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Everything 800mhz (1xA, LTE, coverage, timeline, etc)


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SignalCheck shows the address of the coordinates that the site is squawking. In many markets, for whatever reason, these coordinates are offset from the actual location. That being said, it is possible the site is more than 3 blocks away from your location. Sponsors to the site have access to maps of the actual locations of Sprint sites.

I would guess that it was done this way in the past to try to at least garner a direction on 911 calls. Thats just a assumption. With GPS now it should be much less of a concern. One would think that they would broadcast the tower, but then again, having it offset makes it very easy to know what sector you are a truly on, and even know for sure which panels you are using when you aren't head on to one, but in between 2.

 

 

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I would guess that it was done this way in the past to try to at least garner a direction on 911 calls. Thats just a assumption. With GPS now it should be much less of a concern. One would think that they would broadcast the tower, but then again, having it offset makes it very easy to know what sector you are a truly on, and even know for sure which panels you are using when you aren't head on to one, but in between 2.

 

 

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I'm not sure I've ever seen it explained on this site why this exactly is the case. Here in Michigan, legacy network coordinates were offset but NV network coordinates are dead on.

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I'm not sure I've ever seen it explained on this site why this exactly is the case. Here in Michigan, legacy network coordinates were offset but NV network coordinates are dead on.

The "BSL offset" issue has been discussed in several threads, and is in fact an artifact of public safety/911 requirements from several years ago. Some markets have had the issue (e.g., Milwaukee), others have not (Chicago). Apparently, NV sites do squawk their actual locations once they are upgraded.

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The "BSL offset" issue has been discussed in several threads, and is in fact an artifact of public safety/911 requirements from several years ago. Some markets have had the issue (e.g., Milwaukee), others have not (Chicago). Apparently, NV sites do squawk their actual locations once they are upgraded.

 

Not all post-upgrade sites squawk their actual locations.. in the Boston market, everything was offset pre-NV and post-NV. Some coordinates changed slightly, but are still offset. I do know that the 911 systems in this area have been reporting the actual site locations for several years, but who knows how much relevance that has to the 1X coordinates being broadcast.

 

-Mike

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The "BSL offset" issue has been discussed in several threads, and is in fact an artifact of public safety/911 requirements from several years ago. Some markets have had the issue (e.g., Milwaukee), others have not (Chicago). Apparently, NV sites do squawk their actual locations once they are upgraded.

Most sites in Ericsson markets do not, even post NV.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

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can someone tell me the actual location of my nearest BSL

 

As was already mentioned, that data is limited to Sponsors only. I will tell you that your area does have the BSL locations offset, and there are at several Sprint sites within 10 blocks of you. So you would need to check the maps and then watch SignalCheck to try figuring out which site you were connecting to as you move around. In a dense area like NYC, it is trickier to pinpoint exactly which site you are connecting to until you can confirm which IDs belong to which sites. To do that, you basically need to play Marco Polo while you wander around watching your signal levels..

 

-Mike

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WIRELESS TELECOMMUNICATIONS BUREAU SEEKS COMMENT ON SPRINT WAIVER

REQUEST TO PERMIT WIDEBAND OPERATIONS IN PORTIONS OF NEVADA AND

NORTHERN CALIFORNIA NPSPAC REGIONS

 

On February 12, 2014, Sprint Corporation (Sprint) filed two requests for waiver of Section
90.209(B)(7) of the Commission’s rules1 to permit 800 MHz wideband operations in portions of the
Northern California (Region 6)2 and Nevada (Region 27)3 National Public Safety Planning Advisory
Committee (NPSPAC) regions prior to completion of the 800 MHz Band reconfiguration in those regions
(collectively “Sprint Waiver Requests”).

 

 

 

http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2014/db0219/DA-14-221A1.pdf

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Site on Mineola ave in Little River SC had LTE turned on today at 8am when I got to work I had it and now it's gone so I'm sure they are tweeking it. I went by site about 4pm mon and no crews but a dirt loader was there so I assume they did some work. No crews were there at 8 am today. Here is my speedtest from my short LTE experience.

post-23373-0-10665200-1393336977_thumb.png

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Site on Mineola ave in Little River SC had LTE turned on today at 8am when I got to work I had it and now it's gone so I'm sure they are tweeking it. I went by site about 4pm mon and no crews but a dirt loader was there so I assume they did some work. No crews were there at 8 am today. Here is my speedtest from my short LTE experience.

Was this on PCS band or 800?

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

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Site on Mineola ave in Little River SC had LTE turned on today at 8am when I got to work I had it and now it's gone so I'm sure they are tweeking it. I went by site about 4pm mon and no crews but a dirt loader was there so I assume they did some work. No crews were there at 8 am today. Here is my speedtest from my short LTE experience.

Was this on PCS band or 800?

 

Yes, I question the relevance of that post in this thread.  If not band 26 LTE 800, it does not belong here.  It should be in the appropriate market thread.

 

AJ

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Guest DigiClaws

Saw techs working on two separate towers in SW Fort Worth. Hopefully 1x800 and LTE 800 are about to fired up. For that to happen, they just need to add carrier cards right? If so, does that involve them climbing up the tower or are the carrier cards located in the equipment in the base station?

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Saw techs working on two separate towers in SW Fort Worth. Hopefully 1x800 and LTE 800 are about to fired up. For that to happen, they just need to add carrier cards right? If so, does that involve them climbing up the tower or are the carrier cards located in the equipment in the base station?

 

There is also testing and tweaking of values/antenna downtilt to ensure interference doesn't occur.  This takes some time.

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My phone connects to 800 regularly as I get out of the train station in NYC, but it drops it after a second and switches back to PCS. The 800MHz signal is usually at around -74 and my PCS signal is weaker than that. The only time my phone really connects to 800MHz is if I am in a basement, but by that time even my 800MHz signal is at -105dbm.

 

Is PCS spacing so tight that my phone just sticks to that instead?

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My phone connects to 800 regularly as I get out of the train station in NYC, but it drops it after a second and switches back to PCS. The 800MHz signal is usually at around -74 and my PCS signal is weaker than that. The only time my phone really connects to 800MHz is if I am in a basement, but by that time even my 800MHz signal is at -105dbm.

 

Is PCS spacing so tight that my phone just sticks to that instead?

 

I would expect that Sprint is trying to keep the 800Mhz carriers available for people who simply can't get a signal on PCS. Given the density of sites in NYC, I would imagine it is pretty rare not to have a PCS signal unless you are in a basement or deep in a building like you said. Also, it has less effective capacity/Mhz in dense urban areas, since it can't be deployed as densely as higher frequency spectrum (it propagates TOO well). 

 

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I would expect that Sprint is trying to keep the 800Mhz carriers available for people who simply can't get a signal on PCS. Given the density of sites in NYC, I would imagine it is pretty rare not to have a PCS signal unless you are in a basement or deep in a building like you said. Also, it has less effective capacity/Mhz in dense urban areas, since it can't be deployed as densely as higher frequency spectrum (it propagates TOO well). 

You are mostly correct above, however, you can use 800 in heavily populated area.  Just point the antennas downward and drop the signal down rather than aim it out toward another site.  This has to be done very carefully.   You might need to have 2 sectors pointed downward and the third sector aimed higher to get out to a rural area.  Each site has to be individually optimized to avoid interference to the adjacent sites.   If this it done correctly, it results in a very strong signal near the cell site on 800.

 If this is done correctly, the signal will penetrate into extremely difficult spots in buildings.

However, as you said, there still can be issues if you have too many sites all with a very strong 800 signal. You may have to skip the addition of 800 on a site somewhere if other sites are just too close.

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My phone connects to 800 regularly as I get out of the train station in NYC, but it drops it after a second and switches back to PCS. The 800MHz signal is usually at around -74 and my PCS signal is weaker than that. The only time my phone really connects to 800MHz is if I am in a basement, but by that time even my 800MHz signal is at -105dbm.

 

Is PCS spacing so tight that my phone just sticks to that instead?

 

It also depends on what phone you have.

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Yes, I question the relevance of that post in this thread.  If not band 26 LTE 800, it does not belong here.  It should be in the appropriate market thread.

 

Sorry for the delay. The Mineola ave Little River SC did go live with LTE and 1x800 at the same time. 

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You are mostly correct above, however, you can use 800 in heavily populated area.  Just point the antennas downward and drop the signal down rather than aim it out toward another site.  This has to be done very carefully.   You might need to have 2 sectors pointed downward and the third sector aimed higher to get out to a rural area.  Each site has to be individually optimized to avoid interference to the adjacent sites.   If this it done correctly, it results in a very strong signal near the cell site on 800.

 If this is done correctly, the signal will penetrate into extremely difficult spots in buildings.

However, as you said, there still can be issues if you have too many sites all with a very strong 800 signal. You may have to skip the addition of 800 on a site somewhere if other sites are just too close.

 

I don't mean they can't deploy it at all, I just meant that in the densest areas they might be forced to skip some sites because of how well 800Mhz propagates.

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You are mostly correct above, however, you can use 800 in heavily populated area.  Just point the antennas downward and drop the signal down rather than aim it out toward another site.  This has to be done very carefully.   You might need to have 2 sectors pointed downward and the third sector aimed higher to get out to a rural area.  Each site has to be individually optimized to avoid interference to the adjacent sites.   If this it done correctly, it results in a very strong signal near the cell site on 800.

 If this is done correctly, the signal will penetrate into extremely difficult spots in buildings.

However, as you said, there still can be issues if you have too many sites all with a very strong 800 signal. You may have to skip the addition of 800 on a site somewhere if other sites are just too close.

Nextel did this pretty sucessfully in the mid 2000's. They pretty much stopped building out the network footprint around 2001 or so, but that was back when Nextel was growing by leaps and bounds, so they quickly ran into capacity issues (for voice, not data). They eventually solved the capacity issues by adding towers to densely populated areas and re-tuning the ones they had as you describe above. Ironically they ended up having to take a bunch down towards the end of the iDEN network becuase they were so redundant once the iDEN subsciber base started leaving (in some spots there were just as many Nextel towers as there were Sprint towers). But the point is, if Nextel could do it with older technology, Sprint should be able to accomplish the same thing even more efficiently, given the more efficient network management tools available these days.

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Nextel did this pretty sucessfully in the mid 2000's. They pretty much stopped building out the network footprint around 2001 or so, but that was back when Nextel was growing by leaps and bounds, so they quickly ran into capacity issues (for voice, not data). They eventually solved the capacity issues by adding towers to densely populated areas and re-tuning the ones they had as you describe above. Ironically they ended up having to take a bunch down towards the end of the iDEN network becuase they were so redundant once the iDEN subsciber base started leaving (in some spots there were just as many Nextel towers as there were Sprint towers). But the point is, if Nextel could do it with older technology, Sprint should be able to accomplish the same thing even more efficiently, given the more efficient network management tools available these days.

 

They are deploying LTE 800 on every site, except where not needed.  If two sites are adjacent to each other by a few hundred feet (think Manhattan), it is OK to skip one with B26 (LTE 800).  Your signal strength on B26 will be unaffected, even when standing next to the site where B26 was skipped.  You will still have full bars.  And the area already is completely covered with B41 (LTE 2600) too.  So B26 site splitting is not needed for capacity, as capacity is carried by B41.  

 

There will be some places it just doesn't make sense to deploy B26 on every site in urban environments.  But it will only be done in places where the net result for customers will be unnoticeable.

 

Robert

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So I was just wondering why I don't connect to 800 after the towers went to 4g? I know they are and I connected before but not any more. Not really a big deal but just curious if there is a logical reason why. Thanks

 

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So I was just wondering why I don't connect to 800 after the towers went to 4g? I know they are and I connected before but not any more. Not really a big deal but just curious if there is a logical reason why. Thanks

 

If you are asking why you're not maintaining a 1xRTT connection when connecting to LTE with an LG G2, that's because tri-band devices only have one radio, and only maintain one path at a time. Information about that is all over the site, it has been discussed many many times.

 

-Mike

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No that I know. Just wondering why I can't connect to 800 when I'm not connected to lte?

You probably don't need 1x800 wherever you are. People feel this need to always have to be on 1x800. It's no different, other than propagation. If it's present, and your phone needs it, you'll connect to it, and only be able to see the connection during a call on triband devices. You'll always be idling on 1xRTT.

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