Network Vision/LTE - Chicago Market

[mhammett]

I have been to at least six Cubs games this year and had a couple megs at most if not all times.

 

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[mellimel2212]

I have been to at least six Cubs games this year and had a couple megs at most if not all times.

 

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Last time I had Sprint and was at an outing I had calls text and 4g.

 

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[Joeynach]

More updates.  The tower on the Mag Mile at Walton and Michigan Ave finally turned 4G.  Hooray there is LTE on North Michigan ave.

 

Sprint Care on Twitter told me that the two towers in the West Loop that are still stuck on 3G only are slated to be LTE active within the next 90 days.  Looks like they are some of the if not the last towers scheduled to be turned LTE downtown.

[ChiWestLoop]

More updates.  The tower on the Mag Mile at Walton and Michigan Ave finally turned 4G.  Hooray there is LTE on North Michigan ave.

 

Sprint Care on Twitter told me that the two towers in the West Loop that are still stuck on 3G only are slated to be LTE active within the next 90 days.  Looks like they are some of the if not the last towers scheduled to be turned LTE downtown.

 

I live on the West Loop!!!! Yes, just in time for me to get the iPhone 5S!!! With the conversion to 4G that means that those towers are LTE at 800 and 1900?

[Joeynach]

I live on the West Loop!!!! Yes, just in time for me to get the iPhone 5S!!! With the conversion to 4G that means that those towers are LTE at 800 and 1900?

I can't say for certain if they will have 800Mhz LTE but 1900Mhz LTE for sure yes.  They are located at Washington/Loomis and Kinzie/Sangamon.

[ChiWestLoop]

I can't say for certain if they will have 800Mhz LTE but 1900Mhz LTE for sure yes.  They are located at Washington/Loomis and Kinzie/Sangamon.

Nice! Both towers are less than a mile away from me. What is the range of a 1900 signal? 800? 2600? Just curious.

[Joeynach]

Nice! Both towers are less than a mile away from me. What is the range of a 1900 signal? 800? 2600? Just curious.

I don't know, good question for one of the more technically minded posters on the board or one of the admins.

[Cubbiefan82]

Nice! Both towers are less than a mile away from me. What is the range of a 1900 signal? 800? 2600? Just curious.

Typically in dense city like chicago a 1900 site is about 1 or 2 miles in radius. Downtown has more cell sites(a few blocks), because more people. If your getting the iphone 5s or 5c, u wont be able to get 2600. So I wouldnt worry about it, 1900 and 800 lte(which iphone 5s/5c supports) should start being turned on the end of this month, then give them some time to get to all sites. Also all sites need to have 4g on 1900 before 800 of course(need fiber backhaul). I have 800 voice on my phone right now and it keeps a site a lot long then 1900. So with the new iphone, u will have 4g in a lot of bulidings that u didnt before.

[ydoucare]

Went to Joliet for the NASCAR race on Sunday. Last year there was only a sniff of LTE in one corner of the track. This year, I had a very strong signal everywhere, but as soon as the place got busy, it became *completely* unusable. It took a solid 10 minutes to load a weather map. I gave up trying to check Facebook, Twitter, etc and didn't even bother with a speedtest. It was painful...and very disappointing.

[Joeynach]

Went to Joliet for the NASCAR race on Sunday. Last year there was only a sniff of LTE in one corner of the track. This year, I had a very strong signal everywhere, but as soon as the place got busy, it became *completely* unusable. It took a solid 10 minutes to load a weather map. I gave up trying to check Facebook, Twitter, etc and didn't even bother with a speedtest. It was painful...and very disappointing.

Same thing that happens to me at every event at Soldier Field, Wrigley Field, United Center, and other concert venues.  Sprint seems to have more capacity issues than spectrum issues.  Quite strange.  To me this implies they have made little to no progress with backhaul in the market.  If true, that would put them extremely behind schedule if we are to believe what some of the mods and people in the know have said about the original schedule.

[mhammett]

Any gains in backhaul in some areas have been negated by increased loading.

 

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[Joeynach]

Any gains in backhaul in some areas have been negated by increased loading.

 

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Meh, thats like the dumb people's theory that if you build more highways or expand current ones its just going to mean more traffic.  Thats not true.  That's now how demand forecasting and thus transportation planning works.  Im sure the same is true here.  If backhaul is gained it doesn't automatically induce enough new traffic (or subscriber gain) to negate it's installation.  There is a build up of value to current and new subscribers before the recently deployed back-haul reaches its capacity or bod down point, could take months should take years.  Same with highway expansion, which is why the residents of Lake County are retarded in their resistance to expanding Route 53. 

[mhammett]

Meh, thats like the dumb people's theory that if you build more highways or expand current ones its just going to mean more traffic. Thats not true. That's now how demand forecasting and thus transportation planning works. Im sure the same is true here. If backhaul is gained it doesn't automatically induce enough new traffic (or subscriber gain) to negate it's installation. There is a build up of value to current and new subscribers before the recently deployed back-haul reaches its capacity or bod down point, could take months should take years. Same with highway expansion, which is why the residents of Lake County are retarded in their resistance to expanding Route 53.

Oh, they should certainly expand 53 and the backhauls. My intent was that neither are upgraded fast enough to keep ahead.

 

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[Joeynach]

Oh, they should certainly expand 53 and the backhauls. My intent was that neither are upgraded fast enough to keep ahead.

 

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Oh yeah that is 100% true.  Telecom providers, IDOT, Tollway Authority, etc, all move too slow to actually produce the impact required by the motivation for the infrastructure expansion in the first place to make a difference. 

[coorsleftfield]

I'll be visiting Chicago soon, so I'm curious, being a launched LTE market with 98% of NV sites accepted, and  78% of LTE sites accepted how is life on Sprint's network now? Should I expect to pick up 4G in most places in the city?  I'm on a S3 so it's 1900mhz only.  How are the speeds?

[Dkoellerwx]

Nice! Both towers are less than a mile away from me. What is the range of a 1900 signal? 800? 2600? Just curious.

It depends on how each site is set up. In rural areas, you can get 10-15 miles out of a 1900 site, 20-30 miles out of an 800 site, and 3-4 miles out of a 25/2600 site. In urban areas, each can be configured down to a couple of blocks to fit in more sites for capacity.

[Dkoellerwx]

Went to Joliet for the NASCAR race on Sunday. Last year there was only a sniff of LTE in one corner of the track. This year, I had a very strong signal everywhere, but as soon as the place got busy, it became *completely* unusable. It took a solid 10 minutes to load a weather map. I gave up trying to check Facebook, Twitter, etc and didn't even bother with a speedtest. It was painful...and very disappointing.

 

 

Same thing that happens to me at every event at Soldier Field, Wrigley Field, United Center, and other concert venues.  Sprint seems to have more capacity issues than spectrum issues.  Quite strange.  To me this implies they have made little to no progress with backhaul in the market.  If true, that would put them extremely behind schedule if we are to believe what some of the mods and people in the know have said about the original schedule.

 

 

Any gains in backhaul in some areas have been negated by increased loading.

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

 

Meh, thats like the dumb people's theory that if you build more highways or expand current ones its just going to mean more traffic.  Thats not true.  That's now how demand forecasting and thus transportation planning works.  Im sure the same is true here.  If backhaul is gained it doesn't automatically induce enough new traffic (or subscriber gain) to negate it's installation.  There is a build up of value to current and new subscribers before the recently deployed back-haul reaches its capacity or bod down point, could take months should take years.  Same with highway expansion, which is why the residents of Lake County are retarded in their resistance to expanding Route 53.

All the backhaul in the world won't help if the airlink is saturated. Each site can only handle so many simultaneous connections before things bog down. There is simply no way the Macro network can handle that many people. There is no Macro network that can. The only way to deal with these types of events is either with a DAS system, or small cells, or public WiFi.

[Joeynach]

Ok so here is the real reason Sprint's service, even though its all active LTE, sucks so bad in and around Solider Field and Museum Campus.  Not that they would ever say this, but long story short, their infrastructure is lesser (less towers in the area) and farther away, at least compared to Verizon. Period.

 

See the map below I found from opensignal.com for the South Loop area.  Verizon has an entire series of towers within hundreds of feet of one another right at Solider Field and within the Museum Campus area.  The have systemically identified and planned to cluster towers in this area to provide coverage and service to one of the most highly trafficked areas of Chicago.

 

Sprint has a cluster of towers over by State and 14th, a little over half a mile away from Soldier Field.  Also a couple towers at McCormick Place, about 3/4 miles away.

 

Verizon has a tower within the Solider Field grounds, another about 1000 feet away at the Field Museum, and another one at the Roosevelt Metra Electric station about 1500 feet from the Field Museum, as well as a tower at McCormick Place as too (3/4 mile).  VZW is saturating the Museum Campus area with capacity and coverage, Sprint is not. 

 

So no wonder none of my friends on Verizon have the same no calls, no texts, no data, all timeouts problems on gameday's (or concerts) at Soldier Field that I and my other Sprint friends do.  If Sprint doesn't put up a micro site or DAS they either don't know (in which case I don't want to be with a provider that doesn't know their own network) or don't care.

 

[Vince]

That map doesn't seem very accurate. I have a whole cluster of towers near my house, not a single mark on the map.

[runagun]

Really no matter solder field has a DAS and I'm totally surprised they havent hooked up to it yet. 

[Joeynach]

Really no matter solder field has a DAS and I'm totally surprised they havent hooked up to it yet. 

A sprint person responded to a similar post I made on their community forums.  His response was, "Sprint would love to have a tower at Solder Field, but who is the official sponsor of the NFL"?  I find that a total BS answer.

 

A.  Verizon wasn't always an official sponsor, Sprint was for most of the 2000s

B.  Sprint just received $5B in capital from Softbank, if they wanted to invest in mobile microsites or DAS they could

C.  If Sprint really identified this area of Chicago as under capacity and under performing as we have they could do something if they wanted.  A tower on the Field Museum, a tower across Lake Share on the Museum Park Towers, etc etc.

D.  To do nothing in such a heavily trafficked and impacted area to tens of thousands of subscribers implies they either don't know (in which case they are a bad company) or don't care.

[mhammett]

It depends on how each site is set up. In rural areas, you can get 10-15 miles out of a 1900 site, 20-30 miles out of an 800 site, and 3-4 miles out of a 25/2600 site. In urban areas, each can be configured down to a couple of blocks to fit in more sites for capacity.

Are those typical or optimistic? For my plots, I was using using seven miles for PCS. I got that by measuring from quiet spots to area towers.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

All the backhaul in the world won't help if the airlink is saturated. Each site can only handle so many simultaneous connections before things bog down. There is simply no way the Macro network can handle that many people. There is no Macro network that can. The only way to deal with these types of events is either with a DAS system, or small cells, or public WiFi.

Anyone have any numbers as far as how much real world traffic saturates the airlinks? I'm not talking the 37.5 meg best case.

 

They should have had all of that in 3G years ago.

 

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[Dkoellerwx]

Are those typical or optimistic? For my plots, I was using using seven miles for PCS. I got that by measuring from quiet spots to area towers.

 

15 is best case scenario, but 10-12 is pretty regular for those rural highway sites. Pretty common along my drive from Springfield to KC, and on the drive from KC to Denver. 

 

 

Anyone have any numbers as far as how much real world traffic saturates the airlinks? I'm not talking the 37.5 meg best case.

They should have had all of that in 3G years ago.

 

I don't know that info off the top of my head. You'd probably have to drag AJ into this to get a good answer.

 

They should have had all of what in 3G years ago?

[mhammett]

15 is best case scenario, but 10-12 is pretty regular for those rural highway sites. Pretty common along my drive from Springfield to KC, and on the drive from KC to Denver.

Okay, I'll turn up my cell radius in my mapping project.

 

 

They should have had all of what in 3G years ago?

DAS, small sites, etc. at the major venues.

 

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[Dkoellerwx]

Okay, I'll turn up my cell radius in my mapping project.

 

Also, 20-30 is pretty typical from what we've seen so far out of 800 CDMA. 

 

 

DAS, small sites, etc. at the major venues.

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Ah, yeah, but that's up to the venues. Sprint can approach them about installing something, but it's up to the venue to actually get it installed.