Network Vision/LTE - Minnesota Market

[jakeuten]

Has Sprint done any triband upgrades to add B41 too Duluth yet? I'm going there next month and Sprint was terrible there in the past. 

Nothing I’ve seen beyond what’s already there. Mall area is lacking it... where other carriers have tons of spectrum deployed and Verizon is even building small cells. Good luck.


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[Tengen31]

 

Nothing I’ve seen beyond what’s already there. Mall area is lacking it... where other carriers have tons of spectrum deployed and Verizon is even building small cells. Good luck.

 

 

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Well phone is unlocked [emoji6]. Tho I don't wanna give up my Kickstarter plan. 29 bucks after tax and fees. You might not know any B71 there on T-Mobile yet?

 

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[jakeuten]

Well phone is unlocked [emoji6]. Tho I don't wanna give up my Kickstarter plan. 29 bucks after tax and fees. You might not know any B71 there on T-Mobile yet? 
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It’s on in the rural areas. A 10 MHz channel and a 5 MHz channel. Saw it at Jay Cooke and up in Eveleth. Nothing in the city yet. You might want to activate an AT&T prepaid sim if you’re going to be up here longer than a few days. AWS is a 20 MHz carrier now and there’s lots of B14 and 66.


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[Tengen31]

It’s on in the rural areas. A 10 MHz channel and a 5 MHz channel. Saw it at Jay Cooke and up in Eveleth. Nothing in the city yet. You might want to activate an AT&T prepaid sim if you’re going to be up here longer than a few days. AWS is a 20 MHz carrier now and there’s lots of B14 and 66.


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I might was thinking TMO or vzw. I'll see. Does the unlocked S9+ have B14? I can't remember

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[jakeuten]

I might was thinking TMO or vzw. I'll see. Does the unlocked S9+ have B14? I can't remember

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T-Mobile is garbage in the city. Tests failed all over the place. I have them as eSIM right now. Verizon isn’t a bad option either but will cost more than AT&T and still isn’t quite as good. Yeah, the U1 S9 has B14.


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[mnjeepmale]

I have a family member that traveled to Orr, MN and they have no service there. However they have full bars on the phone with the R symbol. LTE engineering shows band 17. Isn't that AT&T?
They can't make calls, use text or data.

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[aliensporebomb]

That very same crane from the previous page was used this past two days in Bloomington at a site off of 94th and Penn that has a Sprint site but the antenna on top of it is not (I thought it was T-Mobile), something horrible must have happened because they took the old antenna completely off the top of the mast and set it on the tarmac at the base of the antenna, replaced the RRUs, the cabinet was opened and literally everything inside it appeared to be replaced, then the antenna at the top was replaced by Monday morning and they were literally working all day sunday on it.  The nearest I can think is the site above the Sprint antennas must have sustained lightning damage.  I have never seen such extensive work on a cell site taking place on a sunday literally going from before 8 in the morning until well after 8 at night.  I have extensive pictures.   It appears the Sprint site was tangentially involved because there is still equipment and additional guy wiring in place and cabling going to parts of the site including the Sprint cabinets.  Most curious to say the least.  It almost looks like power was prevented from going to the site.

Edited July 23, 2019 by aliensporebomb
typo

[jakeuten]

Lots of cobwebs in this thread. Anyone familiar know if/when Sprint will have 41 on all macros in Duluth?

[aliensporebomb]

That's a really good question - since Sprint and TMo merged a lot of the information I have/had is stale.  I wonder.  

You would think by now they should be in the home stretch though.

[littlejth]

N41 is basically all over the metro at this point so I'd sincerely hope they are working on it in Duluth. I was last up there for the drive-through Bentleyville and noticed 0 B41/N41 but that was of course about three months ago.

[jakeuten]

T-Mobile has completely shut down B2 UMTS in the Duluth market but still hasn't widened PCS LTE. It's been over 2 weeks. LTE is currently at the 851 EARFCN, will be 874 once widened which is how the rural sites are. Also I can connect to 8115 EARFCN which is Sprint's A2 block on the 310-260 PLMN. n41 has been deployed at the Miller Hill Mall and the site near UMD which are both at 40 MHz. They roam on Sprint B25 in many spots of town they shouldn't be and won't roam in many spots they should be. Seems like a lot of growing pains.

[littlejth]

12 hours ago, jakeuten said:

T-Mobile has completely shut down B2 UMTS in the Duluth market but still hasn't widened PCS LTE. It's been over 2 weeks. LTE is currently at the 851 EARFCN, will be 874 once widened which is how the rural sites are. Also I can connect to 8115 EARFCN which is Sprint's A2 block on the 310-260 PLMN. n41 has been deployed at the Miller Hill Mall and the site near UMD which are both at 40 MHz. They roam on Sprint B25 in many spots of town they shouldn't be and won't roam in many spots they should be. Seems like a lot of growing pains.

I can't speak to the B2 issues but unfortunately T-Mobile only has 96MHz of 2500mhz spectrum. I've seen the same thing in Eau Claire where they also only have 96mhz. My guess is they're running 40mhz N41, 20MHz 310-260 B41, and 20MHz 210-120 B41 still. Not sure it's going to get much better than that until Sprint's network is actually shut down sadly, unless T-Mobile changes srategies and starts deploying mmWave at some time in the future for sites like the Miller Hill one? Also, I don't have an X60 modem but I imagine it will be useful to have N41 DL + N71 UL for aggregation in cases like that.

[jakeuten]

Duluth was widened to 60 MHz n41 and I could muster about 550 peak. Quite impressive. B2 LTE is still stuck at 10 MHz, n71 is still 20 MHz, B71 is still 5 MHz. Hoping they'll start eating into that Sprint spectrum soon. They've got A block, B block, and G block. 35 MHz of potential DL spectrum but only 10 MHz on air for LTE.

[jakeuten]

Updating the status of the Duluth market. There is n41 deployed out in Spirit Valley, downtown, near UMD, near the Miller Hill mall, but there are still some gaps in coverage. At some point recently it was widened to 80 MHz and I've been able to get about 750 Mbps DL. UL seems to cap out at about 50 Mbps, no matter where I am in relation to any of the sites. LTE still seems to be 10 MHz B2 centered at 851 EARFCN. B71 is 5 MHz, n71 is 20 MHz, and B66 is still 10 MHz. If you're in range of n41 the network is pretty great, but it really starts to show it's dark side when you're on sites without.