Network Vision/LTE - New York City Market

[RAvirani]

3 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I hope T-Mobile does some sort of spectrum leasing deal with Dish like they did with Columbia Capital.

A deal with Comcast would be nice too. 

[ingenium]

 

 

 

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. 

 

Do you know if they reused the existing mmimo equipment? Did it move racks?

 

Is there still B41 on Sprint? I wonder if they can have NR go to one core and LTE to another.

 

 

 

[Paynefanbro]

Speaking of leasing Dish's spectrum, some analysts are speculating that Dish will lease T-Mobile their 600MHz spectrum for a $400 Million one-time payment in order to cover the remaining cost of purchasing Boost after their $1 Billion debt offering that (it's speculated) Softbank will take on. The free spectrum loan that Dish had with T-Mobile ends June 30th and Dish "buys" Boost Mobile on July 1st so we may hear some news about T-Mobile using Dish's spectrum pretty soon.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/dish-to-raise-1b-for-general-corporate-purposes

[mirskyc]

1 hour ago, ingenium said:

 

 

 

 

Do you know if they reused the existing mmimo equipment? Did it move racks?

 

Is there still B41 on Sprint? I wonder if they can have NR go to one core and LTE to another.

 

 

 

One of the sites wasn't visible at all on the roof. The other site was a standard poll. the Sprint 5G M-MIMO antenna was still on the Sprint rack. On the t-mobile rack it looked like there might have been a M-MIMO antenna from another vendor but I'm not sure. I know the Sprint antenna is Nokia, but the T-Mobile one looked like it could be Ericsson.

[Paynefanbro]

A bunch of updates:

1. I still haven't connected to n41 but I've come across LAA a lot more recently. In some areas, T-Mobile has it deployed on enough sites such that there is near contiguous coverage. I've noticed this in Chinatown and Chelsea. Typically the 20MHz Band 66 carrier is the anchor band, the 10MHz Band 2 carrier is the secondary carrier, and two 20MHz Band 46 carriers are the third and fourth carrier. I find that anytime I connect to LAA, I'm able to break the 200Mbps barrier pretty easily.
2. I connected to n71 and Band 71 at the same time for the first time yesterday. Previously, only OnePlus devices were able to do that but it appears that sometime during the past few weeks/months one of the updates for the S20 series made that available.
3. n71 is pretty much useless in NYC however, it really shows its usefulness in suburban/rural areas. Yesterday while connected to a weak Band 66 signal and strong n71 signal in Bay Shore I was able to get 70Mbps down and 14 up while inside a department store. A few weeks ago, I was in Mt. Sinai, NY where I was pretty much at the edge of LTE signal but I was still able to get over 120Mbps thanks to n71 (this was while n71 was still 10MHz).

[Paynefanbro]

Band 2 on T-Mobile got expanded to 15MHz. That means that they officially poached 5MHz of Sprint's PCS B spectrum to do this, leaving Sprint with a contiguous 10MHz in PCS-B and the PCS-G block.

[RaigekiNYC]

3 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Band 2 on T-Mobile got expanded to 15MHz. That means that they officially poached 5MHz of Sprint's PCS B spectrum to do this, leaving Sprint with a contiguous 10MHz in PCS-B and the PCS-G block.

Not yet in LES here. I disabled band 25, 26 and 41 on Note 9 to force roaming to T-mobile. Still 10MHz on B2 for T mobile, 20Mhz on Band 66 and 5 Mhz on Band 12. When roaming at peak hour, speed drop to 50 Mbps down and 35 Mbps up. Off peak 200 down and 60 up vs. 260 down and 10 up on band 41. Still have band 41 LTE. And no band 71 around here.

[nexgencpu]

14 minutes ago, RaigekiNYC said:

Not yet in LES here. I disabled band 25, 26 and 41 on Note 9 to force roaming to T-mobile. Still 10MHz on B2 for T mobile, 20Mhz on Band 66 and 5 Mhz on Band 12. When roaming at peak hour, speed drop to 50 Mbps down and 35 Mbps up. Off peak 200 down and 60 up vs. 260 down and 10 up on band 41. Still have band 41 LTE. And no band 71 around here.

Same in the Bronx unchanged..

[Paynefanbro]

Spotted it on multiple sites in Crown Heights so far. I forced Band 2 and this is what it shows. Speeds have gone up accordingly. I'm getting 153 down and 46 up in my house now. Typically around this time speeds would be just over 100Mbps.

[mirskyc]

I am not enjoying this t-mobile 5G in Astoria Queens or even LTE for that matter. Here is comparison between the 2 today at Astoria park.
This area had even faster speeds before Sprint 5G was shut down. T-Mobile really needs to expand the N41 coverage outside of Manhattan asap. Some how Sprint really delayed it fast.


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[PhillipJames89]

11 hours ago, mirskyc said:

I am not enjoying this t-mobile 5G in Astoria Queens or even LTE for that matter. Here is comparison between the 2 today at Astoria park.
This area had even faster speeds before Sprint 5G was shut down. T-Mobile really needs to expand the N41 coverage outside of Manhattan asap. Some how Sprint really delayed it fast.


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is it possible to turn off 5G? if so, what are the speeds like on LTE? I would assume you will be connected to B41 LTE....

[nexgencpu]

9 minutes ago, PhillipJames89 said:

is it possible to turn off 5G? if so, what are the speeds like on LTE? I would assume you will be connected to B41 LTE....

If you notice on the speed test it says LTE, that means despite of what the icon is indicating, he is connected to LTE and not N71 or N41. Speed test is more reliable than the carrier icon on the top. Also, I fully expect(ed) T-Mobile to be worse than Sprint in NY for quite a while.

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, nexgencpu said:

If you notice on the speed test it says LTE, that means despite of what the icon is indicating, he is connected to LTE and not N71 or N41. Speed test is more reliable than the carrier icon on the top. Also, I fully expect(ed) T-Mobile to be worse than Sprint in NY for quite a while.

Likewise. Despite my good experiences with T-Mobile, Sprint was definitely better here. T-Mobile now has the scale and revenue to throw the money at the wall like AT&T and Verizon. They really should focus on upgrading every single site to have every single technology available. There's no reason to hold back anymore.

That's part of the reason why AT&T's network shot up to first place in the U.S. according to independent testing. They stopped bs-ing and started throwing money at the problem. They did it in Mexico too and now their network there is second best and only marginally so.

[dewbertdc]

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

Likewise. Despite my good experiences with T-Mobile, Sprint was definitely better here. T-Mobile now has the scale and revenue to throw the money at the wall like AT&T and Verizon. They really should focus on upgrading every single site to have every single technology available. There's no reason to hold back anymore.

That's part of the reason why AT&T's network shot up to first place in the U.S. according to independent testing. They stopped bs-ing and started throwing money at the problem. They did it in Mexico too and now their network there is second best and only marginally so.

Don't forget that the US Government paid AT&T $6.5 billion to deploy B14 FirstNet spectrum.  AT&T took advantage of those subsidized tower climbs to upgrade its own infrastructure to 5G-ready, and add all of its spectrum holdings.  Smart move.

T-Mobile doesn't have that subsidy, but I agree that any tower they're going to touch from here on out should be fully upgraded, and I think we'll see that with the Sprint "keep" sites for sure, plus anywhere they add NR equipment.

[RAvirani]

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

T-Mobile now has the scale and revenue to throw the money at the wall like AT&T and Verizon. They really should focus on upgrading every single site to have every single technology available. There's no reason to hold back anymore.

A full deployment has never been T-Mobile's strategy, and that's why they've never been the best in Seattle. Despite having the best site density (by a lot), their network experience falls far short of AT&T, Sprint and even Verizon now, who I would have claimed was in last place a year ago. 

The trend for the last 4 years has been that AT&T and Verizon never climb a tower without deploying every LTE technology available at that time. Even today, the same cannot be said for T-Mobile. 

I would estimate that more than 35% of T-Mobile sites in Seattle are still midband only. And some are still B2-only whereas others are B4-only. That makes coverage/capacity inconsistent between sites and handovers at the edge of cell sloppy, to say the least.

To really compete with the big two, they're going to have to rethink the way they're deploying their RAN and stop deploying the minimum needed to get by. Hopefully we see those changes going forward, because they definitely have the economies of scale necessary to do so now. 

[nexgencpu]

2 hours ago, RAvirani said:

A full deployment has never been T-Mobile's strategy, and that's why they've never been the best in Seattle. Despite having the best site density (by a lot), their network experience falls far short of AT&T, Sprint and even Verizon now, who I would have claimed was in last place a year ago. 

The trend for the last 4 years has been that AT&T and Verizon never climb a tower without deploying every LTE technology available at that time. Even today, the same cannot be said for T-Mobile. 

I would estimate that more than 35% of T-Mobile sites in Seattle are still midband only. And some are still B2-only whereas others are B4-only. That makes coverage/capacity inconsistent between sites and handovers at the edge of cell sloppy, to say the least.

To really compete with the big two, they're going to have to rethink the way they're deploying their RAN and stop deploying the minimum needed to get by. Hopefully we see those changes going forward, because they definitely have the economies of scale necessary to do so now. 

I'm surprised TMobile is so inconsistent with bands deployed per site. Some sites have full on builds some are two or three bands and others host single bands. While Sprint might have been weak off the beaten path, they consistently deployed full builds on almost all macro sites in NYC.

[Paynefanbro]

I can confirm that 15MHz PCS is live across all of northern Brooklyn at the very least. I went to Red Hook, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Sunset Park, and everywhere in between today and encountered 15MHz PCS everywhere.

[nexgencpu]

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

I can confirm that 15MHz PCS is live across all of northern Brooklyn at the very least. I went to Red Hook, Williamsburg, Park Slope, Sunset Park, and everywhere in between today and encountered 15MHz PCS everywhere.

That's encouraging to see, especially since B2 is used in CA on almost all configurations.

[Tengen31]

That's encouraging to see, especially since B2 is used in CA on almost all configurations.

Will be interesting to see what TMO does with the G block down the road when the sprint network is gone

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[mirskyc]

Do we know where this additional 5Mhz of B2 is coming from? Did they get rid of the last of 1900mhz HSPA? Or take spectrum from Sprint?
If they are using original T-Mobile spectrum I think that just leaves 5 mhz AWS for HSPA

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[Tengen31]

Do we know where this additional 5Mhz of B2 is coming from? Did they get rid of the last of 1900mhz HSPA? Or take spectrum from Sprint?
If they are using original T-Mobile spectrum I think that just leaves 5 mhz AWS for HSPA

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If you're talking about B2 going from 10x10 to 15x15 yes it's sprint spectrum. In other markets they use B2 for H+ but in NY they have 25x25 of AWS, so H+ uses B4

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[Paynefanbro]

48 minutes ago, mirskyc said:

Do we know where this additional 5Mhz of B2 is coming from? Did they get rid of the last of 1900mhz HSPA? Or take spectrum from Sprint?
If they are using original T-Mobile spectrum I think that just leaves 5 mhz AWS for HSPA

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They poached it from the lower 5MHz of Sprint's PCS B-block. I'm assuming the plan is to eventually expand PCS to 20MHz, leaving two 5MHz blocks (one in B-block and one in G-block) for legacy HSPA and Sprint LTE.

[Tengen31]

They poached it from the lower 5MHz of Sprint's PCS B-block. I'm assuming the plan is to eventually expand PCS to 20MHz, leaving two 5MHz blocks (one in B-block and one in G-block) for legacy HSPA and Sprint LTE.

HSPA+ isn't on B2 in NY. It's on B4 out there since they have 20x20 B4. Before the merger TMO only had 10x10 total

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[mirskyc]

They poached it from the lower 5MHz of Sprint's PCS B-block. I'm assuming the plan is to eventually expand PCS to 20MHz, leaving two 5MHz blocks (one in B-block and one in G-block) for legacy HSPA and Sprint LTE.

Hopefully they get more Sprint users in T-Mobile since they are reducing B25 for Sprint to 2 5x5 blocks and I've also notice B41 LTE disappearing in LI.

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[Paynefanbro]

39 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

HSPA+ isn't on B2 in NY. It's on B4 out there since they have 20x20 B4. Before the merger TMO only had 10x10 total

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I know that. I'm talking about further down the line for 5G. What I'm saying is that with the addition of Sprint's PCS, they can expand LTE on PCS and shift HSPA from AWS to the remaining 5MHz in PCS-B so that they can have a 25MHz n66 carrier down the line and a 20MHz n2 carrier since n2 is not currently registered for greater than 20MHz carriers.

The other solution would be to simply get rid of HSPA altogether and have two 25MHz n66 and n25 carriers since n25 allows for 25MHz carriers. Then T-Mobile could retain the 5MHz PCS-G for legacy LTE service.