Network Vision/LTE - Raleigh/Durham Market (includes Fayetteville)

[anthony.spina97]

One other comment, though. I'm not getting nearly the range out of LTE800 as I get out of 1x800. Maybe this is by design, though.

You will never get the same range out of LTE 800 as you get with 1x800. LTE is a much more fragile airlink than 1x is, so you can't hold LTE nearly as well as you can hold 1x.

 

-Anthony

[centermedic]

WOW! Got 23 down and 7 up on Band 26 in Holly Springs!

[centermedic]

Sprint now has Raleigh-Cary listed as a Spark City! Anybody notice any difference?

[modplan]

Sad story, for myself and other Sprint fans. Last night I was at a buddies apartment in the heart of downtown Raleigh. A gathering of 25 or so people to watch the NC State vs Louisville game. He doesn't have cable so we were just going to stream the game from NCAA.com via his computer, no big deal.

 

Problem: TWC internet went out 15 minutes before tipoff. Crisis.

 

So I suggest "Hey I have unlimited LTE and know you are on a 2GB data plan with VZW, I'll just turn on my hotspot and that'll get us by" I rarely/never use the hotspot on my phone, and I don't like people that abuse it with unlimited data, but I think this is a good case to save the party. I looked at my phone, -77 dBm on b25, should be more than enough to stream the game, right? Nope. He loads the website after he connects, but video wont load. He disconnects from my hotspot and I do a speed test, 0.63 mbps down, 4.8 mbps up. Disappointing. 

 

I did multiple airplane mode toggles to try to get on b41 or hell even b26, not knowing if either was live at his house, nothing, only b25. 

 

Long story short, he saved the day by using his own VZW hotspot on his phone where he was getting 28mbps down and burned through 1.1 GB before the internet came back on just before halftime. 

 

Sprint has made excellent strides in Raleigh in the last year, but this was downtown. I should've had B41, a single b25 carrier obviously cannot support the downtown of a major metro area even on off-peak times. Issues like this must be addressed if Sprint want's to seriously compete. I had about the best signal you could ask for, full bars, looked nice on my phone, but performance was abysmal.

 

Sorry for the rant

 

EDIT: Thanks mods for moving my post from the general section to the Raleigh section. While my post was about Raleigh, my concerns, and based on all of the observations of others I read here, are not limited to Raleigh. I was more ranting/pointing out Sprint's weaknesses and what they need to do in general to be able to compete with the VZW/ATT's of the world, maybe I didn't make that clear enough. But the Sprint critique will get a lot less visibility here 

[S4GRU]

We certainly not going to have unique threads for rants.  And when the internet goes down, Sprint takes a bigger hit than VZW and ATT because of unlimited.  Sprint customers will immediately jump to their unlimited device when their ISP goes down, whereas VZW and ATT customers will try to abstain unless they have no choice.  Now this guy is going to pissed the rest of his month and may not let you next time.

 

There can be just as many posts about people claiming Sprint saved the day in their situation.  We see many situations where Sprint even out performs VZW.  It just didn't in your instance and location and time.

[modplan]

We certainly not going to have unique threads for rants.  And when the internet goes down, Sprint takes a bigger hit than VZW and ATT because of unlimited.  Sprint customers will immediately jump to their unlimited device when their ISP goes down, whereas VZW and ATT customers will try to abstain unless they have no choice.  Now this guy is going to pissed the rest of his month and may not let you next time.

 

There can be just as many posts about people claiming Sprint saved the day in their situation.  We see many situations where Sprint even out performs VZW.  It just didn't in your instance and location and time.

 

Thanks Robert for the insight to the decision. I should have clarified, I got 1.2mbps down and 3.9mbps up this morning when I left his place at 8am, the lower speeds had nothing to do with TWC being out and people jumping on Sprint LTE, my critique was more that a highly populated downtown metro area was being covered by a single, obviously saturated b25 carrier, why? Backhaul? Permits?  VZW, ATT, and as much as I hate to say it, hell even TMo do not have this problem there.

 

I spend much of my time in rural NC where I am seeing more and more excellent b26 coverage and speeds, places where TMo, sometimes even ATT have 2G! But why, why, can't Sprint get the population dense areas covered adequately, when the other 3 already have, TMo even just in the last 6 months. We have b25, b26, and b41 and arguably less subscribers, something no one else has to their advantage?

[S4GRU]

Thanks Robert for the insight to the decision. I should have clarified, I got 1.2mbps down and 3.9mbps up this morning when I left his place at 8am, the lower speeds had nothing to do with TWC being out and people jumping on Sprint LTE, my critique was more that a highly populated downtown metro area was being covered by a single, obviously saturated b25 carrier, why? Backhaul? Permits?  VZW, ATT, and as much as I hate to say it, hell even TMo do not have this problem there.

 

I spend much of my time in rural NC where I am seeing more and more excellent b26 coverage and speeds, places where TMo, sometimes even ATT have 2G! But why, why, can't Sprint get the population dense areas covered adequately, when the other 3 already have, TMo even just in the last 6 months. We have b25, b26, and b41 and arguably less subscribers, something no one else has to their advantage?

 

You say that as if dozens of sites aren't going live every day.  The B41 infill coverage is actually going faster than any deployment Sprint has ever done.  It's just not to the level you want it in the places you'd notice.  Or perhaps you do, and it's a thing where you don;t think about it all the times it works and you just notice the places it doesn't.

 

And it continues with dozens of sites every day.

[centermedic]

Sad story, for myself and other Sprint fans. Last night I was at a buddies apartment in the heart of downtown Raleigh. A gathering of 25 or so people to watch the NC State vs Louisville game. He doesn't have cable so we were just going to stream the game from NCAA.com via his computer, no big deal.

 

Problem: TWC internet went out 15 minutes before tipoff. Crisis.

 

So I suggest "Hey I have unlimited LTE and know you are on a 2GB data plan with VZW, I'll just turn on my hotspot and that'll get us by" I rarely/never use the hotspot on my phone, and I don't like people that abuse it with unlimited data, but I think this is a good case to save the party. I looked at my phone, -77 dBm on b25, should be more than enough to stream the game, right? Nope. He loads the website after he connects, but video wont load. He disconnects from my hotspot and I do a speed test, 0.63 mbps down, 4.8 mbps up. Disappointing. 

 

I did multiple airplane mode toggles to try to get on b41 or hell even b26, not knowing if either was live at his house, nothing, only b25. 

 

Long story short, he saved the day by using his own VZW hotspot on his phone where he was getting 28mbps down and burned through 1.1 GB before the internet came back on just before halftime. 

 

Sprint has made excellent strides in Raleigh in the last year, but this was downtown. I should've had B41, a single b25 carrier obviously cannot support the downtown of a major metro area even on off-peak times. Issues like this must be addressed if Sprint want's to seriously compete. I had about the best signal you could ask for, full bars, looked nice on my phone, but performance was abysmal.

 

Sorry for the rant

 

EDIT: Thanks mods for moving my post from the general section to the Raleigh section. While my post was about Raleigh, my concerns, and based on all of the observations of others I read here, are not limited to Raleigh. I was more ranting/pointing out Sprint's weaknesses and what they need to do in general to be able to compete with the VZW/ATT's of the world, maybe I didn't make that clear enough. But the Sprint critique will get a lot less visibility here 

I have to say, Downtown Raleigh is probably the worse area in Raleigh for Sprint speeds and I am not sure why.

[danielholt]

It's been a year now since Sprint installed 2 LTE towers in Wake Forest. I still get .5 bars of LTE in my house, once I turn phone on it immediately bounces over to 3G where I get about 3 bars of service. If I put the phone down, it reconnects to LTE, cycling between regular LTE, and B26. Mind blown.

[spotmeterf64]

Is this as good as it's going to get, or is there more work going on in RDU? I am happy with the service and coverage now, but there are still some holes here and there.

[LoneSnark]

Many of the lte holes I know of were left to leave room for wimax equipment. Therefore, once wimax shuts down, those cell sites should convert to LTE. 

[Cnotes2019]

What's the state of the network here now?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[LoneSnark]

I have not noticed any discernible changes recently. There are still huge gaps around town, particularly Cary, where only 3G can be had. The gaps are still somewhat correlated with where the Wimax towers were (back when I used Wimax regularly). I don't have a way of checking if the Wimax is still up, but if it isn't, I guess it is going to take longer than a software update to switch on the LTE bands at these locations. 

[modplan]

Seeing little to zero band 26 optimization since band 26 was initially deployed a WHILE ago, does not seem to be any sort of a priority. I call this out on every survey I get sent after interacting with Sprint customer service.

 

Ex. Sitting on band 25, walking into home/office/shopping center and see it drop to band 26, take two more steps and it drops to decently strong (but terribly slow) 3G. It should not (and will not....eventually) be this way. Band 26 needs to be cranked up and tilt adjusted, but at this point I think it is obvious that Raleigh is low priority and they just turned it on 1+ years ago to give us SOMETHING (which is appreciated, I guess).

 

Edit: I also frequent the much more rural Eastern NC, from Greenville to the coast. LTE is available but sparse when you leave the highways/cities, making music streaming sometimes difficult. Also something band 26 could and should alleviate. I wish they could crank it up as soon as they turn it on to dramatically increase coverage in rural areas and in-building, much like TMo does with band 12, instead of just turning it on.

[Cnotes2019]

This will make no difference ??

Sprint announces faster LTE Plus network, launching today in 77 markets.

http://forums.androidcentral.com/showthread.php?t=610366

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[shannonbrian]

They have not optimized band 26 anywhere that much. I visit philly , baltimore,and dc. Lot sites just not tune yet. Why who knows why not , maybe lack people do it .

[Cnotes2019]

. Pretty okay speeds

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[JosefTor]

. Pretty okay speeds

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Great speeds besides the unusually low upload speeds.

[S4GRU]

Great speeds besides the unusually low upload speeds.

That's the disadvantage of CA, beamforming and 4xMIMO. They all increase download performance, with beamforming and additional MIMO even extending the range. None of these things help upload. So if you are in a place with a mediocre signal, you have CA, beamforming and 4xMIMO increasing the download performance while upload strength is barely good enough to even get back to the site.

 

If upload carrier aggregation ever becomes a thing in devices, it can double these upload speeds. Some of the new devices upcoming will be technically capable of uplink CA. It will depend on whether Sprint and OEM's try to make this work.

 

The downlink is capable to be 4xMIMO, because it is an easy to feat to fit these in the antenna panels at the site. But uplink 4xMIMO inside something as small as a smartphone is not happening anytime soon. Very difficult technologically to do it, if not impossible in such a small form factor as a smartphone. And beamforming is not possible in a smartphone. Can't make the internal antennas directional and amplified toward the tower. Doesn't seem practical either.

 

Using Tapatalk on Note 8.0

[WiWavelength]

But uplink 4xMIMO inside something as small as a smartphone is not happening anytime soon. Very difficult technologically to do it, if not impossible in such a small form factor as a smartphone. And beamforming is not possible in a smartphone. Can't make the internal antennas directional and amplified toward the tower. Doesn't seem practical either.

 

Au contraire.  If SNL can do it, HTC can do it.

 

 

AJ

[nexgencpu]

That's the disadvantage of CA, beamforming and 4xMIMO. They all increase download performance, with beamforming and additional MIMO even extending the range. None of these things help upload. So if you are in a place with a mediocre signal, you have CA, beamforming and 4xMIMO increasing the download performance while upload strength is barely good enough to even get back to the site.

If upload carrier aggregation ever becomes a thing in devices, it can double these upload speeds. Some of the new devices upcoming will be technically capable of uplink CA. It will depend on whether Sprint and OEM's try to make this work.

The downlink is capable to be 4xMIMO, because it is an easy to feat to fit these in the antenna panels at the site. But uplink 4xMIMO inside something as small as a smartphone is not happening anytime soon. Very difficult technologically to do it, if not impossible in such a small form factor as a smartphone. And beamforming is not possible in a smartphone. Can't make the internal antennas directional and amplified toward the tower. Doesn't seem practical either.

Using Tapatalk on Note 8.0

Isn't this one of the reasons Sprint is talking about using B25 for uplink in CA?

[oldblue910]

I actually left Sprint about 8 months ago for Verizon but after I recently bought both a SIM-free iPhone 6S Plus and a Nexus 6P, I decided to give Sprint another chance. The network is definitely better this time around. Some time in the last 8 months, several things have happened that makes me say this:

 

1. I can now get band 41 at my place in Morrisville (Davis Drive at McCrimmon Parkway) and its solid enough for both phones to remain parked there.

 

2. In Cary, Sprint has finally upgraded the equipment on the water tower at Walnut Street and Maynard Road near Cary Towne Center. That entire area has been 3G-only for ages. Now it's got some great band 26 coverage going on.

 

3. Overall I seem to be seeing less 3G than I was 8 months ago. That's always a win.

 

For me, the biggest problem right now is that 3G-only tower at Cary Parkway and James Jackson Avenue because it covers the Park West shopping center in Morrisville and the Maynard/High House area, which is a place I go frequently. When/if Sprint gets that one tower upgraded, I'll be rocking and rolling as far as LTE goes.

[centermedic]

What's the state of the network here now?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Not sure what other people are talking about but over the last six weeks I have seen a significant improvement in the network in the Raleigh area. Heck, the network even held steady during the State Fair in October. I will say that I find Cary to be a bit spotty and there are still some 3g only holes here and there. But overall speeds have increased in my experience.

[JimBob]

Distributed antenna system (DAS) now provides Sprint LTE coverage for the Cameron Indoor Stadium.

 

http://www.goduke.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=4200&ATCLID=210626188

[spotmeterf64]

Enhanced LTE is now showing in the coverage maps for RDU - anybody seeing this in real life? I have an iPhone 6, so I don't get the new speeds. I had a 6S for a few days and saw no difference at all in coverage or speeds.