jeffgus

405 has been better for me. At the top of the 405 I was able to get 1500kbps down. The areas where I would always drop calls have gone back to the way it was. For a while there, I was dropping a calls six times through the pass... even just outside the pass between Sunset and Wilshire. Now it only happens on the North side going up or down. So far. so good. from Wilshire to the top of the 405. I hope it doesn't go backwards again. Now if they can only fix the area just past the bridge and the 101. That area has been a problem for years!

The best, so far, for me is in the SF Valley: 1775kbps/872kbps This was on a eHRPD tower. As I was moving along on the freeway, it dropped back down to 87kbps. I just wish the 405 voice coverage would get fixed soon. Data I can live without as long as the voice call doesn't get dropped. There has always been weak spots in the 405 pass, but lately... gaping holes!

The 405 pass is terrible! I drop voice calls around 4-5 times driving from the valley to the west side. I know the 405 has had a couple of weak spots for quite a while. The problem is that it seems to have gotten much worse. I am hoping that since they are working on things that the problem is temporary.

I seem to remember my brother saying the most he has seen is 6 T1's for a service. He didn't know exactly how they were used (data/voice). All the new stuff is fiber and that is what he was working with. It's pretty amazing that all those towers have been running on T1's all this time. Makes sense because T1's are available almost anywhere. Just to think, I was so happy to get T1-like speeds on my phone years ago!

My brother has done some work on LTE upgrades for some of the carriers. He told me that the old racks took in one T1 for each sector (each side of the triangle is a sector). Once copper is dumped and there is fiber to the tower, there shouldn't be a backhall problem. If the RF data overtakes the fiber, it is fairly easy to upgrade the fiber interface on each side... no need to pull new wire. He didn't know what the speed of the fiber was, but I was guessing it to be around 100mbit/s. It sounds about right based on the article. We have 3 sectors * 1.54mbit/s each * 20 = 92.40mbit/s... right around 100mbit/s!