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

[burnout8488]

2 hours ago, Joski1624 said:

This is certainly promising.  Other markets like the seemingly forgotten West PA market now have 800MHz sites that have been found by S4GRU members.

These are fairly recent GMO LTE conversions so that is great news they're sending the techs back to improve them yet again. :-) 

[burnout8488]

Drove up to Ithaca today and mapped RT96 on Sensorly. Full LTE the whole way!

Sitting in Ithaca commons right now, every business has full LTE indoors. I’m curious if they have a small-cell here - the service is excellent. 

EDIT: Went to a few more buildings, my phone is locked onto an extremely strong Band 25 signal even within brick hallways. I didn't see Band 26 once. Really, really good signal here.

[Scott]

I picked up a B41 signal this morning in Glens Falls for the first time that I've noticed, and I pass through downtown every weekday on my way to and from work. It was showing as B41 every time I checked SignalCheck Pro until I got close to my office about 3-4 miles away, near exit 18. I'm getting B25 in the office, which could be because I'm indoors. I ran a couple speed tests in downtown Glens Falls and was getting about 15-16mbps. The further away from downtown that I got, the more the speeds dropped toward 10mbps (and below that at times). I chalk those speeds up to the B41 being new and probably not optimized yet.

I live in Queensbury, a few miles north of Glens Falls, and have had my LTE going in and out a lot since last week (per the SignalCheck notification I get when I connect to an LTE signal), but haven't seen B41 yet at home. If they're upgrading the towers in this area, that could be an explanation for my in-and-out LTE signal lately, right?

[nexgencpu]

38 minutes ago, Scott said:

If they're upgrading the towers in this area, that could be an explanation for my in-and-out LTE signal lately, right?

 

Yes.. Optimization/Upgrades. 

[Joseph Monsour]

I’ll have to check myself, I’m in Queensbury but only connect to band 25 at home. We have had downtime in the last week or so so this is great news! I noticed a 2nd B25 carrier a couple weeks ago but no B41. My wife works in downtown GF so she will be happy to see her phone work better now.


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[Joseph Monsour]

Ran a Speedtest today on the GF tower with B41 and got 47 down, upload was around 3. It looked like a dual carrier is active too as it bounced from 40978 to 41176 and the iPhone field test earfcn would go from 0 to 1 to show the dual carrier. I couldn’t find any B41 on the other towers in GF, Queensbury or Lake George.


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[Scott]

On 2/10/2018 at 10:01 PM, Joseph Monsour said:

Ran a Speedtest today on the GF tower with B41 and got 47 down, upload was around 3. It looked like a dual carrier is active too as it bounced from 40978 to 41176 and the iPhone field test earfcn would go from 0 to 1 to show the dual carrier. I couldn’t find any B41 on the other towers in GF, Queensbury or Lake George.

I picked up a second B41 carrier as well, according to SignalCheck, on Thursday. I ran a speed test in the parking lot behind Raul's that was just under 70mbps down and about 2mbps up. Hopefully it's just the start of B41 around here and it'll expand to the surrounding towns sooner than later.

[Scott]

Sprint updated the coverage map on its site today, and it now shows a solid swath of LTE through Queensbury and Lake George, all the way up to Bolton Landing. I believe the LG-BL area was still showing 3G on the last version of the map. So it looks like they've been doing work up there in addition to getting B41 up and running in Glens Falls. Sprint is finally putting some money into upgrading the network in this area, it seems. That is long overdue, and could keep me from leaving Sprint when my free year is up in the summer.

[Joseph Monsour]

Down at Colonie center in Albany and Sprint is running a 10 MHz PCS B block channel here. It’s what we had throughout central IL, 8290 earfcn. The speeds are atrocious, 1.5 mb down and 2 up. Could be optimizing it still, it’s improvement though and when it is right with good backhaul it will pull an easy 40 down and be very strong.


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[Joseph Monsour]

At RPI in Troy, running 10x5 band 25 CA. Looks like 8321 is the DL & UL with 8665 as the 2nd DL channel. iPhone makes it hard to tell. Good speed though.


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[Dkoellerwx]

12 hours ago, Joseph Monsour said:

At RPI in Troy, running 10x5 band 25 CA. Looks like 8321 is the DL & UL with 8665 as the 2nd DL channel. iPhone makes it hard to tell. Good speed though.


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One of the service mode screens should show you the cell identity and the EARFCN of the primary carrier. That should be able to tell you if B25 10+5 CA is happening. 

[Joseph Monsour]

I’ll have to check next time I’m down there, it’s still 5 MHz B25 where I live. We just got our first tower in town with B41 though so changes are coming


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[burnout8488]

Owego, NY got B25 2xCA turned on, this happened within the last week it seems. Pulling down 40-45Mbps now! My Magic Box gets me 30-35 indoors as well now at work, where it used to cap out around 20Mbps.

I was told B41 was scheduled within 6mo in January, but this is a nice stopgap solution. :-) 

 

Edit: Seems like this might be B25 10x10 now, not CA 

 

[joshnys8913]

On 3/27/2018 at 10:38 AM, burnout8488 said:

Owego, NY got B25 2xCA turned on, this happened within the last week it seems. Pulling down 40-45Mbps now! My Magic Box gets me 30-35 indoors as well now at work, where it used to cap out around 20Mbps.

I was told B41 was scheduled within 6mo in January, but this is a nice stopgap solution. :-) 

 

Edit: Seems like this might be B25 10x10 now, not CA 

 

That's great and all but I would like to see Sprint get 800 going in NY state (state wide not just Syracuse, Binghamton, NYC, and one or two here and there towers....., I can't imagine the IBEZ issue would still be lingering, its been a couple of years now). 

[RAvirani]

1 hour ago, joshnys8913 said:

That's great and all but I would like to see Sprint get 800 going in NY state (state wide not just Syracuse, Binghamton, NYC, and one or two here and there towers....., I can't imagine the IBEZ issue would still be lingering, its been a couple of years now). 

800 is coming up over all of New York state. Sadly, in those border areas, Canada is primary and the US is secondary, so L800 will be 3x3 (centered at EARFCN 8775). That being said, 5x5 L800 (centered at EARFCN 8763) is possible outside border regions in the rest of the state. 

[mirskyc]

All the GMO sites that recently had LTE turned on are lacking B26 and those sites tend to be the more rural ones which need B26. 

[burnout8488]

I think the whole Binghamton market now has 10x10 B25 enabled on full builds. Pulled down a nice 40+Mbps speedtest in Endwell, NY last night on a B25/26 only site. This is new as of the last week or two. 

Once the GMOs are upgraded to full-builds (should be this year if Sprint sticks to their timeline) then we will have B26 on every site. Most of NY is covered in GMO sites along the highways. They did an amazing job converting these all to B25 LTE in the last six months though, it was a very quick transition once they started. We can finally say that most of NYS is LTE now. 

[danlodish345]

18 hours ago, RAvirani said:

800 is coming up over all of New York state. Sadly, in those border areas, Canada is primary and the US is secondary, so L800 will be 3x3 (centered at EARFCN 8775). That being said, 5x5 L800 (centered at EARFCN 8763) is possible outside border regions in the rest of the state. 

3 Mhz is better then none in my opinion....

[burnout8488]

2 minutes ago, danlodish345 said:

3 Mhz is better then none in my opinion....

3Mhz won't affect coverage at all, right? Just max speeds? 

[danlodish345]

3Mhz won't affect coverage at all, right? Just max speeds? 

That's correct just speeds. But coverage will be unaffected.

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[Dkoellerwx]

8 hours ago, burnout8488 said:

3Mhz won't affect coverage at all, right? Just max speeds? 

It does affect the coverage slightly. Edge of cell performance will be impacted over a 5x5 carrier, but the impacts are not huge. 

[Joski1624]

My observation is that a 10x10  B25 carrier performs nearly identically to a 3x3 B26 carrier at the cell coverage edge when measured outdoors.  Once the signal strength drops below -115 on a 3MHz carrier, data throughput starts to really suffer.  An additional -10dB  can be tacked onto a B25 10x10 carrier before it suffers the same fate.  Maybe the only advantage is slightly better indoor coverage for B26.

[RAvirani]

2 hours ago, Joski1624 said:

My observation is that a 10x10  B25 carrier performs nearly identically to a 3x3 B26 carrier at the cell coverage edge when measured outdoors.  Once the signal strength drops below -115 on a 3MHz carrier, data throughput starts to really suffer.  An additional -10dB  can be tacked onto a B25 10x10 carrier before it suffers the same fate.  Maybe the only advantage is slightly better indoor coverage for B26.

That’s quite true in my experience as well. But, in scenarios with more obstacles (where signal loss due to walls, shrubbery, etc causes L1900 to take a big hit), L800 definitely outdoes L1900 due to superior propagation characteristics. 

Additionally, when VoLTE goes live, at -125 and potentially worse L800 signal levels (where L1900 simply isn’t available), L800 will probably be able to push just enough data through to maintain a call. 

[Tengen31]

It does affect the coverage slightly. Edge of cell performance will be impacted over a 5x5 carrier, but the impacts are not huge. 

That one thing I wish is that Sprint has enough 800 mhz Spectrum to do 10x10. Unfortunately they don't.

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[RAvirani]

55 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

That one thing I wish is that Sprint has enough 800 mhz Spectrum to do 10x10. Unfortunately they don't.

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Another 4 MHz below their current holdings would be very nice. The SMR spectrum that some other regional carriers operate in.