Network Vision/LTE - West Michigan Market (Grand Rapids/Lansing/Kalamazoo)

[jefbal99]

Need to identify Service Cell 453 as well, same terrible throughput.  Based on the known Sprint sites in the area here are the suspects...

 

MLK/Holmes

Frandor

Wood St, South of Lake Lansing Road

Clare St, near Sexton HS/Old GM plants

[jefbal99]

I spoke with TRV Escalations again on Tuesday and they are still looking into the data speeds in downtown Lansing.  They are trying to correlate the serving cell data to a site.  Now, I'm not an expert in cell phones, but I do work in enterprise networking.  I have a DB of every switch, router, etc by IP, network name, etc so that I can find problems.  I can't believe that it is taking Ericcson that long to locate the site(s) that I'm connecting to.

 

I have provided the exact GPS coordinates where I'm at and even invited them to send Ericcson here to complete their testing.

 

As stated before, if they could get backhaul to the lugnut, then this goes away real quickly as 3 new sectors downtown splits the load and its a happy network.  TRV did say that site is in the 90 day window, but its been in the 90 day window since the antennas/RRUs went up in August.

[jefbal99]

Serving Cell 453 is acting nice today, speed tests of 1Mbps+ down and 1-2Mbps up.  Serving Cell 110 is still junk less than 0.20Mbps down and failing speed tests up.

 

Got a surprising bump on the lugnut on 3G with speed tests averaging 0.70Mbps down and 0.75Mbps up, not sure if they got an extra T1 added in to help the congestion or are starting to hook up some real backhaul for NV.  This test was at 10:20am, so some pretty high usage for downtown.  This site is highly utilized/congested, I've never gotten close to 1.0Mbps here on 3G.

[cdk]

Serving Cell 453 is acting nice today, speed tests of 1Mbps+ down and 1-2Mbps up.  Serving Cell 110 is still junk less than 0.20Mbps down and failing speed tests up.

 

Got a surprising bump on the lugnut on 3G with speed tests averaging 0.70Mbps down and 0.75Mbps up, not sure if they got an extra T1 added in to help the congestion or are starting to hook up some real backhaul for NV.  This test was at 10:20am, so some pretty high usage for downtown.  This site is highly utilized/congested, I've never gotten close to 1.0Mbps here on 3G.

 

Did you notice an improvement in ping times?

[jefbal99]

Did you notice an improvement in ping times?

Serving Cell 110 pings were up from the 30ms-50ms to 118-119ms

I don't have pings times from 453 as I've been shifted back to 110.

 

The 3G pings ranged from 133ms-308ms.

 

Edit in: got shifted back to 453 and the pings are around 100ms

[Overboost]

Of course, the few towers that aren't LTE in the Portage - Three Rivers part of 131 are the ones that are most important to me. Is it too much to ask to finish those 3 or 4 towers up to totally serve the area?

[gifters]

Yes it is, no backhaul for you. The tower closest to my house has had 800 mhz forever now and still no LTE its setup for microwave... Sprint needs to run the backhaul through my yard and I'll take a fiber line to my house while they're at it.

Of course, the few towers that aren't LTE in the Portage - Three Rivers part of 131 are the ones that are most important to me. Is it too much to ask to finish those 3 or 4 towers up to totally serve the area?

[Blueshirt]

Yeah, I feel your pain.  Inside the building at work In downtown Battle Creek, I connect to the only 3G site in the area.  250ish ping and 0.05 down/0.10 up are normal speeds between 8AM and until I get out of work and outside to pick up a LTE signal...

 

 

Serving Cell 453 is acting nice today, speed tests of 1Mbps+ down and 1-2Mbps up.  Serving Cell 110 is still junk less than 0.20Mbps down and failing speed tests up.

 

Got a surprising bump on the lugnut on 3G with speed tests averaging 0.70Mbps down and 0.75Mbps up, not sure if they got an extra T1 added in to help the congestion or are starting to hook up some real backhaul for NV.  This test was at 10:20am, so some pretty high usage for downtown.  This site is highly utilized/congested, I've never gotten close to 1.0Mbps here on 3G.

[jefbal99]

Yeah, I feel your pain.  Inside the building at work In downtown Battle Creek, I connect to the only 3G site in the area.  250ish ping and 0.05 down/0.10 up are normal speeds between 8AM and until I get out of work and outside to pick up a LTE signal...

I connect to LTE, but on a couple of serving cells, data is unusable.  I'm hoping that they can figure something out or get the LugNut site lit up.

[jefbal99]

Still working with TRV on the data issues in Downtown Lansing.  On positive, the site near Grange Rd (96, Eagle/Westphalia exit) went live with LTE over the weekend.  One less drop into 3G for me  Just need some eSMR service from that site now.

[Shima]

Not to go too far off topic from the current thread, but I am seeking help with dropped calls. 

 

Our situation is dropped calls with what I will blame on the proximity of the towers around us.  We live near 76th and Burlingame between Byron Center and Cutlerville.  We have 2 Galaxy S4's and one iphone 5.  From what I understand the iphone 5 will not run the 800 voice (1X 800) due to being in the wrong band, so it's the worst of our 3 phones for dropping calls.  The S4's, will most times connect to the 1X 800, but then fail back over to the 3 or 4 Air Raves in our subdivision.  We've talked to Sprint Customer Service and Air Rave support, and received credits - $100 over 4 months, and now another 10% off my company discount for the rest of the plan, which ends in June 2015.  Air Rave support has tried white listing our numbers from the various Air Raves to no end.  We are Sprint believers and want to stay on board, but need a remedy for the calls being dropped. I do know that when we can stay locked on one of several towers on 1X 800 for the S4's we are golden, but they keep failing back to the Air Raves randomly, and when calls add up on the AR's, we are hard dropped, sometimes 3 or 4 times in a conversation. 

 

Is there any way that a Spark phone will help? I am thinking it won't matter as the towers are not placed well, and even with 800 Data we will face the same calling problems.  Does anyone know when the wifi calling app will be out for the S4?  I know it has launched on the S4 mini and mega.  Does a custom Rom help with tweaking settings to avoid Air Rave connections?  My phone is rooted, but the other S4 is not.   

 

Please help as we are pretty frustrated with this situation. 

 

As a side note, I had an Air Rave as well, installed for about a month last Sept./Oct. and I was promised it was free. I bought it on Ebay for 40 bucks and had Air Rave Support add it to our account.  The next billing cycle we were charged for adding a line to the plan, and the monthly $5 for the Air Rave on the plan.  I was very upset as I was told one thing and delivered another on the bill, so I had them remove it from the account and had to argue to get a refund, which customer service agreed to in the end. 

[jefbal99]

Not to go too far off topic from the current thread, but I am seeking help with dropped calls. 

 

Our situation is dropped calls with what I will blame on the proximity of the towers around us.  We live near 76th and Burlingame between Byron Center and Cutlerville.  We have 2 Galaxy S4's and one iphone 5.  From what I understand the iphone 5 will not run the 800 voice (1X 800) due to being in the wrong band, so it's the worst of our 3 phones for dropping calls.  The S4's, will most times connect to the 1X 800, but then fail back over to the 3 or 4 Air Raves in our subdivision.  We've talked to Sprint Customer Service and Air Rave support, and received credits - $100 over 4 months, and now another 10% off my company discount for the rest of the plan, which ends in June 2015.  Air Rave support has tried white listing our numbers from the various Air Raves to no end.  We are Sprint believers and want to stay on board, but need a remedy for the calls being dropped. I do know that when we can stay locked on one of several towers on 1X 800 for the S4's we are golden, but they keep failing back to the Air Raves randomly, and when calls add up on the AR's, we are hard dropped, sometimes 3 or 4 times in a conversation. 

 

Is there any way that a Spark phone will help? I am thinking it won't matter as the towers are not placed well, and even with 800 Data we will face the same calling problems.  Does anyone know when the wifi calling app will be out for the S4?  I know it has launched on the S4 mini and mega.  Does a custom Rom help with tweaking settings to avoid Air Rave connections?  My phone is rooted, but the other S4 is not.   

 

Please help as we are pretty frustrated with this situation. 

 

As a side note, I had an Air Rave as well, installed for about a month last Sept./Oct. and I was promised it was free. I bought it on Ebay for 40 bucks and had Air Rave Support add it to our account.  The next billing cycle we were charged for adding a line to the plan, and the monthly $5 for the Air Rave on the plan.  I was very upset as I was told one thing and delivered another on the bill, so I had them remove it from the account and had to argue to get a refund, which customer service agreed to in the end. 

Sounds like the might be going backwards on the local AirRaves, you'd need to be blacklisted so your phones won't connected vs. being whitelisted so that they can connect.  There is also the possibility that an AirRave is registered to address A, but operating at Address B and Sprint wouldn't know what AirRave to modify.

 

Since you are a sponsor, you could go and get one of DigiBlur's custom PRLs in the sponsor forums.  I believe there is one that drops AirRave support and has 800Mhz as a higher priority.  Worst case, he occasionally does custom PRLs for a donation to S4GRU.

 

Spark device wouldn't help as it would still connect to the AirRave for the voice calls.

 

There has been no new updates on Wifi Calling since the initial release.  It will probably come with the next software update for your device.

[Shima]

Sounds like the might be going backwards on the local AirRaves, you'd need to be blacklisted so your phones won't connected vs. being whitelisted so that they can connect.  There is also the possibility that an AirRave is registered to address A, but operating at Address B and Sprint wouldn't know what AirRave to modify.

 

Since you are a sponsor, you could go and get one of DigiBlur's custom PRLs in the sponsor forums.  I believe there is one that drops AirRave support and has 800Mhz as a higher priority.  Worst case, he occasionally does custom PRLs for a donation to S4GRU.

 

Spark device wouldn't help as it would still connect to the AirRave for the voice calls.

 

There has been no new updates on Wifi Calling since the initial release.  It will probably come with the next software update for your device.

 

Thanks for the info. I hope they are not backasswardsing (redneck lingo) the white vs. blacklisting.  I totally believe the addresses are incorrect in some instances, plus my wife was ready to go to all neighbors’ houses to let them know about 1X 800 and newer phones until I told her they possibly have iphones lol.  I've also noticed over the last couple days that even when Signal Check Pro says I am connected to the towers, that it's 1X RTT.  I wonder if this is due to the Spark upgrades, as I've heard there are places in GR where this is underway.  I will try and find time to check the custom PRL's and see if that makes a difference.  Also, Air Rave Support had my wife do a battery pull for 15 minutes this afternoon, to see if service would revert back to the towers, and her phone stayed on an Air Rave.  They claim they reduced the power on them, but she is still picking up service on them.  We will keep using trial and error on this until we figure something out. 

[jlbattagli]

Hey All,

 

Posting this here because I'm interested in a more local perspective. I'll be in the market for a new phone soon, and one of my priorities will be RF performance. Specifically comparing the LG G2, the Nexus 5 and the HTC M8. I travel a lot for work, but the bulk of my time is spent near the I-94 corridor (between Battle Creek and St. Joseph) or the US-131 corridor (between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids), with occasional excursions outside that range (Jackson/Lansing areas). I'm looking for local experiences/ recommendations for any of the three phones listed above, particularly with the tri-band performance or issues. There are obviously other differences between them, but those are more easily judged by a hands-on examination in the store.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice/opinions.

[jefbal99]

Hey All,

 

Posting this here because I'm interested in a more local perspective. I'll be in the market for a new phone soon, and one of my priorities will be RF performance. Specifically comparing the LG G2, the Nexus 5 and the HTC M8. I travel a lot for work, but the bulk of my time is spent near the I-94 corridor (between Battle Creek and St. Joseph) or the US-131 corridor (between Kalamazoo and Grand Rapids), with occasional excursions outside that range (Jackson/Lansing areas). I'm looking for local experiences/ recommendations for any of the three phones listed above, particularly with the tri-band performance or issues. There are obviously other differences between them, but those are more easily judged by a hands-on examination in the store.

 

Thanks in advance for any advice/opinions.

I got my Dad an Nexus 5 at Thanksgiving and I'm thoroughly impressed with the RF performance, it tops my Note 2, which is the best RF device I've ever used.  In West Michigan, you need a strong RF performer as the region was built by iPCS and the tower spacing is terrible.  SMR/800Mhz CDMA is helping a lot, but it is only on east of Portland.

 

My wife and mom have the Photon 4g LTE, while it is not the strongest RF device, it is not bad and serves them very well for their physical keyboard needs.

 

If I had had the space cash, I would have bought an N5 from Google Play last fall to replace my Note 2.

[jefbal99]

Still working with TRV on the data issues in Downtown Lansing.  On positive, the site near Grange Rd (96, Eagle/Westphalia exit) went live with LTE over the weekend.  One less drop into 3G for me  Just need some eSMR service from that site now.

Still pestering TRV weekly on downtown Lansing data issues.  Not sure is this is an anomaly or sign of things to come but getting 50-80ms ping, .50-1.0Mbps down and 1.54 Mbps up on 3G from the LugNut this morning.  Hoping that the fibre has been hooked up and they will light up LTE in the next day or so.

 

It was an anomoly on the 3G side, back to 230+ms pings with 0.03Mbps down and 0.06Mbps up

[maxsilver]

I'll echo jefbal99 above.

 

I'd only recommend strong RF devices in Michigan, on account of all the missing / closed down towers. 

 

The Nexus 5 is by far the strongest RF device I've ever used on Sprint. The battery life isn't the greatest though (although I'm a fairly heavy user -- normal users would probably find it totally fine).

 

Since the LG G2 is very similar hardware to the Nexus 5, If I knew then what I knew now, I would probably have picked that device, if only for the extra battery life.

[jlbattagli]

jefbal99 and maxsilver...

 

Thanks for your input, guys! I can see I'm going to have a tough choice to make in the next few weeks.  All three phones have pluses and minuses to consider; kinda wish I could take all three home for a week and just let them duke it out .

[jefbal99]

jefbal99 and maxsilver...

 

Thanks for your input, guys! I can see I'm going to have a tough choice to make in the next few weeks.  All three phones have pluses and minuses to consider; kinda wish I could take all three home for a week and just let them duke it out .

 get 14 days to return a device

[jlbattagli]

 get 14 days to return a device

Honestly, I had considered this. But it just seems uncool to do that when I already know I'd be returning two of them.

[koiulpoi]

get 14 days to return a device

 

 

Honestly, I had considered this. But it just seems uncool to do that when I already know I'd be returning two of them.

It might end up costing you a lot of money to do so, just FYI.

 

$35 restocking fee x 2 + $36 Activation Fee x 3 = $178!

 

Additionally, many stores will only let you exchange once within the 14-day return window. Returns count against the store in Sprint's eyes, so the salespeople also will not be happy with you!

[jlbattagli]

 

 

It might end up costing you a lot of money to do so, just FYI.

 

$35 restocking fee x 2 + $36 Activation Fee x 3 = $178!

 

Additionally, many stores will only let you exchange once within the 14-day return window. Returns count against the store in Sprint's eyes, so the salespeople also will not be happy with you!

Agreed. Even without the restocking fees, it just seems like a crappy thing to do. Don't want to abuse the system. It would be nice if they had a "loaner" that people could try for a few days before committing the bucks on a phone that may not suit their needs.

 

Yeah, I know; not realistic

[BRUCEinGR]

Hey folks,

 

I haven't been around here much lately, but tried looking around and didn't find what I'm looking for, so maybe someone can offer some input...

 

I went to Best Buy last week and did a pre-order for the new HTC ONE M8.  They still haven't gotten the device in, and I haven't given them any money yet.  I've been bummed it was gonna take so long to get my hands on it, but maybe that was actually better.

 

I was reading some reviews about the device on a few Android related sites and noticed people talking about missing calls/texts on Sprint.  It is most likely that Circuit Switched FallBack thing.  So my question is, does anyone have a Spark compatible device, and are you having any issues in the West Michigan area?

 

If this is going to be an issue, I might need to back out before I go any further into this transaction.  I've already been a bit ticked off at the idea of losing simultaneous voice and data (even though I know that puts me in the minority around here, because for some reason most people just seem to think that's no big deal, just get used to it, well I for one will really miss that)  But, if I have to disable the high speed data and go to CDMA only mode just to make sure I can get calls and texts to work properly, I'd probably be better off just to run my EVO LTE until it goes dark.

 

Any input about the status of the Fallback system in the West Michigan area, or if anyone has had problems with it would be appreciated. 

[kineticman]

Hey folks,

 

I haven't been around here much lately, but tried looking around and didn't find what I'm looking for, so maybe someone can offer some input...

 

I went to Best Buy last week and did a pre-order for the new HTC ONE M8.  They still haven't gotten the device in, and I haven't given them any money yet.  I've been bummed it was gonna take so long to get my hands on it, but maybe that was actually better.

 

I was reading some reviews about the device on a few Android related sites and noticed people talking about missing calls/texts on Sprint.  It is most likely that Circuit Switched FallBack thing.  So my question is, does anyone have a Spark compatible device, and are you having any issues in the West Michigan area?

 

If this is going to be an issue, I might need to back out before I go any further into this transaction.  I've already been a bit ticked off at the idea of losing simultaneous voice and data (even though I know that puts me in the minority around here, because for some reason most people just seem to think that's no big deal, just get used to it, well I for one will really miss that)  But, if I have to disable the high speed data and go to CDMA only mode just to make sure I can get calls and texts to work properly, I'd probably be better off just to run my EVO LTE until it goes dark.

 

Any input about the status of the Fallback system in the West Michigan area, or if anyone has had problems with it would be appreciated. 

 

Bruce, I can't help you but just wanted to drop a note saying welcome back to the forums.  I always enjoyed following the West Michigan deployment when it was happening. 

[S4GRU]

Hey folks,

 

I haven't been around here much lately, but tried looking around and didn't find what I'm looking for, so maybe someone can offer some input...

Long time, no see. Welcome back. I would have to imagine in a mature market like West Michigan, where NV 3G and eCSFB is supposed to be complete that you wouldn't experience significant CSFB problems except where they may be working on further optimizations occasionally. But I'd like to hear from other member in your area to confirm that too.

 

As for the simultaneous voice and data thing, most of us don't need it. But we recognize that some do. And given your profession as a truck driver, I could imagine that you would need to use your phone as a hotspot frequently and/or navigation. That would probably make it so you needed voice at the same time in some instances.

 

Simultaneous voice and data would be very handy for you. But you won't see anymore Sprint devices that will have it until VoLTE devices hit the market. I think the earliest Sprint would do that is another year or two. Their latest comments about VoLTE don't sound imminent. That's for sure.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro