Network Vision/LTE - New York City Market

[Tengen31]

The agreement is reciprocal.
Verizon non-CDMA devices roam on T-Mobile WCDMA/HSPA when they fall off Verizon LTE. I don't believe Verizon devices roam on T-Mobile LTE, though - at least not yet. 

With all of vzws coverage why would they need roaming?

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[Paynefanbro]

2 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

With all of vzws coverage why would they need roaming?

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Because just like any other network, they can't guarantee coverage everywhere.

[Paynefanbro]

I've come across a number of Crown Castle oDAS nodes (small cells) on T-Mobile. I think a bunch used to belong to MetroPCS. I found 3 in my own neighborhood and one in Williamsburg. The ones on my neighborhood all share the same the same eNB ID which makes it annoying to track on Cellmapper since it's 3 separate "sites" but only one marker.

[mdob07]

19 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I've come across a number of Crown Castle oDAS nodes (small cells) on T-Mobile. I think a bunch used to belong to MetroPCS. I found 3 in my own neighborhood and one in Williamsburg. The ones on my neighborhood all share the same the same eNB ID which makes it annoying to track on Cellmapper since it's 3 separate "sites" but only one marker.

Both Verizon and AT&T do the same thing in my area, and I agree its extremely annoying. AT&T uses the same eNB Id across 3 nodes, and on Verizon I've seen as many as 6 nodes share one ID with different sector IDs.

[Paynefanbro]

I'm poking around Cellmapper and looking at all of the sites I've connected to since I've switched to T-Mobile. I've counted a bunch more small cells in Brooklyn. Taking a look at Google Street View, many of them have been around since late 2012-early 2013.

I've run speed tests at 2 of them and they max out at around 50Mbps which is significantly lower than the Sprint small cells I've used in the past. They're also ENDC capable so the small cells can act as anchor bands/sites for the 5G network.

The fact that they've retained so many DAS sites and with many of them being 7 and 8 years old makes me hopeful that they will keep Sprint's small cells and use them for 5G.

[dkyeager]

2 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I'm poking around Cellmapper and looking at all of the sites I've connected to since I've switched to T-Mobile. I've counted a bunch more small cells in Brooklyn. Taking a look at Google Street View, many of them have been around since late 2012-early 2013.

I've run speed tests at 2 of them and they max out at around 50Mbps which is significantly lower than the Sprint small cells I've used in the past. They're also ENDC capable so the small cells can act as anchor bands/sites for the 5G network.

The fact that they've retained so many DAS sites and with many of them being 7 and 8 years old makes me hopeful that they will keep Sprint's small cells and use them for 5G.

The problem is many of tbe Sprint small cells might be in the wrong location depending on macros.

[Paynefanbro]

25 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

The problem is many of tbe Sprint small cells might be in the wrong location depending on macros.

That's not really something I'm worried about in here. In NYC there's almost never a wrong location for a small cell. On top of that, the sheer number of small cells that Sprint has in NYC means that, while T-Mobile has the advantage of a dense macro network to deploy mmWave, they'll have access to literally thousands of small cell sites to bolster their mmWave 5G network if they choose to do so.

They're also inheriting a small cell deal with Altice and if their MetroPCS merger is any indication of what they'll do with Sprint, then most if not all of the small cells will be kept to enhance the network. The same can't be said for macros where in that case, there are going to be plenty of wrong locations.

[sunmybun]

im on native tmobile bands now. when i band select b41 in my s20 ultra, the phone shows it as roaming.
i guess they are getting people off of b41 even on small cells.
i leave it on b41 because noone is on it lol

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[Paynefanbro]

Today I noticed that the grocery store that I frequent has a T-Mobile CellSpot. What made me notice is that throughout the store I have low to no signal everywhere and will occasionally roam on super weak Verizon signal but by the registers, I had a full signal which is stronger than the signal I get outside. I immediately checked SignalCheck and saw the T-Mobile B4 CellSpot label and started searching for it. I found it in about 30 seconds. It was attached to the ceiling right next to a WiFi router. Interestingly, speeds on the CellSpot were significantly faster than they were on WiFi.

[nexgencpu]

Finally connected to some N41 in midtown (28th st indoors). Speeds were between 200mbs and 300mbs still using 40mhz of N41+B2+B71

Funny enough ground level is N261, speeds were similar to N41.

[mirskyc]

13 hours ago, nexgencpu said:

Finally connected to some N41 in midtown (28th st indoors). Speeds were between 200mbs and 300mbs still using 40mhz of N41+B2+B71

Funny enough ground level is N261, speeds were similar to N41.

I finally got the update on my unlocked S20 on Monday. I plan on going into Manhattan on Tuesday find some N261 and N41 will report back if I find anything interesting 

[mirskyc]

I biked around midtown east and Murray Hill today. Noticed a lot more N261 then N41. Also N261 was way slower then when I connected to N41. N41 also wasn't stand alone in the few sites I connected. Here is my fasted speed test with N41. My fasted N261 test was 330Mbps but it also would sometimes only pull ~10Mbps Download and then 50Mbps upload.

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[nexgencpu]

39 minutes ago, mirskyc said:

I biked around midtown east and Murray Hill today. Noticed a lot more N261 then N41. Also N261 was way slower then when I connected to N41. N41 also wasn't stand alone in the few sites I connected. Here is my fasted speed test with N41. My fasted N261 test was 330Mbps but it also would sometimes only pull ~10Mbps Download and then 50Mbps upload.

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Nice find. but yes, pretty much what Ive found when connected to N261, I'm assuming it's a backhaul limitation. The whole mmwave deployment from T-Mobile definitely seemed like a stopgap solution to keep V and ATT at Bay marketing wise. Also, I wonder what happened to that 60mhz N41 site Milan found. Seems all sites I've found are 40mhz. 

[Paynefanbro]

It's not due to backhaul or anything like that. mmWave is sharing the same backhaul as n41.

The reason why is because current 5G chipsets aren't able to make the most out of mmWave spectrum. n261 in NYC is currently split into two 50MHz carriers that are aggregated together so technically 100MHz of spectrum. However, it operates in 2x2MIMO and 64QAM. This is in comparison to n41 which operates in 4x4MIMO and 256QAM. It's a lot more spectrally efficient than the current mmWave deployment and as a result, you get much higher speeds.

[nexgencpu]

2 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

It's not due to backhaul or anything like that. mmWave is sharing the same backhaul as n41.

The reason why is because current 5G chipsets aren't able to make the most out of mmWave spectrum. n261 in NYC is currently split into two 50MHz carriers that are aggregated together so technically 100MHz of spectrum. However, it operates in 2x2MIMO and 64QAM. This is in comparison to n41 which operates in 4x4MIMO and 256QAM. It's a lot more spectrally efficient than the current mmWave deployment and as a result, you get much higher speeds.

The highest speed I've been able to achieve on N261 with a strong signal is around 400mbs. Assuming 100mhz even on 2x2 should be able hit well over 800mbs. Definitely not related to network traffic since barely anyone was in the street.

Buddies Verizon phone on mmwave typically hits 500mbs during day and 1gb+ late night with same device.

[Paynefanbro]

On 6/16/2020 at 8:42 PM, nexgencpu said:

The highest speed I've been able to achieve on N261 with a strong signal is around 400mbs. Assuming 100mhz even on 2x2 should be able hit well over 800mbs. Definitely not related to network traffic since barely anyone was in the street.

Buddies Verizon phone on mmwave typically hits 500mbs during day and 1gb+ late night with same device.

Two aggregated 50MHz n261 carriers with 2x2MIMO 64QAM has a lower theoretical download throughput than 40MHz n41 with 4x4MIMO and 256QAM.

[Paynefanbro]

Found a ton more T-Mobile small cells in other neighborhoods in Brooklyn. They seem to have a lot more than I initially anticipated.

I also think that my phone is finally using LTE+NR upload carrier aggregation after the update that I received yesterday morning. I managed to get 74Mbps up while on n71 which is something that I never usually get.

[Paynefanbro]

deleted

[mirskyc]

I noticed today that N71 is down from 10x10mhz to 5x5mhz. I also found 2 cell sites in LI that had N41 from Sprint and have already be switch over to N41 on T-mobile. Probably helps that the sites had both Sprint and T-mobile on them. 

[nexgencpu]

18 minutes ago, mirskyc said:

I noticed today that N71 is down from 10x10mhz to 5x5mhz. 

Man, that was the only really nice thing in some areas around me having 10x10 N71. Now my N71 speeds went from 20-30mbs, to 3-6mbs..

This merger has been a total bummer so far.

[mirskyc]

Just now, nexgencpu said:

Man, that was the only really nice thing in some areas around me having 10x10 N71. Now my N71 speeds went from 20-30mbs, to 3-6mbs..

This merger has been a total bummer so far.

Its strange it B71 went from 10x10 to 20x20 and N71 stayed at 5x5. Then N71 went down to 15x15 and B71 went to 10x10. Now B71 is still at 15x15 and N71 is back down to 5x5. Really doesn't make any sense unless the FCC waiver they got to use the spectrum they down own ran out. 

N71 performance is really bad, They really need to expand N41 since density here in NYC is good enough that you will stay on it most of the time, even indoors. 

[nexgencpu]

36 minutes ago, mirskyc said:

Its strange it B71 went from 10x10 to 20x20 and N71 stayed at 5x5. Then N71 went down to 15x15 and B71 went to 10x10. Now B71 is still at 15x15 and N71 is back down to 5x5. Really doesn't make any sense unless the FCC waiver they got to use the spectrum they down own ran out. 

N71 performance is really bad, They really need to expand N41 since density here in NYC is good enough that you will stay on it most of the time, even indoors. 

I've heard a few markets that 71 got downgraded so I assume the temp dish agreement expired. Was also looking forward to seeing more N41 sites especially with 60mhz worth of spectrum, but alas have seen very little movement in bringing more N41 sites online and have yet to see any sites with over 40mhz.

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, mirskyc said:

Its strange it B71 went from 10x10 to 20x20 and N71 stayed at 5x5. Then N71 went down to 15x15 and B71 went to 10x10. Now B71 is still at 15x15 and N71 is back down to 5x5. Really doesn't make any sense unless the FCC waiver they got to use the spectrum they down own ran out. 

N71 performance is really bad, They really need to expand N41 since density here in NYC is good enough that you will stay on it most of the time, even indoors. 

T-Mobile's spectrum constraints with n71 are pretty short term because the plan is to implement DSS so that they can use the full breadth of spectrum across LTE and 5G. It's the same plan that Verizon and AT&T have for their n5 networks. Likely by year end or early 2021 we'll be up to 1̶5̶M̶H̶z̶ 10MHz n71.

[Tengen31]

T-Mobile's spectrum constraints with n71 are pretty short term because the plan is to implement DSS so that they can use the full breadth of spectrum across LTE and 5G. It's the same plan that Verizon and AT&T have for their n5 networks. Likely by year end or early 2021 we'll be up to 15MHz n71.

In NY TMobile only holds 10x10 themselves, so it's likely they are losing borrowed Spectrum

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[Paynefanbro]

10 hours ago, Tengen31 said:

In NY TMobile only holds 10x10 themselves, so it's likely they are losing borrowed Spectrum

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You're right, I got ahead of myself there. I hope T-Mobile does some sort of spectrum leasing deal with Dish like they did with Columbia Capital.