Network Vision/LTE - New York City Market

[AirlineFlyer]

Starting to see more Verizon owned oDAS nodes appear and it’s great. New one on DeKalb Ave in Fort Greene pumping out 3+ Gbps mmWave in a spot that previously has decent but not great service. T-Mobile is quite weak here, though.

[Paynefanbro]

Got my fastest standalone 5G speed test on T-Mobile today.

eNB 41050 in Park Slope

[T-MoblieUser207]

B71 is definitely turned off across NYC, and n71 got widened to 15 MHz. Brooklyn and Queens both don't B71 live anymore, so I would assume its citywide, if not New York City PEA wide.

[Paynefanbro]

Caught a T-Mobile site mid-upgrade this morning.

[clbowens]

12 hours ago, T-MoblieUser207 said:

B71 is definitely turned off across NYC, and n71 got widened to 15 MHz. Brooklyn and Queens both don't B71 live anymore, so I would assume its citywide, if not New York City PEA wide.

So for low-band, do they only have 5x5 B12 there now?

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, clbowens said:

So for low-band, do they only have 5x5 B12 there now?

Yup just the 5MHz of Band 12. Might be an issue for the people still stuck on LTE only devices but standalone 5G is quickly becoming the norm. At this point it seems like half the time I look at the FieldTest screen on the iPhone I’m on standalone n41 with 3xCA. 

[Paynefanbro]

Bad photo but I came across a new AT&T install in Williamsburg by McCarren Park. According to Google Maps it has been installed since last summer but I don't think it's live. Whenever it does go live it'll cover what's probably their weakest area in Brooklyn.

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T-Mobile eNB 894899 in a Sprint conversion located at 40.85249928698625, -73.92019513165127.

This site was part of the initial phase of WiMax to LTE conversions that was done by Clearwire just before Sprint acquired them. The site doesn't even appear on Cellmapper even though you can clearly see the antennas in Streetview. I don't think it ever broadcasted the keep PLMN either.

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Also good to see T-Mobile still doing new builds in the city that aren't Sprint conversions. eNB 331694 and a bunch of small cells went live October 2022 in Broad Channel to fill in what was once a massive gap in coverage.

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Finally found my local Dish site. Instead of taking over Sprint's spot on what was once my home site, they moved onto the same building as the nearest Verizon site to me which is a little further away. Verizon doesn't have the best coverage in my house so that's a bit worrying for Dish but they might be alright because of lowband.

[wispiANt]

eNB 880577 is a Sprint conversion at 419 East 81st Street.

---

The Dish network appears to be live across the city and a handful of sites have popped up on CellMapper. Performance seems to be good.
 

 

[Paynefanbro]

On 6/2/2023 at 7:27 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Sprint eNB 6786 is converted but not live

1. Located at: 40.647096399275, -73.97984672978991
   

 

Caught workers on this site. It's still not live but it looked like they're doing their finishing touches.

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On 7/1/2023 at 10:27 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Bad photo but I came across a new AT&T install in Williamsburg by McCarren Park. According to Google Maps it has been installed since last summer but I don't think it's live. Whenever it does go live it'll cover what's probably their weakest area in Brooklyn.

Got a clearer picture of this site. Turns out it has been live since December.

 

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T-Mobile n41 keeping up with Verizon mmWave. This is eNB 43891. I posted this site to Reddit last year sometime. You can see both the Verizon and T-Mobile site in the photo.

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Also spotted a Verizon small cell with only mmWave in Staten Island earlier this week.

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Also mapped a new AT&T site at Fort Hamilton. eNB 112267. 

 

 

[Dkoellerwx]

14 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Caught workers on this site. It's still not live but it looked like they're doing their finishing touches.

 

C-Band antenna in the middle? Or do the n41 antennas look different there compared to Midwest markets.

[Paynefanbro]

6 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

C-Band antenna in the middle? Or do the n41 antennas look different there compared to Midwest markets.

Nope just the regular Ericsson n41 antennas that they've been deploying here for a while. I don't think T-Mobile has any C-band antennas deployed in NYC yet.

[Dkoellerwx]

7 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Nope just the regular Ericsson n41 antennas that they've been deploying here for a while. I don't think T-Mobile has any C-band antennas deployed in NYC yet.

Edited: The newer older Ericsson n41 antennas do appear to have a different design than what I normally see. I guess I've only ever seen the Nokia deployment and newer Ericsson ones. Not used to seeing those two distinct sections/ridges on the back of the antenna.

[wispiANt]

3 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Edited: The newer Ericsson n41 antennas do appear to have a different design than what I normally see. I guess I've only ever seen the Nokia deployment and older Ericsson ones. Not used to seeing those two distinct sections/ridges on the back of the antenna.

That's actually an older Ericsson 6449. The newer model is the Ericsson 6419, pictured below.

[Dkoellerwx]

29 minutes ago, wispiANt said:

That's actually an older Ericsson 6449. The newer model is the Ericsson 6419, pictured below.

Ah... okay. That's what I was expecting to see. Clearly not as familiar with the Ericsson ones as I am Nokia.

[Paynefanbro]

Went to Citi Field yesterday evening for a concert. I had the opposite experience of Yankee Stadium. While both T-Mobile and AT&T have a DAS built out in the stadium AT&T performed phenomenally staying above 60Mbps the entire time while T-Mobile was stuck at 1-3Mbps for the entire concert. It seems like T-Mobile's DAS just hasn't been updated in a while there. I'm also fairly certain that whatever throughput I was getting on T-Mobile was strictly thanks to 5G from outside the stadium because switching my phone to LTE only resulted in zero throughput.

When the concert was over and everyone began leaving, the opposite occurred. Outside the stadium AT&T's macro network couldn't handle the load and had zero throughput while T-Mobile was still able to load websites and directions via Apple Maps even though it was very slow.

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eNB 40400 is now gig+. Got over 800Mbps while driving by it recently. Similar experience near the Barclays Center but I'm not sure which eNB it was. Could be 59459 but I'll have to test again. Glad to see backhaul upgrades progressing.

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Adding onto the list of neighborhoods I mapped, got most of Red Hook and the southern half of Bay Ridge. Looks like the points only loaded on T-Mobile in Bay Ridge this time and AT&T is lagging. In Red Hook, both carriers points are appearing but At&T is missing a couple spots. I've been focusing on areas where there likely aren't any more Sprint conversions so that the coverage is as up to date as possible.

Bay Ridge:

 

Red Hook:

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I noticed that I've been getting a lot more 250-350Mbps speed tests on AT&T recently. At first I thought it might've been that they increased C-band to 80MHz like we've been seeing in some other markets but it's not that. Maybe it's just an extensive backhaul increase. Even getting some 400Mbps+ speeds in Flatbush. 

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Someone has been uploading Dish speed tests over on coveragemap.com. There are a bunch of 600-700Mbps speed tests all over Brooklyn and Manhattan. That's already competitive with the big 3. 

[Paynefanbro]

Officially at over 700 Dish permits in DOB.

[AirlineFlyer]

16 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

Officially at over 700 Dish permits in DOB.

Wow. Can you share the map so I can take a closer look. Though that looks reallll sparse in SI and Queens.

[Paynefanbro]

30 minutes ago, AirlineFlyer said:

Wow. Can you share the map so I can take a closer look. Though that looks reallll sparse in SI and Queens.

Sure! Here you go: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Ss9bK42uxuOWoPFE2dT1guS1IFsTj64&ll=40.71040969667979%2C-73.97969604999999&z=11

They're still submitting a ton. I last made this map a couple of months ago and since then there are around 150 more permits submitted. The other carriers each have over 1,000 sites that they built out over the decades. Dish (conservatively) has half that in two years so I think they're doing a great job.

They also clearly have a good understanding of the density necessary to perform well in the city. In areas like Flatbush and Bay Ridge they have density matching and even exceeding AT&T.

[AirlineFlyer]

33 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

Sure! Here you go: https://www.google.com/maps/d/viewer?mid=1Ss9bK42uxuOWoPFE2dT1guS1IFsTj64&ll=40.71040969667979%2C-73.97969604999999&z=11

They're still submitting a ton. I last made this map a couple of months ago and since then there are around 150 more permits submitted. The other carriers each have over 1,000 sites that they built out over the decades. Dish (conservatively) has half that in two years so I think they're doing a great job.

They also clearly have a good understanding of the density necessary to perform well in the city. In areas like Flatbush and Bay Ridge they have density matching and even exceeding AT&T.

Looking forward to an updated map. Do you know to what degree Dish is using small cell/oDAS in NYC?

[Paynefanbro]

49 minutes ago, AirlineFlyer said:

Looking forward to an updated map. Do you know to what degree Dish is using small cell/oDAS in NYC?

Last I heard they said they aren't focused on small cells right now because they're just trying to hit buildout deadlines but they were trialing CBRS small cells at one point. They'll probably start small cell deployments 2-3 years from now when their macro buildout is significantly complete.

[Paynefanbro]

On 6/23/2023 at 11:05 PM, Paynefanbro said:

DoD sighting in Brooklyn. This is AT&T eNB 110691 in Red Hook.

Turns out this AT&T site is actually not live yet. There used to be a monopole in the lot adjacent to 28 Verona St that hosted Verizon and AT&T. Verizon moved from the monopole to this building back in 2018 but AT&T stayed on the tower until it got demolished sometime in the past year. Now this building hosts all of the Big 3 and while i haven't spotted the antennas myself, Dish has an approved permit for this building that expired in November 2022 so the antennas might be there but set back from the roof a bit.

[AirlineFlyer]

Seeing a bunch of Verizon oDAS nodes pop up in Fort Greene in the last few weeks. Some are in great locations, others are extremely puzzling. Two Verizon nodes are within direct line of sight to macro sites that already provided multi-gigabit mmWave coverage at their location. No idea why Verizon is doing that.

[Paynefanbro]

Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile eNB 894878
Located at 40.88814659211605, -73.9045439608868.
Site address is 3840 Greystone Ave, Bronx, NY 10463

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Filled out a bit more of Flatlands/Old Mill Basin on Cellmapper

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I'm also mapping a bunch of new T-Mobile small cells every time I go out. Unfortunately none are the newer 5G nodes. It seems like right now Crown Castle is still fulfilling some sort of existing contract to build out small cells that were first submitted as far back as 2017. I get the feeling that T-Mobile is still trying to figure out what their 5G small cell strategy is gonna look like here. It'll certainly include midband but they might want to deploy mmWave as well since they could feasibly deploy both with the new design.

[T-MoblieUser207]

I have updated the map with the latest gig+ and keeps found here. I also found a few more gig+ sites in Boerum Hill/Park Slope and have added them as well. There are 2 or 3 more in Harlem, but I have figured where exactly they are yet.

 

On 7/22/2023 at 2:43 AM, Paynefanbro said:

I'm also mapping a bunch of new T-Mobile small cells every time I go out. Unfortunately none are the newer 5G nodes. It seems like right now Crown Castle is still fulfilling some sort of existing contract to build out small cells that were first submitted as far back as 2017. I get the feeling that T-Mobile is still trying to figure out what their 5G small cell strategy is gonna look like here. It'll certainly include midband but they might want to deploy mmWave as well since they could feasibly deploy both with the new design.

Speaking of small cells, I think T-Mobile has already added n41 to some of the newest ones. I have realized I picked up decent n41 signal in places where there is no macro, only to find service mode saying 100+20 instead of the 100+40 which the macros currently have. Any gNB that has 304-306 for their cell number, or 301-303 but all macros are located already seems to have a polygon that matches the coverage area of the nearby LTE small cell. 301 or 304 matches Cell 1 or 4 for B66; 302 or 305 for Cell 2 or 5; 303 or 306 for Cell 3 or 6. Some small cells have their own gNB, some are shared. I haven't located any yet as I want to find more data across the city confirming it first.

[Paynefanbro]

8 hours ago, T-MoblieUser207 said:

Speaking of small cells, I think T-Mobile has already added n41 to some of the newest ones. I have realized I picked up decent n41 signal in places where there is no macro, only to find service mode saying 100+20 instead of the 100+40 which the macros currently have. Any gNB that has 304-306 for their cell number, or 301-303 but all macros are located already seems to have a polygon that matches the coverage area of the nearby LTE small cell. 301 or 304 matches Cell 1 or 4 for B66; 302 or 305 for Cell 2 or 5; 303 or 306 for Cell 3 or 6. Some small cells have their own gNB, some are shared. I haven't located any yet as I want to find more data across the city confirming it first.

Nice catch!

gNB 1347372 fits the bill. Each cell pretty matches up with an existing oDAS node in Downtown Brooklyn.

Cell 301 -> eNB 134687 Cell 1/11
Cell 303 -> eNB 134687 Cell 3/13
Cell 306 -> eNB 134688 Cell 6/16 (Importantly this small cell and the corresponding gNB were spotted two days apart confirming that they're the same site)

I believe that 347812-6 that I mapped in Brooklyn Heights may have n41 too. I reported really fast speeds and strong n41 signal next to it earlier this year but at the time I chalked it up to a nearby macro just performing really well. Maybe I was wrong about that. 

I'll have to check all of them out. This is big news!