Network Vision/LTE - Chicago Market

[Vince]

That's great news. Dekalb has been a disaster. What has it taken, 2 years to get 3 towers with LTE?

 

Sent from my HTC One M8

[AMD64]

What's the location of the third tower? I know the one near Kish hospital,and one near ski in Sycamore.

 

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[DjDynasty]

I'm in the Chicago area. I Freequent wrigley field and live in the sw burbs Joliet Plainfield Bolingbrook. I rarely if ever get decent 4g speeds on an iPhone 5 and 5c 99% of the time I'm either in 3G or have to turn off LTE because the speeds are faster on 3G.

 

What are other peoples experiences?

[njjdnt]

What are other peoples experiences?

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/1084-network-visionlte-chicago-market/

[DjDynasty]

I'm almost always on 3G because LTE is so slow I'm getting speed 0.08 as the high sometimes. I'm in west Joliet in the shadow of St Joes hospital but the coverage keeps getting worse and worse rather than upgraded.

[Dkoellerwx]

I'm almost always on 3G because LTE is so slow I'm getting speed 0.08 as the high sometimes. I'm in west Joliet in the shadow of St Joes hospital but the coverage keeps getting worse and worse rather than upgraded.

Sounds like the opposite of other peoples experiences lately. If you have an iPhone 5c you should bee seeing a significant boost in coverage thanks to Band 26 LTE which has been coming online all over the place.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

[jamisonshaw125]

Sounds like the opposite of other peoples experiences lately. If you have an iPhone 5c you should bee seeing a significant boost in coverage thanks to Band 26 LTE which has been coming online all over the place.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

Whenever and wherever b26 is available, I am pretty much on it non stop. It's quite nice.

 

 

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[DjDynasty]

Seems like b26 doesn't exist then in the ws burbs near Joliet. Even the times I have had LTE it's 1.5mbs tops. It's like they left a DSL link at the backhaul.

[Vince]

Seems like b26 doesn't exist then in the ws burbs near Joliet. Even the times I have had LTE it's 1.5mbs tops. It's like they left a DSL link at the backhaul.

That's not the case. Every LTE Sprint site in America has fiber backhaul, or a microwave connection to a fiber site. Capacity issues have plagued our market and others, too. That's what happens with a 5x5 carrier. It can only handle so much. Chicago and a few other Midwestern markets have the luxury of an additional pcs band 25 carrier via a us cellular spectrum purchase a few years ago. I, personally, am finding this in almost every location I visit around here. Pair that with band 26, the Chicago market will have 3 5x5 LTE carriers, plus 20mhz of tdd-LTE on band 41. What kind of phone do you have? I can help explain how to identify if you're on the new band 25 spectrum, as well as how to identify if you're on band 26. Personally, I'm finding speeds to be increasing in Chicago based on the fact that traffic is now being diverted to 3 separate carriers. Even if you have an older, single-band (band 25) only device, you will start noticing a difference in the coming weeks/months.

[saywhatman]

That's not the case. Every LTE Sprint site in America has fiber backhaul, or a microwave connection to a fiber site. Capacity issues have plagued our market and others, too. That's what happens with a 5x5 carrier. It can only handle so much. Chicago and a few other Midwestern markets have the luxury of an additional pcs band 25 carrier via a us cellular spectrum purchase a few years ago. I, personally, am finding this in almost every location I visit around here. Pair that with band 26, the Chicago market will have 3 5x5 LTE carriers, plus 20mhz of tdd-LTE on band 41. What kind of phone do you have? I can help explain how to identify if you're on the new band 25 spectrum, as well as how to identify if you're on band 26. Personally, I'm finding speeds to be increasing in Chicago based on the fact that traffic is now being diverted to 3 separate carriers. Even if you have an older, single-band (band 25) only device, you will start noticing a difference in the coming weeks/months.

 

I've still never seen the second carrier and B26 only seems to kick in east of the Dan Ryan if you pray a bit and offer a sacrifice to the sprint gods. 

 

Has anyone else been having problems with getting a consistent GPS lock when on B26? It seems like it's always way off. 

[Vince]

I've still never seen the second carrier and B26 only seems to kick in east of the Dan Ryan if you pray a bit and offer a sacrifice to the sprint gods.

 

Has anyone else been having problems with getting a consistent GPS lock when on B26? It seems like it's always way off.

It's coming. Patience, my friend.

 

And as far as the gps goes, that shouldn't be an issue, as they both share the same coordinates from the same gps antenna. Maybe it's just the phone, or some kind of strange coincidence. B41, on the other hand, if broadcasting from a separate clear site, would obviously have a different set of gps coordinates.

[Dkoellerwx]

I've still never seen the second carrier and B26 only seems to kick in east of the Dan Ryan if you pray a bit and offer a sacrifice to the sprint gods.

 

Has anyone else been having problems with getting a consistent GPS lock when on B26? It seems like it's always way off.

It's coming. Patience, my friend.

 

And as far as the gps goes, that shouldn't be an issue, as they both share the same coordinates from the same gps antenna. Maybe it's just the phone, or some kind of strange coincidence. B41, on the other hand, if broadcasting from a separate clear site, would obviously have a different set of gps coordinates.

Your LTE connection cannot affect your GPS location. LTE does not broadcast a location.

 

If you are having GPS issues, it's device related.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

[saywhatman]

It's coming. Patience, my friend.

 

And as far as the gps goes, that shouldn't be an issue, as they both share the same coordinates from the same gps antenna. Maybe it's just the phone, or some kind of strange coincidence. B41, on the other hand, if broadcasting from a separate clear site, would obviously have a different set of gps coordinates.

 

 

Your LTE connection cannot affect your GPS location. LTE does not broadcast a location.

 

If you are having GPS issues, it's device related.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

That's what I would have thought, but the problem only crops up when I'm connected to B26. I thought perhaps it was just an issue with A-GPS configuration on the new equipment, but If that's not possible then I'm stumped. 

[corys00]

That's what I would have thought, but the problem only crops up when I'm connected to B26. I thought perhaps it was just an issue with A-GPS configuration on the new equipment, but If that's not possible then I'm stumped.

By chance are you on a G2? I had similar issues with my G2 down here in Orlando with B26 deployment happening here too. Switched to my iPhone 5C and no issue.

 

 

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[Joeynach]

Every-time I leave Chicago and return I am reminded how good we have it here.  I know sometimes we gripe about poor performance at certain locations, events, or times of day, but we are very lucky to live in such an advanced NV market.  I just returned from 5 days in the LA/Malibu area.  Service was extremely sub par on all fronts.

[Joeynach]

Maybe 3G will actually be usable now. *shrugs*

 

Maybe I'll resume my out-of-the-way driving to bring some density to Sensorly.

So why do you think the tower at Lincoln Highway and Annie Golden Road is still 3G when the other two have now been LTE activated?

[mhammett]

So why do you think the tower at Lincoln Highway and Annie Golden Road is still 3G when the other two have now been LTE activated?

 

Time, I hope? Logically, that site is the point where they hit fiber as each microwave hop out is slower and slower. In Sycamore, the fiber connected site was I believe last to get activated. It certainly wasn't first. In a chain of three sites, I believe it went 2 - 3 - 1.

 

I can't explain that.

[Joeynach]

Time, I hope? Logically, that site is the point where they hit fiber as each microwave hop out is slower and slower. In Sycamore, the fiber connected site was I believe last to get activated. It certainly wasn't first. In a chain of three sites, I believe it went 2 - 3 - 1.

 

I can't explain that.

There is a lot of random 3G only sites around Chicago I can't explain.  Loop sites I give a bit of leeway too b/c I understand accessing them or supplying them with new Fiber can be a chore, but like the random 3G only sites off i-294 or in Evanston/Winnetka or off the Indiana Toll Road I can't explain either.

[briank101]

Here's a picture of how the 800 MHz spectrum has changed in my neck of the woods since my Feb 6th post #3560 on this topic.

 

850 to 890 MHz

[briank101]

Here the old pic.

 

[Vince]

Here the old pic.

 

800MHz_Site_BID13155.jpg

Here's a picture of how the 800 MHz spectrum has changed in my neck of the woods since my Feb 6th post #3560 on this topic.

 

850 to 890 MHz

850-890MHz.jpg

For everyone that has no idea what they're looking at, care to explain?

 

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[WiWavelength]

Here's a picture of how the 800 MHz spectrum has changed in my neck of the woods since my Feb 6th post #3560 on this topic.

 

850 to 890 MHz

850-890MHz.jpg

 

From a Sprint standpoint, nothing has changed.  The current sweep still shows the band class 10 CDMA1X 800 carrier, and that is it.  No band 26 LTE 800 carrier.

 

AJ

[kyle_4thousand]

Every-time I leave Chicago and return I am reminded how good we have it here. I know sometimes we gripe about poor performance at certain locations, events, or times of day, but we are very lucky to live in such an advanced NV market. I just returned from 5 days in the LA/Malibu area. Service was extremely sub par on all fronts.

Out in the suburbs the reliability of the network is on par or even better than Verizon I would imagine, especially with B26 coming online.

 

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[Joeynach]

Out in the suburbs the reliability of the network is on par or even better than Verizon I would imagine, especially with B26 coming online.

 

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Yeah many of us myself included have discussed the stark performance differences between suburb and city users.  The population density makes a huge difference when we are talking about one 5x5 LTE carrier for all.  Hopefully, by the end of the year the timelines hold true and the entire area is covered in Tri-Band spectrum so all Chicagoland users receive them same experience no matter what location.

[briank101]

Here's another Feb 6th vs June 6th spectrum comparison in the PCS band. This is 1945 to 1970 MHz. Not too much different, but I note some change in the 1955 to 1960 MHz region since Feb. Not sure if it's another Sprint tower/sector nearby or that they haven't adjusted downtilt, I'm 900m from tower. Hopefully in the next few months I'll see the extra 5X5 LTE carrier both on band 25 and band 26 and perhaps some extra CDMA thrown in on the 25 band, they have room. This tower is in the center of a high tech region of the western suburbs so there should be no excuses on delaying maximizing air-link capacity on all bands at this site.

 

Now June 6th 2014 1945 to 1970 MHz

 

 

 

Previous Feb 6th 2014 1945 to 1970 MHz