Sprint is doing a live tour of the cell site

[S4GRU]

What I hope Sprint is doing (at least with the 4G LTE), is starting with little to no downtilt on sites (for maximum coverage), and then adjusting the downtilt down as adjacent sites come online. However, since our coverage maps are pretty accurate (and they are figured with downtilt based on built-out site spacing), it doesn't appear that they are doing this.

 

Robert

[digiblur]

What I hope Sprint is doing (at least with the 4G LTE), is starting with little to no downtilt on sites (for maximum coverage), and then adjusting the downtilt down as adjacent sites come online. However, since our coverage maps are pretty accurate (and they are figured with downtilt based on built-out site spacing), it doesn't appear that they are doing this.

 

Robert

 

My thoughts on this... yes would think that would be the best option to do just tweak the downtilts as needed as towers come online? Easy right? Not so much... First, you would have to create a multi-staged RF plan for every market...multi-staged as in for every "wave" of towers that would come online. If one tower didn't come online in time it would throw the entire plan off and it would have to be redone every time there was a delay in a tower. And we never have a delay in towers right? But lets say you figure out a way to tackle this.

 

How many towers do we have? Think I heard something like 30,000+ sites but I could be wrong. Let's make it easy that every tower has 3 sectors and with 1 panel each. So that's 30,000 sites * 3 sectors: 90,000 panels. Each panel as 3 "sections". 90,000 * 3 = 270,000 actual antennas. Each movable section has an ACU. So 540,000 pieces you are moving for some temporary RF plans. Then how many times are you moving those as waves of towers come online or maybe some are delayed? Statistically with a number that high there is going to be failures of some sort. Now you've got to send tower guys back out to fix something in a market that you should be 100% done with.

 

From a me and you techy stand point it sounds like a cool idea. But from a whole network logistical standpoint, I can bet you after the tower is signed off on and accepted, it would take an act of Sprint congress to make adjustments. Imagine what would happen on an active site if the motor got jammed and ran the downtilt all the way down and now you've got tons of dropped calls during a huge college football game event.

 

But with all that said, I'm very happy to see Sprint have this feature built into their network. I was worried how they would adjust the downtilt for the different air interfaces and frequencies. Looks like they have it under control and if down the road they do find a site that needs an adjustment all it takes is a bunch of paper work from the RF group, signatures, then send some commands from the NOC.

[S4GRU]

My thoughts on this... yes would think that would be the best option to do just tweak the downtilts as needed as towers come online? Easy right? Not so much... First, you would have to create a multi-staged RF plan for every market...multi-staged as in for every "wave" of towers that would come online. If one tower didn't come online in time it would throw the entire plan off and it would have to be redone every time there was a delay in a tower. And we never have a delay in towers right? But lets say you figure out a way to tackle this.

 

How many towers do we have? Think I heard something like 30,000+ sites but I could be wrong. Let's make it easy that every tower has 3 sectors and with 1 panel each. So that's 30,000 sites * 3 sectors: 90,000 panels. Each panel as 3 "sections". 90,000 * 3 = 270,000 actual antennas. Each movable section has an ACU. So 540,000 pieces you are moving for some temporary RF plans. Then how many times are you moving those as waves of towers come online or maybe some are delayed? Statistically with a number that high there is going to be failures of some sort. Now you've got to send tower guys back out to fix something in a market that you should be 100% done with.

 

From a me and you techy stand point it sounds like a cool idea. But from a whole network logistical standpoint, I can bet you after the tower is signed off on and accepted, it would take an act of Sprint congress to make adjustments. Imagine what would happen on an active site if the motor got jammed and ran the downtilt all the way down and now you've got tons of dropped calls during a huge college football game event.

 

But with all that said, I'm very happy to see Sprint have this feature built into their network. I was worried how they would adjust the downtilt for the different air interfaces and frequencies. Looks like they have it under control and if down the road they do find a site that needs an adjustment all it takes is a bunch of paper work from the RF group, signatures, then send some commands from the NOC.

 

If we were going to do it for the best optimized situation when every adjacent site went live, it would be way too large to RF engineer, manage and implement. Just as you have pointed out. However, it could be simplified to this:

 

How about two settings...early deployment and final engineered setting? Set the initial early sites deployment with very little downtilt. When adjacent sites start to come online, use the internal downtilt adjustment to reset them to formal and final engineered settings. Since there is this trick remote controlled adjustment that can be done, it's a shame to not use it to your advantage now in early deployment.

 

Robert

[digiblur]

How about two settings...early deployment and final engineered setting? Set the initial early sites deployment with very little downtilt. When adjacent sites start to come online, use the internal downtilt adjustment to reset them to formal and final engineered settings. Since there is this trick remote controlled adjustment that can be done, it's a shame to not use it to your advantage now in early deployment.

 

Robert

 

Fully agree on that and wish they would but I just see them waving the caution flag on this one. If it were me though, I'd kick the tires one last time at the end of the market roundup to test the warranty on these things.

 

I'm going to have look more into this ACU thing. I'm curious if there is some soft of feed back on if it is stuck or not. Like how do you know 1,000 miles away that you really adjusted the downtilt without someone to check on the ground? I wonder if there's some sort of physical feedback from the panel itself for a return signal. Technically you don't need one for a stepper motor but who's up there to say it's stepping? The reason I ask is I would have figured these things would have been rated for more than 36,000 adjustments..not that you should need that many adjustments though.

[ny3ranger]

please NYC.......... NEED to switch from AT&T with iphone 5.

[irev210]

Fully agree on that and wish they would but I just see them waving the caution flag on this one. If it were me though, I'd kick the tires one last time at the end of the market roundup to test the warranty on these things.

 

I'm going to have look more into this ACU thing. I'm curious if there is some soft of feed back on if it is stuck or not. Like how do you know 1,000 miles away that you really adjusted the downtilt without someone to check on the ground? I wonder if there's some sort of physical feedback from the panel itself for a return signal. Technically you don't need one for a stepper motor but who's up there to say it's stepping? The reason I ask is I would have figured these things would have been rated for more than 36,000 adjustments..not that you should need that many adjustments though.

 

It also makes a lot of sense when there is say, a giant wind storm or another event that causes the downtilt to change. Instead of having to send someone up the tower, you can just adjust it remotely and have a field engineer on the ground test coverage.

 

This seems like a huge advantage over legacy equipment, I am surprised that sprint has never mentioned this. Do other carriers deploy this?

[doug526]

Did anyone ever find the full length news quality version of this video? The video posted here basically got cut off about 30 seconds into the meat of the presentation! It would be nice to see the context of what Viet is talking about in the still photos.