Network Vision/LTE - Alabama Market (including Birmingham, Montgomery, Huntsville, Mobile)

[Wireless Junkie]

Unless SouthernLINC has some sort of deal with Verizon to enable eCSFB to Verizon's 1X network, that won't really work.

 

In any event part of the point of RRPP is to expand the network and thus avoid paying Verizon for roaming.

 

True, I forgot Verizon doesn't use CSFB. I was thinking of the iPhone because I have been roaming on Verizon 1X but still connected to B26 LTE on Sprint, I forgot Android's which utilize CSFB may not be able to accomplish this though.

[lilotimz]

True, I forgot Verizon doesn't use CSFB. I was thinking of the iPhone because I have been roaming on Verizon 1X but still connected to B26 LTE on Sprint, I forgot Android's which utilize CSFB may not be able to accomplish this though.

They do use csfb. They've transitioned to single radio devices last year. They just don't have 1xA or volte to cdma handoffs.

[Wireless Junkie]

They do use csfb. They've transitioned to single radio devices last year. They just don't have 1xA or volte to cdma handoffs.

Thats good to know, I know when VoLTE is enabled on my Droid Maxx 2, CDMA shuts off completely.

 

Now if they are csfb, how are they able to do LTE roaming, I'm assuming their LTE Rural America partners have enabled the needed solutions as they are deploying per VZW specs.

 

Now with my iPhone 6S able to access Sprint LTE while connected to Verizon for 1X, it should be possible to have data only LTE roaming?

 

 

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[RAvirani]

Thats good to know, I know when VoLTE is enabled on my Droid Maxx 2, CDMA shuts off completely.

 

Now if they are csfb, how are they able to do LTE roaming, I'm assuming their LTE Rural America partners have enabled the needed solutions as they are deploying per VZW specs.

 

Now with my iPhone 6S able to access Sprint LTE while connected to Verizon for 1X, it should be possible to have data only LTE roaming?

 

 

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Doesn't the whole CSFB thing happen over LTE as a packet based kind of thing? If it does I would imagine sprint can find a way to drop the phone to Verizon 1x when on another carriers LTE network...

[Wireless Junkie]

 

Well in the Birmingham Market, we still have live WiMAX protection sites but absolutely no B41 LTE in sight...

 

Hattiesburg looks like it just got a blip of B41... Where the heck is Alabama!!!!!!!

 

Every carrier in Birmingham has enhanced LTE speeds except Sprint....

 

 

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[jonathanm1978]

I haven't given up on Alabama's rollout, but I will say that I'm not as enthused as I once was for Sprint in Alabama. It's not really that upsetting, I had higher hopes for us, but the last two years has been slow and cumbersome, and mostly because getting backhaul to these towers is keeping Sprint from moving forward. I know where I live, it's one internet provider, and that's regardless of what business, etc is located near me. Even with new businesses, like dollar general, it hasn't pushed anyone to look at this area for charter cable or uverse....or anything that isn't at&t slow DSL with stupid monthly caps.

I hope within two or three years things will improve for Alabama, but I don't hold the same hopes that I did before when everyone was seeing progress and things looked somewhat probable. Now I just enjoy what I can get, when I can get it, and keep waiting as my posts here show reflecting back to 2013.

 

 

Edit: actually, October of 2012.

[Wireless Junkie]

I haven't given up on Alabama's rollout, but I will say that I'm not as enthused as I once was for Sprint in Alabama. It's not really that upsetting, I had higher hopes for us, but the last two years has been slow and cumbersome, and mostly because getting backhaul to these towers is keeping Sprint from moving forward. I know where I live, it's one internet provider, and that's regardless of what business, etc is located near me. Even with new businesses, like dollar general, it hasn't pushed anyone to look at this area for charter cable or uverse....or anything that isn't at&t slow DSL with stupid monthly caps.

I hope within two or three years things will improve for Alabama, but I don't hold the same hopes that I did before when everyone was seeing progress and things looked somewhat probable. Now I just enjoy what I can get, when I can get it, and keep waiting as my posts here show reflecting back to 2013.

I'm not terribly upset by it, but up in Birmingham backhaul is no excuse. AT&T, Verizon, and even T-Mobile have been able to get all their sites fiber optic ran from AT&T.

 

Heck even T-Mobile somehow got AT&T fiber optics out to Talladega!! Up on Cheaha they have Fiber relayed through Microwave.

 

Granted, coverage is much better than T-Mobile but they don't even have a lot of the groundwork laid to even begin B41 deployment here.

 

My friend is an Ericsson Engineer and told me the other day SoLINC has them busier with their LTE rollout than Sprint [emoji23][emoji23]

 

I am very optimistic though and crossing my fingers!!

 

From West Jefferson County to Delta Alabama I have been much needed B26 densification out here which is thrilling

 

 

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[jonathanm1978]

I'm not sure why Alabama isn't higher on priority, or getting more attention. We are severely outpaced by the rest of the country, and I bet it's safe to say still in early NV1.0. I doubt NGN has anything to do here until 2017 or 2018.

Wife will be getting new southern Linc when she gets back to day shift at work and we'll see what their network looks like.

[Wireless Junkie]

One of the many iDEN Sprint owns and hasn't taken down to this day, but have no CDMA/LTE

 

Then on this same site at the top of the 450FT Guyed tower, right below the iDEN Omni's sit SouthernLINC's new SMR LTE panels installed by Ericsson ..

 

 

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[Wireless Junkie]

So I received a call from Sprint executive's office unexpected after I made a simple tweet asking about Birmingham's spark upgrades (if any).

 

The person I spoke to was super friendly, however she stated I am not the first person to talk to from Birmingham but I was super polite.

 

According to her after I have her zip codes ranging from Tuscaloosa to Hoover To Alexandria she states there are no planned upgrades in the near future and they just say to be determined. She said the 3G only towers in West Jefferson and also one near the racetrack have no planned upgrades to 4G.

 

She even said that if I wanted out of my lease, she would allow me to return both our 6S's and port to another provider at no charge...

 

That being said, my voice service is great and data for the most part is ok. 8meg on average so I told her I would stick it out especially because I am on iPhone forever..

 

Not promising news especially from executive services..

 

And in other news on Cheaha this past week I found LTE was pretty good, spotty In some areas but mostly native 3G and SMR LTE

 

 

 

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[S4GRU]

I thought for certain Cheaha was a typo. Well, what do you know? It's legit. LOL

 

Using Tapatalk on Note 8.0

[Trip]

I thought for certain Cheaha was a typo. Well, what do you know? It's legit. LOL

 

Using Tapatalk on Note 8.0

 

What's more interesting (to me, at least) is that Alabama's PBS service has a TV station on Mount Cheaha, and while most TV stations are licensed to a "community" (featuring people, businesses, etc.), somehow WCIQ is licensed to "Mount Cheaha State Park, AL".

 

- Trip

[lordsutch]

I strongly suspect Sprint is planning a similar deal with SoLinc that they cut with CSpire around Memphis: some sort of spectrum arrangement that gets Sprint more bandwidth in Atlanta and Birmingham in exchange for divesting/subletting some rural spectrum elsewhere in the SoLinc footprint, with a commitment that SoLinc will do a rural buildout on Roaming+ terms and provide CDMA 1X fallback using Sprint's band 26 holdings.

 

Sprint then pulls down the rural 3G-only sites left over from the affiliate networks (like those on the I-16 and I-22 corridors) and relies on SoLinc coverage instead, only keeping the towers that are already upgraded and replacing the relative handful of GMOs in the more urbanized parts of the SoLinc footprint. That would give SoLinc a lot more bandwidth to play with in rural areas Sprint never will build out in its own, perhaps to do fixed wireless internet, VoIP/VoLTE, and video as part of a quadruple-play with electricity service.

 

Option B would be to Shentelize everything in the region except maybe Atlanta/Athens... SoLinc owns the whole Sprint network in their footprint, sells service under Sprint's name, etc., and inherits the Sprint customer base in the region to pay for the LTE rollout using SoLinc's existing infrastructure (backhaul, easements, etc.) as much as possible. Enough bandwidth on ESMR to roll out three 3x3 LTE carriers, since you can squish together their internal guard bands, plus 1.25x1.25 1X Advanced, plus a ton of bands 25 and 41 for capacity in urbanized areas. The resulting network would probably stomp both Verizon and AT&T, to say nothing of T-Mobile.

[Wireless Junkie]

I thought for certain Cheaha was a typo. Well, what do you know? It's legit. LOL

 

Using Tapatalk on Note 8.0

Ha, now say it out loud with a southern accent from Talladega Nights.

 

[emoji4]

 

 

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[jonathanm1978]

I strongly suspect Sprint is planning a similar deal with SoLinc that they cut with CSpire around Memphis: some sort of spectrum arrangement that gets Sprint more bandwidth in Atlanta and Birmingham in exchange for divesting/subletting some rural spectrum elsewhere in the SoLinc footprint, with a commitment that SoLinc will do a rural buildout on Roaming+ terms and provide CDMA 1X fallback using Sprint's band 26 holdings.

 

Sprint then pulls down the rural 3G-only sites left over from the affiliate networks (like those on the I-16 and I-22 corridors) and relies on SoLinc coverage instead, only keeping the towers that are already upgraded and replacing the relative handful of GMOs in the more urbanized parts of the SoLinc footprint. That would give SoLinc a lot more bandwidth to play with in rural areas Sprint never will build out in its own, perhaps to do fixed wireless internet, VoIP/VoLTE, and video as part of a quadruple-play with electricity service.

 

Option B would be to Shentelize everything in the region except maybe Atlanta/Athens... SoLinc owns the whole Sprint network in their footprint, sells service under Sprint's name, etc., and inherits the Sprint customer base in the region to pay for the LTE rollout using SoLinc's existing infrastructure (backhaul, easements, etc.) as much as possible. Enough bandwidth on ESMR to roll out three 3x3 LTE carriers, since you can squish together their internal guard bands, plus 1.25x1.25 1X Advanced, plus a ton of bands 25 and 41 for capacity in urbanized areas. The resulting network would probably stomp both Verizon and AT&T, to say nothing of T-Mobile.

That would be great...just the amount of time it will take from now to get Sprint on par with the rest of the country... I wish Alabama was further along...And there was just one place in the entire state where band 41 could be enjoyed. Not even Birmingham though. I live between Bham and Montgomery...almost directly between the two on US280. I don't think Sprint will be a contender in my area, via adding to the tower that's 1 mile from me, for a long time, if ever. Three towers are fifteen miles away or so, I think they will use 26 to try and fill in, and lots of microwave on the towers.

 

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[Wireless Junkie]

I'm able to see SoLINC LTE broadcasting throughout Hoover and West Jefferson..

 

However that being said, I realize the only reason for SouthernLINC existing is because of Southern Utilities needing a long range digital PTT network.. Benefits to locals and a lot of government and construction entities was just subsidizing their network costs.

 

However their core focus is not in consumers, it's built mainly for the power company and now LTE is being deployed from what I understand for a "mission critical" fixed LTE applications. However is they did a roaming plus agreement with Sprint, it could be mutually beneficial as Sprint's entire network could be like Telus/Bell in Canada where it's just a tower sharing agreement and Sprint could have a network built to SouthernLINC standards which is very very resilient..

 

Btw I believe LINC stands for

Long Range Integrated Network Communication

 

 

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[red_dog007]

I'll be in BHam for the Indy race in a couple weeks. I'll keep an eye on the phone.

 

Last year I went to the race, speeds there and in Leeds was go. Didn't go into the city. But I will be this time.

 

What is bad is the drive there. Most of I59 is really bad 3G.

[red_dog007]

Wow BHam. Not even a 2nd B25 carrier. Haven't run into B41. Speeds Saturday were around 6~8Mbps all day.

 

Currently at the Indy race pulling in 15Mbps for now.

 

At least the experience is still smooth.

 

One thing I'll give Sprint ID the market seems dense. Rarely saw B25 lower than -100dBm.

[uh60james]

Wow BHam. Not even a 2nd B25 carrier. Haven't run into B41. Speeds Saturday were around 6~8Mbps all day.

 

Currently at the Indy race pulling in 15Mbps for now.

 

At least the experience is still smooth.

 

One thing I'll give Sprint ID the market seems dense. Rarely saw B25 lower than -100dBm.

 

I don't think you will find any B41 here unfortunately.  B25 is fairly dense and you will generally see decent speeds unless you are in the downtown area during business hours or a major event in which case it can be anywhere from decent to awful.

[jonathanm1978]

I wish Alabama would get in gear but I'm not sure when we will see any improvement. My area still needs band 26 optimized and the 3rd and final tower turned into LTE. I wish somewhere had 41, or even a second 25 carrier...but we struggle to get decent internet so I can imagine Sprint's headache. I live where two 24pr fiber runs are under my driveway and still the max internet out of the DSLAM next door is 6 meg down. I hope with my close vicinity to the DSLAM that Sprint will approach me for a small cell in my small area.

 

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[Wireless Junkie]

I don't think you will find any B41 here unfortunately.  B25 is fairly dense and you will generally see decent speeds unless you are in the downtown area during business hours or a major event in which case it can be anywhere from decent to awful.

I feel like the speeds around Hoover and Homewoos have dropped lately, especially around the summit on 280. I've had to take all but 2 of my lines to AT&T because of the vast amount of 3G outside of the metro.

[uh60james]

I haven't noticed any improvements for quite some time. Not even some Southernlinc LTE roaming. Any good news to report Alabama peeps?

 

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[lordsutch]

A post at Reddit suggests some improvements may be coming soon.

[Paynefanbro]

I've been spoiled by high site density in the northeast. I'm currently in Montgomery and speeds on the whole haven't been bad, I'm averaging about 6-8Mbps down and 4-5Mbps up. Signal strength isn't a problem outdoors but once you enter a building you often drop to weak LTE that makes it difficult to load web pages. Coupled with the lack of WiFi in a lot of buildings, I can understand some user's frustration with this market.

 

Tomorrow I head to Selma, then after that Tuskegee, and finally Birmingham so it'll be interesting to see how the network compares in each city.

[jonathanm1978]

I am often in Bham for various reasons -- usually against my better judgement ( I really despise Bham traffic!!!)..

But I see B25 for the most part, mixed with occasional B26. Now, B41...HAHA...literally!

 

I can say this, there is a new tower near me (35150 area)...since 2014 there have only been 2 towers that have B25 + B26...but there are 3 towers ...the 3rd one was only 3G..

 

And it was also a GMO.

 

Just last week, I saw LTE on B25 and it was obvious to me that the 3rd (GMO) tower now has live B25.

Far as I can tell, no B26 yet...but that's expected. I will be visiting the tower location -- hopefully today -- and trying to grab some photos if I can remember to take the Canon + 75-300.

 

If the above is the case, then that would mean one of the first GMO's in Alabama has been converted to full build LTE. I'm curious to see for myself exactly what's the case with this tower. And hopefully B26 will be coming along shortly...

 

I have seen some strange happenings with my GN5. I know the note 5 has some roaming LTE bands available to it, but since this tower has become live (give or take a day or two) I've been seeing some strange LTE behavior on my Note 5.

 

And SCP has been reporting some weird stuff...and if what it says is true, then this phone is defying it's radio capabilities!!

First I started seeing B17 AT&T here at my home when I unplug my Airvana. Any other time, I'm on regular EV-DO and Wifi...but when I unplug the Airvana and the Note starts looking for native signal (which isn't present here -- only VZW roaming coverage)..it latches onto LTE on B17 (and even SCP says AT&T)..

 

And just a couple days ago, I was in town and for some reason, I was in an area where I couldn't grab LTE from Sprint...so my Note 5 grabbed onto B2...and again reported that it was AT&T B2 LTE.

 

Along with that, I've also noticed strange behavior from the Airvana -- dropping calls lately...etc. And that's only ever happened around here when either 1)the airvana is on the way out and needs to be swapped -- I've had an airave/airvana since 2008 when sprint first introduced them,...or 2) Sprint is doing work on towers in the area. It has always caused the Airvana to act peculiar when there is work going on with Sprint's towers around me....I see the same dropped call behavior and stuff ..

 

Hopefully B26 goes live on that newly-LTE'd B25 tower pretty soon. I am in the line of thinking that it may even reach me if they get B26 up and optimized ..

 

If you look at where I am in comparison to the towers, I'm 7.5 miles from 1 tower (has B25 + B26), 8.4 miles from another tower (same LTE bands)...and the newly livened tower, I'm 9.1 miles away.

 

It's the small hills/trees and other things that I guess keep me from getting anything LTE flavored. I can get on my ATV and ride up behind my house (maybe 1/2 a mile, but up the hill some)...and I get B26 and it's usually around 8mbps / 5mbps on download/upload.

 

I am also in regular communication with the Bham corp store manager...

Last week when I was in the Sprint store, during our talks, he told me that he had around 40 sites in Shelby + Jefferson + Talladega + St. Clair that went live with LTE..and more on the way. He said there is LOTS of work being done in the Birmingham + surrounding areas...

And now I've seen it for myself with that GMO having LTE...