Network Vision/LTE - LA Metro Market

[RedSpark]

1 hour ago, bigmachine said:

I had given up on checking for B26, but I knew something was up when I was able to have several really long conversations while driving using VoLTE and the calls didn't drop.

Now it seems like my phone is parked on B26 -- which probably isn't a great thing since it hasn't been optimized yet.

Check this out:

More B26 sites coming soon....

[Lioncat55]

On 12/13/2018 at 8:40 PM, RedSpark said:

Check this out:

More B26 sites coming soon....

I had B26 in the Brea area last week for a few days. Not it's gone. At I get -125 on B25 if I am lucky. I even got good speeds. I miss it already.

[Brad The Beast]

5G speeds in Westwood: 560Mbps down, 31.6Mbps up, 15ms ping. OnePlus 7 Pro 5G. 

[thematch]

On 8/30/2019 at 4:56 PM, Brad The Beast said:

5G speeds in Westwood: 560Mbps down, 31.6Mbps up, 15ms ping. OnePlus 7 Pro 5G. 

Impressive.  How has the overall coverage been?

[Brad The Beast]

1 hour ago, thematch said:

Impressive.  How has the overall coverage been?

I could've clarified. Found on reddit. 5G coverage isn't the greatest in LA. Very spotty based off the coverage map. 

[Paynefanbro]

Visited Los Angeles this past weekend and T-Mobile's network left a lot to be desired in most of the areas I visited, especially their 5G network. I spent the most time in West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, Universal Studios. I visited other places but not long enough to give a good summary of network performance.

1. LAX: According to Cellmapper there are three T-Mobile macro sites that serve the airport specifically. That means that outdoor signal and speeds are great, but inside the terminal both signal strength and speeds dropped off significantly the further away from the site you were. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no T-Mobile DAS in the airport, or at least in Terminal 5 where I was. Luckily the terminal did have one of those Passpoint WiFi networks that your phone connects to automatically so I was still able to use my phone. This is in comparison to JFK which has one macro site that serves the airport but has a separate DAS in each terminal so signal strength and speeds are phenomenal both inside and outside the airport. It was definitely a shock going from 200Mbps indoors on LTE at JFK to barely being able to load directions to my car rental without WIFi at LAX.
    
2. West Hollywood/Hollywood: It appears that T-Mobile has done the bare minimum in terms of 5G deployment to provide contiguous coverage here. There was virtually no n41 to be found. All 5G was Band 71 and it was so sparsely deployed that the network was very overburdened resulting in poor speeds. Additionally, the low signal strength of the 5G network meant that my phone was constantly switching to standalone mode to attempt to stay connected to 5G at the expense of losing LTE completely. Because it was so overburdened it was worse than NSA 5G or even LTE alone. As a result, I found myself having to put my phone in LTE only mode if I wasn't near a 5G site or if my phone didn't switch over to NSA 5G fast enough.
    
3. Santa Monica: I can't speak for the entire city of Santa Monica, just the waterfront but this was the first place I went where T-Mobile's network performed decently everywhere I went. Speeds were great on 5G thanks to n41 on the site near Santa Monica Pier and they also had a bunch of oDAS sites littered throughout the area. I'd catch my phone dropping down to LTE frequently when I'd get near them but speeds remained high.
    
4. Venice: Great once again. I visited the beach and the canals. This was the first time that I actually spotted the physical n41 antenna. I believe Los Angeles is at 100MHz for n41 but they're limited by the same backhaul restrictions that I've seen in NYC. Near the site I was able to get about 600Mbps down but over 130Mbps up which was super impressive. I also encountered a few oDAS sites out there that would cause my phone to drop 5G in favor of LTE but they all performed well much like in Santa Monica.
    
5. Universal Studios: This area was LTE only because it's fed virtually entirely by a network of small cells littered throughout the entire studio/theme park. Having this dedicated small cell network meant having great speeds inside and out almost everywhere. Speeds of 100-200Mbps were common. Eventually T-Mobile will have to upgrade these to support 5G though.

[RedSpark]

21 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Visited Los Angeles this past weekend and T-Mobile's network left a lot to be desired in most of the areas I visited, especially their 5G network. I spent the most time in West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, Universal Studios. I visited other places but not long enough to give a good summary of network performance.

1. LAX: According to Cellmapper there are three T-Mobile macro sites that serve the airport specifically. That means that outdoor signal and speeds are great, but inside the terminal both signal strength and speeds dropped off significantly the further away from the site you were. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no T-Mobile DAS in the airport, or at least in Terminal 5 where I was. Luckily the terminal did have one of those Passpoint WiFi networks that your phone connects to automatically so I was still able to use my phone. This is in comparison to JFK which has one macro site that serves the airport but has a separate DAS in each terminal so signal strength and speeds are phenomenal both inside and outside the airport. It was definitely a shock going from 200Mbps indoors on LTE at JFK to barely being able to load directions to my car rental without WIFi at LAX.
    
2. West Hollywood/Hollywood: It appears that T-Mobile has done the bare minimum in terms of 5G deployment to provide contiguous coverage here. There was virtually no n41 to be found. All 5G was Band 71 and it was so sparsely deployed that the network was very overburdened resulting in poor speeds. Additionally, the low signal strength of the 5G network meant that my phone was constantly switching to standalone mode to attempt to stay connected to 5G at the expense of losing LTE completely. Because it was so overburdened it was worse than NSA 5G or even LTE alone. As a result, I found myself having to put my phone in LTE only mode if I wasn't near a 5G site or if my phone didn't switch over to NSA 5G fast enough.
    
3. Santa Monica: I can't speak for the entire city of Santa Monica, just the waterfront but this was the first place I went where T-Mobile's network performed decently everywhere I went. Speeds were great on 5G thanks to n41 on the site near Santa Monica Pier and they also had a bunch of oDAS sites littered throughout the area. I'd catch my phone dropping down to LTE frequently when I'd get near them but speeds remained high.
    
4. Venice: Great once again. I visited the beach and the canals. This was the first time that I actually spotted the physical n41 antenna. I believe Los Angeles is at 100MHz for n41 but they're limited by the same backhaul restrictions that I've seen in NYC. Near the site I was able to get about 600Mbps down but over 130Mbps up which was super impressive. I also encountered a few oDAS sites out there that would cause my phone to drop 5G in favor of LTE but they all performed well much like in Santa Monica.
    
5. Universal Studios: This area was LTE only because it's fed virtually entirely by a network of small cells littered throughout the entire studio/theme park. Having this dedicated small cell network meant having great speeds inside and out almost everywhere. Speeds of 100-200Mbps were common. Eventually T-Mobile will have to upgrade these to support 5G though.

Great report.

Does network issue reporting in My Sprint still work if you're on TNX or is there another way to report these slow speeds, etc.?

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, RedSpark said:

Great report.

Does network issue reporting in My Sprint still work if you're on TNX or is there another way to report these slow speeds, etc.?

I'm not certain. Shortly after the merger I moved my line over to T-Mobile so I don't have access to the MySprint app anymore but I wish that there was a way for me to report that. It would've been super helpful.

[RedSpark]

3 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I'm not certain. Shortly after the merger I moved my line over to T-Mobile so I don't have access to the MySprint app anymore but I wish that there was a way for me to report that. It would've been super helpful.

It seems there's really no convenient way to report network issues in T-Mobile's App? That's what I liked about the My Sprint App. It was quick and easy to file a network issue report.

Seems like the best options now are to Tweet @NevilleRay or @TMobileHelp about network issues?

[the_intern]

On 6/8/2021 at 1:26 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Visited Los Angeles this past weekend and T-Mobile's network left a lot to be desired in most of the areas I visited, especially their 5G network. I spent the most time in West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, Universal Studios. I visited other places but not long enough to give a good summary of network performance.

1. LAX: According to Cellmapper there are three T-Mobile macro sites that serve the airport specifically. That means that outdoor signal and speeds are great, but inside the terminal both signal strength and speeds dropped off significantly the further away from the site you were. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no T-Mobile DAS in the airport, or at least in Terminal 5 where I was. Luckily the terminal did have one of those Passpoint WiFi networks that your phone connects to automatically so I was still able to use my phone. This is in comparison to JFK which has one macro site that serves the airport but has a separate DAS in each terminal so signal strength and speeds are phenomenal both inside and outside the airport. It was definitely a shock going from 200Mbps indoors on LTE at JFK to barely being able to load directions to my car rental without WIFi at LAX.
    
2. West Hollywood/Hollywood: It appears that T-Mobile has done the bare minimum in terms of 5G deployment to provide contiguous coverage here. There was virtually no n41 to be found. All 5G was Band 71 and it was so sparsely deployed that the network was very overburdened resulting in poor speeds. Additionally, the low signal strength of the 5G network meant that my phone was constantly switching to standalone mode to attempt to stay connected to 5G at the expense of losing LTE completely. Because it was so overburdened it was worse than NSA 5G or even LTE alone. As a result, I found myself having to put my phone in LTE only mode if I wasn't near a 5G site or if my phone didn't switch over to NSA 5G fast enough.
    
3. Santa Monica: I can't speak for the entire city of Santa Monica, just the waterfront but this was the first place I went where T-Mobile's network performed decently everywhere I went. Speeds were great on 5G thanks to n41 on the site near Santa Monica Pier and they also had a bunch of oDAS sites littered throughout the area. I'd catch my phone dropping down to LTE frequently when I'd get near them but speeds remained high.
    
4. Venice: Great once again. I visited the beach and the canals. This was the first time that I actually spotted the physical n41 antenna. I believe Los Angeles is at 100MHz for n41 but they're limited by the same backhaul restrictions that I've seen in NYC. Near the site I was able to get about 600Mbps down but over 130Mbps up which was super impressive. I also encountered a few oDAS sites out there that would cause my phone to drop 5G in favor of LTE but they all performed well much like in Santa Monica.
    
5. Universal Studios: This area was LTE only because it's fed virtually entirely by a network of small cells littered throughout the entire studio/theme park. Having this dedicated small cell network meant having great speeds inside and out almost everywhere. Speeds of 100-200Mbps were common. Eventually T-Mobile will have to upgrade these to support 5G though.

LAX seems to be very difficult to work with because nobody has a DAS at LAX.

[Paynefanbro]

T-Mobile n77 permit in Los Angeles 

Neville stated last week that n77 deployment would start in 2023 with a capacity-driven approach meaning the sites that need it most would get C-band and DoD spectrum first. Looks like it's starting earlier than anticipated. Neville has also stated in the past that T-Mobile would be waiting on a 2-in-1 that would allow them to broadcast C-band and DoD spectrum through a single antenna. I wonder why they chose to just deploy C-band separately here.