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

[gostallion]

nice to know that I was not the only one that was out at 3 in the morning looking for LTE, but I did not find any on the east side. and I went by the Eastside library. maybe I need to pull tighter on the string.

[4starcashier]

Ooooo Methinks I will head that way after work (I get off at 7AM) and check it out!!!!!!!   YAAAAY!  LOL@CubbieFan82 for the Goonies reference...overplayed movie, but it's appropriate!

[4starcashier]

Sure enough, like I said, I went out to Hartford and SE 14th (I'm assuming the tower I saw just East of the intersection was the Sprint tower).

 

I was impressed with the speeds while downloading games (just for fun, I uninstalled them afterwards) from the Google Play Store.  2MB a second down and a 50MB file was finished in just under 60 seconds!  SOOOOO Excited!  NOW they just need to get Jordan Creek area, Downtown and the Woodland Heights neighborhood live!

 

Here are some pictures...enjoy!

[bmoses]

my turn to post pictures!!!!!

 

did anyone else have issues getting their phone to connect to the tower? i was sitting right under it and did airplane mode about 10 times and it wouldn't connect to 4G, finally i restarted it and then it connected when it loaded up. I drove around and lost 4G and when i got back in range it wouldn't pick it up again, this time i did a PRL update to force a rescan and it picked it up again. not sure what the deal was with that. Oh, its also on sensorly now too 

[Guest mbrinson]

I had no problem connecting. It literally connected automatically for me!

[njjdnt]

I had no problem connecting. It literally connected automatically for me!

Are we comparing an Iphone to an EVO on acquiring an LTE signal... EVO has been known to have issues. 

[Beef]

Sweet, that's right near my job site. I won't get anything done next week.

[gostallion]

At se14th and hartford with LTE!!!!! 6.6 mbps download, Fisher Price never went this fast!

[gostallion]

Now it is 12.7 mbps!!!! Woo hoo

[Guest mbrinson]

Are we comparing an Iphone to an EVO on acquiring an LTE signal... EVO has been known to have issues. 

my apologies didn't know you were comparing an evo to iphone sorry... im just happy to see some progress here finally!

[Justindcarter79]

I wonder how long until the other completed towers go live ?

[cerebasan]

I'm getting LTE at St Anthony's Church on Indianola Rd!

[Justindcarter79]

I think it's safe to say Des Moines will be on the next list to be officially announced for LTE.

[eleanos24]

NV Sites Accepted = 2%

Is now 

NV Sites Accepted = 11%

[Dkoellerwx]

I think it's safe to say Des Moines will be on the next list to be officially announced for LTE.

 

Announced... as in the "Coming Soon" list? Because it certainly won't be on the launched list. Detroit has had LTE, and quite a bit of it since ... this winter I think, but still hasn't been announced as "Coming Soon" or launched, so I wouldn't count on it. When it comes to Sprint marketing, you never know what's going to happen.

[Mr.Nuke]

I wonder how long until the other completed towers go live ?

Des Moines currently only has 1 completed (accepted tower).  So I don't know what you mean by the other completed towers. There are other towers in Des Moines that are in various stages of visible progress including having NV equipment installed on the sites. That said we have no way of knowing what behind the scenes things like testing and dialing in the signals that may still need to be done.

I think it's safe to say Des Moines will be on the next list to be officially announced for LTE.

I don't. Omaha had 7 or 8 towers live at the time of the last announcement and wasn't even on the coming soon list. Like Dkoellerwx said, it is a Sprint marketing thing and it is hard to discern anything there.

[bmoses]

I had no problem connecting. It literally connected automatically for me!

 

 

Are we comparing an Iphone to an EVO on acquiring an LTE signal... EVO has been known to have issues. 

 

 

my apologies didn't know you were comparing an evo to iphone sorry... im just happy to see some progress here finally!

 

i was not comparing an evo lte to an iphone. i know the evo lte has problems, but its issues are that it doesn't scan for LTE often enough and it doesn't hold onto weak signals very well. I was in neither of those scenarios since i was sitting right under the tower and was cycling airplane mode, which would force it to rescan. since it wasn't connecting to 4G i wanted to check and see if anyone else had any issues. 

 

earlier this summer i drove through KC and my phone had no issues connecting to LTE there so i didn't know if it was my phone or tower this time. 

 

mbrinson, thanks for your reply confirming you had no issues

[Dkoellerwx]

i was not comparing an evo lte to an iphone. i know the evo lte has problems, but its issues are that it doesn't scan for LTE often enough and it doesn't hold onto weak signals very well. I was in neither of those scenarios since i was sitting right under the tower and was cycling airplane mode, which would force it to rescan. since it wasn't connecting to 4G i wanted to check and see if anyone else had any issues. 

 

earlier this summer i drove through KC and my phone had no issues connecting to LTE there so i didn't know if it was my phone or tower this time. 

 

mbrinson, thanks for your reply confirming you had no issues

 

It seems a pattern that market's first sites are finicky as to when they let people connect. Also, apparently, an airplane mode cycle doesn't always for a full rescan if you had a very strong signal right before. Especially if you've never had LTE in the area before.

[bmoses]

I posted this in the west iowa/nebraska thread, figured it would be good to put it here now that we have a live tower

 

remember in a new market where there are only a few towers live, that 1 tower broadcasting LTE will have many more people connecting to it than when the market is complete and the rest of the towers have LTE too.

 

for example, if normally 1000 people are covered by 4 towers you would have 250 people per tower. if 1 of those 4 towers gets LTE and it can reach 750 of those 1000 people you will have 750 people connecting to that 1 tower. once the other 3 get upgraded it will go back down to 250 people on each tower so there will be less people sharing the bandwidth.

 

the max speed you can get from a single sector is 37.5 Mbps, the more people on that sector, the slower your speeds will be as you will all be sharing that bandwidth. in the future sprint will be adding LTE on 800Mhz and 2500Mhz, each of those frequencies will have their own max bandwidth too. but once people get phones that support those bands people will be split between 3 different frequencies so you all won't be sharing that 1 37.5 Mbps pipe anymore

[Beef]

Living up the 4g today. It's beautiful.

[WiWavelength]

Living up the 4g today. It's beautiful.

 

Every time I see Beef's username, I hear the music of Aaron Copland in my head.

 

 

AJ

[cerebasan]

Can the heat affect the towers? Service switched between evdo and 1x yesterday and was out for a bit downtown. Or is that indication they are working on LTE there?

[bmoses]

Can the heat affect the towers? Service switched between evdo and 1x yesterday and was out for a bit downtown. Or is that indication they are working on LTE there?

 

i'm no expert but i don't think it should, they design the equipment to work in all kinds of conditions. losing 3G or even service all together could be an indication that they were working on something, it could also just mean you lost 3G and service for a bit (aka it could mean nothing). There is no way to know for sure.

[TMan]

First post. 

 

Yesterday, I was at the blood center at E. 4th & Locust in Des Moines.  While parked in the chair with a needle in my arm, I had several minutes of intermittent 4G service.  SignalCheck Lite acknowledged a 4G signal as well.

 

Please let that be a sign of things coming soon.

 

Haven't seen it today in the core of downtown, but I imagine the East Village isn't covered by the same tower.

[bmoses]

First post. 

 

Yesterday, I was at the blood center at E. 4th & Locust in Des Moines.  While parked in the chair with a needle in my arm, I had several minutes of intermittent 4G service.  SignalCheck Lite acknowledged a 4G signal as well.

 

Please let that be a sign of things coming soon.

 

Haven't seen it today in the core of downtown, but I imagine the East Village isn't covered by the same tower.

 

welcome! did you happen to get a screen shot of signalcheck connected to 4G? i ask because i want to see if its the tower that is already 4G accepted or a new tower. if it was a weak intermittent signal it was probably the one that was already accepted, but if it was a stronger signal they could have been testing a new tower.

 

the serving cell ID of the current live tower is 07A04C0X (where X=0, 1, or 2 depending on what sector you are on).