T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion

[lilotimz]

Will T-mobile LTE coverage catch up with sprint? and att?

 

no. Mostly the same footprint as their existent HSPA+ networks. 

[adamo696]

no. Mostly the same footprint as their existent HSPA+ networks. 

I mean if like know sprint has 88 markets will T-mobile catch up because they have 7 know. I they will catch our number of markets and coverage

[vryan44]

I'm not sure I believe t-mobile having 51,000 towers....

[JohnHovah]

I'm not sure I believe t-mobile having 51,000 towers....

between t-mobile and metro it is highly likely.  Sprint also had 10's of thousands on the Nextel side but are not keeping all of their towers. 

[vryan44]

But it is stated that before the merger they had 51,000 sites. That's almost as much as att with a much smaller footprint.

[S4GRU]

Tmo has said they have 36,000 sites in the past. Long before any mergers. Even the 1, 2 Kalamazoo commercial said they had 36k sites. I've never seen where Tmo had 51,000 before the merger. That is not believable. Tmo has slightly less coverage than Sprint. Sprint has 38,000 CDMA sites. 36,000 Tmo native sites before the merger sounds just about right.

 

Robert from Note 2 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[Paynefanbro]

1, 2 Kalamazoo; 3,4, Jersey Shore; 5, 6, West Phoenix... 1008, 1009, Dallas, Denver, Anaheim.

[HawaiiD]

T-mobile LTE is live in Honolulu now but coverage is very limited. First test I got was 21MB down and 16MB up.

I like the fact that when LTE drops out? HSPA+ (15-22 MB down) kicks in.

 

Sent from my Coconut Wireless HTC One

 

[maximus1987/lou99]

Tmo has said they have 36,000 sites in the past. Long before any mergers. Even the 1, 2 Kalamazoo commercial said they had 36k sites. I've never seen where Tmo had 51,000 before the merger. That is not believable. Tmo has slightly less coverage than Sprint. Sprint has 38,000 CDMA sites. 36,000 Tmo native sites before the merger sounds just about right.

 

Robert from Note 2 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

Is it possible the 37k towers are the HSPA/LTE and 14k are the EDGE-only sites?

[S4GRU]

 

Tmo has said they have 36,000 sites in the past. Long before any mergers. Even the 1, 2 Kalamazoo commercial said they had 36k sites. I've never seen where Tmo had 51,000 before the merger. That is not believable. Tmo has slightly less coverage than Sprint. Sprint has 38,000 CDMA sites. 36,000 Tmo native sites before the merger sounds just about right.

 

 

 

Robert from Note 2 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

Is it possible the 37k towers are the HSPA/LTE and 14k are the EDGE-only sites?

 

No. Tmo doesn't have anywhere near 37k HSPA+ sites. Not even close. The 36k is the entire Tmo network, pre-merger.

 

http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-57576440-85/how-t-mobile-is-priming-a-stronger-lte-network-with-metropcs/

 

http://www.tmonews.com/2012/06/t-mobile-says-making-great-progress-on-4g-network-modernization/

 

http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/131241-t-mobile-makes-great-progress-on-network-upgrade-begins-lte-trials

 

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

[maximus1987/lou99]

 

 

 

Tmo has said they have 36,000 sites in the past. Long before any mergers. Even the 1, 2 Kalamazoo commercial said they had 36k sites. I've never seen where Tmo had 51,000 before the merger. That is not believable. Tmo has slightly less coverage than Sprint. Sprint has 38,000 CDMA sites. 36,000 Tmo native sites before the merger sounds just about right.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Robert from Note 2 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

Is it possible the 37k towers are the HSPA/LTE and 14k are the EDGE-only sites?

No. Tmo doesn't have anywhere near 37k HSPA+ sites. Not even close. The 36k is the entire Tmo network, pre-merger.

 

 

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

"T-Mobile will be improving approximately 37,000 cell sites over the next 18 months. These upgrades include:

 

Replacing copper lines with fiber optic lines

Adding new radios

Moving ground equipment to the top of towers

Adding new antennas"

 

Doesn't this mean they're gonna have 37k HSPA towers?

 

 

[S4GRU]

"T-Mobile will be improving approximately 37,000 cell sites over the next 18 months. These upgrades include:

 

Replacing copper lines with fiber optic lines

Adding new radios

Moving ground equipment to the top of towers

Adding new antennas"

 

Doesn't this mean they're gonna have 37k HSPA towers?

 

Yes.  If they upgrade their entire network to HSPA+, they will have 37,000 HSPA+ sites.  But they do not have that many HSPA+ sites now.  The entire Tmo network with HSPA, HSPA+, GPRS and EDGE, not including MetroPCS is the 37k total number of sites.  The only reference I could find of 51,000 Tmo sites was a Kevin Fitchard article, and that must be an error.   Because in all my Google searches, I keep consistently finding that the Tmo network pre-merger had 37,000 sites.

 

Robert

[lynyrd65]

 

 

Will T-mobile LTE coverage catch up with sprint? and att?

 

 

no. Mostly the same footprint as their existent HSPA+ networks.

I suspect in the no too distant future we'll see an anouncement from t-mobile comitting to expand their "4G" HSPA+ to rural areas. They wont be able to stay competitive with Sprint for long otherwise.

 

They will probably expand LTE also but their sites are spaced for PCS and adding AWS LTE to these sites would make for LTE coverage islets. More sites would be needed for coverage parity

 

Sent from my SCH-R970 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[iansltx]

I wouldn't be surprised to find out that T-Mobile + MetroPCS have 51k sites, some of which are collocated. Remember that MetroPCS doesn't have much spectrum in some areas, so in order to deal with capacity issues they have to have smaller cells.

 

As I posted elsewhere, there's a T-Mobile site colo'd with a Clearwire site around 1000 feet from my apartment. I just got LTE working on my Nexus 4 (fast.tmobile.com != fast.t-mobile.com) and I'm getting as low as 22ms latency to Dallas (though highly variable) and speeds as high as 29 Mbps down and 8 Mbps up. Sounds very much like 5x5 LTE to me, and my S III can meet or beat those speeds depending on signal strength, but I may need to upgrade the radio on my Nexus to one downgrade from current rather than two. I'm testing via wired tethering, so anything other than the radio firmware and the network itself aren't bottlenecks (I've seen Nexus 4 speed tests hitting 50/20 on Canadian networks).

 

Posting this via that tethered connection on my workstation, just for fun...the experience is very similar to what I get with my cable connection, albeit with a 5GB per month cap, which speaks volumes about how well LTE works with good signal strength...and how far behind the curve TWC is...I can get more upload speed over LTE from four providers here (I assume AT&T's LTE is plenty fast) than I can from my cable connection.

[Mobilesolutions]

T-mobile with 51K cell sites and 600MHZ spectrum would/will be a monster competitor for Sprint. 

Competing with 37K is hard enough. 

[ChadBroChillz]

T-mobile with 51K cell sites and 600MHZ spectrum would/will be a monster competitor for Sprint. 

Competing with 37K is hard enough. 

 

I think this is one of those cases where bigger is not better. Those cell sites are not coming cheap. Sprint covers the same distance with a quarter less cell sites. ATT/Verizon have around 50k as well, but of course cover massively more than Tmobile. They are going to need to trim some of that fat, if they want to compete. 

[WiWavelength]

The idea that T-Mobile somehow has 51,000 sites just seems ludicrous.  T-Mobile has a slightly smaller native footprint than Sprint does, and my experience is that T-Mobile also has slightly lesser site density.  So, the 37,000 site figure seems about right.

 

AJ

[WiWavelength]

As I posted elsewhere, there's a T-Mobile site colo'd with a Clearwire site around 1000 feet from my apartment. I just got LTE working on my Nexus 4 (fast.tmobile.com != fast.t-mobile.com) and I'm getting as low as 22ms latency to Dallas (though highly variable) and speeds as high as 29 Mbps down and 8 Mbps up. Sounds very much like 5x5 LTE to me...

 

I can confirm that T-Mobile in Austin is currently 5 MHz FDD.  Spectrum wise, it does not make sense.  But Houston and San Antonio follow the same pattern.  So, it must be a Texas thing, possibly due to a preponderance of Mexicans and Asians with GSM only or single band AWS W-CDMA handsets.

 

AJ

[iansltx]

I can confirm that T-Mobile in Austin is currently 5 MHz FDD.  Spectrum wise, it does not make sense.  But Houston and San Antonio follow the same pattern.  So, it must be a Texas thing, possibly due to a preponderance of Mexicans and Asians with GSM only or single band AWS W-CDMA handsets.

 

AJ

 

Before I continue...

 

 

 

Anyway, where's the source of your confirmation? I mean, I'm not terribly surprised if T-Mobile's doing this to keep DC-H+ in AWS online for a few more months in markets where they don't have 40MHz of AWS, and Austin is along for the ride to harmonize the deployment.

 

But my other guess would be that T-Mobile doesn't have enough PCS H+ sites (equal in number to AWS LTE sites) live to make sure that the tons of non-LTE, PCS/AWS-H+ capable devices on their network get consistent service on PCS (falling back to EDGE or GPRS doesn't count). Which will need to happen more often when less AWS is devoted to H+.

 

But every single urban site can do AWS H+/DC-H+. So, rather than dealing with the network nightmare that would be running H+ and LTE on the same swath of spectrum, depending on which site is close to you, they're sticking with all H+ until their own mini-NV is 90+% complete in those markets. At that point, PCS H+ will be widely available, so most subscribers' phones will sit there rather than cluttering up AWS, so T-Mobile can shut an H+ channel down market-wide and extend LTE up to 10x10.

 

And this sort of thing is why Sprint's PCS G block is a godsend for their first LTE rollout; phones have been out for a year that support the network, and Sprint didn't have to clear anything to deploy. I would say that Sprint is also pushing LTE harder than T-Mobile is (and this would be correct), but the fact is that T-Mobile is just fine with selling cheaper phones with PCS H+21 support because that's as much a part of their revised band plan as PCS LTE is to Sprint's.

[WiWavelength]

Anyway, where's the source of your confirmation?

 

Milan Milanovic and I are researching and writing an article on T-Mobile's deployed LTE FDD bandwidths.  Here is an engineering screenshot from Austin:

 

 

AJ

[iansltx]

Milan Milanovic and I are researching and writing an article on T-Mobile's deployed LTE FDD bandwidths. 

 

 

AJ

 

Ah, got it. It's too bad that my Nexus doesn't have those screens. Or can I get something that adds them?

[milan03]

Yeah, it's coming from users able to connect to LTE in live or testing markets. With Austin, Houston, and San Antonio it would totally make sense to deploy 10Mhz LTE since T-Mobile's AWS spectrum is contiguous, all nicely lined up, but they opted to start 5Mhz.

AJ has his explanation which probably isn't too far from the truth, but for me it's still kinda hard to explain why...

 

In Austin they have two big fat chunks of AWS, both 20Mhz, F block used for DC-HSPA+ and A block perfect for 2x10Mhz, but they've decided to only use the upper portion of that 20Mhz slice and deploy 2x5Mhz LTE, leaving the bottom A open...

[S4GRU]

Yeah, it's coming from users able to connect to LTE in live or testing markets. With Austin, Houston, and San Antonio it would totally make sense to deploy 10Mhz LTE since T-Mobile's AWS spectrum is contiguous, all nicely lined up, but they opted to start 5Mhz.

AJ has his explanation which probably isn't too far from the truth, but for me it's still kinda hard to explain why...

 

In Austin they have two big fat chunks of AWS, both 20Mhz, F block used for DC-HSPA+ and A block perfect for 2x10Mhz, but they've decided to only use the upper portion of that 20Mhz slice and deploy 2x5Mhz LTE, leaving the bottom A open...

 

Surprising and puzzling.

 

Robert from Note 2 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[dmchssc]

For the 51,000 sites number, is it possible that they're counting HSPA+ and GSM separately and then adding them? Or PCS and AWS? 

[WiWavelength]

Ah, got it. It's too bad that my Nexus doesn't have those screens. Or can I get something that adds them?

 

Nope.  Honestly, I do not get the infatuation with Nexus devices and OS updates.  Give me OEM customized Android with engineering screens any day.  And who cares about OS updates?  That is more about the psychology of the supposed "latest and greatest" than any tangible benefit.  If you ask me, save the next OS version for your next device.

 

AJ