Network Vision/LTE - Chicago Market

[S4GRU]

I live in the Wrigley area and can tell you that we have issues there all the time. Even this weekend with the Tbox drunk-fest on Clark Street I had problems getting service at my place. Any time there is an event at the park or a very busy night on Clark Street, you will have problems with service. Sadly, if you don't switch to Airplane mode on your Android device it will burn through your entire battery in under 25 minutes while trying to connect to a signal.

 

Chicago is (or was) a spectrum constrained market for Sprint. Once a site is maxed out with the available spectrum, there was not much left for Sprint to do to help performance. Especially on 3G. Also, Sprint didn't have any additional resources to deploy a 2nd LTE 1900 carrier in Chicago.

 

However, now that Sprint is buying USCC's spectrum in Chicago, it has much more breathing room. They can deploy another LTE carrier and lots more 3G and voice carriers. They won't be able to add these in the near future, but its going to do a lot for capacity in your market.

 

Until then, Sprint will be deploying more small cells around Chicago to take more burden off the macro network. Once LTE is fully deployed, it will help a lot as well to reduce the burden off 3G. And Network Vision handles all the traffic more efficiently. It will get better and better every month in Chicago for Sprint customers from here on out for a year or two.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 on Tapatalk

 

 

[Bird_Chicago]

Thanks Robert, I do understand all of that (old vs new vs future), but I think everyone needs to understand the size of the crowd in the Wrigley area. The ballpark can hold just a bit over 41,000 and you can add on maybe 1500 to 2500 on the rooftops; add in another 2500-3000 on the night of a concert. Then there are no less than 30 bars within a 5 minute walk of the park that are typically full on the day of a game/event (They have to close several major streets due to the size of the crowd). And finally the entire neighborhood around the park is home to more than 100,000 people. I wouldn't know how to estimate the amount of people that work there or those that are commuting. However I would estimate that a typical summer day has nearly 200,000 people within range of 2-3 towers.

 

I'm not sure how Sprint could ever make this a reliable neighborhood without a massive investment. At the very least I will have moved before that happens. My guess is that days like New Years Eve, St Patricks, Halloween and other major drinking holidays will be serviceable with the near-term upgrades.

 

I will say that my patience has paid off. I am able to use my phone on about 90% of my trip on the way to work these days with only the Old Town area being the major dead zone. Earlier this year my phone was usable about 1-2% of the the trip.

[drock2750]

As a Wrigley resident, my Airave keeps me chuggin along! I highly recommend it. I find that when I'm inside a bar, signal strength is a problem, not just sprint's capacity. If I operated a bar, I would install a radio repeater for all major bands with an antenna on the roof...they're like 300 bucks. That would keep people in the bar and their batteries juiced up longer. I realize this doesn't solve a capacity issue, but when you're deep inside some of these buildings, and google voice is failing to send out the tiniest snippet of text, signal is often the problem.

 

On another note, my ride from Howard down to Addison on the Red Line yesterday had netmonitor reporting cell towers either with no name at all or names/addresses that aren't even in Illinois and no carrier ID. Even though I'm sure the names don't affect operation, it seems to be a clear indication that work is being done so I'm happy about that!

[Bird_Chicago]

I might look into an Airwave, but for now I use my Google Voice integration via Gmail and the Gvoice plugin for Chrome. This way I can hear a tone over my laptop speakers when I get a SMS or phone call. Also, the calls over Gmail do not use up minutes on your plan.

[ydoucare]

Oh I get that problem all the time. Whenever my phone is struggling with service its obvious its cycling through connections and kills my battery. Thats what happened at Solider Field two weeks ago. Every open of the NFL app, Twitter update, email refresh, browser open that went timed out or cannot access network killed my battery in about 2 hours. When Sprint service is bad you are better off in Airplane mode or turning your phone off. But again, back to my original point, in places like Wrigley, Soldier Field, US Cellular Field, Im shocked there is no extra capacity built in and around these massive scheduled gatherings of people. The idea that the macro network and neighborhood towers are good enough is ancient. You would think by default all carriers would place extra cell sites around ballparks, the micro sites, extra panels on nearby rooftops or billboards, etc, to help ease the burden on the regular tower sites in place in these areas.

 

Sprint has had CoWs setup around all the NASCAR tracks for years. It probably helps that they are the title sponsor of the cup series, but I still can't believe they haven't done it at the ballparks in Chicago already.

[nmbr1scoobs]

Sprint has had CoWs setup around all the NASCAR tracks for years. It probably helps that they are the title sponsor of the cup series, but I still can't believe they haven't done it at the ballparks in Chicago already.

 

I go to Daytona International Speedway and Chicagoland Speedway every year for the Cup races and see them all of the time there. It's grrrrreat!

[Joeynach]

I go to Daytona International Speedway and Chicagoland Speedway every year for the Cup races and see them all of the time there. It's grrrrreat!

 

Wish they would put those at more sporting and social hot spots in the city. You wouldnt find me within 10 miles of a nascar race. GIve me better coverage for MLB, NBA, NFL, NHL games, city street fests, Lolla, TeeBox, and all the city bars a 28 year old goes to looking for you know what every weekend and I am a happy camper. Is that so much to ask?

[StephanStengel]

Similar situation.

 

I'm 2,125 feet away from a NV tower that has not had any work done yet and am still at 3G at home. Insult to injury, I'm surrounded by about 20 LTE towers within a 5 mile radius.

 

Well, got good news yesterday. Loaded up Robert's "NV Sites Complete" map and saw my local tower appear for the first time as a blue pin (3G/800).

 

A quick check at network.sprint.com and saw that it was updated with 1 data speed upgrade...tho no LTE on the S3 at that time. Then later last night I glanced at the phone again, and lo and behold, it was finally showing 4G goodness.

 

Checked network.sprint.com today and it now shows 2 data speed upgrades. Speedtest.net shows 13 to 14Mbps down and 7 to 8Mbps up. RSRP's in the low to mid -90's and I'm a happy guy!

[mellimel2212]

I have lte mostly everywhere I go. I'm lovin it lol

 

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy Nexus Rockin 4.2.1 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[aerxx]

With the tower saturation increasing and the radio tilting becoming increasingly more effective.....I have been getting great 4G service. I work in a retail store where its hard enough to hold even a cellular signal....but I have had 4G all day today with minimal issues. Hand off between 3G to 4G to 3G again is quick and seemless.

 

 

 

 

 

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Sent from my SPH-L710 using Forum Runner

[Joeynach]

I have lte mostly everywhere I go. I'm lovin it lol

 

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy Nexus Rockin 4.2.1 using Tapatalk 2

 

Can you describe in more detail everywhere you go. So far my LTE coverage has been meh OK. LTE tends to pop up in lots of places I go in and around the city then quickly goes away as soon as I go inside any building or structure.

[mellimel2212]

Everywhere in the city lol. I stay out west on central and Ohio and my girl be on Potomac and Lavergne solid 4G. I was in Bellwood earlier and guess what SOLID 4G lol.

 

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy Nexus Rockin 4.2.1 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[aerxx]

I know its a bad angle, but does anyone know whos equipment this is...?

 

 

 

 

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Sent from my SPH-L710 using Forum Runner

[lilotimz]

I know its a bad angle, but does anyone know whos equipment this is...?

 

 

 

 

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Sent from my SPH-L710 using Forum Runner

 

Bad angle but the really flat ones I think are clearwire wimax panels.

[Dkoellerwx]

I know its a bad angle, but does anyone know whos equipment this is...?

 

 

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Forum Runner

 

I'm not quite sure, it's hard to tell how long they are. WiMax cells are usually arranged like that, but they are also very short. I can't tell what those are.

[mellimel2212]

 

Can you describe in more detail everywhere you go. So far my LTE coverage has been meh OK. LTE tends to pop up in lots of places I go in and around the city then quickly goes away as soon as I go inside any building or structure.

 

And most of the time my lte connection stays when I enter my house

 

 

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy Nexus Rockin 4.2.1 using Tapatalk 2

Edited December 12, 2012 by mellimel2212

[aerxx]

 

I'm not quite sure' date=' it's hard to tell how long they are. WiMax cells are usually arranged like that, but they are also very short. I can't tell what those are.[/quote']

 

They were replacing them with new larger RRUs that look similar to Sprints NV panels. Is Clear already rolling out their new LTE spectrum...?

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Forum Runner

[Dkoellerwx]

They were replacing them with new larger RRUs that look similar to Sprints NV panels. Is Clear already rolling out their new LTE spectrum...?

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Forum Runner

 

Can you get a shot of those? It could be Sprint, but AT&T is also using RRUs, and I believe T-Mobile is in places as well.

[mellimel2212]

Look at what I pulled earlier lol at rush hour

 

Sent from my Sprint Galaxy Nexus Rockin 4.2.1 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[drock2750]

How much do we know about Sprint's QOS setup in the NV rollout? Obviously someday voice over LTE will require some form of QOS, but I am hoping that they are doing something more sophisticated than port based QOS since lots of things use port 80 for purposes other than HTTP. I believe google voice uses port 80, and it's frustrating when I have trouble sending or receiving a 1 KB text message because some goofballs are using up all available capacity watching youtube or listening to pandora. Even some voip apps use port 80 since it is almost never blocked by IT on wifi networks. I also always wondered how they could differentiate at the network level between data used by the phone and data used by a computer tethered to the phone to kick people off that haven't paid for tethering.

Edited December 13, 2012 by drock2750

[S4GRU]

How much do we know about Sprint's QOS setup in the NV rollout? Obviously someday voice over LTE will require some form of QOS, but I am hoping that they are doing something more sophisticated than port based QOS since lots of things use port 80 for purposes other than HTTP. I believe google voice uses port 80, and it's frustrating when I have trouble sending or receiving a 1 KB text message because some goofballs are using up all available capacity watching youtube or listening to pandora. Even some voip apps use port 80 since it is almost never blocked by IT on wifi networks. I also always wondered how they could differentiate at the network level between data used by the phone and data used by a computer tethered to the phone to kick people off that haven't paid for tethering.

 

Details of Sprint's internal QoS is not known at this time by any of us. However, text messages are sent via Sprint's 1x network and not affected by Yahoos watching YouTube on the EVDO, WiMax or LTE networks.

 

Robert

 

EDIT: Nevermind my comment. I just saw you said Google Voice and I missed that initially. Google Voice obviously uses data sources beyond 1x.

[drock2750]

Details of Sprint's internal QoS is not known at this time by any of us. However, text messages are sent via Sprint's 1x network and not affected by Yahoos watching YouTube on the EVDO, WiMax or LTE networks.

 

Robert

 

EDIT: Nevermind my comment. I just saw you said Google Voice and I missed that initially. Google Voice obviously uses data sources beyond 1x.

 

Thanks Robert...speaking of 1x, I had another question for you...

 

My old Sanyo flip had 1xrtt data only, no evdo...it was slow but functional. Why is it that on my Evo LTE, the phone will report "no data connection available" when 3g isn't connected but 1x has good signal. Are new phones able to use 1x for anything but voice and texting? I'd rather have 50 kbps in a pinch than nothing at all! My understanding is that ehrpd only deals with evdo lte handoff...maybe throwing 1x data into the mix was something Sprint wanted to avoid? is anybody out there able to use 1x data? Is 1x data part of NV at all?

[S4GRU]

 

Thanks Robert...speaking of 1x, I had another question for you...

 

My old Sanyo flip had 1xrtt data only, no evdo...it was slow but functional. Why is it that on my Evo LTE, the phone will report "no data connection available" when 3g isn't connected but 1x has good signal. Are new phones able to use 1x for anything but voice and texting? I'd rather have 50 kbps in a pinch than nothing at all! My understanding is that ehrpd only deals with evdo lte handoff...maybe throwing 1x data into the mix was something Sprint wanted to avoid? is anybody out there able to use 1x data? Is 1x data part of NV at all?

 

I'm not sure what the problem you are encountering is, but I use 1x data on my devices all the time. Including my EVO. Strange.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

 

[gusherb]

Sprint 3G is pretty good at 2AM on Lake Shore Drive by the loop in Chicago! Much much better compared to the 150 kbps I saw at 7 this evening hahahaha. What a difference a deserted network makes.

 

[drock2750]

Jelly Bean is out for Evo LTE...lets see how this affects LTE scanning performance vs GSIII. Finally!