Network Vision/LTE - Atlanta/Athens Market

[Proxcee]

No one should count on any apps for accurate LTE site locations. I have not seen one be correct yet with LTE. Not one.

 

Robert via Samsung Galaxy S-III 32GB using Forum Runner

 

Good to know. You actually have a point...last night the sprint rep told me I was connected to a tower that was different from the three that the "apps" tell me that I cycle through when I'm home.

[Crimson01]

No one should count on any apps for accurate LTE site locations. I have not seen one be correct yet with LTE. Not one.

 

Robert via Samsung Galaxy S-III 32GB using Forum Runner

 

I used open signal maps today under the Maps setting, and I could visually see the towers I was connected to. 2 of the 6 or so I connected to had LTE. There was one tower, oddly enough closest to my house that I can't find for the life of me. Drove around 2 neighborhoods, wasn't there, or its in somebody's house! LOL ,my daughter said its underground (which explains a lot.) : )

[themuffinman]

Good to know. You actually have a point...last night the sprint rep told me I was connected to a tower that was different from the three that the "apps" tell me that I cycle through when I'm home.

 

Sprint reps are just as inaccurate, LOL.

 

I used open signal maps today under the Maps setting, and I could visually see the towers I was connected to. 2 of the 6 or so I connected to had LTE. There was one tower, oddly enough closest to my house that I can't find for the life of me. Drove around 2 neighborhoods, wasn't there, or its in somebody's house! LOL ,my daughter said its underground (which explains a lot.) : )

 

Yeah, open signal isn't that accurate at all as far as tower locations. I have a tower that is literally 1000 feet to my north east but open signal tells me that very same tower is off to my west by over a mile.

[boomerbubba]

I used open signal maps today under the Maps setting, and I could visually see the towers I was connected to. 2 of the 6 or so I connected to had LTE. There was one tower, oddly enough closest to my house that I can't find for the life of me. Drove around 2 neighborhoods, wasn't there, or its in somebody's house! LOL ,my daughter said its underground (which explains a lot.) : )

 

Open Signal's "tower" locations are just guesses based on crowdsourced signal-receptions data. They are notoriously inaccurate. Even Open Signal's page on the Google Play market site warns about inaccuracies.

 

There are other apps, such as CDMA Field Test, that report lat/lon coordinates broadcast by the sector base stations themselves. In some cases, those sector coordinates match the actual tower location. But in others, each sector's base station on a given tower reports different coordinates offset by some distance, possibly miles away in large cells. We don't know why this is.

[Crimson01]

If I wanted to inquire about a tower, what identifier would I use?

[ballinjin2k]

dial ##3282# and the menu pops up edit enter your msl and the settings are under the evdo

I appreciate this. I did it, but didn't get 4G where I'm at. I'll try Lawrenceville and see if I have better luck there. Good looking out.

[4ginnc]

No one should count on any apps for accurate LTE site locations. I have not seen one be correct yet with LTE. Not one.

 

Robert via Samsung Galaxy S-III 32GB using Forum Runner

 

That brings up something I was wondering after a post from AJ in another thread. If you can potentially connect to 3 different towers at the same time (one for 1x, one for EV-DO, one for LTE), which one are these apps reporting the connection for?

 

I doubt LTE, most likely my guess would be EV-DO?

[boomerbubba]

If I wanted to inquire about a tower, what identifier would I use?

 

Inquire to whom? Frontline Sprint reps? They may not know much anyway, and are good at playing dumb if they do know stuff.

 

The identifiers picked up by apps such as CDMA Field Test, etc., are network IDs that fit the CDMA standard and are broadcast. There is a hierarchical set of codes that identify, system, operator, network and base station. Each base station represents a sector, and there are typically three sectors per tower. There is no ID in this hierarchy that corresponds one-to-one to a tower, although Sprint's practice seems to be to assign sequential BSIDs to the sectors of each tower. These sector base stations also broadcast lat/lon coordinates, which might all coincide exactly with the tower location. However, some of those BSID sector coordinates are not the actual tower locations but rather are offset in a triad pattern. We don't know why.

 

If you become a sponsor here and see the project maps, they are tower-oriented. There is an identifier, apparently assigned by Sprint, visible per tower on the S4GRU maps. The coordinates of the towers are accurate. There is no easy way here to correlate the tower IDs to the CDMA network IDs in a table. Such tables surely exist somewhere within Sprint, but we still don't have them.

[Proxcee]

So how can you accurately tell where the towers are and which ones your connecting to?

[ATLRick]

More 4G LTE goodness in Canton; Marietta Highway, just north of 575 (exit 14). 6.7MB down; 2.1 up.

[ldenton]

I live in the subdivison that is located right at the corner of the buffington/old bill intersection and me nor my wife have been able to pick up LTE yet on either of our gs3's. I'm rooted and rom'd but she's not wonder what is going on.

im right around the corner from u.

[jman05]

I just turned off my Evo 4G and activated my Evo 4G LTE to test LTE

So I checked in Lawrenceville (Discovery Mills) last night - No LTE

Right now I'm at St. Joseph's (400 & 285/Johnson Ferry Rd) - No LTE

 

Saucratiz - where are you getting the LTE only option? I just have CDMA/LTE or CDMA only.

 

Coverage is spotty. I live close to Discover Mills and I can get a strong 4G signal in my house (avg 20 Mbps with 32 being the highest). If I go a half of mile away from my house in any direction..back on 3G.

 

I work in Sandy Springs at 285/400 and can get a 4G decent signal in my office (avg about 6 Mbps). But I was only getting 3G at the intersection of Hammond Dr and Peachtree Dunwoody.

 

Maybe I'm really lucky to get it both at home and at work (although I use wifi at both so I don't really need it).

Edited July 16, 2012 by jman05

[Proxcee]

Coverage is spotty. I live close to Discover Mills and I can get a strong 4G signal in my house (avg 20 Mbps with 32 being the highest). If I go a half of mile away from my house in any direction..back on 3G.

 

I work in Sandy Springs at 285/400 and can get a 4G decent signal in my office (avg about 6 Mbps). But I was only getting 3G at the intersection of Hammond Dr and Peachtree Dunwoody.

 

Maybe I'm really lucky to get it both at home and at work (although I use wifi at both so I don't really need it).

 

Extremely lucky!....enjoy it. The more sprint works through the growing pains and brings more towers online the better things will get.

[boomerbubba]

So how can you accurately tell where the towers are and which ones your connecting to?

 

Apps such as CDMA Field Test will accurately capture the Network IDs and Base Station IDS broadcast by the tower radios you connect to, along with a lat/lon coordinate for each sector BSID. The Sponsor-accessible maps at S4GRU accurately map the towers themselves. Correlating the coordinates to actual tower sites depends on the configuration of each tower, which fits one of two cases:

• Some BSID coordinates for all three sectors per tower closely match the coordinates on their tower.
  
• Other towers are configured such that each sector squawks coordinates offset some distance from the tower, the three forming a triangle.
  

So correlating the BSIDs to towers is a bit of a trial-and-error art, but it is quite possible once you get the hang of it. You will need to figure out which of these configurations fits your tower. You might need to travel around the tower to log all three sector BSIDs.

[Crimson01]

Coverage is spotty. I live close to Discover Mills and I can get a strong 4G signal in my house (avg 20 Mbps with 32 being the highest). If I go a half of mile away from my house in any direction..back on 3G.

 

I work in Sandy Springs at 285/400 and can get a 4G decent signal in my office (avg about 6 Mbps). But I was only getting 3G at the intersection of Hammond Dr and Peachtree Dunwoody.

 

Maybe I'm really lucky to get it both at home and at work (although I use wifi at both so I don't really need it).

 

I carpool from Discover Mills, and when riding to work, I frequently on my old EVO whipped out the speed test on every 4G wimax signal I got. My problem with that then was it was spotty and inconsistent, gaping holes up and down I 85. So bad that I couldn't even watch a youtube video because as soon as I got 4G (wimax) it was gone while in a car. Downtown it wouldn't penetrate my building unless I pressed my phone against the window. So if LTE is gonna be like that...I'm done. Somebody in a previous post told me to lighten up cause we don't pay extra for this. I call a BS on that, the $10 extra is likely for the 4G, I know they said it was for unlimited service, but how can you ever get extraordinary amounts of data, if your download speed is .30 kbps? I'm in for 2 years though...thanks to EVOlte.

[pyroscott]

I carpool from Discover Mills, and when riding to work, I frequently on my old EVO whipped out the speed test on every 4G wimax signal I got. My problem with that then was it was spotty and inconsistent, gaping holes up and down I 85. So bad that I couldn't even watch a youtube video because as soon as I got 4G (wimax) it was gone while in a car. Downtown it wouldn't penetrate my building unless I pressed my phone against the window. So if LTE is gonna be like that...I'm done. Somebody in a previous post told me to lighten up cause we don't pay extra for this. I call a BS on that, the $10 extra is likely for the 4G, I know they said it was for unlimited service, but how can you ever get extraordinary amounts of data, if your download speed is .30 kbps? I'm in for 2 years though...thanks to EVOlte.

 

Keep it up and you're going to be banned. The $10 is not for 4G, it is for the massive amounts of data usage that is possible with a smartphone. Nobody around here likes listening to people complain about "how much Sprint sucks" or "I have to pay $10"

[ballinjin2k]

went to sprint. There's an open ticket for the ATL market; the LTE is on, but not propagating to devices properly. The expected resolution time it tomorrow around 1 PM.

[troyd96]

How are they going to fix that? That sounds like OTA updates needed for phones that are not connecting correctly. Maybe they can turn down the threshold of signal needed for the phone to connect to LTE but turn up the threshold for 3g?

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

Edited July 17, 2012 by troyd96

[Trice]

im right around the corner from u.

 

 

cool, I went over to the tower today(it's behind the school & fire dept.) and nada lol, called support and talked with tech, they said they were aware and working on it so we will see how that goes. Are you by any chance getting a signal?

[pyroscott]

How are they going to fix that? That sounds like OTA updates needed for phones that are not connecting correctly. Maybe they can turn down the threshold of signal needed for the phone to connect to LTE but turn up the threshold for 3g? Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

Could be that they screwed something up by blocking access.

[themuffinman]

went to sprint. There's an open ticket for the ATL market; the LTE is on, but not propagating to devices properly. The expected resolution time it tomorrow around 1 PM.

 

Could be that they screwed something up by blocking access.

 

And this is why everyone needs to relax, lte has been live officially for 1 day so far so there are bound to be issues. I mean seriously, if 6 months had past then I could understand the frustrations but not after 1 day.

[jman05]

I carpool from Discover Mills, and when riding to work, I frequently on my old EVO whipped out the speed test on every 4G wimax signal I got. My problem with that then was it was spotty and inconsistent, gaping holes up and down I 85. So bad that I couldn't even watch a youtube video because as soon as I got 4G (wimax) it was gone while in a car. Downtown it wouldn't penetrate my building unless I pressed my phone against the window. So if LTE is gonna be like that...I'm done. Somebody in a previous post told me to lighten up cause we don't pay extra for this. I call a BS on that, the $10 extra is likely for the 4G, I know they said it was for unlimited service, but how can you ever get extraordinary amounts of data, if your download speed is .30 kbps? I'm in for 2 years though...thanks to EVOlte.

 

The rollout isn't done until the end of the year so its to be expected. If its December and the coverage is still spotty then I'd be disappointed but as of right now I'm hopeful.

[Proxcee]

 

 

 

 

And this is why everyone needs to relax, lte has been live officially for 1 day so far so there are bound to be issues. I mean seriously, if 6 months had past then I could understand the frustrations but not after 1 day.

 

True...but for those who aren't getting LTE but probably should...it's nice to know they're working on improving it. There will always be glitches with a roll out of this level.

[pyroscott]

And this is why everyone needs to relax, lte has been live officially for 1 day so far there are bound to be issues. I mean seriously, if 6 months had past then I could understand the frustrations but not after 1 day.

 

I want to like this about 20 times.

 

Has everyone forgotten the pains of being an early adopter? Sometimes there are bugs, actually most of the time there are bugs. It sucks, but it is what happens. In cities with WiMax, there was nothing stopping anyone from keeping their WiMax device and a 4G that had its problems, but works. The option was there to upgrade to a newer, better device and access the new LTE network as it rolls out. Taking that option would give tyhe possibility of a great new network or some spots/bugs/holes.

[Crimson01]

Thanks to all of you for your input and info. Its been very helpful. I've been reading this forum for months now, just decided to start posting today. Let's keep it going because this is the only ATL LTE info out there from what I can see.

 

And pyroscott check your inbox.