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


drlovety

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Also, not sure if I noticed this before or not but the Sprint Tower at the north intersection of I405 and I5 (by Target) is labeled as a keep tower. I guess Tmobile wants to get off that power pylon.

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On 5/6/2021 at 6:02 PM, PedroDaGr8 said:

Also, not sure if I noticed this before or not but the Sprint Tower at the north intersection of I405 and I5 (by Target) is labeled as a keep tower. I guess Tmobile wants to get off that power pylon.

Good - that site has given them way too many upgrade issues. SnoPUD wouldn't even let T-Mobile climb the tower; they insisted on taking T-Mobile's plans and doing the upgrade themselves.

On 5/5/2021 at 9:10 AM, PedroDaGr8 said:

Kingsgate still isn't live yet as of yesterday afternoon. There were some staff working on it at the ground level though. 

Interesting - I'm back in town so I'll stop by this week sometime. 

On 5/5/2021 at 9:10 AM, PedroDaGr8 said:

EDIT: Add one more for the conversion of the Woodinville Slough Sprint Site.

That's a great add. 

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14 hours ago, RAvirani said:

Interesting - I'm back in town so I'll stop by this week sometime. 

Just checked again this morning. Apparently they finished it off yesterday or the day before.  The drunken panels are gone and B41/n41 is live.

 

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  • 4 weeks later...
1 hour ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Note: I'm beginning to suspect they deprecated Sprints 2660 MHz B41 carrier on around June 1st. Based on my logs I have only seen Sprints 2680 Mhz and no CA since that point. 

You're probably right - I remember hearing that Sprint L2500 was going to be trimmed down to a single carrier a few weeks back. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just saw this permit: 

https://permitsearch.mybuildingpermit.com/PermitDetails/21110744CBP/Snohomish County

It sure looks like a T-Mobile site number (SE01794A) and mentions "ADD 2 ABIL FOR N1900 N2100"

First time I have seen a permit mention n1900 or n2100 (would this be n2 and n66?).

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7 hours ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Just saw this permit: 

https://permitsearch.mybuildingpermit.com/PermitDetails/21110744CBP/Snohomish County

It sure looks like a T-Mobile site number (SE01794A) and mentions "ADD 2 ABIL FOR N1900 N2100"

First time I have seen a permit mention n1900 or n2100 (would this be n2 and n66?).

Yes. Coming soon!

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OK add this to the WTF pile that is T-Mobile and the Totem Lake area. 

You know the old Sprint site on top of the Motel 6, the one which was such a PIA that Sprint never bothered to upgrade to tri-band. Well...it is broadcasting the Sprint Keep PLMN this morning. Seriously. WTF T-Mobile. That makes FIVE sites within a 3/4 mile radius and easily almost ten sites within visibility of this area.

On a related note, the new Totem Lake site (the colo with AT&T) on top of the TSRI building in Totem Lake started broadcasting yesterday. Additionally, the Evergreen upgrade appears to be completed but not live yet. 

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39 minutes ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

OK add this to the WTF pile that is T-Mobile and the Totem Lake area. 

You know the old Sprint site on top of the Motel 6, the one which was such a PIA that Sprint never bothered to upgrade to tri-band. Well...it is broadcasting the Sprint Keep PLMN this morning. Seriously. WTF T-Mobile. That makes FIVE sites within a 3/4 mile radius and easily almost ten sites within visibility of this area.

On a related note, the new Totem Lake site (the colo with AT&T) on top of the TSRI building in Totem Lake started broadcasting yesterday. Additionally, the Evergreen upgrade appears to be completed but not live yet. 

Wow. 

In Totem Lake, Verizon has two sites - one four sector (four 45° antennas) and a three sector that is nulled in the direction of the other site (via three 45° antennas). AT&T has two standard three sector sites (with 65° antennas) that don't overlap due to terrain. Their networks are so clean that 64QAM (24dB+ SNR) or even 256 QAM (30dB+ SNR) are consistently available.

https://imgur.com/a/jm3Wvy1

T-Mobile, on the other hand, has four (going on five) sites plus a significant spectrum advantage, and they perform noticeably worse. They barely push 16QAM - in fact you frequently see modulation drop to QPSK. I guess in their mind, 4-5 sites operating at 4 bits per symbol is better than two sites operating at 8 bits per symbol. 

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18 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

Wow. 

In Totem Lake, Verizon has two sites - one four sector (four 45° antennas) and a three sector that is nulled in the direction of the other site (via three 45° antennas). AT&T has two standard three sector sites (with 65° antennas) that don't overlap due to terrain. Their networks are so clean that 64QAM (24dB+ SNR) or even 256 QAM (30dB+ SNR) are consistently available.

https://imgur.com/a/jm3Wvy1

T-Mobile, on the other hand, has four (going on five) sites plus a significant spectrum advantage, and they perform noticeably worse. They barely push 16QAM - in fact you frequently see modulation drop to QPSK. I guess in their mind, 4-5 sites operating at 4 bits per symbol is better than two sites operating at 8 bits per symbol. 

I seriously can't figure it out, especially in light of the coverage from new AT&T Colo site. This new site provides excellent B2/B66 coverage for the area; if they had just added B41 to the new site, it would have been perfect. The coverage on this site compliments the Evergreen site very well pretty much negating the need for any additional sites nearby. 


Seriously, the site next to McDonalds and the site on top of Motel 6 should both be shut down. They add NOTHING to the area in terms of coverage. The only nearby site which is semi-necessary is the site next to the CKC. It provides some good intermediate coverage down I405.

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On 4/28/2021 at 9:06 AM, PedroDaGr8 said:

Yeah, the two corner sectors are just insane, they are almost totally overlapping. They could get essentially the exact same performance from this sector with half the equipment by mounting it right on the corner. 

PPIEqjI.jpg

Update on this one:

https://imgur.com/a/WZFfaY2

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24 minutes ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Hmm, that is interesting and gives a bit of insight into their thought process. Though I am not sure I believe that the indoors performance was truly necessary in that area.

I strongly disagree with their assessment. A 20-degree difference in alignment would make little to no difference in indoor coverage. While the beta sector may be picking up a lot of traffic now, it could easily be picked up by the gamma sector. 

Meanwhile, going from 16QAM (which is about normal there) to 64QAM or 256QAM (which requires a 6-12 dB increase in SNR) would allow UEs to push 50-100% more bits per symbol. That would be huge for speeds. 

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1 hour ago, RAvirani said:

Wow. 

In Totem Lake, Verizon has two sites - one four sector (four 45° antennas) and a three sector that is nulled in the direction of the other site (via three 45° antennas). AT&T has two standard three sector sites (with 65° antennas) that don't overlap due to terrain. Their networks are so clean that 64QAM (24dB+ SNR) or even 256 QAM (30dB+ SNR) are consistently available.

https://imgur.com/a/jm3Wvy1

T-Mobile, on the other hand, has four (going on five) sites plus a significant spectrum advantage, and they perform noticeably worse. They barely push 16QAM - in fact you frequently see modulation drop to QPSK. I guess in their mind, 4-5 sites operating at 4 bits per symbol is better than two sites operating at 8 bits per symbol. 

T-Mobile's commitment to using twice as many sites as necessary is something that they also love to do in NYC though it typically doesn't affect performance much. They just adjust down tilt so each site covers a really tiny area. Here's a comparison between T-Mobile and Verizon in two different neighborhoods in Brooklyn, NY (Canarsie and Bed-Stuy). Sprint in the same neighborhoods has a similar number of sites to Verizon and is spaced similarly.

T-Mobile in Canarsie:

 83X7iK5.png

 

Verizon in Canarsie: 

6VQIvzj.png

 

T-Mobile in Bed-Stuy:

(A lot of the unconfirmed Band 2/66 sites on T-Mobile are eNB IDs for multiple small cells in the neighborhood.)

gIlgLLU.png

 

Verizon in Bed-Stuy: 

l5QM2q1.png

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23 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

T-Mobile's commitment to using twice as many sites as necessary is something that they also love to do in NYC though it typically doesn't affect performance much. They just adjust down tilt so each site covers a really tiny area. 

If they were limiting sites' range with downtilt, they'd be a lot better over here. Unfortunately, we have a lot of sector overlap and noise because they don't. 

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11 hours ago, RAvirani said:

Nice! How does the load balancing look?

I'm not sure how to tell.  I seem to not stay on it very long unless it is the only option available. Speeds seem fine on it, though having it and an 80MHz n41 at the same time was kind of humorous to me. 

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23 hours ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

I'm not sure how to tell.  I seem to not stay on it very long unless it is the only option available. Speeds seem fine on it, though having it and an 80MHz n41 at the same time was kind of humorous to me. 

Without rooting your phone, SNR of the 5x5 vs SNR of the 20x20 carrier is probably your easiest comparison. 

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