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


sweyers

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checked out a few more towers over lunch to see if there were anymore deliveries of base cabinets i could find. Only found one new one out of 5 towers checked.

 

this tower is off of 2nd ave south of euclid

IMAG0312.jpg

 

also drove by the tower at MLK and hickman again and there were a couple of trucks there, didn't have time to stop and couldn't tell what they were doing but presumably it had something to do with the base cabinets that were delivered Monday. especially since the pic for the other tower shows the GPS antenna so i'm guessing they are all wired up, all the other cabinets i'd seen so far they were just sitting there.

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Downtown speeds improved in the last couple of speedtests i made just now. Ping was about 100 ms and download speeds about 1 mb. I'm wondering if they are doing some work on the tower which I am assuming is the Falcon Drive tower. I didnt get an LTE signal. Maybe everyone is just gone from downtown today?

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Downtown speeds improved in the last couple of speedtests i made just now. Ping was about 100 ms and download speeds about 1 mb. I'm wondering if they are doing some work on the tower which I am assuming is the Falcon Drive tower. I didnt get an LTE signal. Maybe everyone is just gone from downtown today?

 

i would guess that everyone is just gone ;) even if they are doing work on downtown towers and new equipment is installed they have to bring the 3G side up in clusters on the new equipment in order to not cause interference between new equipment and legacy equipment. thats my guess anyway :)

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Guest mbrinson

The other day a guy I work with was saying when he was out in West Des Moines he was getting a 4G signal, anyone have any insight on this possibility or has anyone else gotten a 4G signal?

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The other day a guy I work with was saying when he was out in West Des Moines he was getting a 4G signal, anyone have any insight on this possibility or has anyone else gotten a 4G signal?

. Could it have been Wimax possibly? I know there are some protection sites there.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

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The other day a guy I work with was saying when he was out in West Des Moines he was getting a 4G signal, anyone have any insight on this possibility or has anyone else gotten a 4G signal?

 

that would be awesome! if you can find out where he was i will check it out. do you know what phone he has? like the above poster said, there are 3 Wimax sites in des moines. 1 is on the corner of douglas and lower beaver, the other is at downling high school across from sams club/walmart and the other is way over on the east side. so depending on where he was in west des moines he may or may not have picked those up. of course if he doesn't have a wimax phone and does have a LTE phone then none of that matters :) 

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that would be awesome! if you can find out where he was i will check it out. do you know what phone he has? like the above poster said, there are 3 Wimax sites in des moines. 1 is on the corner of douglas and lower beaver, the other is at downling high school across from sams club/walmart and the other is way over on the east side. so depending on where he was in west des moines he may or may not have picked those up. of course if he doesn't have a wimax phone and does have a LTE phone then none of that matters :)

I work in West Des Moines/Clive off of 80/35 and I haven't seen any LTE there yet.

 

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I was at the Farmer's Market over the weekend, and with my iPhone 4S I was pulling 1.3mb down!!!  Impressive speeds lately!  I live in the Woodland Heights neighborhood, and get one to three sprint bars in my house (NEVER goes into roaming, fortunately).  I am just running a SpeedTest now and I'm getting 1.2mb down and 500k up...not too shabby for 3G.  I'm thinking since they're working on the towers this week, I think I'll switch back to my EVO LTE to watch it like a hawk for LTE...I'll scream it from the rooftops (not literally, but on social media!)  Am also waiting for the 4.2/Sense 5 update on the EVO LTE....

 

That said, I've always been a mobile phone fanatic, and I should get educated on identifying towers...anyone want to get together and grab Starbucks or something sometime?  Kind of blindly asking, I know, but nobody besides you guys and girls are interested in mobile phones this much!

 

Thanks!

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I was at the Farmer's Market over the weekend, and with my iPhone 4S I was pulling 1.3mb down!!!  Impressive speeds lately!  I live in the Woodland Heights neighborhood, and get one to three sprint bars in my house (NEVER goes into roaming, fortunately).  I am just running a SpeedTest now and I'm getting 1.2mb down and 500k up...not too shabby for 3G.  I'm thinking since they're working on the towers this week, I think I'll switch back to my EVO LTE to watch it like a hawk for LTE...I'll scream it from the rooftops (not literally, but on social media!)  Am also waiting for the 4.2/Sense 5 update on the EVO LTE....

 

That said, I've always been a mobile phone fanatic, and I should get educated on identifying towers...anyone want to get together and grab Starbucks or something sometime?  Kind of blindly asking, I know, but nobody besides you guys and girls are interested in mobile phones this much!

 

Thanks!

 

welcome to the site! honestly your best option for tower spotting is to become a sponsor, you can find info on becoming one here. that will give you access to a map of all of the sprint towers in des moines, and the entire country. then you won't be wasting any time when you are out tower spotting checking towers that aren't sprint ones :) there is also this thread here that has pictures of the new equipment they are installing so you will know what to look for.

 

if you do decide to donate and become a sponsor Robert will have to upgrade your account and he is out on a family vacation so it may take a day or so for him to upgrade your account.

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For what it's worth, I'm in Urbandale(Northeast of Living History Farms) right now and getting 0.8-1.1Mbps down now. This never happens! Grinning ear to ear.

 

iPhone 4S

 

Update: Back to earth. Speeds are back to the ~0.1Mbps range. So a fluke or work was being done or somebody who knows more than me could explain, lol.

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Speeds downtown are still poor today. Ping at 450 ms and sometimes can't even ping. Guess last week was a one off for now. We have a lot of people that stream pandora and such downtown at offices here so bandwidth gets eaten up pretty fast. I can tell the tower is over by the school so I'll have to drive by tonight and see if there is anything going on.

 

 

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The other day a guy I work with was saying when he was out in West Des Moines he was getting a 4G signal, anyone have any insight on this possibility or has anyone else gotten a 4G signal?

 

 

i will be out in the jordan creek area tonight, will see if i can pick anything up, hopefully i'll be able to drive around to the towers to verify.

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i will be out in the jordan creek area tonight, will see if i can pick anything up, hopefully i'll be able to drive around to the towers to verify.

That's a good test. I was there over the weekend and it is pretty overloaded too. Indoors and outside. Can't wait for this work to be done!!!

 

 

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Are they turning on 4G as they get done with the towers ? If so that's great news for me since I'm right across the street from the MLK and Hickman tower.

If backhaul is there and ready to go then yes, customers will be allowed to use it.

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Interesting thought with Iowa being one of the last to get an LTE upgrade and how fast technology gets better. Will we be getting the latest equipment then say California who was first to get LTE?

 

 

i would say that all of the equipment is probably going to be mostly the same as what they installed in the first markets. since we are closer to last, and our deployment didn't start until after the nextel shutdown, i would say our chances of having 800 voice and 800 LTE off the bat would be higher as there wouldn't really be a reason not to install it and turn it on while they are here doing everything else and that would save a trip back here.

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just got a text from my brother, had him scouting out ames towers for me, he found one a little north of ames off of interstate 35 with new base cabinets installed :)

 

IMG_0546.jpg

 

 

he also thought the one off of lincoln way might have new cabinets but he couldn't get close enough to confirm.

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went out last night looking for upgrade work, went to most of the towers around Urbandale, Clive, Grimes, and West Des Moines and didn't see any other signs of work and didn't pick up any 4G signals (wasn't expecting to just confirming). I *think* they are running fiber to the Ryko water tower on the south side of Grimes next to 80/35 off 141 but they weren't close enough to the tower yet to say for sure. Also out of the 5 towers that i've confirmed do have base cabinets installed i found guide wires run at 2 of them (one at MLK and Hickman, the other off 2nd ave south of Euclid).

 

I did confirm that the work at the Clive water tower is them repainting it. Still not sure who/why the temporary tower they setup is for as there are a lot of carriers besides sprint on that tower yet only one set of panels on the temp tower. here is a pic of those in case anyone can tell whose they are

 

IMG_5821CR2.jpg

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Found a tower getting new panels installed!!!!!!! :D not sure if its the first one in the Des Moines area, but its the first one i've found.

 

IMG_5824CR2.jpg

 

IMG_5825CR2.jpg

 

 

this one is off of 2nd ave just south of Euclid. Also checked the one by MLK and Hickman, no panels up top yet but there were people there working.

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Sweet!  I am pretty sure it isn't turned on, but I'll swing over to Euclid and 2nd after I get off work today to see if it's turned on!!!

 

when i was there around noon it looked like they had 2 of the 3 panels up. if i had to guess i would say we won't have a live LTE signal from it for at least another week. and thats if all the different parts are lined up and happen one right after the other. once the panels are installed they will need to be hooked up to the base cabinets, i'm sure there is probably some work to install things in the base cabinets as well. backhaul will need to be hooked up. then an inspector will need to come out and there will probably be a list of things that will need fixed, then once that list is fixed they can start testing it and then it will hopefully be live. so probably 2 week minimum ;)

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Looks like the wire is down at the tower at MLK and Hickman, I wonder if they got the antennas up ?

 

just got back from that tower, the guide wires are still there, no panels up top yet. Also stopped by the one off lower beaver by the interstate and there are now guide wires there, someone was there working, looked like they had just got done putting them up.

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