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

[gostallion]

No LTE at the club tonight. But as soon as I stepped outside to socialize, I had full LTE bars. What's the deal? Does Sprint's LTE signal not work inside buildings or what? I know they have the 800 mhz plans or whatever, will that help inside buildings? Hopefully the next iPhone will support tri-band! And when is the deployment plan (I know nobody has the answer here, totally understand that, just frustrated and want to talk with other knowledgeable individuals on this forum)

 

the LTE on the default freq band (1900mhz) does not penetrate buildings very well because of the high frequency, in radio waves the lower the freq the farther the signal travels and better in building coverage, but lower bandwidth meaning a "channel" is wider and limits the number of channels.  higher freqs go shorter distances but wider bandwidth so more channels available.  Sprint has now 3 different bands of these freqs.  They are adding 800 mhz and 2600 mhz for a great tri-fecta, hence the Spark.  when it is done Sprint will have a great network using 800 for house penetration and distance, 1900 for normal use, and 2600 for dense areas to give many users fast data (limited range) such as a downtown area.  All this is why we need to gravitate to the tri-band phones.  The LTE and the CDMA (talk, text) are separate radios so you can get one without the other.  i don't know about the iphone but most of the existing androids (except the G2 and the updated S4) get LTE on 1900 and CDMA on 800 and 1900.  when buying a phone look for LTE and CDMA on all three bands.

[gostallion]

wait is over, i just got the 4.4 kitkat and 5.5 sense update on my HTC ONE!  now i gotta play with it to see whats new

[bmoses]

No LTE at the club tonight. But as soon as I stepped outside to socialize, I had full LTE bars. What's the deal? Does Sprint's LTE signal not work inside buildings or what? I know they have the 800 mhz plans or whatever, will that help inside buildings? Hopefully the next iPhone will support tri-band! And when is the deployment plan (I know nobody has the answer here, totally understand that, just frustrated and want to talk with other knowledgeable individuals on this forum)

 

as others have said it depends on what the building is made of, and how far away from the tower you were. signal can be strong bouncing around off buildings outside but not strong enough to penetrate a building unless there was direct LOS.

 

there is a schedule of LTE 800 sites and when they should be live by in the premier sponsors section. all i can say is that its coming.

 

no one knows about B41 for central iowa yet except that we should get it and sprint is starting that rollout the 2nd half of this year and they are planning on a 3 year rollout. where we fall in the time frame no one knows yet.

[cerebasan]

 they are planning on a 3 year rollout. where we fall in the time frame no one knows yet.

I'm feeling a Sprint joke coming on.....

[4starcashier]

Two weeks in and I still bounce between the LTE tower that's South of me and the 3G tower (which works better than the LTE tower).  Any updates on the Ingersoll Ave./University Ave. area near I-235 and Drake (Woodland Heights neighborhood)?  Please let me know!  Thank you!

[bmoses]

Two weeks in and I still bounce between the LTE tower that's South of me and the 3G tower (which works better than the LTE tower). Any updates on the Ingersoll Ave./University Ave. area near I-235 and Drake (Woodland Heights neighborhood)? Please let me know! Thank you!

Better buckle down and get used to it. We are in site by site mode where towers will get LTE as backhaul becomes available. There is no schedule and no time frame of when they will be done. They are at the mercy of the backhaul vendor now.

[Justindcarter79]

The tower on milk had back haul done before equipment and still hasn't come on, I'm assuming I'm waiting on Mediacom.

[DsmIowaGuy]

We've seen that at a few sites. They have run cable to the base station equip are from a pedestal maybe out by the road or somewhere. Our guess in these cases is that the telco or cable company still need to hook that pedestal up and may involve a longer run next to the road or such.

[cerebasan]

Is that why some towers are broadcasting LTE but are still crazy slow?

 

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[DsmIowaGuy]

Is that why some towers are broadcasting LTE but are still crazy slow?

 

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LTE sites could be slow for a myriad of reasons.  If it's live LTE there is fiber (or equiv) backhaul and fully deployed to 1900Mhz so that is not the issue.

 

Some issues with slow (in the Dsm market) could be attributed to some of the following and probably more that is above me:

 

Sector overload,  each sector (antenna panel) is only capable of ~37Mbps or close to that and if there are enough people on that sector using enough data as you can imagine that can certainly get used up.

 

Actual issues of sometype with the site or system.

 

Some things that will fix the overload will be that more sites deployed to LTE from 3G. Now with the limited LTE towers they are really getting over worked in some cases. Many phones try to hold that LTE signal even when closer to a 3G tower. So once all of the towers get converted to LTE the user/device load will get better spread around.

 

Another big thing will be that when LTE gets deployed onto Band 26 and Band 41 that allows users to be spread across the 3 sectors of 1900Mhz, 3 Sectors of 800Mhz and 3 sectors of 2500Mhz.  As you might imagine you have pushed the capacity of that site even further with the additions of those two additional frequency spectrums to handle that data traffic.

 

Once the full base station management system is put in place that will load balance and make choices that will optimize the frequency use for devices.

[Dkoellerwx]

Is that why some towers are broadcasting LTE but are still crazy slow?

 

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Dsm got into a lot of details there, but usually the explanation for a slow site is simply it's overcrowded. In this case, it's because only a few sites out of the total sites are actually broadcasting LTE right now. When more sites are activated, things should level out.

[matkinsonsp]

I'm getting a lte signal from the Borne Ave site here in Ames.

[bmoses]

I'm getting a lte signal from the Borne Ave site here in Ames.

Got accepted today :-)

[Justindcarter79]

I wonder when the remaining towers will get finished, still nothing on MLK. When do they start round 2 ?

[cerebasan]

Yes waiting on Mediacom to get the back haul run downtown is getting pretty old. I can't imagine it is that difficult to get access. They have the bandwidth available. So its just not getting scheduled/done.

 

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[DsmIowaGuy]

Yes waiting on Mediacom to get the back haul run downtown is getting pretty old. I can't imagine it is that difficult to get access. They have the bandwidth available. So its just not getting scheduled/done.

 

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Funny you mention downtown.  It's actually very difficult to get fiber many times in the downtown, worse than suburban and residential areas.  Reason being many times you can get fiber out in the street or pedestal but then getting it run in wire chases in the bldg is a nightmare.  For varied reasons some being City permits, most being bldg hassles, bldg owners, bldg super's, etc, etc.   Generally in the suburban areas and residential areas say in Des Moines you run it directly to your equipment fairly quick because you don't have all those extra steps to go through. 

 

I was actually surprised at how quick we got it at two downtown sites to be honest. One of them that was one of the last to get NV and then fairly quickly had LTE light up.

[Justindcarter79]

I would think it will be a while if they need to do any digging due to the ground freeze and ongoing polar vortex. Yes I used polar vortex. Lol

[Mr.Nuke]

I would think it will be a while if they need to do any digging due to the ground freeze and ongoing polar vortex.

Trenching has continued throughout the winter.

[nmwust]

Not the strongest signal from home but looks like LTE is alive in Indianola.

 

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[gostallion]

For awhile I was getting 1X800 and in many locations 4G LTE, but now I still get the 4G but no 800, only 1xRTT. Did they shut off the 800 or something? I'm back to poor coverage in the house.

[bmoses]

For awhile I was getting 1X800 and in many locations 4G LTE, but now I still get the 4G but no 800, only 1xRTT. Did they shut off the 800 or something? I'm back to poor coverage in the house.

1x800 is still alive and around. A couple of weeks ago they sent out a new prl that changed it so 1x1900 was scanned for first instead of 1x800 getting scanned for first. You will still connect to 1x800 if your phone loses 1x1900 or the network thinks you need to be on it, otherwise it will park on 1x1900 for the most part now.

[gostallion]

Thanks bmoses, I have been dropping ALOT of calls suddenly and my signal check pro hasn't come up with 800 on those occasions. I have it set in the notification bar to show connection. I am on 55018 PRL, maybe I need a different one, hmmmm

[gostallion]

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[dleewee]

The xxx18 PRLs are the ones that changed to scan 1900 first. If you move back to xxx17 you will see the old behavior.

 

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[gostallion]

ok, good to know, now how do i set the PRL back to an older one??????????