Network Vision/LTE - New York City Market

[Paynefanbro]

7 hours ago, dkyeager said:

They remind me of Sprint's first failed effort with "small" cells that were 130ft tall on public rights of way.  I think there are 5 left in Ohio. Same design at the top. Much more reasonable in size. Public wi-fi and kiosk should help with acceptance. Hopefully they also use wi-fi 6e to send a chance of providing usable signal. Wonder how the kiosks will stand up to vandalism or just regular use.

The current LinkNYC kiosks have been around for a few years and are still in great condition for the most part. Those that get vandalized tend to get cleaned or repaired pretty quickly. So I don’t really have any doubts about how they’ll stand up.

[Paynefanbro]

I went up to Beacon, NY recently and found this new Verizon site on top of a fire department. Looks like it was built in Fall 2021. It has Band 2/5/13/66 and what looks like sheathed CBRS antennas. No 5G coming from this site yet.

 

T-Mobile's coverage map claims that there is Ultra Capacity 5G covering all of Beacon but I couldn't connect to it at all. All I could find is n71.

However, I did connect to n41 a few times in really remote areas while driving up. I'd occasionally see the 5GUC icon appear with 1 bar while driving through the mountains which was pretty cool. I'm sure if I were actually using my phone I'd probably spot a lot more n41 because my phone pretty much never idles on n41, it only connects during an active data session.

[AirlineFlyer]

22 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I went up to Beacon, NY recently and found this new Verizon site on top of a fire department. Looks like it was built in Fall 2021. It has Band 2/5/13/66 and what looks like sheathed CBRS antennas. No 5G coming from this site yet.

 

T-Mobile's coverage map claims that there is Ultra Capacity 5G covering all of Beacon but I couldn't connect to it at all. All I could find is n71.

However, I did connect to n41 a few times in really remote areas while driving up. I'd occasionally see the 5GUC icon appear with 1 bar while driving through the mountains which was pretty cool. I'm sure if I were actually using my phone I'd probably spot a lot more n41 because my phone pretty much never idles on n41, it only connects during an active data session.

I was there last October and noticed this site. My iPhone pulled 333 Mbps down, 53 Mbps up on LTE. Pretty good!

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, AirlineFlyer said:

I was there last October and noticed this site. My iPhone pulled 333 Mbps down, 53 Mbps up on LTE. Pretty good!

Yup! And It gives Verizon a solid leg up along Main St since the only other site in the area is a rooftop that every other carrier is collocated on further south. I don't think the city would be willing to lengthen that mast to add other carriers on top of it.

[AirlineFlyer]

The city's small cell approval data has been updated again as of a few days ago if anyone wants to take a look https://data.cityofnewyork.us/City-Government/Mobile-Telecommunications-Franchise-Pole-Reservati/tbgj-tdd6

[wispiANt]

https://old.reddit.com/r/cellmapper/comments/t25z8d/site_identification_request/

Interesting post from the CellMapper subreddit. It's getting tough to tell all these AIR 6449 variants apart. My guess is it's a B48-capable AIR 6449 variant deployed in the Bronx (similar to this deployment), not C-Band.

[Paynefanbro]

I finally got to try Verizon's n77 while in Manhasset. I was seeing speeds as high as 580Mbps. Pings were consistently in the low 20's and dipped as low as 18ms. Because T-Mobile and Verizon are collocated on the site I was connected to, I had the opportunity to test both carriers' mid-band 5G networks in an environment where neither of their site spacing was extremely dense. Since neither of my iPhones accurately report signal strength consistently in the Service Mode screen, I had to go by bars.

Outdoors in the same spot, my Verizon line had 4 out of 5 bars and my T-Mobile line had 5 out of 5. Indoors however, T-Mobile dropped to 4 out of 5 while my Verizon line dropped down to 2 out of 5 bars. I think it's important to note though that while signal strength was generally weaker on Verizon, they still had spectacular speeds. Even at 2 bars I was seeing speeds above 350Mbps. Finally, When I went into the lower level of a store, my Verizon line dropped n77 entirely while my T-Mobile line stayed at 2 bars.

So in general, n77 speeds were similar to T-Mobile, signal strength was slightly worse, but overall it was great. Can't wait for it to be more widely available in NYC. 

[AirlineFlyer]

On 2/26/2022 at 10:06 PM, Paynefanbro said:

I finally got to try Verizon's n77 while in Manhasset. I was seeing speeds as high as 580Mbps. Pings were consistently in the low 20's and dipped as low as 18ms. Because T-Mobile and Verizon are collocated on the site I was connected to, I had the opportunity to test both carriers' mid-band 5G networks in an environment where neither of their site spacing was extremely dense. Since neither of my iPhones accurately report signal strength consistently in the Service Mode screen, I had to go by bars.

Outdoors in the same spot, my Verizon line had 4 out of 5 bars and my T-Mobile line had 5 out of 5. Indoors however, T-Mobile dropped to 4 out of 5 while my Verizon line dropped down to 2 out of 5 bars. I think it's important to note though that while signal strength was generally weaker on Verizon, they still had spectacular speeds. Even at 2 bars I was seeing speeds above 350Mbps. Finally, When I went into the lower level of a store, my Verizon line dropped n77 entirely while my T-Mobile line stayed at 2 bars.

So in general, n77 speeds were similar to T-Mobile, signal strength was slightly worse, but overall it was great. Can't wait for it to be more widely available in NYC. 

I was at Industry City yesterday and one of the buildings has a Verizon n77 site located on it. I was able to get a 2 bar n77 signal inside with speeds hovering around just under 200 Mbps and pings around 30ms. Nothing very impressive seeing as the site was right next door. I wasn't actually able to test outdoor speeds because anytime I went outside my phone latched on to mmWave, so the 200 Mbps I was getting clearly wasn't a backhaul issue. I have not been impressed with n77's range or speeds so far.

[Paynefanbro]

Pretty sure eNB 895044 in the Bronx is a fully converted Sprint site. I'll confirm this weekend but I've marked it on Cellmapper already and the trails look correct.

Location: 40.82639148703134, -73.84100143796987

[T-MoblieUser207]

On 2/26/2022 at 8:43 PM, thisischuck01 said:

My guess is it's a B48-capable AIR 6449 variant deployed in the Bronx (similar to this deployment), not C-Band.

I agree, and like you said in the comments on the post, T-Mobile's C-band doesn't open up until Dec 2023, and they said they want to do a "one and done" rollout with C-band and 3.45 GHz, so this probably an updated CBRS panel. Some folks have already ran with it as T-Mobile installing C-band though...

5 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Pretty sure eNB 895044 in the Bronx is a fully converted Sprint site. I'll confirm this weekend but I've marked it on Cellmapper already and the trails look correct.

Location: 40.82639148703134, -73.84100143796987

Added! T-Mobile seems to have a knack for poor Home Depot coverage that Sprint sites are filling in now wonderfully. I haven't been to the Bed-Stuy Home Depot recently to check if the Sprint site is being kept, as that one also has poor indoor coverage from T-Mo which the Sprint site fills in.

Sprint eNB 5820 is switched to Converted on the map. This time, I can confirm there is a Sprint panel left up on one of the sectors, but besides that, full rip and replace. Sprint eNB 6786 is still rocking its AAHF, so it hasn't been touched yet.

I'm not the only one who has added data across NYC to the 312-250 PLMN across NYC, so I'm taking another glance across the city for 8xxxxx eNBs and checking what can be added to the map from the 312-250 data.

[wispiANt]

I'm now seeing the second n41 carrier @T-MoblieUser207 spotted a little while back, probably went live in Williamsburg within the last week or two. The Engineering Mode on my S21U won't show the bandwidth but I'm guessing it's only 20MHz or so. Seeing a bump in speeds of ~75Mb/s. 

Also, I believe Sprint eNB 74311 (at 40.69489559347538, -73.91177371321197, bordering Bushwick Playground) has now been converted and is broadcasting T-Mobile eNB 875607. Haven't confirmed it, though, and no permits have surfaced just yet.

[wispiANt]

Who needs 100MHz of n41 when you can aggregate 8 n71 carriers?

[Paynefanbro]

Went up to Middletown again and found two keep sites. 

1. Sprint eNB 6325 (Location: 41.4311701118526, -74.35960489915462)
   1. This site fills in coverage on NY Highway 17 just south of Middletown. Good site to keep.
2. Sprint eNB 6324 (Location: 41.47101083500609, -74.37163722479815)
   1. This site is a weird one because it's within spitting distance of a T-Mobile tower. On top of that, the T-Mobile site that it's nearest to it is fully upgraded with n41/71. I'm curious whether this is site in broadcasting the keep PLMN temporarily or if T-Mobile actually wants to keep both towers. 

Also looks like n41 was added to T-Mobile eNB 48775 but it hasn't been mapped in Cellmapper yet. I was getting a super weak n41 signal from it. My phone was reporting 40MHz but that could be wrong and I was seeing speeds around 50Mbps.

Sadly I'm not certain that Sprint eNB 74435 is broadcasting the keep PLMN or that it's even live anymore. I really wanted T-Mobile to keep that site but I wasn't able to connect to it in the area I was in. Verizon is collocated on that site and had a really strong signal in the area I was in so I figured Sprint should be able to provide something similar but instead my phone connected to 6324 and 6325 which were further away.

[Paynefanbro]

On 2/28/2022 at 12:25 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Pretty sure eNB 895044 in the Bronx is a fully converted Sprint site. I'll confirm this weekend but I've marked it on Cellmapper already and the trails look correct.

Location: 40.82639148703134, -73.84100143796987

Confirmed it's now a T-Mobile site. n41 at 40MHz but speeds are still really good.

Also Sprint eNB 75141 in Staten Island is broadcasting the keep PLMN. I verified this while inside the Food Bazaar in Red Hook. I connected to Band 26 with a -114 signal from that site. Pretty good signal for that distance and being indoors.

Location: 40.62938953855877, -74.07909702198626

I also connected to T-Mobile eNB 137361 in Staten Island in the same place but had a much weaker -123 signal on Band 71 which is virtually unusable.

 

[Paynefanbro]

Found an interesting site to check out.

T-Mobile eNB 40982 is a flagpole site in Canarsie that apparently recently got n71 added to it according to Cellmapper. I'm wondering if n41 was also added and also how they managed to add other bands to it given that the current n71 antennas are a bit larger both in length and width than existing Band 12 antennas. It may give a bit of insight into how they plan to handle flagpole upgrades in the region and potentially signals that T-Mobile may be on the next phase of 5G deployment, upgrading the problem sites. I'll try to visit this weekend to take some pics of it.

Street View image from 2018:

 

[T-MoblieUser207]

On 3/6/2022 at 11:04 AM, Paynefanbro said:

Went up to Middletown again and found two keep sites. 

1. Sprint eNB 6325 (Location: 41.4311701118526, -74.35960489915462)
2. Sprint eNB 6324 (Location: 41.47101083500609, -74.37163722479815)

 

On 3/6/2022 at 4:37 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Also Sprint eNB 75141 in Staten Island is broadcasting the keep PLMN.

Add them all. I also adjusted the default map view so its easier to reach the ones in Middletown, since its quite a way north.

 

On 3/7/2022 at 8:06 PM, Paynefanbro said:

T-Mobile eNB 40982 is a flagpole site in Canarsie that apparently recently got n71 added to it according to Cellmapper. I'm wondering if n41 was also added and also how they managed to add other bands to it given that the current n71 antennas are a bit larger both in length and width than existing Band 12 antennas. It may give a bit of insight into how they plan to handle flagpole upgrades in the metro area and signal that T-Mobile may begin upgrading them in mass. I'll try to visit this weekend to take some pics of it.

Sprint eNB 73954 nearby, the one which @thisischuck01 found, has been converted. I would assume some of the other sites in Canarsie have been upgraded, but the towers aren't passed by often enough to update them.

 

I still have some 312-250 data to add to the map, as I have finished looking for 8xxxxx eNBs, I'll summarize the changes when I finish.

--

Found another mmWave small cell, again outside of the specs the city approved. This time in Brooklyn, corner of Winthrop Street and Albany Avenue.

[Paynefanbro]

19 hours ago, T-MoblieUser207 said:

Found another mmWave small cell, again outside of the specs the city approved. This time in Brooklyn, corner of Winthrop Street and Albany Avenue.

Looks like it's an upgrade of an Extenet small cell just like the one posted on Reddit a few months ago. 

The common theme that I see is that they're using this design on wooden poles. Maybe the city carved out an exception.

If I'm recalling correctly there's another Extenet small cell near the one in your photo on Snyder and Troy that got upgraded around December 2021. It's also a on wooden pole and using the same design.

- - - - - 

On another note, it appears that T-Mobile upgraded backhaul on my home site. Over the last few months, specifically post-iPhone 13 launch, I watched speeds on my home site decline a little. I went from hitting 600/100 regularly to seeing speed of 575/80 at all hours of the day. But this week I noticed that speeds are back up again. I just ran a speed test and got 660 down and 120 up on my site. LTE quickly shoots up to 220 Mbps but flattens out at 180Mbps. The last time they increased backhaul on my site it was just before they added n41/71. Did they increase backhaul this time because they saw the performance decrease or because they're expecting a change to the site soon?

The only thing I can think of is that CDMA is going to be shut off later this month so an extra 5MHz of PCS is going to be available pretty soon.

[T-MoblieUser207]

On 3/9/2022 at 7:06 PM, Paynefanbro said:

On another note, it appears that T-Mobile upgraded backhaul on my home site. Over the last few months, specifically post-iPhone 13 launch, I watched speeds on my home site decline a little. I went from hitting 600/100 regularly to seeing speed of 575/80 at all hours of the day. But this week I noticed that speeds are back up again. I just ran a speed test and got 660 down and 120 up on my site. LTE quickly shoots up to 220 Mbps but flattens out at 180Mbps.

I don't think its a backhaul upgrade; I think they have either adjusted the routing of data, or network optimizations. Same thing happened to me; -120 n41 + -118 B66 was <=150 down and 5 up a few months ago, and now its 230 down and 8 up. Tested the site at 5am last week, and it was gig cap which I found out since it got n41 late 2020. Haven't tested LTE in a while though, so I don't know how good/bad that is, but I would assume its pretty good since it has a 3246 on it.

[Paynefanbro]

On 3/7/2022 at 8:06 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Found an interesting site to check out.

T-Mobile eNB 40982 is a flagpole site in Canarsie that apparently recently got n71 added to it according to Cellmapper. I'm wondering if n41 was also added and also how they managed to add other bands to it given that the current n71 antennas are a bit larger both in length and width than existing Band 12 antennas. It may give a bit of insight into how they plan to handle flagpole upgrades in the region and potentially signals that T-Mobile may be on the next phase of 5G deployment, upgrading the problem sites. I'll try to visit this weekend to take some pics of it.

Street View image from 2018:

 

I visited this site and visually nothing has changed about it. I don't know how they managed to get 600MHz antennas to fit, but they did. Unfortunately I couldn't force my phone to connect to n71 at all. I cycled airplane mode a bunch but my phone would quickly connect to n41 from eNB 42917 instead of connecting to n71 from this site.

Speeds on both LTE and 5G weren't that impressive. On 5G I was seeing speeds of 50 down and 60 up and on LTE speeds were 30 down and 25 up. I think it may be a combination of backhaul being limited and just not being enough capacity being available in the area. The next nearest site to this one is eNB 53741 and it's also a flagpole site with only Band 2/12/66 so T-Mobile has their work cut out for them and increasing backhaul likely won't be enough.

[wispiANt]

On 3/14/2022 at 11:01 AM, Paynefanbro said:

I visited this site and visually nothing has changed about it. I don't know how they managed to get 600MHz antennas to fit, but they did. Unfortunately I couldn't force my phone to connect to n71 at all. I cycled airplane mode a bunch but my phone would quickly connect to n41 from eNB 42917 instead of connecting to n71 from this site.

Speeds on both LTE and 5G weren't that impressive. On 5G I was seeing speeds of 50 down and 60 up and on LTE speeds were 30 down and 25 up. I think it may be a combination of backhaul being limited and just not being enough capacity being available in the area. The next nearest site to this one is eNB 53741 and it's also a flagpole site with only Band 2/12/66 so T-Mobile has their work cut out for them and increasing backhaul likely won't be enough.

I couldn't find anything on this site in the DOB database, but I did a bit of an analysis on flagpole sites in CT a few months ago:

https://old.reddit.com/r/cellmapper/comments/rj02qv/new_stealth_site_in_progress/hp3jbj3/

I'm guessing that the diameter of the shroud is a bit smaller than some of the sites on that list, so they likely didn't deploy 4x4 MIMO on lowband. But something like the FVV-65A-R3 (the smaller sibling of the FVV-65C-R3 on my list) has almost the same exact dimensions as the LNX-6513DS-A1M they probably had deployed.

[Paynefanbro]

Two more Manhattan keep sites: 

eNB 9097/9098/9099 (Location: 40.73731141530291, -74.00194364096748)

eNB 9670/9671/9672 (Location: 40.72189329735279, -74.00495597394665)

Edit: Should specify that these are broadcasting the keep PLMN, they aren't converted yet.

[PedroDaGr8]

5 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Two more Manhattan keep sites: 

eNB 9097/9098/9099 (Location: 40.73731141530291, -74.00194364096748)

eNB 9670/9671/9672 (Location: 40.72189329735279, -74.00495597394665)

Have to say, T-Mobile has been keeping A LOT more sites than I expected. 

[Paynefanbro]

Verizon finally turned on C-band on the sites the cover my home. Maximum speeds indoors or out are ~350Mbps around my home. Unfortunately their signal isn't great inside my home just as I hypothesized. Near any window I get 2 bars which gets me as fast as 350Mbps down and up to 12Mbps up but generally hover around 250 down.

In my living room where I have the weakest signal on both T-Mobile or Verizon (besides my basement) I lose n77 completely. If I hold my phone just right I can get ~55Mbps down but the uplink is the bottleneck. I can’t get more than 1Mbps there. This is in comparison to 483 down and 28Mbps up in the same place on my T-Mobile line.

For what it's worth I don't think backhaul is the issue since the sites around me all have mmWave. I think it's more that C-band's range isn't that great in my area. 

Here are some screenshots of Verizon speeds just outside my house vs in my living room:

 

Sidenote: Has anyone else noticed that Verizon has removed the mmWave layer from their coverage maps? Looks like they're deemphasizing it just like T-Mobile and AT&T.

Edit 2: Speed test from closer to the site

 

[clbowens]

4 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Verizon finally turned on C-band on the sites the cover my home. Maximum speeds indoors or out are ~350Mbps around my home. Unfortunately their signal isn't great inside my home just as I hypothesized. Near any window I get 2 bars which gets me as fast as 350Mbps down and up to 12Mbps up but generally hover around 250 down.

In my living room where I have the weakest signal on both T-Mobile or Verizon (besides my basement) I lose n77 completely. If I hold my phone just right I can get ~55Mbps down but the uplink is the bottleneck. I can’t get more than 1Mbps there. This is in comparison to 483 down and 28Mbps up in the same place on my T-Mobile line.

For what it's worth I don't think backhaul is the issue since the sites around me all have mmWave. I think it's more that C-band's range isn't that great in my area. 

Here are some screenshots of Verizon speeds just outside my house vs in my living room:

 

Sidenote: Has anyone else noticed that Verizon has removed the mmWave layer from their coverage maps? Looks like they're deemphasizing it just like T-Mobile and AT&T.

 

I still see the mmWave layer

[Paynefanbro]

20 minutes ago, clbowens said:

I still see the mmWave layer

Really weird. I’m not seeing it on my phone, tablet, or computer. 
 

Edit: Oh wait, my bad. I was misremembering when I thought that the map was differentiating between mmWave and C-band on the map while calling them both Ultra Wideband but I just realized that they just made them the same color way back when C-band launched.