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Network Vision/LTE - Buffalo Market


S4GRU

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Well if it's true that back haul isn't an issue why wouldn't they just do the CDMA and LTE upgrades at once, what's the point of just doing network vision for 3G?

 

Edit: basically 3G is going to suck even with network vision upgrades until they start the CDMA 800. The problem on half of the towers is the awful range due to the 1900mhz spectrum.

Edited by Eelnwahs
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Well if it's true that back haul isn't an issue why wouldn't they just do the CDMA and LTE upgrades at once, what's the point of just doing network vision for 3G?

 

Edit: basically 3G is going to suck even with network vision upgrades until they start the CDMA 800. The problem on half of the towers is the awful range due to the 1900mhz spectrum

Well the 3G sites your seeing being accepted do in fact have all the physical network vision equipment installed on them, including LTE..only thing is until Backhaul is installed, LTE will not go live. Once more towers come online you will start to see much better speeds and signal. Yes 1900mhz is very short in range compared to 800 but it will get better as our market gets Phase 1 of Network Vision completed. I'm sure once majority of the towers are upgraded, they will start deploying 800 and 2500mhz (800 is 50/50 because of the IBEZ situation between us and Canada). Even without 800 unless your in a rural area, you will see great coverage!

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So basically right now we are waiting for a lot of sites to have the back haul ran? But also with the 800 CDMA they should still be able to install it in buffalo and the surrounding suburbs correct? It would just be towns closer to the border like Niagara Falls but towns such as Lancaster, depew, Clarence, williamsville, etc. should be fine for an 800mhz launch correct? I don't think the signal would transfer all the way over the border. Of course I could be wrong.

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So basically right now we are waiting for a lot of sites to have the back haul ran? But also with the 800 CDMA they should still be able to install it in buffalo and the surrounding suburbs correct? It would just be towns closer to the border like Niagara Falls but towns such as Lancaster, depew, Clarence, williamsville, etc. should be fine for an 800mhz launch correct? I don't think the signal would transfer all the way over the border. Of course I could be wrong.

I believe the ibez extends 100 km in from the border with Canada, so it pretty much covers all 8 counties of Western New York.

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Soooo basically we live in an area with terrible cell service, if we are never getting the 800 spectrum I'm not sure I want to stay with sprint. I was banking on it to make signal strength not suck literally everywhere

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Soooo basically we live in an area with terrible cell service, if we are never getting the 800 spectrum I'm not sure I want to stay with sprint. I was banking on it to make signal strength not suck literally everywhere

Oh we'll be getting it... eventually. Read this post from a couple weeks ago. Should explain everything.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/3923-network-visionlte-buffalo-market/page-8&do=findComment&comment=267587

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Soooo basically we live in an area with terrible cell service, if we are never getting the 800 spectrum I'm not sure I want to stay with sprint. I was banking on it to make signal strength not suck literally everywhere

Buffalo only has a few accepted sites so there is limited areas where LTE is broadcasting. Give it some time. 

 

Also see above post.

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Ok thank you very much for that information, hopefully sprint gets these LTE towers live because sprint has had such bad service in buffalo for so long. If they plan to keep any customers they need to start paying overtime to get those back hauls ran to the towers. Sprint hypothetical concept of the tri band is definitely capable of out shining the other carriers but sprint needs to actually execute it.

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Ok thank you very much for that information, hopefully sprint gets these LTE towers live because sprint has had such bad service in buffalo for so long. If they plan to keep any customers they need to start paying overtime to get those back hauls ran to the towers. Sprint hypothetical concept of the tri band is definitely capable of out shining the other carriers but sprint needs to actually execute it.

They will eventually, like 2016, but any type of lte is good for the time being

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can anyone tell me what the brown dots on the nv map are?

Sites that have not been accepted as completed for any NV technology yet.  They may be in the middle of being rebuilt or may not have started their Network Vision rebuild yet.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Can anyone tell me why it says I'm connected to lte in my engineering screen but my status bar says 3G? I'm not sure if I'm reading my engineering screen incorrectly, but it says I'm connected to band 25 with a -118 rsrp which I know isn't excellent but still a connection.

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Can anyone tell me why it says I'm connected to lte in my engineering screen but my status bar says 3G? I'm not sure if I'm reading my engineering screen incorrectly, but it says I'm connected to band 25 with a -118 rsrp which I know isn't excellent but still a connection.

Interesting, Ive seen this before and this was because I was still connected to an LTE signal on a different tower but 3G on a tower closer to me, I did a reboot and it cleared up. 

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Well Niagara Falls had zero 4G and now has tons of it. I mapped a lot of it on sensorly.

Nice job! I see lots of purple up there now, and that's great to see.

 

Unfortunately for me, my phone wouldn't connect to any of the new towers near me in Tonawanda so I could map. I toggled airplane mode and LTE would show up for a split second then revert to 3G. So to test that I didn't have something wonky going on with my phone I drove out to the end of the 990 where I know I've connected before and I had no issues. So either these new towers are in some quasi-testing mode or they may be affected by the CSFB issue. But since the pins are yellow on the sponsor map I think that may not be the case.

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Here's a question I have for the experts. I'd try a search but I'm not sure I could sift through the results to get the answer I'm looking for. AFAIK there are two Clearwire towers in the Buffalo area even though we never officially had WiMax. One is in Wheatfield and one is by ECMC on the east side. Will those eventually convert to NV towers or are they now useless for all intents and purposes?

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Here's a question I have for the experts. I'd try a search but I'm not sure I could sift through the results to get the answer I'm looking for. AFAIK there are two Clearwire towers in the Buffalo area even though we never officially had WiMax. One is in Wheatfield and one is by ECMC on the east side. Will those eventually convert to NV towers or are they now useless for all intents and purposes?

 

The short answer, we really don't know yet.

 

 

Long answer....

They (are most likely) protection sites, set up to provide at least a minimal level of service in that area. In addition they most likely are using Huawei equipment. As part of the Clear take over Sprint agreed to remove all the Huawei gear on the network (we aren't sure the exact deadline though). So at some point these sites will get that equipment removed and a couple of possibilities might happen. First, if they are co-located with an existing Sprint site they may just receive their NV 2.0 upgrades for band 41 (possibly long before the rest of the market). If they are not co-located with an existing site, they could be converted to full blown NV sites (with both NV 1.0 & 2.0 equipment on bands 25 & 41) particularly if they fill in a coverage gap. Or, they could be converted to a band 41 only site (since the optimal spacing for band 41 requires a denser spacing than band 25). Last option might be to upgrade a near by Sprint location with NV 2.0 for for band 41 and decommission the Clear site (again possibly long before the rest of the market get its NV 2.0 upgrades).

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Wow, thank you for that very detailed response! Much appreciated!  :tu:

 

I'm pretty sure the one is not co-located and one is. The non co-located one would fill in a gap so hopefully that gets the full upgrade treatment. But since there's no timetable I won't worry about it much. I'm just excited we're actually getting a lot of 4G deployments recently!

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Wow, thank you for that very detailed response! Much appreciated!  :tu:

 

I'm pretty sure the one is not co-located and one is. The non co-located one would fill in a gap so hopefully that gets the full upgrade treatment. But since there's no timetable I won't worry about it much. I'm just excited we're actually getting a lot of 4G deployments recently!

 

Looking at some maps... I would think the one site has a decent chance of being converted to a full site (or at least a band 41 only site), while the other has a Dumb and Dumber chance.

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I don't understand why sprint is upgrading low income areas first, is that where more of their market share exists?

 

They are upgrading the entire market all at once.  LTE goes live at each complete converted site when the backhaul is complete and ready by the backhaul vendor.  It has nothing to do with planning by demographics.

 

Robert

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