Network Vision/LTE - Upstate New York Markets - Central & East (including Syracuse, Albany, Binghamton, Ithaca, Utica)

[travismheim]

Found some band 41 in Manlius today at the nice n easy gas station on route 92 and enders rd. Last week there was 3G only, this fills a really big LTE coverage gap in this area. I suspect it's coming from the site next to Fayetteville manlius high school but it's hard to see the equipment behind the trees. Its good to see progress still being made in this market.

 

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[burnout8488]

I think the Binghamton cluster of LTE got another round of optimization recently. Getting B26 A bit deeper into a bar I frequent, and got fringe LTE at the Binghamton Regional Airport, which is miles and miles and miles away from a Sprint site. (used to be 1x only)

[GregBigness]

I been picking up some lte in chittenango i try to do a speed test but im not in one spot for long enough to do one but hope that means it will be live for this town in a couple months

[Camcroz]

is there any reason sprint wouldn't have any lte on there towers yet. I was in Ithaca for a week and sometimes I had a -60 to -70 dbm evdo signal and even after toggling airplane mode or profile updates, I couldn't connect. I passed by a couple sprint towers and they didn't have the NV antenna. I didn't recognize the antennas they were using. some places had band 25 lte but no 26. any reason for that. I found one place that had 26 near a strip mall but otherwise my signal always dropped from 25 to 3g. my uncle has Verizon and had lte almost everywhere. if sprint would deploy 26 on all towers and 25 on all non lte towers then they would be very competitive in Ithaca. without lte your stuck on slow evdo or (ehrpd in some places)

[mmmburritos]

is there any reason sprint wouldn't have any lte on there towers yet. I was in Ithaca for a week and sometimes I had a -60 to -70 dbm evdo signal and even after toggling airplane mode or profile updates, I couldn't connect. I passed by a couple sprint towers and they didn't have the NV antenna. I didn't recognize the antennas they were using. some places had band 25 lte but no 26. any reason for that. I found one place that had 26 near a strip mall but otherwise my signal always dropped from 25 to 3g. my uncle has Verizon and had lte almost everywhere. if sprint would deploy 26 on all towers and 25 on all non lte towers then they would be very competitive in Ithaca. without lte your stuck on slow evdo or (ehrpd in some places)

Sounds about right. As far as I can tell progress has slowed to a crawl. LTE is pretty widespread around Syracuse but there's enough gaps that I drop down to 3g frequently. Apparently they're now down to the difficult sites and it would seem there's a pretty good amount of them around here. As frustrating as it is I also have a Verizon phone for work and believe it or not there are a handful of spots Sprint has better coverage.

 

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[burnout8488]

Ithaca has great LTE throughout the city. B25 and B26 switch flawlessly and I think they even got some optimization recently. If you're on the outskirts, you'll be on the 3G-only sites. Totally normal. Rural sites haven't been hit yet, but they will be...eventually. 

[Camcroz]

when you say you theres gaps that you drop to 3g. do u drop from band 25 or from 26. if its 25 that is dropping than all spint needs to do is deploy 26 and there shouldn't be any drops. I understand sprint wants to release spark to get speeds boosted in major makets but they need to at least finish up deploying lte on rural sites too. Ithaca has 20,000 people all primarily on at&t or Verizon. that's just another market sprint is missing out on when they could easily fix there coverage by not having any 3g only towers or band 25 only towers

[Camcroz]

Ithaca has great LTE throughout the city. B25 and B26 switch flawlessly and I think they even got some optimization recently. If you're on the outskirts, you'll be on the 3G-only sites. Totally normal. Rural sites haven't been hit yet, but they will be...eventually.

In the parts of the city i was in, i noticed one good band 25 tower that had faster speeds then the verizon phone i tested. For some reason my phone hated band 26 here. Everytime i had low 25 signal it always dropped to 3g. Usually my s6 loves 26 back where i live in atlanta but here not so much. Other than that, those 3g towers are a real pain. I didnt know there were any left.

 

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[mmmburritos]

when you say you theres gaps that you drop to 3g. do u drop from band 25 or from 26. if its 25 that is dropping than all spint needs to do is deploy 26 and there shouldn't be any drops. I understand sprint wants to release spark to get speeds boosted in major makets but they need to at least finish up deploying lte on rural sites too. Ithaca has 20,000 people all primarily on at&t or Verizon. that's just another market sprint is missing out on when they could easily fix there coverage by not having any 3g only towers or band 25 only towers

I have not seen band 26 in Syracuse, only 25 and 41 is popping up more and more. My phone will normally be on b25 but its so fragile. In my office it sits on b25 but when I put it in my pocket and walk out to my car I pull it back out and its on 3g. That's with something like 4 LTE towers active in the downtown area.

 

For the most part these days my data connection works fine even if I'm on 3g so I can't complain too much but its obvious the progress is painfully slow. I assume a lot of areas aren't optimized because there are gaps in LTE still. There's one or two towers in the Liverpool area that aren't upgraded surrounded by a sea of towers that are. Those last holdouts are annoying because you drop down to 3g and if you have data active streaming music it won't go back to LTE for quite a while.

 

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[Camcroz]

I have not seen band 26 in Syracuse, only 25 and 41 is popping up more and more. My phone will normally be on b25 but its so fragile. In my office it sits on b25 but when I put it in my pocket and walk out to my car I pull it back out and its on 3g. That's with something like 4 LTE towers active in the downtown area.

 

For the most part these days my data connection works fine even if I'm on 3g so I can't complain too much but its obvious the progress is painfully slow. I assume a lot of areas aren't optimized because there are gaps in LTE still. There's one or two towers in the Liverpool area that aren't upgraded surrounded by a sea of towers that are. Those last holdouts are annoying because you drop down to 3g and if you have data active streaming music it won't go back to LTE for quite a while.

 

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Well its good news that your dropping from 25 to 3g instead of 26 to 3g. All sprint needs to do is hurry there butt up and put 26 on the towers. And your very correct about 25 being fragile. I was at the park today with a -110 dbm signal, looked away from my phone for a second and when i looked back at my phone it was at -115 dbm and dropped to 3g

 

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[travismheim]

I was just near downtown at the war memorial and was connected to band 41. I bet with the next announcement Syracuse is officially launched as a spark market. Band 26 can't come soon enough, I don't know why its not being deployed. Public safety is clear and there is an exclusionary zone around the city for the ibez.

 

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[GregBigness]

Dose sprint work with hpc wireless service?

[travismheim]

Second band 41 carrier is live in Syracuse, I found this at destiny USA.

 

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[nexgencpu]

Second band 41 carrier is live in Syracuse, I found this at destiny USA.

Screenshot_20150822-101441.pngScreenshot_20150822-101417.png

 

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wow! what kind of speed did you see?!

[travismheim]

wow! what kind of speed did you see?!

Typical b41 speeds, I don't have a carrier aggregation phone to test it with.

 

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[nexgencpu]

Typical b41 speeds, I don't have a carrier aggregation phone to test it with.

 

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Well, second carrier is double capacity, im curious about backhaul.

[Paynefanbro]

I can't wait for Sprint to launch that second B41 carrier in NYC. November couldn't come soon enough.

[travismheim]

Well, second carrier is double capacity, im curious about backhaul.

I'll run some speed tests the next time I'm back in that area, I didn't notice the second carrier anywhere other than at the mall. For reference if anyone wanted to know, the initial carrier was at channel 40978, the second is at channel 41176.

[greyski]

So I've been away from Sprint for a while but just activated my old nexus 5 on ringplus to see how coverage is looking in Syracuse as of late. A couple points.

 

2nd band 41 carrier is near Manley field house in the city as well as near Onondaga lake park in Liverpool as well as quite a few other areas. I'm glad to see it!

 

Some in city 3g areas still exist which I find rather odd as Syracuse doesn't run into CL backhaul issues and uses aav for backhaul for parts of the city. But overall quite an improvement from my last checkin.

 

The two bigger questions is not once have I seen band 26 or 1x 800 even though the area is our of the ibez and had 1x acceptance for quite sometime. I wonder if they haven't tuned the area still.

 

I'll be holding onto the rp line for now ($5 1500 minutes, texts and 1.5 gigs of data!) And will be cell mapping the city and surrounding areas.

 

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[travismheim]

 

 

So I've been away from Sprint for a while but just activated my old nexus 5 on ringplus to see how coverage is looking in Syracuse as of late. A couple points.

 

2nd band 41 carrier is near Manley field house in the city as well as near Onondaga lake park in Liverpool as well as quite a few other areas. I'm glad to see it!

 

Some in city 3g areas still exist which I find rather odd as Syracuse doesn't run into CL backhaul issues and uses aav for backhaul for parts of the city. But overall quite an improvement from my last checkin.

 

The two bigger questions is not once have I seen band 26 or 1x 800 even though the area is our of the ibez and had 1x acceptance for quite sometime. I wonder if they haven't tuned the area still.

 

I'll be holding onto the rp line for now ($5 1500 minutes, texts and 1.5 gigs of data!) And will be cell mapping the city and surrounding areas.

 

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Syracuse has had 1x800 turned on for a while, though I rarely see it. Still no band 26 though. Syracuse just barely falls within the ibez, but has an exclusionary zone around it. I wish I knew why they aren't turning it on, its the last thing Sprint needs to have a great network here.

 

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[greyski]

It'd help with the sparse tower layout inherited from iwo from their affiliate days and bring me back to the mother ship... And for the fact 1x has been lit up for over a year it'd bring people back to the top 100 market for certain!

 

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[joshnys8913]

It'd help with the sparse tower layout inherited from iwo from their affiliate days and bring me back to the mother ship... And for the fact 1x has been lit up for over a year it'd bring people back to the top 100 market for certain!

 

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A "sparse" tower lay out? You got to remember back when it was just voice and text you didn't really need towers close together, so long as you had a signal you could make calls and texts will go though, everything NOW is Internet and well it has more affect on Internet than it would voice and text. You got to remember cell phone companies add cell sites all the time. 

[travismheim]

A "sparse" tower lay out? You got to remember back when it was just voice and text you didn't really need towers close together, so long as you had a signal you could make calls and texts will go though, everything NOW is Internet and well it has more affect on Internet than it would voice and text. You got to remember cell phone companies add cell sites all the time.

This was an affiliate market that was not originally built out very well that Sprint later took over. Site density and placement is poor here compared to many other "native" Sprint markets.

 

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[greyski]

As an ex iwo affiliate employee, yes. A sparse tower layout. Nextel decommissioned towers didn't really help (from my arbitrary observation) as I don't believe band 26 has launched. Luckily central New York was an ofdm clearwire/wimax market so tower spacing was kept in mind. Honestly, speaking for the Syracuse area proper, Sprint has not added new builds. Capacity? Definitely.

 

Also, remember that Sprint was one of the first companies to push data in the fledgling days of smart phones (if I remember correctly htc had one of the first windows mobile devices as well as that flip kyocera palm is) EVDO and led speeds for years in the "early days". In the early 2000's they were leading the pack.

 

Native Sprint markets (for comparison Buffalo) are way more dense. Look at Louisiana or (shudder) swiftel.

 

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[nexgencpu]

Sooooo close to NYC, but yet so far, hope you upstate guys start seeing more of this!

 

In Buffalo..

http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/1581260232

 

 

Looks like CA is live.