Network Vision/LTE - New York City Market

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, thisischuck01 said:

CellMapper seems to indicate there is an oDAS node near there (eNB ID 127069). 

That's interesting, I never saw that one there. Thanks for pointing it out!

[Paynefanbro]

Looks like Verizon updated their coverage maps. Massive mmWave expansion in Brooklyn mostly. I've still never even connected to it despite it supposedly being in a lot of places that I go to regularly.

 

[mirskyc]

Connected to a lot of 5G SA on my way to New Haven CT. Also noticed N41 is 80mhz in New Haven. Hope they expand to 80 soon in NYC

[mirskyc]

I just transferred at jamaica station and I think there might be a 5G DAS with N41. 

[wispiANt]

Got my new S21 Ultra today. It generally seems to prefer N71 SA in my location, though if I walk around my apartment (or bandlock) I can connect to N41 NSA. When RAT-locking to LTE, B2 still tends to be the default band. That said, the phone is bouncing between bands quite a bit, so it might just need some time to figure itself out.

Average speeds:

LTE (B2/B66/B12): 15Mb/s

N71 SA: 30Mb/s

N41 SA: 150+ Mb/s

Super happy to see such a big improvement over my OP6T!!

 

[wispiANt]

10 hours ago, thisischuck01 said:

Got my new S21 Ultra today. It generally seems to prefer N71 SA in my location, though if I walk around my apartment (or bandlock) I can connect to N41 NSA. When RAT-locking to LTE, B2 still tends to be the default band. That said, the phone is bouncing between bands quite a bit, so it might just need some time to figure itself out.

Average speeds:

LTE (B2/B66/B12): 15Mb/s

N71 SA: 30Mb/s

N41 SA: 150+ Mb/s

Super happy to see such a big improvement over my OP6T!!

 

My S21U seems to have figured itself out and I'm now connecting to to n41/B2/B66/B12 by default (though I'm occasionally running into issues with connecting to anything but B2/B66/B12, or connecting to n71 NSA instead of n41 NSA). Typical speeds tend to be between 150-200Mb/s, but tonight I managed to max out at almost 500Mb/s by practically sticking my device out the window:

Still have to get used to these dialer codes, rather than NSG... my last Samsung phone was a Galaxy S2. Planning to stop by my serving site in the next day or two to see what kinda speeds I can get during off-hours with an RSRP < -90dBM. The capability is certainly there for some >1Gb/s speed tests, though I'm more likely to agree with @Paynefanbro on backhaul being the main limitation at this point.

[Paynefanbro]

10 hours ago, thisischuck01 said:

Still have to get used to these dialer codes, rather than NSG... my last Samsung phone was a Galaxy S2. Planning to stop by my serving site in the next day or two to see what kinda speeds I can get during off-hours with an RSRP < -90dBM. The capability is certainly there for some >1Gb/s speed tests, though I'm more likely to agree with @Paynefanbro on backhaul being the main limitation at this point.

Pretty much every other n41 speed test that I've seen so far has confirmed my assumption that T-Mobile's limiting factor at this point is backhaul. Speeds are far from slow but virtually every n41 site nationwide is topping out at ~700Mbps no matter if they're using 40, 60, or 80MHz of spectrum. The only sites that are giving speeds faster than that have mmWave or LAA installed.

Last year I got over 300Mbps on LTE on Verizon and I recently found out that that site I got that on had mmWave installed which meant that Verizon likely had upwards of 4Gbps of backhaul feeding it. If T-Mobile decided to add 4Gbps+ links to all of their sites, users would likely easily achieve speeds of 1Gbps+ outdoors. The only issue is that it's much more expensive for T-Mobile to do that than Verizon since Verizon is likely using their own fiber infrastructure in many areas as backhaul whereas T-Mobile is likely paying a premium to Spectrum, Altice, Verizon, and AAV's for backhaul.

[wispiANt]

14 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Pretty much every other n41 speed test that I've seen so far has confirmed my assumption that T-Mobile's limiting factor at this point is backhaul. Speeds are far from slow but virtually every n41 site nationwide is topping out at ~700Mbps no matter if they're using 40, 60, or 80MHz of spectrum. The only sites that are giving speeds faster than that have mmWave or LAA installed.

Last year I got over 300Mbps on LTE on Verizon and I recently found out that that site I got that on had mmWave installed which meant that Verizon likely had upwards of 4Gbps of backhaul feeding it. If T-Mobile decided to add 4Gbps+ links to all of their sites, users would likely easily achieve speeds of 1Gbps+ outdoors. The only issue is that it's much more expensive for T-Mobile to do that than Verizon since Verizon is likely using their own fiber infrastructure in many areas as backhaul whereas T-Mobile is likely paying a premium to Spectrum, Altice, Verizon, and AAV's for backhaul.

Ran a few snowy 1AM speedtests at each sector of my serving site tonight:

Backhaul is looking awfully capped at 700Mb/s. Like you said, far from slow  - though it'd certainly be refreshing to see T-Mobile sites equipped with multi-gig backhaul like Verizon is doing with their mmWave sites. 2.5+Gb/s speed tests are a dime a dozen in the Verizon subreddit.

While Verizon and AT&T certainly have an advantage as last-mile providers (among many other things), I do wonder if/how the acquisition of Sprint's fiber backbone will be able to benefit T-Mobile in this regard.

[shaferz]

700mb/s seems like such a weird speed cap to me.  At least for residential customers, tiers are normally 100/500/1gig.  I'm struggling a bit with understanding the 700 limit that appears to be in place

[wispiANt]

Verizon outage brought down most sites in the Williamsburg area today. Best connection was to a site ~1 mile away. No data for almost two hours.

Anyone else experiencing outages? Last I heard, Verizon service was affected in parts of Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Bushwick, and Greenpoint. No official acknowledgment from Verizon.

[Paynefanbro]

6 hours ago, thisischuck01 said:

Verizon outage brought down most sites in the Williamsburg area today. Best connection was to a site ~1 mile away. No data for almost two hours.

Anyone else experiencing outages? Last I heard, Verizon service was affected in parts of Bed-Stuy, Crown Heights, Flatbush, Bushwick, and Greenpoint. No official acknowledgment from Verizon.

Working fine in Manhattan as far as I can tell.

Edit: No issues in my part of Crown Heights.

[Paynefanbro]

An n71 speed test from a site here in Brooklyn with n71, mmWave, and LAA but no n41. I was out of range of mmWave but pretty impressed with my n71 speeds. When I turned off 5G, my phone connected to a nearby DAS which gave me super slow speeds. Verizon in the same spot gave me about 180Mbps on both 5G and LTE. That was my fastest ever 5G speed test on their network.

[wispiANt]

The new 47xxxx eNB numbering for B12/B71 seems to be popping up all over NYS, according to CellMapper. Spotted another one in my neighborhood, as well.

T-Mobile also seems to be switching up sector numbering on some sites to match their Nokia markets (B12 goes from sectors 4/5/6 to sectors 21/22/23). 

[transitwatch889]

As of today they have expanded to 40mhz of band 41 nr, up from the 20 prior, in upper Manhattan and the BX at least in my hood. 

[nexgencpu]

On 2/19/2021 at 7:22 AM, transitwatch889 said:

As of today they have expanded to 40mhz of band 41 nr, up from the 20 prior, in upper Manhattan and the BX at least in my hood. 

That's awesome! 

[Paynefanbro]

I found a running list of street light and utility poles that have been reserved for 4G/5G small deployment in NYC and turned it into a map. I haven't found a way to share it but I can zoom in on any area and post a pic if you'd like!

Just taking a look at my own neighborhood it looks like a light pole at one corner of my block has been reserved. 

I also came across the proposed design for new small cells in NYC. Lots of info here.

[nexgencpu]

On 2/19/2021 at 7:22 AM, transitwatch889 said:

As of today they have expanded to 40mhz of band 41 nr, up from the 20 prior, in upper Manhattan and the BX at least in my hood. 

I can confirm the extra 20mhz on N41 are live all over the Bronx, hit speeds in excess of 300mbs! Very happy to finally see this.

[transitwatch889]

4 hours ago, nexgencpu said:

I can confirm the extra 20mhz on N41 are live all over the Bronx, hit speeds in excess of 300mbs! Very happy to finally see this.

In the early AM when I 1st noticed I hit up to 600 down aggregated with lte on band 41 and 40 mhz of me, so pretty the limit of the backhual currently available so not really missing much till they update the feed to the site.

[wispiANt]

11 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I found a running list of street light and utility poles that have been reserved for 4G/5G small deployment in NYC and turned it into a map. I haven't found a way to share it but I can zoom in on any area and post a pic if you'd like!

Just taking a look at my own neighborhood it looks like a light pole at one corner of my block has been reserved. 

I also came across the proposed design for new small cells in NYC. Lots of info here.

Awesome find! Link if anyone wants to view the map themselves.

I actually spotted one of the new RRHs in the East Village about nine months ago!

I wonder if they'll (finally) be switching away from omni-directional antennas, didn't see any information (or images) of what's hidden under the shrouds.

[wispiANt]

19 minutes ago, thisischuck01 said:

Awesome find! Link if anyone wants to view the map themselves.

I actually spotted one of the new RRHs in the East Village about nine months ago!

I wonder if they'll (finally) be switching away from omni-directional antennas, didn't see any information (or images) of what's hidden under the shrouds.

Been checking out a few T-Mobile oDAS nodes I know the install date of, and generally the reservation date seems to be 1.5 to 2 years before that. Oof. Just one of the reasons T-Mobile tends to shy away from small cells, I suppose. 

[Paynefanbro]

9 hours ago, thisischuck01 said:

Awesome find! Link if anyone wants to view the map themselves.

I actually spotted one of the new RRHs in the East Village about nine months ago!

 

I wonder if they'll (finally) be switching away from omni-directional antennas, didn't see any information (or images) of what's hidden under the shrouds.

In the pictures of the proposed design the top portion looks vented on the bottom so we might finally be getting regular antennas hopefully. 

Also just taking a look at the Sprint small cells around my home, the time between the reservation date and when they were actually installed was only a few months. But then again Sprint was moving really fast on small cells here. 

[wispiANt]

Did some mapping in the East Village this past weekend. My S21U was really struggling with n261, had to try 4-5 sites before I could actually maintain a connection. n41 was fast and reliable in the majority of places I tested.

n41 vs n261 on the same site:

Did a bit of mapping in the Greenpoint area, as well. Only two of the five sites between Nassau Ave and Newtown Creek have been upgraded with n41, so still a bit of work that needs to be done. Unfortunately, the Sprint site on Ash Ave doesn't seem to be designated as a keep site.

[Paynefanbro]

Results are in! It looks like T-Mobile got 40MHz of C-band in NYC, AT&T got 80MHz, and Verizon got 160MHz. My hope is that T-Mobile works out a deal with NW Spectrum LLC where they trade the 40MHz of C-band for the 40MHz of BRS/EBS licenses they're squatting on. After the swap, T-Mobile will control all 197MHz of BRS/EBS in most of NYC. Also let's not forget that T-Mobile got that 10MHz CBRS PAL last year in the Bronx. In parts of the south Bronx T-Mobile is missing more than just 40MHz. Perhaps their intent is to give up C-band and CBRS (a total of 50MHz of spectrum) to gain all of the remaining BRS/EBS there.

https://auctiondata.fcc.gov/public/projects/auction107/reports/results

 

 

[wispiANt]

On 2/24/2021 at 6:09 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Results are in! It looks like T-Mobile got 40MHz of C-band in NYC, AT&T got 80MHz, and Verizon got 160MHz. My hope is that T-Mobile works out a deal with NW Spectrum LLC where they trade the 40MHz of C-band for the 40MHz of BRS/EBS licenses they're squatting on. After the swap, T-Mobile will control all 197MHz of BRS/EBS in most of NYC. Also let's not forget that T-Mobile got that 10MHz CBRS PAL last year in the Bronx. In parts of the south Bronx T-Mobile is missing more than just 40MHz. Perhaps their intent is to give up C-band and CBRS (a total of 50MHz of spectrum) to gain all of the remaining BRS/EBS there.

https://auctiondata.fcc.gov/public/projects/auction107/reports/results

 

 

I'm more of the opinion that they're going to keep the license and pay off whoever is squatting on BRS/EBS licenses. The license covers far more than NYC - the entirety of Rhode Island, a good portion of New Jersey, all of Long Island and the Hudson Valley, and a sizeable chunk of PA. Unless they plan on partitioning the license, it's probably worth more to keep it. Plus, it lines up well with their holdings in Philly and Boston.

Additionally, they've previously demonstrated that they're very willing to shell out for licenses in key markets. Even if it's going for far above market value.

[Paynefanbro]

I've been pretty impressed by T-Mobile's network performance lately in Long Island. It looks like they're slowly but surely pushing n41 into the suburbs. As a side effect, n71 and LTE performance as a whole have increased quite a bit. I'm guessing this is because T-Mobile is increasing backhaul at a number of sites in anticipation of these n41 upgrades happening. 

These are indoor and outdoor n41 speed tests from the same site in Flower Hill/Roslyn, NY on n41. This is eNB 45048 on Cellmapper. It's near a strip of stores that have pretty high foot traffic so the ability to get these speeds is awesome.

I also spent some time in Ronkonkoma and got these speeds indoors on LTE and n71. You can see that the speeds are pretty similar but the main benefit of 5G is the ~15Mbps increase in upload speeds. I believe this is eNB 42322.