Network Vision/LTE - West Washington Market (Seattle/Puget Sound Region)

[RP88]

Nothing on 176th between Spanaway and Puyallup or in Frederickson .

[RP88]

Finally got to test the tower near Granite Falls today. Wish it were further southwest, I'm jealous!

 

Well it's still not anywhere I would make regular use of it, so I feel your pain.

[drlovety]

Finally got to test the tower near Granite Falls today. Wish it were further southwest, I'm jealous!

 

 

 

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Glad to see the speed has increased. When I tested it in early March, I got only 2megs down and actually had faster upload speeds. Doesn't it seem odd that they'd light up LTE in Granite Falls, of all places? Were you able to get signal in "downtown" Granite Falls?

[Beejis]

 

Glad to see the speed has increased. When I tested it in early March, I got only 2megs down and actually had faster upload speeds. Doesn't it seem odd that they'd light up LTE in Granite Falls, of all places? Were you able to get signal in "downtown" Granite Falls?

 

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I know right. Don't completely understand the strategy behind that.

I didn't go that far. I was basically a the the southwest portion of the sensorly area that's lit up. Stopped at a gas station to get those speeds.

[RP88]

I think it's been mentioned before that they probably started on the towers that already have the backhaul bandwidth to support LTE first. This while the other tower backbone feeds are being upgraded, or at least in the process of being upgraded.

[lilotimz]

All towers are upgraded the moment they are ready regardless if backhaul is in place or not. They will not just sit on a single thing as it just only slows down their work. If a tower does not have the neccasary backhaul in place then they'll upgrade it as is and hook it up to the legacy backhaul and only enable 3g and return for 4g when backhaul permits.

 

A network vision tower can and will use legacy T1 backhaul for 3g but 4g can and only will be turned on with upgraded backhual.

[RP88]

Yeah, and in which case LTE would not be live, so this goes along with the way the rollout is happening.

All towers are upgraded the moment they are ready regardless if backhaul is in place or not.

Please clarify that statement. At what point is a tower "ready" if it's not ready to go live. I assume you mean ready for NV status and not necessarily LTE, but I am fairly sure the comments above were specifically about LTE. Edited April 7, 2013 by RP88

[lilotimz]

Yeah, and in which case LTE would not be live, so this goes along with the way the rollout is happening.

Please clarify that statement. At what point is a tower "ready" if it's not ready to go live. I assume you mean ready for NV status and not necessarily LTE, but I am fairly sure the comments above were specifically about LTE.

 

A tower is ready to go live when: 1) New base stations and misc. equipment are powered, secured, hooked up, 2) antennas are in place and connected to RRU's and to the base stations, and 3) backhaul is connected so it can connect to the regional msc.

 

A network vision tower may go live after these basic requirements are fulfilled to undergo testing and adjustments. Any problems here that the contractor finds are thus corrected. When the contractors feel they are ready, they will contact sprint to indicate they are ready for inspection by a inspector (who is usually an employee of another independent vendor). If the inspector finds any problems, he will write it down and inform the crew and sprint that they failed inspection. The crew will need to fix the said problems and call for another inspection once they're done. If they pass the inspection, the crew is paid for their work and the site is thus officially "live" and accepted.

 

There are some outliers where the cell sites are materially finished but not live but those are special cases.

[RP88]

lol yeah I get it, just wanted to make sure there was not something I was missing anything. Although not in this exact sector, I am in telecommunications myself.

 

Also asked to help others understand why the rollout is going to way it is. Although everyone thinks their local towers should be first... it's kind of human nature to want something first.

[lilotimz]

At least you're getting something up there.... still waiting down here.

[RP88]

wow I have not looked in a while and given the coverage Sensorly is showing in the Bay Area (is that right? ...I'm not from Cali ) I figure that something would have shown up in Sac by now

[lilotimz]

/shrug

 

Word on the street is they've only just begun to gather the contractors and get equipment stocked. Best case scenario is they start applying for permits from now to the end of april. Even then, the fastest I've seen permits get accepted is 3 weeks (and it was for t-mobile's modernization program). So even then, I don't expect anything to start till at least the middle of may and nothing accepted until well into june. LTE .. hah... I'll be glad if I see anything til july...

 

I'm nearly 75% positive than t-mobile will have LTE before sprint down here (they've begun modernizing beginning in october with 5-10 permit applications every 2 weeks).

 

But that's another story.

[RP88]

I see LTE has started appearing in Bellingham now too.

[cd121082]

I picked up lte by kinkos in lynnwood yesterday and off of 4th and 112th in everett

[RP88]

Map it

[chadn2011]

So AT&T lit up its 4G (LTE) in Silverdale WA. Did some tests. Highest I got was Ping-65ms, DL-49.08, UL-15.92. Better than stupid Verizon. I like AT&T better than Verizon.

 

UPDATE! - Sprint LTE is coming to Silverdale in mid-May. Maybe sooner! As always, I will keep up to date on this.

[chadn2011]

Oh. Oops. I traded in my <Jailbroken> iPad 2 for a Galaxy Tab 2 on March 19. Ill get to that in a moment.

[DunBH8tin]

I received LTE on 41st near Safeway in Everett! And also 196th in lynnwood. But both signals had small ranges so it tapped out when i drove away.

[JThorson]

I received LTE on 41st near Safeway in Everett! And also 196th in lynnwood. But both signals had small ranges so it tapped out when i drove away.

I noticed the LTE in Lynnwood last week. I actually got a fairly far range with it. I had it for a few miles, all the way up into Mountlake Terrace. One time I got around 21Mbps down.

Edited April 12, 2013 by JThorson

[drlovety]

I received LTE on 41st near Safeway in Everett! And also 196th in lynnwood. But both signals had small ranges so it tapped out when i drove away.

 

Cool! Lynnwood looks pretty solid on sensorly. Remember, if you are driving 60mph down a freeway you will lose signal pretty quickly, that's why there are towers every few miles

[DunBH8tin]

Ah great reminders on driving and recieving signals. I was on the freeway in lynnwood and regular roads in everett. How many miles do these LTE towers, or just data towers cover each?

[starbarry32]

Just checked the sensorly map and see LTE in the Newcastle area, must have just started fairly recent.

[DunBH8tin]

Just checked the sensorly map and see LTE in the Newcastle area, must have just started fairly recent.

 

Can you share the link to the sensory maps?

[dhlee528]

Can you share the link to the sensory maps?

 

http://sensorly.com/map/4G/US/USA/Sprint/lte_310sprint

[Beejis]

I'm in Costco at the Smokey point tower and I'm getting decent 4g signal.

 

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