Network Vision/LTE - Milwaukee Market (including Madison)

[Jswets]

Prolly Johnson creek or Watertown if I were to guess?

 

Lake Mills / Fort Atkinson area.

 

It looks like no 800 yet. Do we know if 800 is deployed right away or do they add it at a later time?

[mr.phoneguy]

Lake Mills / Fort Atkinson area.

 

It looks like no 800 yet. Do we know if 800 is deployed right away or do they add it at a later time?

Sweet!! thats Even closer too Madison!!

[mr.phoneguy]

Sweet!! thats Even closer too Madison!!

I thought they were starting 800 next year? Not like Sprint offers any 800 compatable phones at this time anyway.

[tommym65]

It looks like no 800 yet. Do we know if 800 is deployed right away or do they add it at a later time?

 

In the Chicago market, 800SMR has been deploying since fall, using shut-down Nextel spectrum. Milwaukee/Madison is similarly very constrained in 1900 CDMA spectrum, and is also Samsung, so you may see 800SMR soon. Of course, 800LTE is into very late 2013 or sometime in 2014.

 

Virtually all of the newer Sprint-compatible phones are set up for both 1900LTE and 800SMR, although I think the iPhone 5 may currently be blocked from using 800.

 

When I get 800, my voice and text are very good, and the in-building penetration it also good, but I am totally unable to explain why it shows up in a given spot, then disappears for hours or days, and then comes back.

[tommym65]

FIrst off, I apologize to everyone (EXCEPT tommym65, frack you shill) for coming in to the forum and "farting".

 

Your tone is offensive, and your facts are often distorted and incorrect.

 

This site is in no way sponsored, funded, or even approved by Sprint Nextel.

 

I have willingly donated multiple times to this site so that I may have access to accurate information, and also because I support its goals. I am not a moderator or staff member, and thus have no control over site policy or management.

 

I am not now, nor have I ever been, an employee of Sprint Nextel Corporation nor its predecessors or assigns, nor have I been associated with it in any way.

 

I have paid a very large amount of money over the years to Sprint, and have received both bad and good service during that time.

 

I am a "shill" for no-one: I speak my mind. If you are so down on Sprint, rather than waste your own time and the time of supporters of this forum with things that we cannot change, you would be better off finding a mobile phone vendor which better meets your needs. That was my point.

 

And, no, I am not "special": I am a paying Sprint subscriber who may or may not have valid points to share with others on this forum, but who maintains my privilege to share them. I attempt to do so in a respectful manner.

[supert0nes]

I've been running Sensorly for every trip I've taken in Madison in the past 2 weeks and will continue to do so, so if it blips to LTE, it'll get mapped.....but there's nothing going on here with our towers that I've heard of. I also ran it all the way up to GB last weekend (through Appleton area) and nothing but 2G/3G mapped the whole way.

 

I was supposed to be going through Milwaukee on Sunday but our tickets to the Brewers/Cardinals fell through. Was going to be my first time in a suite, alas, I'll have to listen on the radio.

 

Great to see some sites accepted in Milwaukee!

 

 

Just a note, you can drive right by a lone 4g tower and not even connect. It could take a couple minutes after entering a 4g signal area (or not) when your phone will switch to 4g. Once on 4g, your phone will hand off between LTE towers just as nicely as 3g today, which is to say, quite seamless.

[mr.phoneguy]

Just a note, you can drive right by a lone 4g tower and not even connect. It could take a couple minutes after entering a 4g signal area (or not) when your phone will switch to 4g. Once on 4g, your phone will hand off between LTE towers just as nicely as 3g today, which is to say, quite seamless.

##33284# on your dial pad, select lte engineering.That puts you phone into lte search mode. I believe my statement correct?

Edited May 1, 2013 by mr.phoneguy

[digiblur]

##33284# on your dial pad, select lte engineering.That puts you phone into lte search mode. I believe my statement correct?

 

No, it just shows you information about the signal. It doesn't make it search.

 

Sent from my little Note2

 

 

[supert0nes]

##33284# on your dial pad, select lte engineering.That puts you phone into lte search mode. I believe my statement correct?

 

I don't actually know. I have Cyanogenmod without LTE engineering screen. I usually just toggle airplane mode when I think I'm around a tower that should be broadcasting 4g.

[mr.phoneguy]

No, it just shows you information about the signal. It doesn't make it search.

 

Sent from my little Note2

Good to know. I have the 'lte discovery' android app on my phone also. Not sure it works? as I've not been in a Sprint lte coverage area as of yet.

[Jswets]

So the 3 new towers are not broadcasting LTE as of yet, correct?

[digiblur]

Just a note, you can drive right by a lone 4g tower and not even connect. It could take a couple minutes after entering a 4g signal area (or not) when your phone will switch to 4g. Once on 4g, your phone will hand off between LTE towers just as nicely as 3g today, which is to say, quite seamless.

 

And actually Sensorly running compounds that as the radio will be busy trying to send up 3G points instead of scanning for LTE. My typical thing is to run the LTE Discovery in "Cycle only when not connected to LTE". Fire up Sensorly, hit Map Trip, then start. Then I go to the LTE Engineering screen. Hit split screen and put the Sensorly map up so I can watch the serving cells and the map/point counters at the same time. So I end up with this and cycling airplane mode when I'm not on LTE.

 

[Jswets]

And actually Sensorly running compounds that as the radio will be busy trying to send up 3G points instead of scanning for LTE. My typical thing is to run the LTE Discovery in "Cycle only when not connected to LTE". Fire up Sensorly, hit Map Trip, then start. Then I go to the LTE Engineering screen. Hit split screen and put the Sensorly map up so I can watch the serving cells and the map/point counters at the same time. So I end up with this and cycling airplane mode when I'm not on LTE.

 

 

Which app do you use to get the LTE and 1XRTT DB levels in your notification bar? Thats exactly what im looking for!

[digiblur]

Which app do you use to get the LTE and 1XRTT DB levels in your notification bar? Thats exactly what im looking for!

 

Crafted by our very own S4GRU member.... http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/3060-signalcheck-new-android-app-to-monitor-your-2g3g4g-lte-signal-strengths/

[mmark27]

Crafted by our very own S4GRU member.... http://s4gru.com/ind...gnal-strengths/

 

Perfect, thank you sir!

[Jswets]

Crafted by our very own S4GRU member.... http://s4gru.com/ind...gnal-strengths/

 

I had the lite version but was unaware the Pro version had the notification icons. Sweet, its sooo awesome!

[S4GRU]

Hey, it's no problem at all. I'm just happy the Milwaukee market has started!

 

Fixed. They are on the maps now. Thanks.

 

Robert

[S4GRU]

So the 3 new towers are not broadcasting LTE as of yet, correct?

 

I don't think any S4GRU Member has checked yet. Nothing has shown up on Sensorly, yet. So they may be, until we can confirm otherwise.

 

Robert

[mmark27]

Fixed. They are on the maps now. Thanks.

 

Robert

 

Robert, not trying to be a thorn here, just asking a question. If you aren't turning a profit off the website, why continue to host your own site instead of just making a Google + Community? You can set up different sections and whatnot. I understand being entrenched with all the data that has accumulated over the years on these topics and starting anew, but just a thought. I want to be able to help you out, just can't at this time.

[Jeffas332]

Robert, not trying to be a thorn here, just asking a question. If you aren't turning a profit off the website, why continue to host your own site instead of just making a Google + Community? You can set up different sections and whatnot. I understand being entrenched with all the data that has accumulated over the years on these topics and starting anew, but just a thought. I want to be able to help you out, just can't at this time.

 

I wonder if it has something to do with maintaining confidentiality of the internal sources at Sprint. If that were the case, I'd want to protect that as much as possible.

[stevenjw]

Within the last couple of hours, I have been able to confirm that the new tower in Allenton, WI is now broadcasting LTE. It tooke about 10 minuets before I was able to connect. I rebooted my phone, cycled airplane mode. Just as I was about to give up, I finally connected to LTE. I have tried to do the road trip thing from Sensorly, but as of yet, I don't see it updated on any maps. The link here shows a speedtest that I ran while sitting in the park and ride lot across the freeway from the tower.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/95473563/Screenshot_2013-05-01-18-57-07.png

[dequardo]

Nice!

[mmark27]

So after a lot of reading and nice use of that SignalCheck App, I see now that my towers around me are broadcasting eHRPD.

 

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/60396219/Screenshot_2013-05-01-17-54-37.png

 

This is a new development in my area as far as I know, I swear it was reporting EVDO rev A just a couple weeks ago. In that screen shot from SignalCheck, it is saying that BSL: is located at an area that A) a tower doesn't exist (in the ghetto to boot) and its not reporting from the tower closest to me which is located at 5995-5999 McKee Rd Fitchburg, WI 53719 (which I recently posted a picture of a few pages back). Now I know that this is a Sprint tower, it had recently been reported on the upgrades list at network.sprint.com, although it doesn't show up now on that page.

 

The Googles told me that eHRPD is the software upgrade portion for tower handoffs with LTE, so its a precursor, but not necessarily anytime soon kinda precursor, right?

 

So, my questions are,

 

#1. Has eHRPD been reported for the Madison area, I see that it has been reported in the Milwaukee area and in between before. Searching this thread showed most chatter about Milwaukee towers dating back to early January, sorry if I'm late to this party. It was NOT reporting eHRPD downtown Madison at all.

 

#2. Am I reading that SignalCheck App wrong? Why is it putting a tower where there isn't one? I have seen it report this at that station area before using a different app to identify towers, but I thought that one was broken as there is no tower there. I do understand that the BSD is reporting the 1xRTT signal, I suppose it is possible that the EVDO (eHRPD) is coming from the tower at 5995-5999 McKee Rd?

 

Thanks guys. You can simply just point me to articles that tell me more if you don't want to respond in full or if this has been asked a lot before.

[Dkoellerwx]

#1. Has eHRPD been reported for the Madison area, I see that it has been reported in the Milwaukee area and in between before. Searching this thread showed most chatter about Milwaukee towers dating back to early January, sorry if I'm late to this party. It was NOT reporting eHRPD downtown Madison at all.

 

eHRPD has been reported in pretty much every market, but it doesn't always show up, and if you're looking in the wrong spot you won't see it. As you stated, it's just a software update, and is usually pushed to whole clusters of towers, or even whole markets at the same time. It has no bearing on the speed of the network either, it only helps with the handoff of LTE to 3G data connections.

 

#2. Am I reading that SignalCheck App wrong? Why is it putting a tower where there isn't one? I have seen it report this at that station area before using a different app to identify towers, but I thought that one was broken as there is no tower there. I do understand that the BSD is reporting the 1xRTT signal, I suppose it is possible that the EVDO (eHRPD) is coming from the tower at 5995-5999 McKee Rd?

 

In many (most) markets, Sprint towers do not broadcast the actual location of the tower, but rather an arbitrary point some distance away from the sector on the site you are connecting to. As you circle around the tower (if you remain connected to the same tower) you would find three different points, all which do not correspond to an actual site, but three points surrounding the site.

[Jswets]

Within the last couple of hours, I have been able to confirm that the new tower in Allenton, WI is now broadcasting LTE. It tooke about 10 minuets before I was able to connect. I rebooted my phone, cycled airplane mode. Just as I was about to give up, I finally connected to LTE. I have tried to do the road trip thing from Sensorly, but as of yet, I don't see it updated on any maps. The link here shows a speedtest that I ran while sitting in the park and ride lot across the freeway from the tower.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/95473563/Screenshot_2013-05-01-18-57-07.png

 

Nice! Keep us updated. I know I had trouble connecting in Tampa. Did you update your profile and PRL?