Network Vision/LTE - Chicago Market

[Joeynach]

There was one in city change from Robert's last update.  A site near Washington Park on the South Side received LTE.

[saywhatman]

There was one in city change from Robert's last update.  A site near Washington Park on the South Side received LTE.

Finally, the site that serves campus! I didn't see any new LTE on campus today, but I'll check around. That site is problematic, as the hospital complex directly to the east of it destroys the signal. B41 LTE barely goes 100 feet, we'll see if B25 is any better. 

[Joeynach]

Finally, the tower that serves campus! I didn't see any new LTE on campus today, but I'll check around. That site is problematic, as the hospital complex directly to the east of it destroys the signal. 2600Mhz LTE from that site barely goes 100 feet. 

Ahh, I see now, looks like the site, the radio panels are attached to a smokestack of a campus power or utility facility.  And yeah looks like the Univ of Chicago Hospital and supporting building are right across the street the East.  Thats gotta kill the signal for the rest of the campus which is also to the east of site.  I wouldn't be surprised if U of C is a well known bad spot for Sprint after seeing this.  The site is probably a Sprint and Clear co-located site since you mentioned B41.  I can see multiple panel racks at multiple heights on the smock stack via Streetview in Google.  But you're right if the B25 LTE signal is no good, it's not likely to be any better with B41 at higher freq.  The only thing that would probably help is B26. 

[mhammett]

Working with Robert we discovered an anomaly in DeKalb. Lincoln Towers was not the site lit with LTE, but the new one on University Plaza. The web site has been corrected to reflect this.

 

This still leaves that chain of four sites with LTE only on the one, far site in Elburn.

 

I wish Sprint would just let me connect these sites for them! Seriously, I would have had backhaul to them a year ago if they just asked!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

[AMD64]

Working with Robert we discovered an anomaly in DeKalb. Lincoln Towers was not the site lit with LTE, but the new one on University Plaza. The web site has been corrected to reflect this.

 

This still leaves that chain of four sites with LTE only on the one, far site in Elburn.

 

I wish Sprint would just let me connect these sites for them! Seriously, I would have had backhaul to them a year ago if they just asked!

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

How the far the signal goes ? I work is near south 1st and harvestore Dr and I get only a single or two 3G bars

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

[mhammett]

How the far the signal goes ? I work is near south 1st and harvestore Dr and I get only a single or two 3G bars

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Check out www.sensorly.com They also have apps for Android and iOS. That shows what the observed signal strengths are. You won't get good LTE there until LTA or GYP are upgraded to LTE. You should have plenty of 3G signal there.

[saywhatman]

Ahh, I see now, looks like the site, the radio panels are attached to a smokestack of a campus power or utility facility.  And yeah looks like the Univ of Chicago Hospital and supporting building are right across the street the East.  Thats gotta kill the signal for the rest of the campus which is also to the east of site.  I wouldn't be surprised if U of C is a well known bad spot for Sprint after seeing this.  The site is probably a Sprint and Clear co-located site since you mentioned B41.  I can see multiple panel racks at multiple heights on the smock stack via Streetview in Google.  But you're right if the B25 LTE signal is no good, it's not likely to be any better with B41 at higher freq.  The only thing that would probably help is B26. 

 

Yep. The site is B41/B25 colocated. Standing right on top of it, to the west of the hospital complex, I could pick up B41 (a few weeks ago), but once I tried to walk back to campus I lost it. We'll see about the B25 coverage, but honestly I've been using a T-Mobile SIM card for a bit because they have a site on campus somewhere. Sprint's coverage in the area is pretty abysmal, I hope that this new LTE acceptance and/or B26 helps. 

[Vince]

B26 and USCC spectrum need to be implemented immediately. I'm not sure what the hold up could be. This is a major metro area with a troublesome network in place. Why isn't there a sense of urgency from sprint? B26 is showing up in some really random places across the country, and not where they should be right now. We need one or both really bad right now.

[Joeynach]

B26 and USCC spectrum need to be implemented immediately. I'm not sure what the hold up could be. This is a major metro area with a troublesome network in place. Why isn't there a sense of urgency from sprint? B26 is showing up in some really random places across the country, and not where they should be right now. We need one or both really bad right now.

Yeah come to think I am curious why we haven't heard or noticed a thing relative to the new USCC spectrum Sprint took over on Feb 1st here in Chicago.

[Vince]

Yeah come to think I am curious why we haven't heard or noticed a thing relative to the new USCC spectrum Sprint took over on Feb 1st here in Chicago.

I think someone caught a flicker of USCC somewhere in Naperville or some northwest suburb. We haven't heard anything since. I'm thinking a dual launch since both require site visits. It would save money that way. I wish we had some way of knowing what our status is. Have the crews installed the carrier cards at all sites? In progress? Or, haven't even started yet. I emailed dan@Sprint and never got a response, which is strange. Then again, my questions for them usually can't be resolved with a reboot or a prl update, so they probably have me on ignore

[Joeynach]

I think someone caught a flicker of USCC somewhere in Naperville or some northwest suburb. We haven't heard anything since. I'm thinking a dual launch since both require site visits. It would save money that way. I wish we had some way of knowing what our status is. Have the crews installed the carrier cards at all sites? In progress? Or, haven't even started yet. I emailed dan@Sprint and never got a response, which is strange. Then again, my questions for them usually can't be resolved with a reboot or a prl update, so they probably have me on ignore

Can I have your cross streets and zip code, I would like to look into this further Vtrossi? Did you do a data profile and PRL update?

 

Ok Ok, I had my fun, I just had to do it, just had to.

[Vince]

Can I have your cross streets and zip code, I would like to look into this further Vtrossi? Did you do a data profile and PRL update?

 

Ok Ok, I had my fun, I just had to do it, just had to.

It's funny because every tower here has been done for over a year, but they would still say "yeah, we see an outage there. The techs are on their way." They're just programmed to say that.

[Joeynach]

It's funny because every tower here has been done for over a year, but they would still say "yeah, we see an outage there. The techs are on their way." They're just programmed to say that.

I know I see it all the time, they are only programmed to solve billing issues and look up tower outages or open tickets in their system to explain performance issues.  The best is when more than one rep responds on the same issue, one says there is no outage or issues effecting the tower, the other says I see an outage or an open ticket on data/connectivity at your location.  I have come to the conclusion unless you want a $10 credit on your bill don't bother contacting Sprint directly.  If you want technical information come here, donate, ask questions, and read.

[S4GRU]

First Band 26 sites accepted in the Chicago market. Details in the Premier Sponsor B26/LTE 800 thread.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

 

[Joeynach]

Really interesting updates from Robert's last.  McCormick place now all 4G thats good.  Miss the auto show by 1 month...damn!  What I find striking is there is new add on what looks like the Fairmont Hotel on Columbus Dr.  But this location has upper Columbus and Lower Columbus, I am curious if this new add is up above on the street or down below to provide coverage on lower Columbus, lower Wacker, lower Michigan, etc. 

[S4GRU]

Really interesting updates from Robert's last.  McCormick place now all 4G thats good.  Miss the auto show by 1 month...damn!  What I find striking is there is new add on what looks like the Fairmont Hotel on Columbus Dr.  But this location has upper Columbus and Lower Columbus, I am curious if this new add is up above on the street or down below to provide coverage on lower Columbus, lower Wacker, lower Michigan, etc. 

 

The new add is at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel.  What I don't know is if it is a DAS or rooftop site, though.  It didn't say in the listing.  Which usually means it's not a DAS.  But sometimes they just forget to list it that way.

Robert

[Joeynach]

The new add is at the Radisson Blu Aqua Hotel.  What I don't know is if it is a DAS or rooftop site, though.  It didn't say in the listing.  Which usually means it's not a DAS.  But sometimes they just forget to list it that way.

Robert

Very nice add, the Aqua Blue Hotel is brand new, its actually a condo building too.  It's now part of the adjacent Lake Shore east condo complex, I have a few friends over in those buildings.  Last time I was there the coverage wasn't great, had pretty weak signals indoors.  Hopefully this improves the signal and coverage for many Sprint users crammed into this popular Condo space.  I will have to go by there and check it out again sometimes soon.

[gusherb]

The past three weeks things have started to improve for me on LTE. Ever since late summer I was getting awful upload speeds most places, and started to see download speeds drop below 3 Mbps.

So the last three weeks many places where I get decent signal no more then a mile from the nearest site I'm starting to see above 3 Mbps down, and always above 1mbps up, like I did a year ago.

To put it in perspective, i used to see 5-8 Mbps at home, inside, then it dropped to 3 Mbps and below with useless upload speeds and now it's back to 5-10 Mbps with at least 2mbps up.

At one point everywhere I went was crap! But even in Chicago I see improvement.

 

I'm guessing they're finally doing something about that bad SNR. I'm still using a single band phone FYI so all reports are about band 25 only.

[tommym65]

Band 26 LTE has apparently popped up in the wild in the Far Northwest Burbs.  My hotspot has been crazily jumping from B25 to B41 to B26 for the last several hours. (It is wonderful to live on the fringes!)

 

For B26, it is reporting Channel UL of 26763 and Channel DL of 8763, both dead-center of the channels expected by AJ in his Wall article from last spring (i.e., UL 26761-26765 and DL 8761-8765).  RSRP is mediocre (-105 to -115).  I believe that the Sprint site is about 4.5 miles southeast of me.  I think I got a speed test of 7.80 Mbps down and 4.20 Mbps up with a ping of 76 ms, but it is hard to be certain because the hotspot keeps jumping bands.  (Right now, for instance it is camped on B41and giving me ~4.4 Mb down & ~0.8 up with a 168 Ms ping, from a site about 3 miles southwest of me.  Of course, when I WANT to see B41, I can't connect to it at all.)  I will post B26 screenshots and tower ID on the B26 Acceptances [edit:] 800 Deployment Schedule Premier thread.

 

I am also getting an apparently anomalous B25 Channel UL reading from that same site, which keeps bouncing back & forth between B26 and B25:  Per AJ, the normal B25 UL is 26665 (1912.5 MHz) and the DL is 8665 (1992.5 MHz), and I am getting those numbers most of the time.  But intermittantly, from the same Sprint site, I am getting a UL of 40056 with a DL of 8665.  Using AJ's formula, 40056 translates to 2.2516 MHz, which doesn't seem to be in any cellular band at all.  I had thought that I finally found the elusive "USCC spectrum" in use as a second B25 LTE carrier, but actually my observation doesn't make any sense, first because the UL and DL aren't paired, second because the DL is already paired with 26665, and third because the UL isn't even in a cellular frequency.  Any experts have any thoughts?

[Vince]

Tommy, what suburb are you seeing this at? Can't you disable 41 on your hotspot to isolate a 26 connection?

[tommym65]

Tommy, what suburb are you seeing this at? Can't you disable 41 on your hotspot to isolate a 26 connection?

 

Crystal Lake, but the sites (I found a second) are both south of me. And, yes I could disable B41, but I have been busy enough sorting out the numbers that i simply haven't disabled it.  I think the B26 data is pretty solid, and in line with the Deployment Schedule, as you will see in the Premier post.

 

Edit:  Vt: Took your suggestion, disabled B41, now my eyes are getting easick as the hotspot yo-yo's between B25 & B26.    The RSRP's are nearly identical, ~116. SNR also about the same, ~9.

[S4GRU]

Channel 40056 is 2536.6MHz.

 

Robert

[tommym65]

Channel 40056 is 2536.6MHz.

 

Robert

Which somehow means my Zing is reporting a B41 frequency for a B25 site. Still doesn't seem to make sense. My guesses are 1. The Zing is wrong; 2. The site is somehow reporting wrong (this is also a new B26 site and Samsung may have gotten something wrong - does the Zing calculate the number, or is it broadcast by the sector?) 3. Something else is going on and needs more expert analysys.

 

Or, 4. Huh?

[Vince]

Which somehow means my Zing is reporting a B41 frequency for a B25 site. Still doesn't seem to make sense. My guesses are 1. The Zing is wrong; 2. The site is somehow reporting wrong (this is also a new B26 site and Samsung may have gotten something wrong - does the Zing calculate the number, or is it broadcast by the sector?) 3. Something else is going on and needs more expert analysys.

 

Or, 4. Huh?

Maybe the zing was just caught in a refreshing state. You said it was bouncing between 3 LTE bands. It might have just gotten "hung up" on a b41 download and a b25/26 upload frequency. That's my guess.

[tommym65]

Maybe the zing was just caught in a refreshing state. You said it was bouncing between 3 LTE bands. It might have just gotten "hung up" on a b41 download and a b25/26 upload frequency. That's my guess.

I think that's a good theory, but the Zing stuck on that setting sometimes for a couple of minutes, and I was able to web browse and do speed tests. My B41 DL/UL channel is consistently 40978, while the B25 reading was 40056. My guess is tower tweaking.