NV tower work in Denton MD (Delmarva) ?

[spdweb.net]

I have been a Sprint customer for about 4 years, switched from ATT due to an extended tower outage. My co-workers and I have been patiently awaiting the arrival of LTE on our personal Sprint devices. VZW lit up LTE here a couple weeks ago. Anyway, enough of the back story. The tower outside of where I work is both a Verizon and Sprint tower. The VZW equipment, being housed in a small building, and Sprints outdoors in a couple small cabinets. Today a truck rolled up with a trailer and a few large spools of cable. My excitement started to build as 4 guys got out and started working around the Sprint tower equipment. They first opened up all the equipment, then dug a hole, now two of them are climbing the tower pulling a line up with them. Could it be true? NV work in progress here in rural Maryland? Or perhaps just some repair work? This tower has been EXTREMLY slow as of late. Degraded signal and data throughput of around 15 - 20kbps sometimes even less.

 

From what I can see the logo on the truck just says TOWER and like a radio signal radiating out from it.

 

I have noticed some Ericson trucks (and one Siemens) going to and from the site in the past week or so as well but I believe those are for the VZW LTE rollout. I dunno about the Siemens truck. I believe the Sprint north east rollout is being done by Alcatel-Lucent no?

 

I have attached a pic for fun.... What I believe to be Sprints cabinets (small gray) has coaxial which runs to the bottom smallest array. Above that I believe is the VZW array, the coaxial for that comes out of a building which I know is Verizons because we lease space from them for our communications equipment which shares the same tower for its antenna (too small to really see lol) I do not know whats at the very top. That arrays coaxial comes out of a different building.

 

Can anyone confirm or deny my excitment!? lol

 

Thanks

-Matt

[S4GRU]

You are in an active deployment market. Seems completely feasible they are there for Sprint Network Vision/LTE upgrades. I would go ask the workers present for confirmation. Just make sure they are on the ground and doing something safe before you distract them. I do it all the time. Most will tell you what they are up to.

 

Robert

[spdweb.net]

I may just do that if I have a chance.

 

We have some Sprint devices here at work so I just pinged my Sprint rep to see what he knew. He said that tower is scheduled for NV upgrade the end of this month. With that news I am pretty positive thats what they are doing work for. It looks to me as though they are pulling a fiber backhaul up the tower.

 

I am really hoping this helps with the signal quality. In theory it wouldnt.. but I think something is wrong with the current array. As you can see from the picture I am but a few hundred yards from the tower and the signal is only -97dBm. At my house about a mile away its non existant. My VZ work phone off the same tower location gets near full signal at my house.

 

Crossing my fingers. I believe VZW is using a 700 or 750mhz spectrum while Sprint is 1900mhz? Hopfully they will start using the 800mhz iDEN spectrum soon.. that would also help. specially in this rural area.

 

Correct me if I am wrong in any of this.. I am mostly guessing.

[S4GRU]

I may just do that if I have a chance.

 

We have some Sprint devices here at work so I just pinged my Sprint rep to see what he knew. He said that tower is scheduled for NV upgrade the end of this month. With that news I am pretty positive thats what they are doing work for. It looks to me as though they are pulling a fiber backhaul up the tower.

 

I am really hoping this helps with the signal quality. In theory it wouldnt.. but I think something is wrong with the current array. As you can see from the picture I am but a few hundred yards from the tower and the signal is only -97dBm. At my house about a mile away its non existant. My VZ work phone off the same tower location gets near full signal at my house.

 

Crossing my fingers. I believe VZW is using a 700 or 750mhz spectrum while Sprint is 1900mhz? Hopfully they will start using the 800mhz iDEN spectrum soon.. that would also help. specially in this rural area.

 

Correct me if I am wrong in any of this.. I am mostly guessing.

 

In some areas they are deploying CDMA 800 now. They will not start LTE 800 until the 2nd half of 2013. On your site it will likely be just CDMA 1900 and LTE 1900 initially.

 

Robert

[spdweb.net]

In some areas they are deploying CDMA 800 now. They will not start LTE 800 until the 2nd half of 2013. On your site it will likely be just CDMA 1900 and LTE 1900 initially.

 

Robert

 

Thanks for the insight. I am looking forward more to enhanced coverage with the 800mhz spectrum then LTE personally. I am hoping all these improvments will bring a much needed boost in network speeds.. like I said before we are lucky to get a tenth of a mbit out of this tower most of the time. Where as speeds from surrounding towers are usually approching 2mbps for 3g service.

[spdweb.net]

Well.....

 

Physical tower work (which was indeed a NV upgrade) has been completed for 2 weeks now, and for about 2 weeks the tower has been boucing up and down. The tower seems to go down about 4 or 5 times every hour. Up for 5 minutes, down for 10, up for 5, down for 10. Etc. This has been going on for 2 weeks now like I said. I don't mind waiting paitently for an upgrade in service.. but only being able to carry on a conversation for 5 minutes at a time is getting a little old. The signal (when the tower is up) is also very degraded. Any ideas what may be going on? My co-workers and I have each called CS.. and they give us a time at which the problem should be resolved.. but that time comes and goes and nothing changes.

 

Anyone have any ideas what may be happening?

[S4GRU]

Well.....

 

Physical tower work (which was indeed a NV upgrade) has been completed for 2 weeks now, and for about 2 weeks the tower has been boucing up and down. The tower seems to go down about 4 or 5 times every hour. Up for 5 minutes, down for 10, up for 5, down for 10. Etc. This has been going on for 2 weeks now like I said. I don't mind waiting paitently for an upgrade in service.. but only being able to carry on a conversation for 5 minutes at a time is getting a little old. The signal (when the tower is up) is also very degraded. Any ideas what may be going on? My co-workers and I have each called CS.. and they give us a time at which the problem should be resolved.. but that time comes and goes and nothing changes.

 

Anyone have any ideas what may be happening?

 

What you are encountering is not common with Network Vision work. I would call CS yourself and insist on a Ticket #. If you don't get a ticket number, then likely nothing has been filed for service. Also, I would inquire about a service credit for your bill for the inconvenience.

 

Sorry I have no more info to provide about your issue. Best of luck.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

[spdweb.net]

Thanks for the reply.. there seems to be two issues with this tower. First is the tower itsself, degraded signal which has been going on for quite some time. As the crow flies I live 1.5 miles from the tower can only get -100 / -105dBm standing on my roof with one foot. Right now I am literally 100 yards from the tower at work (its right on our property) and am only getting -97dBm.

 

Ever since the NV work the tower bounces up and down up and down.. with periods of GREAT signal strength.. but most of the time its on par or worse then it has been.

 

Second is data speeds. On the best day at the times this tower is up.. we can see throughput of around 20 - 30kbps.. with a ping latency around 800ms or even over 1000ms at some times. Dialup speeds here.. The tower has had these barely usable data speeds for over a year. many many complaints have been filed with CS

 

When I saw NV work at the tower I was excited that these would be resolved.. but it seems like they are waiting on something. Perhaps the copper to the tower is not up to par to carry the needed bandwidth?

 

At this point I don't even know which equipment is active. I really hope its not the new NV equipment. Would the CID or LAC change when the new equipment comes online?

 

We were told the issues would be fixed last night at 6pm. and so far... the tower has quit bouncing.. BUT.. with degraded signal and barely usable data speeds. IE: it takes 30 seconds to load google.. and pandora wont stream at all. Old equipment back online? Do they test data throughput when they setup an new NV tower?

[spdweb.net]

Just got off the phone with sprint. The trouble ticket had been closed. The tower was operating normally according to them. NV upgrades complete. This is our new NV tower. A new ticket has been opened.

 

The tower is not constantly dropping now.. but throughput is... yeah.. just take a look.

 

 

 

 

 

[koiulpoi]

Just got off the phone with sprint. The trouble ticket had been closed. The tower was operating normally according to them. NV upgrades complete. This is our new NV tower. A new ticket has been opened.

 

The tower is not constantly dropping now.. but throughput is... yeah.. just take a look.

Have you tried it with a Sprint device other than your aircard/hotspot? The issue could be with your computer.

[spdweb.net]

Thanks for the reply.

 

Its defiantly not the device. These screen shots were taken from my work laptop, however, my personal Sprint phone acts the same way.. as well as a co-workers. We also have 30+ out of 200 or so data devices on Sprint at work ranging from USB, PCMCIA, and embedded cards.. they all act the same. (The other 170+ devices are on a different carrier). Unfortunately I work in IT so I am getting daily calls from those 30+ users asking why their cards do not work in this area.

 

Which also brings me too another question. As said, my personal device is a Sprint device (Evo 4g LTE) and my work issued phone is a Verizon device (ugh). Both cell sites are on the same physical tower structure, actually located at my work. I could have hit it with a rock during those speed tests. I am now at my house, as the crow flies about 1.5 miles or less from that tower. My Sprint phone is showing a signal of -103dBm which is not good at all, while my VZW device is near perfect at -83dBm. Is this really just the difference between the 800mhz spectrum vs 1900mhz? That seems like an awfully big difference to me. That's marginally poor service vs excellent service from the same physical structure. To add insult to injury I can pull down 18.22Mbps from the work phone. Don't get me wrong.. I am a Sprint fanboy all the way.. just trying to figure things out here.

 

When I first switched to Sprint from ATT 3 years ago I could get consistent data speeds of 2 - 3 Mbps.. and I swear the signal was better also.. but over the years its slowly degraded to what you see in the screen shots. I got very excited when they started NV work.. but I am a sorely disappointed and I think rightly so.

 

Sorry if this seems like a long rant but I have gone round and round with sprint support for the last year, both consumer and business support and have gotten no where.