Network Vision/LTE - New York City Market

[Paynefanbro]

34 minutes ago, AirlineFlyer said:

Not seeing very impressive speeds from this site nearby on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade yesterday.

Did the same thing on Sunday. It's entirely possible that where you're standing you're connected to eNB 879451 in Manhattan. I walked the entire promenade to see if I could map the range of the site and quickly realized that it's not great. I was honestly confused that I could be standing within eyeshot of this new site and still getting coverage from across the water.

From your pic it looks like you're just past Montague which funnily enough is exactly where coverage cuts out from that site.

— — — — —

As an aside I mapped like four n41 small cells in the southern section of Brooklyn Heights each pushing nearly a 1Gbps.

[AirlineFlyer]

23 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

Did the same thing on Sunday. It's entirely possible that where you're standing you're connected to eNB 879451 in Manhattan. I walked the entire promenade to see if I could map the range of the site and quickly realized that it's not great. I was honestly confused that I could be standing within eyeshot of this new site and still getting coverage from across the water.

From your pic it looks like you're just past Montague which funnily enough is exactly where coverage cuts out from that site.

— — — — —

As an aside I mapped like four n41 small cells in the southern section of Brooklyn Heights each pushing nearly a 1Gbps.

Exactly, I was between Montague and Pierrepont. Not great, but better than a few years ago where T-Mobile was a total dead area on the promenade and directly around the new site in BBP.  

[Paynefanbro]

Was in the Barclays Center yesterday. AT&T has 5G+ in the arena according to their coverage map which I'm assuming means mmWave because my test line on AT&T was only able to see LTE from the DAS and no midband at all. I think T-Mobile has n41 deployed on the DAS there. Speeds were reasonable for what looked like a sold out game. I was seeing anywhere from 40-80Mbps. Weirdly T-Mobile seems to be running 10MHz Band 2 in the arena as opposed to the 15MHz we see outside. I was able to see a single 100MHz n41 carrier but I was unable to confirm the existence of a second carrier.

— — — — —

New Gig+ Sites:

1. eNB 40972
2. eNB 50450
3. eNB 41430
4. eNB 45733
5. eNB 41286

— — — — —

More decommissioned sites from the keep site map:

1. Sprint eNB 253671 located at 128-11 Newport Ave, Far Rockaway, NY 11694
2. Sprint eNB 6214 located at 41-16 51st St, Flushing, NY 11377
3. Sprint eNB 6295 located at 37-18 Northern Blvd, Queens, NY 11101
4. Sprint eNB 6727 located at 89-01 Astoria Blvd, East Elmhurst, NY 11369
5. Sprint eNB 6877/9452 located at 915 84th St, Brooklyn, NY 11228

— — — — —

I think eNB 15833 on the keep site map is the same as T-Mobile eNB 326104 which already got converted.

— — — — —

1. Sprint eNB 6208 -> T-Mobile gNB 1355290
   Location: 40.726957115554065, -73.89562912664496
   Site has gig+ backhaul.
   
   
    
2. Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile gNB 1350688
   Location: 40.76419435322034, -73.8102723335394
   Site has gig+ backhaul.
   
   
    

3. Sprint eNB 6300 -> T-Mobile gNB 1328802
   Located at: 40.76686150886295, -73.90548642920258

 

[transitwatch889]

So I have officially moved over to boost infinite and was also happily surprised I got a T-Mobile SIM as my mom and the line that I opened up prior,  got AT&T sims. What I didn't realize is that they had moved n71 carrier from 10 MHz to a full 20 and I'm now seeing that aggregated with 40 MHz of n41 here in the uuper bronx where they don't hold the contiguous sprectrum. But it seems on Boost infinite the prioritization is way lower so I'm not seeing three carrier aggravation between the 2, 40 mhz band 41 carriers and the 20mhz n71. Like I did when I had noticed prior on tmobile proper.

[Paynefanbro]

I'm pretty sure Sprint eNB 839191 on the keep site map in Bushwick is the Sprint site located at 101 Wyckoff Ave Brooklyn, NY 11237. Even though it's right across the street from a converted T-Mobile site, there has been no decommission permit submitted for it yet. T-Mobile eNB 53596 could end up getting decommissioned or it could be a situation like T-Mobile gNB 1355290 where the sectors are rearranged on the conversion to minimize interference between sites and boost coverage and capacity in a specific direction. 

[Paynefanbro]

On 12/23/2023 at 4:48 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Sprint eNB 6714 located at 102 North End Ave, New York, NY 10282 is currently being converted (finally).

This site is now live. gNB 1339372 | eNB 895413

— — — — —

Tried to do some mapping in Staten Island and found what I think might be a gig+ site there. Got this while driving by T-Mobile gNB 1340847 earlier today. It's only 743Mbps but most 1Gbps sites in Staten Island cap out in the high 400's.

— — — — —

1. Sprint eNB 6235 -> T-Mobile eNB 219116/gNB 1345585
   1. This site is on the keep site map on the outskirts of Goshen, NY near Mechanicstown.

[Paynefanbro]

Orange County update:

I thought T-Mobile had 80MHz of n41 in Orange County, NY but they actually have 70MHz live split into one 40MHz carrier and one 30MHz carrier. It's my first time seeing that carrier size on T-Mobile's network.

— — — — —

I was at Woodbury earlier today and was unable to replicate the issues with NR aggregation that some others were seeing on their MVNO lines. I have a Tello prepaid line which is the same QCI as Boost Infinite and I was seeing 15MHz Band 2 + 40MHz n41 + 15MHz n71 + 20MHz Band 66. 

— — — — —

I also drove a bit further north to Middletown both yesterday and today. T-Mobile built a new site on top of Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine's campus in Middletown. It's difficult to overstate how much this has improved coverage in Middletown. A friend of mine has a home in Middletown that had really poor coverage on T-Mobile. It was so bad that she had to have a T-Mobile Cellspot in her home just to make calls on her phone. She now has a full signal in her home thanks to this new site.

T-Mobile shares this rooftop with both AT&T and Verizon and all carriers have upgraded their respective sites. Verizon has 160MHz C-band deployed, AT&T has C-band and DoD deployed for a total of 120MHz, and T-Mobile has 70MHz of n41 deployed. Oddly on AT&T my phone refused to aggregate DoD and C-band. Instead it would connect to one carrier or the other individually. Another quirk is that the new T-Mobile site seems to have super inconsistent standalone 5G. On most sites my Android phone will camp on standalone 5G without issue but on this site it seems to connect to NSA 5G almost exclusively and occasionally for a few seconds standalone 5G will activate but then I'll get kicked off. Other sites in Middletown don't have this same issue. I'm thinking it's some sort of software issue with the site. Thankfully it doesn't affect performance.

— — — — —

Here are some speed tests on all 3 carriers from in my friend's living room: 

1. Verizon 5G and LTE
   
    
2. T-Mobile 5G and LTE
   
    
3. AT&T 5G
   

Verizon's performance is amazing but it's cool to see the performance T-Mobile is getting out of so little midband with multi-gig backhaul. They're holding their own against Verizon despite Verizon having over 2x the midband spectrum. I was seeing similar speeds on AT&T no matter if I was on C-band or DoD so I have to assume they were splitting the load over the two bands instead of aggregating them to increase throughput. I just wish I was able to aggregate the two because then I'd probably see speeds a lot more comparable to the other two.

 

[the_intern]

10 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Orange County update:

I thought T-Mobile had 80MHz of n41 in Orange County, NY but they actually have 70MHz live split into one 40MHz carrier and one 30MHz carrier. It's my first time seeing that carrier size on T-Mobile's network.

 

1. T-Mobile 5G and LTE
   

 

 

Seeing these speeds on such little spectrum makes me think that there is a lot more in the pipe for T-Mobile in areas where they own more spectrum where speeds are currently either limited by backhaul or some other limits. 

[mirskyc]

Has anyone seen 4x CA on standalone 5G in NYC? I thought the z flip 5 was able to but I haven’t seen it yet 

[Paynefanbro]

On 12/25/2023 at 11:32 AM, Paynefanbro said:

Sprint eNB 6856 located at 421 Smith St got converted but isn't live yet. 

 

This site is live now. It's gNB 1088940/1088852 | eNB 109354

What's interesting about this site is that it is 140MHz despite all of the sites nearest to it being 80MHz. I've marked all 40+40MHz sites with a red dot and the green sites are all 100+40MHz.

The site with the highlighted coverage area is the conversion. There has to be some amount of overlap/interference from the site just north of it in addition to NextWave's network.

[Paynefanbro]

On 1/15/2024 at 11:49 AM, mirskyc said:

Has anyone seen 4x CA on standalone 5G in NYC? I thought the z flip 5 was able to but I haven’t seen it yet 

I think one person reported seeing it in eastern Queens but it may have just been a site bleeding over from Nassau County. It seems to be online there but not here in the city.

[mirskyc]

Not sure if anything changed but service in the subway has been terrible. Data is pretty much useless in the bigger stations. 
I hope transit wireless have a plan for 5G soon. 

[transitwatch889]

On 1/24/2024 at 5:30 PM, mirskyc said:

Not sure if anything changed but service in the subway has been terrible. Data is pretty much useless in the bigger stations. 
I hope transit wireless have a plan for 5G soon. 

I've noticed this too and I wasn't sure if it was because I'm on Boost infinite with a lower prioritization or with the actual Network itself. Because I have a Boost infinite Sim that's for T-Mobile. And I have a visible esim line so on my s23 ultra it actually switches over to the visible line once the data on my main number which is the Boost infinite over T-Mobile is completely not usable which happens very often when I'm traveling through the subway Network.

[wispiANt]

2 hours ago, transitwatch889 said:

I've noticed this too and I wasn't sure if it was because I'm on Boost infinite with a lower prioritization or with the actual Network itself. Because I have a Boost infinite Sim that's for T-Mobile. And I have a visible esim line so on my s23 ultra it actually switches over to the visible line once the data on my main number which is the Boost infinite over T-Mobile is completely not usable which happens very often when I'm traveling through the subway Network.

I'm on postpaid and it's been awful for me, as well. W4th is especially bad, I don't think I've gotten usable service there in at least 2 years. But that may be a separate issue.

[Paynefanbro]

1. Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile gNB 1371640
   1. Location: 132-07 14th Ave, College Point, NY 11356 (40.78749217352727, -73.83569067377078)
2. Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile gNB 1358277
   1. Location: 81 W 104th St, New York, NY 10025 (40.79795431905179, -73.96330050041114)
   2. Decommission permit came in recently for the T-Mobile site on the shorter building. It's already offline.
      

— — — — —

A second mmWave node in Times Square (n260 at 400MHz). Good to see T-Mobile going all out deploying both mmWave and n41 in a single small cell. Hopefully we see a larger deployment this year focused on high density commercial areas at least initially. Areas like Fulton Mall, Fordham Road, Downtown Flushing, etc. could really benefit from these. Even a deployment in the lesser known "Main Streets" like 5th Ave in Sunset Park, 86th Street in Bath Beach/Gravesend, or Flatbush Ave/Church Ave in East Flatbush would be cool.

[Paynefanbro]

Atlantic Ave/Barclays Center has an n41 DAS but they haven't upgraded the entire station yet. For example, the 2/3/4/5 station and transfer concourse all have n41 but the Pacific St platform on the D/N/R is still LTE only even though it does have the NR flag switched so it'll say 5G in the status bar. 

Difference in speed between the transfer concourse and Pacific St.

— — — — —

I've also seen the 5GUC icon at High St on the A/C line but I've never run a speed test or managed to get Service Mode on the iPhone to update in time to determine if it's really an upgraded DAS.

— — — — —

Also 4xCA seems to be making it's way into NYC.

https://x.com/milanmilanovic/status/1753499407528415665?s=20

[Paynefanbro]

Looks like T-Mobile is now on the site near Bear Mountain Inn that Verizon built in 2020 and AT&T joined in 2021.

— — — — —

The Sprint conversion on One Brooklyn Bridge Park (360 Furman St) actually has much better range than we initially thought. It seems that the antenna is adjusted downward to cover Furman St and Brooklyn Bridge Park. I maintained a much stronger signal driving along there than I did walking along the promenade or driving on the BQE. On Furman I stayed connected to the site all the way to Clark St where I only disconnected because I connected to the small cell near the Cranberry Street Ventilation Shaft.

— — — — —

Also spotted a new Verizon site on top of 10-25 Jackson Ave in Long Island City, continuing the trend of Verizon immediately hopping onto newly constructed buildings. I wish the other carriers were as proactive about new builds. T-Mobile used to be fairly good about building new sites before the Sprint merger and they're finally wrapping those up so we'll probably start seeing more but AT&T rarely ever adds new sites. Even the new AT&T site on Vanderbilt & Myrtle in Clinton Hill was built to replace another site that got decommissioned two blocks over.

[Paynefanbro]

On 2/8/2024 at 11:19 AM, Paynefanbro said:

Also 4xCA seems to be making it's way into NYC.

 

 

I connected to 4xCA in midtown.

— — — — — 

Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile eNB 348926

[Paynefanbro]

Looks like T-Mobile added themselves to the DAS in my office in midtown. I noticed I had a much stronger signal than normal and confirmed the existence of a new LTE eNB but it has an older 5-digit numbering scheme. No 5G on the DAS but I'm glad to see them join anyway. Now I have full signal everywhere in the building. Speeds are fine at ~50Mbps which is slightly faster than what I get on the AT&T and Verizon DAS in here but pings are terrible at 100-200ms. I'm hoping it'll improve over time though as today is the first day it's active.

— — — — —

Edit: DAS turned off for about an hour for all carriers and came back. Now pings are 30-40ms with peak speeds over 100Mbps on T-Mobile.

Edit 2: Looks like Band 2 is at 10MHz on the DAS as opposed to 15MHz on macros. Band 66 is at 20MHz though.

[Paynefanbro]

A bit of an embarrassing moment for AT&T this afternoon when I went into an indoor garage in Alphabet City and saw this in the status bar.

Instead of spending money on a million small cells to fill in gaps in their outdoor coverage where their macros barely reach, they should just add more macros like their competitors do and it'll help both outdoors and indoors.

[T-MoblieUser207]

4xCA is finally citywide, but Sprint keeps are still occasionally a tossup. Rare to find 4xCA them, most do 3xCA finally, but only 41+25 or 41+71.

n71 is down to 15 MHz, since the Dish lease is up. With the financial situations going on at Dish, a deal for that 5 MHz block alongside the 800 MHz spectrum doesn't seem too bad.

On 1/26/2024 at 8:30 AM, wispiANt said:

W4th is especially bad, I don't think I've gotten usable service there in at least 2 years. But that may be a separate issue.

The subway DAS at West 4th has been utter rubbish for T-Mobile since 2017-2018, hasn't ever changed. Even adding B2 to it wasn't helpful. Capacity at all stations need some upgrades, as even Fulton street station DAS in Lower Manhattan with its 50 MHz n41 can slow to crawl, NSA or SA.

[Paynefanbro]

This one is weird because I wasn't able to find an antenna permit for it. I only found it because we had it on our keep site map and there was a gNB that matched the coverage pattern of the site. Confirmed it's existence with roadview.

Sprint eNB 253661 -> T-Mobile gNB 1370628

Located at 40.77956781042574, -73.89963351976638

Site is gig+
 

— — — — —

T-Mobile gNB 1343755/6 | eNB 879752/3 is a Sprint conversion in Hoboken.

Located at: 40.75217759916991, -74.0298680462198

Also a gig+ site

— — — — —

Also got my fastest speed on AT&T's network yet a couple of days back.

AT&T eNB 115379

[Paynefanbro]

Looks like T-Mobile learned their lesson and is starting to wipe out those mini-macro sites with the antennas on the facade of buildings. Two permits in late February alone. These sites have already been turned off, the antennas just haven't been removed yet. The areas they are in are better served by the full macros/Sprint conversions in the area so it's nothing lost.

The two sites are at:

1. 515 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10022
2. 222 Park Ave S, New York, NY 10003

Also recently mapped a new T-Mobile site (non-conversion) in Manhattan at 810 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Looks like it was first mapped last November. This site replace one that used to be on 797 Broadway before that building got demolished.

[the_intern]

On 3/12/2024 at 1:01 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Looks like T-Mobile learned their lesson and is starting to wipe out those mini-macro sites with the antennas on the facade of buildings. Two permits in late February alone. These sites have already been turned off, the antennas just haven't been removed yet. The areas they are in are better served by the full macros/Sprint conversions in the area so it's nothing lost.

The two sites are at:

1. 515 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10022
2. 222 Park Ave S, New York, NY 10003

Also recently mapped a new T-Mobile site (non-conversion) in Manhattan at 810 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Looks like it was first mapped last November. This site replace one that used to be on 797 Broadway before that building got demolished.

Curious what your experience was with the mini-macros? Did they have bad performance because they had limited bands (maybe no NR?) or some other issue with them? Either way, full macros likely cover indoor spaces better anyways! 

[Paynefanbro]

On 3/13/2024 at 5:20 PM, the_intern said:

Curious what your experience was with the mini-macros? Did they have bad performance because they had limited bands (maybe no NR?) or some other issue with them? Either way, full macros likely cover indoor spaces better anyways! 

When I'm near the mini-macros performance is fine. They're pretty much like high powered small cells so they do have a place in the network. However in some areas T-Mobile has been using them instead of normal macros which introduces a ton of problems. They have terrible range, most can't cover more than a block, they're often 2x2MIMO as opposed to 4x4MIMO+ that you get on traditional macros, they take forever to upgrade because antenna manufacturers typically have trouble getting the newest technologies in a smaller form factor (at least initially), and more often than not they're 2-sector because they get installed on the facade at the corner of a building so they only provide coverage in two directions.

A bunch of us in this thread have found some mini-macro sites that have been upgraded to NR but they are few and far between. The majority of them are still LTE only, some with Band 2/66 only and others with Band 2/12/66. 

The good news is, T-Mobile seems to be reevaluating their usefulness and decommissioning or converting them to full macros where possible. A good example of this is T-Mobile eNB 40003 which I posted a while back. Instead of just upgrading the small antennas, they moved to the roof of the building, installed regular antennas, and installed a third sector which has boosted coverage significantly.

On 11/19/2023 at 11:49 AM, Paynefanbro said:

T-Mobile eNB 40003 was one of those sites that used the mini-antennas but it looks like T-Mobile removed those antennas and put regular macro antennas on the roof when they upgraded it. Coverage is way better as a result. I wish they did that more often.

Before: 

 

After: