Network Vision/LTE - Cleveland/NE Ohio Market

[strumgewr]

How far does the ibez zone go? I live in the Akron area, which should be able to use 800.

[Dfarley]

How far does the ibez zone go? I live in the Akron area, which should be able to use 800.

From documents I've seen the IBEZ is 100 km (about 70 miles) from the Canadian border which lies in the middle of Lake Erie. Akron is right at that border, however I've seen a document where the 30 mile radius around the cities of Akron, Youngstown, and Syracuse NY are excluded from the 'Exclusion Zone' due to their proximity to the edge of the border zone and their heavily (relatively speaking) populated areas. Additionally, Sprint has already activated some 800 MHz sites out near Ashtabula & Vermillion / Sandusky which leads one to believe that NEO has some sort of exception in place, at least for a 1x carrier; it still remains to be determined if Sprint can fire up 800 LTE. For what it's worth every upgraded Sprint tower that I've seen in NEO has the necessary RRUs for both 1900 & 800 frequencies, and LTE would just need an additional carrier card and some fiber hook ups to be turned on, so time will tell if we'll be seeing 800 LTE around here.

[SID3232]

I was in Ashtabula yesterday and I can tell you that there is 800 1x service there. Full bars everywhere I went and 3 to 4 indoors. The coverage was amazing.

[SID3232]

But no 3G let alone LTE

[Vette]

A 1x800 voice carrier would still be a huge increase in service quality up here.

[SID3232]

A 1x800 voice carrier would still be a huge increase in service quality up here.

The voice service really is unbelievable and Ashtbula doesnt have a tower on every corner so that just makes it that more impressive.

[joevehar]

well into another month and still just a few small pockets of lte.... does anyone out there have any real idea, other then by the end of the year, northeast Ohio will get lte coverage ?? footnote- my 3g is getting real bad.... no win, won here...

[SID3232]

well into another month and still just a few small pockets of lte.... does anyone out there have any real idea, other then by the end of the year, northeast Ohio will get lte coverage ?? footnote- my 3g is getting real bad.... no win, won here...

It seems that Cuyahoga and Lake counties are moving real slow. I've actually been seeing improvement at certain sites. I did a speed test the other day and the tower I was connected to showed 1.67 down which is really good for 3G but only .01 up which is really bad. I only ran one test though so that might be an anomoly. 

[Vette]

I wish Lake county would hurry up. We are going to switch...as soon as Sprint is actually usable. We are too used to LTE and usable 3G to switch while Sprint is still legacy up here. Verizon is degrading pretty fast in the heavily populated areas though. LTE is down to a blazing 3Mbps during parts of the day, and voice quality is 1970's-esque at best (typical for Verizon). That's actually another big point for Sprint is the voice quality. Verizon makes everyone sound like robots (big contrast from the old Alltel-which I still miss that network). All I know is Verizon better fire up that AWS LTE or their network is going to turn completely crap once even more people are on LTE (and forget about VoLTE, LTE still sometimes randomly drops down to 3G even when in an area that is LTE covered). And the way Verizon has their LTE set up, there are gaps even along main roads like Rt20 where only CDMA is useable. So hurry up Sprint, you'll get another ~$200 a month from a NEO subscriber.

[ImTiME]

well into another month and still just a few small pockets of lte.... does anyone out there have any real idea, other then by the end of the year, northeast Ohio will get lte coverage ?? footnote- my 3g is getting real bad.... no win, won here...

3g degrading is kind of a good thing. Means they are working on LTE near you. I dont have LTE yet in my area (Warrensville Hts.) but my 3g and voice reception was real low for a couple weeks. Once they flipped the switch in Maple it was back better than before. 

[qig]

Before you jump ship to Sprint when LTE is in place, please take into consideration what other Sprint users have to say about their data experience. I work downtown and I get into work at 7 and can manage 300kb/s 3G download speeds until downtown starts to fill up around 830ish and then data becomes extremely inconsistent between bad and not at all. If there is an issue with network traffic, it won't help that Sprint has been selling LTE equipped phones for almost 2 years before a proper launch. Also, LTE is rolling out very slowly so I would caution anyone hoping to find a positive data experience to do their homework when coming over from any other network.

 

My experience has me wishing my ETF was already bottomed out (only a few months away) so I could switch carriers. I was attracted to the unlimited data but it becomes moot when I can not stay connected and I burn through the battery trying to find signal constantly. = /

[blemas]

Before you jump ship to Sprint when LTE is in place, please take into consideration what other Sprint users have to say about their data experience. I work downtown and I get into work at 7 and can manage 300kb/s 3G download speeds until downtown starts to fill up around 830ish and then data becomes extremely inconsistent between bad and not at all. If there is an issue with network traffic, it won't help that Sprint has been selling LTE equipped phones for almost 2 years before a proper launch. Also, LTE is rolling out very slowly so I would caution anyone hoping to find a positive data experience to do their homework when coming over from any other network.

 

My experience has me wishing my ETF was already bottomed out (only a few months away) so I could switch carriers. I was attracted to the unlimited data but it becomes moot when I can not stay connected and I burn through the battery trying to find signal constantly. = /

 

I am not a fanboy just a guy who has had Sprint as my carrier for nearly 15 years. I was 'short changed' on WiMax and though about jumping ship but decided to hang tight based upon what I saw coming down the road with Sprint. I can say that LTE is close enough for me to taste it and while I had hoped that I would have had it by now, I'm not ready to jump when my contract is up in January. When it really comes down to it, I don't NEED LTE coverage, it is a luxury. One that is going to be cheaper than the current alternatives and will eventually get here. Sure, I've had an LTE EVO since its launch and have only been on an LTE signal a few times but I can tell you that when I traveled to a market with LTE saturation, the experience was positive. I have no reason to believe that by the time that the upgrade is complete, I will have the same feelings about my home market. Other than for bragging rights and speedtest screenshots, LTE is a novelty for me as 95% of my day is spend with a WIFI signal. 

[Mrick26]

Anything in Akron? Are they working on it at all? Contract is up in March, can I expect Lte around Kent and Akron by that time?

[eml626]

Is 2600 LTE currently turned on downtown and or in Painesville/Mentor? Long time reader and first time poster. Thank you for all of the hard work.

Edited October 17, 2013 by eml626

[eml626]

Does anybody know what has been going on downtown the last few days? The 1275 Ontario tower keeps switching between ehrpd and evdo. Strangely, when it is on evdo I cannot get a connection. Sometimes it showed connected and I get no Internet and other times I have no connection. 1Xrtt signal is strong.

 

Any word on when 1900 lte may go live downtown. I purchased a note 3 as I like the phone for business purpose but am thinking if 1900 lte is not on and stable soon I will need to swap into the LG go as win max always worked in my office on public square and the justice center.

[Mrick26]

If your networks is really bad and not getting connection this means they could be working on towers down town. Also on sensorly it looks like downtown Cleveland is getting a few glimpses of Lte

[jmeduri82]

Anything in Akron? Are they working on it at all? Contract is up in March, can I expect Lte around Kent and Akron by that time?

I know they have started work on the towers in Ravenna haven't seen any work to the ones in Kent though   

[Mrick26]

I know they have started work on the towers in Ravenna haven't seen any work to the ones in Kent though

Really!? Ravenna! Alright atleast it's getting closer. How much will be done by the end of the year do ya know?

[Copticwalad]

If your networks is really bad and not getting connection this means they could be working on towers down town. Also on sensorly it looks like downtown Cleveland is getting a few glimpses of Lte

I mapped out the little coverage of downtown a few weeks ago and do monitor any changes every week or so.  Downtown is very unusual because it seems like the wireless is spreading slowly but my theory is that it's not connected to the any sort of the new network vision high speed backbone yet.  I assume this because every speed test with the Cleveland LTE either doesn't go through or is painstakingly at 3G speeds.  Plus I think they intentionally turn it off after the wireless testing if the internet isn't available.  You can think of this like an analogy at home where your Wireless router can connect computers in your house to eachother (to access files) without necessarily needing internet working.  We're simply waiting for that Internet to be ready which I think will greatly help the signal, and once mapped will show much better coverage.  The major areas on the east and west of 480 already have 30+ Mbps speeds so it's just a matter of time.

[Dfarley]

I know a couple of you guys are new here, but all you need to do is donate a few dollars and you will be blown away by the information available to you. The staff on this site is not paid, the money strictly goes to keeping the site running. Robert, the admin, doesn't want to flood the sites with pop up adds either, so they rely 100% on our donations.

 

In regards to the status of NEO (Akron, Ravenna, downtown Cleveland, East side, West side, all of NEO), equipment is being installed all over; I'd be willing to bet that at least 50% of the sites (towers) have most of the NV equipment already installed, they're just waiting on backhaul to get fired up (50% is probably a conservative guess). We should be seeing many sites getting turned on with both LTE & 3G upgrades in the coming months.

[Mrick26]

We can only hope we see Lte in the coming months, I got to school at KSU and I'm unable to use the network at all

[irwinshere]

We can only hope we see Lte in the coming months, I got to school at KSU and I'm unable to use the network at all

Cant you use wifi on campus?

 

Jim, Sent from my Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

 

 

[Mrick26]

Cant you use wifi on campus?

 

Jim, Sent from my Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

Well yea inside of all of the buildings. But most of the time I'm in downtown Kent, stow, or Akron. And I pull about. .05-.45 mbs down depending on the time of day

[irwinshere]

Well yea inside of all of the buildings. But most of the time I'm in downtown Kent, stow, or Akron. And I pull about. .05-.45 mbs down depending on the time of day

Yeh, those speeds suck. I hope to see significant improvement in the coming months.

 

Jim, Sent from my Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

 

 

[Mrick26]

Yeh, those speeds suck. I hope to see significant improvement in the coming months.

 

Jim, Sent from my Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

 

Yea it's pretty rough and almost unusable during the prime hours of the day. But the good news is, I was in Bainbridge around the 4g area located on sensorly. I snagged 28 down and 7 up