Network Vision/LTE - Central Iowa Market (Des Moines and surrounding areas)

[sweyers]

Noticed there wasn't a thread for Central Iowa, if anyone has any insight as to progress in the area, please contribute to this thread!

[S4GRU]

Work is starting now. Brace ya'selves!

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

 

[BigJohn2]

here is were most of the info will be at. http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/636-network-vision-site-map-nebraskaiowa-markets/

 

Later,

 

John

[sweyers]

here is were most of the info will be at. http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/636-network-vision-site-map-nebraskaiowa-markets/

 

Later,

 

John

Have to be a sponsor to go to that link. Of course most of the info will be there. I just thought Central Iowa deserved a market thread like everyone else.

[Dkoellerwx]

Have to be a sponsor to go to that link. Of course most of the info will be there. I just thought Central Iowa deserved a market thread like everyone else.

 

It certainly does. Seems we just hadn't had enough interest from the area yet for a thread, but you're welcome to one! As soon as we know anything about sites in progress, or sites accepted, it will be posted here. Right now, all we know is what Robert said, that deployment is underway now, and we should be seeing some progress soon!

 

Let us know if you see anything going on, and welcome to the site!

[dleewee]

The tower near Des Moines golf & country club I think has something happening as I've had very poor signal and even flipped to roaming a while today from a location with usually a good signal. I have not seen LTE, so no clue if they are actually upgrading it or just some kind of outage. I'll update if anything fun happens.

 

Thanks to OP for starting this, I can't wait to see some LTE around Des Moines.

[bmoses]

i've been watching towers that i frequent by for weeks now and haven't seen any work yet. I have a feeling though that a lot of the towers around here will initially be ground mount units as there are a lot of monopole and water tower towers that i'm not sure will support RRUs without further engineering. not only that but most of the towers around here the base cabinets are hidden from view if you are just driving by so it makes it hard to see if new cabinets have been installed.

 

i'm thinking also that backhaul will be a major component in this area as a lot of sprint towers are on their own and not co-located with other carriers so they won't have fiber already there they can utilize.

 

and one last thought hopefully when sprint gets done with NV they come back and do some re-engineering of their network in the des moines market, looking at tower locations (found in the sponsor section) there are quite a few areas that have expanded and are not covered by very many towers at all. so there are quite a few areas i've driven around where signal is lost because there are too many gaps between towers to properly hand off to.

 

anyway, i'll be posting here and in the iowa thread in the sponsor section when i start to see work being done

[Justindcarter79]

I knew I got an iPhone 5 for a reason ! Bring on the blazing LTE speed !

[Justindcarter79]

I wonder when we might see LTE start kicking on ? I will be sure to keep my eyes peeled and let you guys know when I start seeing it.

[bmoses]

it sounds like preliminary work is starting now. I'm guessing that means lining up permits (if needed) and getting the backhaul vendors lined up to start installing backhaul. Then tower work can commence. My best guess is we would start seeing a live LTE signal in 2+ months.

[BigJohn2]

just looked at the NV tread in the sponsor area. Looks like more towers in this area are in progress. Just can't wait to see when they go live with LTE.

 

Later,

 

John

[Justindcarter79]

How do you tell on the network enhancements map that LTE upgrades have been done ? Data speed upgrades ?

[S4GRU]

How do you tell on the network enhancements map that LTE upgrades have been done ? Data speed upgrades ?

 

You can't. It doesn't say. Speed upgrades just mean that backhaul has been upgraded. Backhaul can be upgraded on a legacy site and just may be additional T1 lines. Most LTE sites will show speed upgrades also, but not all speed upgrades are for LTE sites.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

[Justindcarter79]

I'm assuming people getting 3 of the same text is because they are working on the towers ?

[bmoses]

I'm assuming people getting 3 of the same text is because they are working on the towers ?

 

are you saying you are getting multiple texts or yours are failing and you have to resend multiple times? I see you have listed that you have an iphone5, my wife, brother, and his wife all have this phone and they have a random problem where texts will say they failed to send on their iphone but the person they sent it to did receive the text, then if they resend it the person will get it again. I've never had that problem on my EVO 4G LTE nor has any of my other family with non-iphones complained about it. So if that's the problem you are talking about i would say its an iphone/sprint issue and not related to any tower work being done yet.

[sweyers]

just looked at the NV tread in the sponsor area. Looks like more towers in this area are in progress. Just can't wait to see when they go live with LTE.

 

Later,

 

John

You majorly got my hopes up. Maybe you meant to post in East Iowa forum, but as of now that's where all the progress is. Not a single site on the map in the Central Iowa market yet. But I will say, much of Eastern Iowa needs NV much worse than Des Moines. Everytime I have been to the Quad Cities in the past 2 years or so (many times, I have family there) the network has been abysmal.

[sweyers]

i've been watching towers that i frequent by for weeks now and haven't seen any work yet. I have a feeling though that a lot of the towers around here will init1ially be ground mount units as there are a lot of monopole and water tower towers that i'm not sure will support RRUs without further engineering. not only that but most of the towers around here the base cabinets are hidden from view if you are just driving by so it makes it hard to see if new cabinets have been installed.

 

i'm thinking also that backhaul will be a major component in this area as a lot of sprint towers are on their own and not co-located with other carriers so they won't have fiber already there they can utilize.

 

and one last thought hopefully when sprint gets done with NV they come back and do some re-engineering of their network in the des moines market, looking at tower locations (found in the sponsor section) there are quite a few areas that have expanded and are not covered by very many towers at all. so there are quite a few areas i've driven around where signal is lost because there are too many gaps between towers to properly hand off to.

 

anyway, i'll be posting here and in the iowa thread in the sponsor section when i start to see work being done

Yes there are quite a few "fringe" areas between towers in the Des Moines area. However, considering how much less I pay a month on Sprint than I would on VZ/ATT/USCC, I find the coverage to be adequate, if just barely. I rarely, if eber, completely lose a signal. I didn't count TMO even though they are cheaper, they are not a viable option in my area/personal situation.

 

I don't know how normal it is but we have a LOT of towers on top of stuff. My main tower that I use everyday is on top of the old grain elevator in Waukee. There's towers on top of both the Marriott on Jordan Creek Parkway and the Sheraton at 50th and University, both roughly 12 stories high. There's a tower on top of an office building on Valley West Drive, roughly 8 stories. One on the Clive water tower on University. And that's just on my side of town. Numerous monopole towers as well like you mentioned. But none of these locations make it easy to see whether work is going on or not. I wonder how much impact these "non traditional" towers will have on progress in this area.

 

[bmoses]

Yes there are quite a few "fringe" areas between towers in the Des Moines area. However, considering how much less I pay a month on Sprint than I would on VZ/ATT/USCC, I find the coverage to be adequate, if just barely. I rarely, if eber, completely lose a signal. I didn't count TMO even though they are cheaper, they are not a viable option in my area/personal situation.

 

I don't know how normal it is but we have a LOT of towers on top of stuff. My main tower that I use everyday is on top of the old grain elevator in Waukee. There's towers on top of both the Marriott on Jordan Creek Parkway and the Sheraton at 50th and University, both roughly 12 stories high. There's a tower on top of an office building on Valley West Drive, roughly 8 stories. One on the Clive water tower on University. And that's just on my side of town. Numerous monopole towers as well like you mentioned. But none of these locations make it easy to see whether work is going on or not. I wonder how much impact these "non traditional" towers will have on progress in this area.

 

i know what you mean! i would say about half of the towers i've seen myself around here are "non-traditional" towers. From what i have been reading on here i'm guessing there are 2 scenarios that will play out for our market.

 

1) all sites are GMO installs and then sometime later they will come back and do a full build with new panels on as many towers as they can, regardless of what kind of tower.

 

2) all non-traditional sites are GMO installs and all traditional sites are full builds and then they come back later and convert all of the GMO sites they can to full builds.

 

while option 1 would obviously give us improved 3G and 4G everywhere i'm hoping for option 2 as the full builds with RRUs will help increase signal and will also give us the option for 800 on voice to help fill in gaps initially until they come back and finish out the upgrades.

[S4GRU]

 

i know what you mean! i would say about half of the towers i've seen myself around here are "non-traditional" towers. From what i have been reading on here i'm guessing there are 2 scenarios that will play out for our market.

 

1) all sites are GMO installs and then sometime later they will come back and do a full build with new panels on as many towers as they can, regardless of what kind of tower.

 

2) all non-traditional sites are GMO installs and all traditional sites are full builds and then they come back later and convert all of the GMO sites they can to full builds.

 

while option 1 would obviously give us improved 3G and 4G everywhere i'm hoping for option 2 as the full builds with RRUs will help increase signal and will also give us the option for 800 on voice to help fill in gaps initially until they come back and finish out the upgrades.

 

We have a map located in the Premier Sponsor section of all the GMO sites in the Central Iowa market. About 1/3 are GMO's by my quick review.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

[bmoses]

We have a map located in the Premier Sponsor section of all the GMO sites in the Central Iowa market. About 1/3 are GMO's by my quick review.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

 

thanks so much for sharing that info! and yay for option 2!!!!

[Justindcarter79]

I am not seeing any work as of yet, but just the mention of Des Moines gives me hope. I am still convinced that one of the towers down the street from me that was added in the last couple years is a network vision site. If you put in 50313 zip code it is close to Cornell St and Broadway. I wouldn't think if they were adding towers they would put up old technology only to overhaul it maybe a year or two later ?

[bmoses]

I am not seeing any work as of yet, but just the mention of Des Moines gives me hope. I am still convinced that one of the towers down the street from me that was added in the last couple years is a network vision site. If you put in 50313 zip code it is close to Cornell St and Broadway. I wouldn't think if they were adding towers they would put up old technology only to overhaul it maybe a year or two later ?

 

unfortunately if it is only a few years old it will be legacy (non NV) equipment. NV didn't start until the last couple of years and towers that are new are planned for a long time before they are actually installed so it still would have been legacy equipment. The only thing it may have going for it is since its newer is they may have used fiber backhaul instead of T1 lines like most of their other towers have.

[Justindcarter79]

I may have spotted a tower upgrade in progress at the Douglas and beaver tower that was a WiMAX test site.

[bmoses]

If I remember right sprint isn't on that tower. That is the tower that has to be torn down and moved because of the Hy-Vee going in there. Which does bring up the question, what is clearwire going to do about replacing that protection site?

[bmoses]

I may have spotted a tower upgrade in progress at the Douglas and beaver tower that was a WiMAX test site.

 

yep i double checked the map, that isn't a sprint tower. So any work you saw was either another carrier or them getting things ready to move that tower or just pulling the equipment off since its being torn down.