Network Vision/LTE - Jacksonville Market (including Gainesville/St. Augustine/Ocala)

[Hmight]

Results are in and its worse than I thought. Sprint didnt get a award and tmobile got all of the awards. They need to get the Jax market back on the ball. I mean the data speeds are terrible compared to everyone else although At&t is hurting. http://rootmetrics.com/en-US/rootscore/map/metro/jacksonville-fl/2016/1H

 

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Its bad!

[Ascertion]

Results are in and its worse than I thought. Sprint didnt get a award and tmobile got all of the awards. They need to get the Jax market back on the ball. I mean the data speeds are terrible compared to everyone else although At&t is hurting. http://rootmetrics.com/en-US/rootscore/map/metro/jacksonville-fl/2016/1H

 

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I'm impressed T-Mobile scored as well as it did, their site density is no joke!  They have 3 sites right off Old St Augustine Rd where i95 meets and the other carriers only have one or two.  I have personally gotten dropped/blocked calls on T-Mobile, but they are inside my work building on an old DAS.  AT&T has some serious capacity issues, similarly to Sprint during peak hours.  Haven't tested/tried Verizon but looks like even T-Mobile scored better than Verizon on everything.

[greenbastard]

No since im not there often i dont keep track of that area. If its anything like 258, 259, 260. Basically only a 1 number difference in value then it has changed.

 

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As far as the PCI changing, the same thing happened throughout Southeast & Central Texas around the same time you reported the change. Both Sprint B25/26 and Clear B41 saw changes everywhere in my area as far as I can tell. For what is worth, only one panel for both 800/1900 is being used in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. Lots of useless Clear B41 which may as well be a glorified wifi hotspot in most areas.

 

I'm just as confused as you are as to why Sprint would just change PCI out of nowhere. I'm sure they had a reason. Unfortunately, it hasn't made the network balance any better.

[Terrell352]

As far as the PCI changing, the same thing happened throughout Southeast & Central Texas around the same time you reported the change. Both Sprint B25/26 and Clear B41 saw changes everywhere in my area as far as I can tell. For what is worth, only one panel for both 800/1900 is being used in Austin, Houston, and San Antonio. Lots of useless Clear B41 which may as well be a glorified wifi hotspot in most areas.

 

I'm just as confused as you are as to why Sprint would just change PCI out of nowhere. I'm sure they had a reason. Unfortunately, it hasn't made the network balance any better.

I thought it was some higher purpose and it might be but for now no one knows [emoji17]

 

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[Terrell352]

Does anyone know how long it takes for nokia b41 to go live after equipment is installed? Its been a full 31 days since they installed equipment but it has yet to be turned on. I haven't seen evidence of testing either.

 

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[greenbastard]

Does anyone know how long it takes for nokia b41 to go live after equipment is installed? Its been a full 31 days since they installed equipment but it has yet to be turned on. I haven't seen evidence of testing either.

 

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Well, how close are you to the cell?

 

The first time I got a triband phone, I searched for B41 around South Austin without any success. I almost thought Sprint was pulling my leg until I was finally able to latch onto it...standing next to a tower.

 

I know many people will hate me for saying this, but in my opinion B41 may as well be a glorified wifi hotspot. It's range is very limited, it doesn't penetrate walls, and thick brush rapidly diminish the quality of the signal. I've seen 8t8r installed and deployed next to a shopping plaza only for it to fail. Its awesome to see 100+ Mbps in the parking lot with -85 RSRP (+/- 5 dbu). What's not awesome is losing B41 as soon as I go inside one of the big box stores. There's a reason why that B41 is still pulling down 100+ Mbps while B25/B26 are crawling to dialup speeds. It's because B41 doesn't travel far.

 

That's just my experience. I know many people will claim it's not properly optimized or it's not at full power. But it's been about 2 years now since B41 launched in my area. Optimization should have come and gone by now. I doubt small cells will do much unless you're an outdoors person. And seeing as how this is Jacksonville, us southerners avoid the outdoors for most of the year (because it's hot).

 

My advice is to get in a line of sight position to the tower and let the phone sit for a while. Maybe B41 is live, you just don't know it because it can't reach you.

[nexgencpu]

Does anyone know how long it takes for nokia b41 to go live after equipment is installed? Its been a full 31 days since they installed equipment but it has yet to be turned on. I haven't seen evidence of testing either.

 

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Try enabling LTE only mode, sometimes its because CSFB is not enabled during pretesting.

[Dkoellerwx]

I know many people will hate me for saying this, but in my opinion B41 may as well be a glorified wifi hotspot. It's range is very limited, it doesn't penetrate walls, and thick brush rapidly diminish the quality of the signal. I've seen 8t8r installed and deployed next to a shopping plaza only for it to fail. Its awesome to see 100+ Mbps in the parking lot with -85 RSRP (+/- 5 dbu). What's not awesome is losing B41 as soon as I go inside one of the big box stores. There's a reason why that B41 is still pulling down 100+ Mbps while B25/B26 are crawling to dialup speeds. It's because B41 doesn't travel far.

 

That's just my experience. I know many people will claim it's not properly optimized or it's not at full power. But it's been about 2 years now since B41 launched in my area. Optimization should have come and gone by now. I doubt small cells will do much unless you're an outdoors person. And seeing as how this is Jacksonville, us southerners avoid the outdoors for most of the year (because it's hot).

 

I almost have to wonder if it's not your device. Because you constantly complain of non-coverage from B41 sites, yet I am able to connect to B41  --- indoors --- up to several miles away from Sprint 8T8R sites. Even in big box stores. Here in Springfield, there is an 8T8R site about 1 mile away from WalMart, but I stay connected everywhere in the store.

 

The experiences most have do not add up to the experience you have, so somewhere somehow something is not right. 

 

And I am 99% certain this is not the reason Terrell is not getting B41 from the site in question. I have seen new installs go live everywhere from practically the next day, to 3 or 4 months later. 

[Terrell352]

Try enabling LTE only mode, sometimes its because CSFB is not enabled during pretesting.

Didn't work. I tried that before too. I even went to the tower and nothing.

 

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[Terrell352]

I almost have to wonder if it's not your device. Because you constantly complain of non-coverage from B41 sites, yet I am able to connect to B41 --- indoors --- up to several miles away from Sprint 8T8R sites. Even in big box stores. Here in Springfield, there is an 8T8R site about 1 mile away from WalMart, but I stay connected everywhere in the store.

 

The experiences most have do not add up to the experience you have, so somewhere somehow something is not right.

 

And I am 99% certain this is not the reason Terrell is not getting B41 from the site in question. I have seen new installs go live everywhere from practically the next day, to 3 or 4 months later.

I hope its not another 3-4 months. Sprint average speeds in the area is already slower than its 3G during daylight hours and Sprint has the second highest site density with the first being At&t, for this area. There is a reason its the first site in the county to get nokia equipment. They need to flip the switch asap. Can't be backhaul because cox runs the show on this tower and they are usual fast about it unlike centurylink plus T-Mobile also shares this tower and they have 40mhz of b4 and 10mhz of b12 running on it.

 

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[Dkoellerwx]

I hope its not another 3-4 months. Sprint average speeds in the area is already slower than its 3G during daylight hours and Sprint has the second highest site density with the first being At&t, for this area. There is a reason its the first site in the county to get nokia equipment. They need to flip the switch asap. Can't be backhaul because cox runs the show on this tower and they are usual fast about it unlike centurylink plus T-Mobile also shares this tower and they have 40mhz of b4 and 10mhz of b12 running on it.

 

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I hope they get to it soon too. However the weeks before and after holidays are generally pretty slow as far as site work goes, so I wouldn't expect it this week. If it goes beyond next week, it might be worth trying to get in touch with someone about the schedule.

 

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[Flompholph]

I almost have to wonder if it's not your device. Because you constantly complain of non-coverage from B41 sites, yet I am able to connect to B41  --- indoors --- up to several miles away from Sprint 8T8R sites. Even in big box stores. Here in Springfield, there is an 8T8R site about 1 mile away from WalMart, but I stay connected everywhere in the store.

 

The experiences most have do not add up to the experience you have, so somewhere somehow something is not right. 

 

And I am 99% certain this is not the reason Terrell is not getting B41 from the site in question. I have seen new installs go live everywhere from practically the next day, to 3 or 4 months later. 

Texas was weird when I went there a while ago. 1x800 was only going 1/2 mile when I had the the 1x800 preferred PRL.  So it would not reach tower to tower 1x800 would drop then I went a little ways and I would pick it back up. If greenbastard has not left the state it could just be a State wide issue.  I seen the 1x800 issue in Dallas and Houston but it has been awhile since I have been there. (google timeline says ~2 years) Things may have changed but the range issue has been seen there with other technologies in that state.

[greenbastard]

I almost have to wonder if it's not your device. Because you constantly complain of non-coverage from B41 sites, yet I am able to connect to B41 --- indoors --- up to several miles away from Sprint 8T8R sites. Even in big box stores. Here in Springfield, there is an 8T8R site about 1 mile away from WalMart, but I stay connected everywhere in the store.

 

The experiences most have do not add up to the experience you have, so somewhere somehow something is not right.

 

And I am 99% certain this is not the reason Terrell is not getting B41 from the site in question. I have seen new installs go live everywhere from practically the next day, to 3 or 4 months later.

Could be that 3 triband devices (two CA) could be faulty, but I doubt that.

 

B41 just isn't the bread and butter many people make it out to be in my neck of the woods. We can argue that maybe I'm sitting between sectors or that each building I visit is made out of (nerd alert!) Valyrian steel. Let's say that is true...then why is it that Sprint still suffers from slow speeds on Band 26, Band 25 and Band 25²? A lot of sites around me are all triband (mixture of Clear and 8T8R), yet they are all incredibly slow on LTE SMR and PCS. If B41 was truly working like it should be, then B25 and B26 should have been offloaded by now. Unfortunately, EVDO is now faster than both B25/B26 so B41 offloading is not happening anywhere in Texas or Southern Louisiana.

 

Physics are physics and the higher we go in frequency, the harder it is to penetrate buildings and get past obstacles. Now that's not to say I haven't seen B41 flourish. I've had decent encounters with B41 in places such as Las Vegas. No trees or vegetation to block towers and sites are more tightly spaced than most markets in the Southeast. Unfortunately Jacksonville is nothing like Vegas. It has a high density of medium to tall trees that produce a lot of foliage which hurts B41.

 

Terrell simply asked what the reason was he hasn't seen B41 live and I offered a possible explanation. It's not out of the realm of possibility that B41 has been on this entire time. It could just be that it doesn't reach him. I'm just giving him my personal experiences so he can understand what he may encounter. In my experience, 8t8r B41 won't reach the same places B25 currently does, especially when you're indoors.

[Terrell352]

Could be that 3 triband devices (two CA) could be faulty, but I doubt that.

 

B41 just isn't the bread and butter many people make it out to be. We can argue that maybe I'm sitting between sectors or that each building I visit is made out of (nerd alert!) Valyrian steel. Let's say that is true...then why is it that Sprint still suffers from slow speeds on Band 26, Band 25 and Band 25²? A lot of sites around me are all triband (mixture of Clear and 8T8R), yet they are all incredibly slow on LTE SMR and PCS. If B41 was truly working like it should be, then B25 and B26 should have been offloaded by now. Unfortunately, EVDO is now faster than both B25/B26 so B41 offloading is not happening anywhere in Texas or Southern Louisiana.

 

Physics are physics and the higher we go in frequency, the harder it is to penetrate buildings and get past obstacles. Now that's not to say I haven't seen B41 flourish. I've had decent encounters with B41 in places such as Las Vegas. No trees or vegetation to block towers and sites are more tightly spaced than most markets in the Southeast. Unfortunately Jacksonville is nothing like Vegas. It has a high density of medium to tall trees that produce a lot of foliage which hurts B41.

 

Terrell simply asked what the reason was he hasn't seen B41 live and I offered a possible explanation. It's not out of the realm of possibility that B41 has been on this entire time. It could just be that it doesn't reach him. I'm just giving him my personal experiences so he can understand what he may encounter. In my experience, 8t8r B41 won't reach the same places B25 currently does, especially when you're indoors.

Its definitely not on. I went to the tower and the tower is only 0.9 miles away from my house. I can see the tower from my kitchen window. Tmobile band 4 from the same tower is full bars throughout my house and band 12 is even better. Sprint on the same site bounces between 3-5 bars on band 25 and 2-4 bars on band 26. SNR is alot more all over the place from 1-22. Tmobile is way more stable around 8-26 in SNR. Sprint is at the bottom and trees are in the way but tmobile is above the tree and in line of site. I checked last night though at the tower and went to lte only mode and sta there for 10 mins. Its not active yet for some reason and its the only tower in the whole county with b41 equipment. But like you said I have often seen 3g outperform LTE in everything but upload.

 

 

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[greenbastard]

Its definitely not on. I went to the tower and the tower is only 0.9 miles away from my house. I can see the tower from my kitchen window. Tmobile band 4 from the same tower is full bars throughout my house and band 12 is even better. Sprint on the same site bounces between 3-5 bars on band 25 and 2-4 bars on band 26. SNR is alot more all over the place from 1-22. Tmobile is way more stable around 8-26 in SNR. Sprint is at the bottom and trees are in the way but tmobile is above the tree and in line of site. I checked last night though at the tower and went to lte only mode and sta there for 10 mins. Its not active yet for some reason and its the only tower in the whole county with b41 equipment. But like you said I have often seen 3g outperform LTE in everything but upload.

 

 

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I'm about 1500 feet away from a Clearwire/Sprint colocation and can't receive B41 indoors.

 

Of course, it is important to note that the tower is one of the shortest towers in the area, I'm sitting between sectors, it's using Clear equipment, and there is a lot of vegetation covering my line of sight.

 

But still, 1500 feet...

 

If you can see the tower, then you shouldn't have any problems, especially since this is likely 8T8R, which performs better than Clearwire. It is in places in which you lose LOS in which you should test out B41.

[Terrell352]

I'm about 1500 feet away from a Clearwire/Sprint colocation and can't receive B41 indoors.

 

Of course, it is important to note that the tower is one of the shortest towers in the area, I'm sitting between sectors, it's using Clear equipment, and there is a lot of vegetation covering my line of sight.

 

But still, 1500 feet...

 

If you can see the tower, then you shouldn't have any problems, especially since this is likely 8T8R, which performs better than Clearwire. It is in places in which you lose LOS in which you should test out B41.

Idk in the Villages, Fl I have seen band 41 go almost 4 miles.

 

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[S4GRU]

I have a B41 site here in Washington State that I can get for 5 miles. Most are 1-2 miles with dense forestry (which is common here).

 

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[Terrell352]

I have a B41 site here in Washington State that I can get for 5 miles. Most are 1-2 miles with dense forestry (which is common here).

 

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Woah that's impressive for b41.

 

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[Dkoellerwx]

Woah that's impressive for b41.

 

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On par with sites in the KC area. Not the urban sites of course, but ones on the edge of town I have seen 3-5 miles pretty regularly. In town sites are anywhere from 1/2-2 miles depending on density.

 

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[RAvirani]

I have a B41 site here in Washington State that I can get for 5 miles. Most are 1-2 miles with dense forestry (which is common here).

 

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Are these the sites out east by 2 and 90?

[Ascertion]

The legacy site off Old St Augustine Rd and 295 is still not upgraded. They had it planned for March. Wonder what happened.

[Terrell352]

The legacy site off Old St Augustine Rd and 9A is still not upgraded. They had it planned for March. Wonder what happened.

Non priority probably.

 

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[tybo31316]

The legacy site off Old St Augustine Rd and 9A is still not upgraded. They had it planned for March. Wonder what happened.

Meanwhile AT&T has upgraded their sites again and VZW is upgrading their sites with 3 big panels with RRUS up top.

 

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[Terrell352]

Meanwhile AT&T has upgraded their sites again and VZW is upgrading their sites with 3 big panels with RRUS up top.

 

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Verizon has those on most sites in the city limits of Ocala. Att also has added 4 towers in the past year. Sprint added 2 last year. But nothing at all this year besides the pci changing on every site and some downtilt and power adjustments to existing sites. 4/29 the first tower in marion county which is my home site recieved nokia equipment but it has yet to be turned on.

 

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[Ascertion]

Meanwhile AT&T has upgraded their sites again and VZW is upgrading their sites with 3 big panels with RRUS up top.

 

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Verizon and AT&T have performed an upgrade to replace panels on the tower across the street since I asked Sprint about the site in November.