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Network Vision/LTE - East Iowa Market (Quad Cities, Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, Dubuque, Waterloo/Cedar Falls)


S4GRU

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Edit: Wow, two months without an update on this thread! 

 

According to Sprint on Twitter, there's a tower within 1.5 miles of 52001 that is going to be upgraded within 3 months. I have been tweeting #sprintcare on a regular basis, usually every month. They have to be getting tired of hearing from me.

 

I work on the west side of town and recently saw Centurytel working on fiber for a few days out there around the Pennsylvania / NW Arterial area. Hopefully it's for us and not for someone's Internet service.

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That would be awesome I am really close to that intersection. 1 tower won't be enough thou will it??? Can't wait to have it here finally hope more towers in Dbq get it. Does the tower out here have the antennas on it for lte?

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Check...THAT out!...look at that...it only works near Clarke though. But hey -- it's a step in the right direction, yes?

 

Sweet, finally! If you can grab the GCI and/or PCIs (aka Serving Cells), be sure to let us know so we can add them to the market map. They will help to determine which site you are connected to once others also begin to broadcast LTE.

 

I'd be on the lookout for CDMA 800 as well. Given that we haven't had any LTE activations on GMOs in this market (even though that's technically possible), that makes it likely that this site and others in Dubuque are already full-builds. If crews are in the area, that means that both 1x800 and B26 LTE should be coming very soon, which will make a big difference given the hilly terrain.

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Update! The serving cell for this one seems to be 466 on band 25.  I took a screenshot of this one but the signal strength was negative at the time, but it had been up to 25 dBm.

 

But wait, there's more! I captured this one down by Sacred Heart, near Jefferson School. Serving cell 9, band 25, and here's a speed test from that one.

 

Dubuque moving up in the world maybe?

 

Edit: Love how Samsung misspelled "engineering" lol.

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Update! The serving cell for this one seems to be 466 on band 25.  I took a screenshot of this one but the signal strength was negative at the time, but it had been up to 25 dBm.

 

But wait, there's more! I captured this one down by Sacred Heart, near Jefferson School. Serving cell 9, band 25, and here's a speed test from that one.

 

Dubuque moving up in the world maybe?

 

Edit: Love how Samsung misspelled "engineering" lol.

 

Those are both likely from the same site. Most sites will have three sectors (alpha, beta, gamma), each with their own PCI/Service Cell. Often, you'll find that those three sectors broadcast to the North, SE, and SW, respectively. If the site near Jefferson School was live, your signal at Sacred Heart would be much stronger. Service cell 9 has therefore most likely been assigned to the alpha sector of the one known accepted site.

 

Also, signal strengths (including both RSSI and RSRP) are always reported as negative values. The closer to zero, the stronger the signal. B25 LTE tends to be usable down to -120 or so. If you find a signal around -80 or better, you should be close enough to the site to see it and be sure that that is the site your phone is connected to. A quick drive around it will reveal all 3 PCIs, assuming the site has been properly configured.

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Ahh gotcha, I thought it was a different site since I knew there would also be one down there by Jefferson. That makes sense though, since I do notice both screenshots share a lot of the same numbers. 

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This morning while driving to work, I saw a crane extended up towards the tower by Sam's Club near Asbury Rd and NW Arterial in Dubuque. There were also some trucks surrounding the base of the tower. Going 60 MPH it was hard to see what was actually going on. But hopefully that means that particular tower will be going live soon!

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Drove by again during lunch and they had two guys up there in a basket doing something. Additionally, it looked like they were taking panels off the tower. I thought the hardware was installed on all the towers already? Either way, I hope it's soon.

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in most of the east iowa market towers were install as "GMO" towers, meaning all the base cabinet equipment was installed, but no new panels were installed, they were re-using the legacy panels. the trend appears to be that they are converting towers to full build (meaning new panels get installed) before they can get LTE. so assuming the work you saw was sprint they would have been installing the new NV panels and removing the legacy panels.

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were they working on the top rack there? the top rack is sprint's and does have the NV panels installed. They are the big ones in the middle with the 2 RRUs mounted behind the panel.

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were they working on the top rack there? the top rack is sprint's and does have the NV panels installed. They are the big ones in the middle with the 2 RRUs mounted behind the panel.

 

Yes, both times I went by they were working on the top rack.

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