Network Vision/LTE - Cleveland/NE Ohio Market

[Dfarley]

what is IBEZ that is referred to in this thread, and can anyone give a straight answer on lte.in NEO? there's talk of spark, tri band multiple vendors. we purchased SG3's at a pretty good deal but now it feels like we won't get lte until our next upgrade in June '15 ? ? ?

IBEZ = International Boundary Exclusion Zone. It refers to the roughly 70 mile area from the Canadian and Mexican borders (there's varying accounts of the actual area, but 70 miles is what I've seen the most of). The US and Canada / Mexico must reach an agreement for the use of the 800 MHz SMR spectrum that Sprint owns before Sprint can fully deploy that spectrum, otherwise there will be interference with the owners of the same spectrum on the other side of the border (Telus Mike on the Canadian side). The SMR (800 MHz) spectrum is what Sprint obtained from Nextel and is far better at building penetration and traveling distances than the 1.9 ghz PCS spectrum Sprint operates on now.

 

In addition to the 800 and the 1.9 frequencies, Sprint acquired a huge swath of 2.5 ghz from the acquisition of Clearwire earlier this summer . Sprint Spark refers to Sprint utilizing the three of these frequencies together as one contiguous unit - in essence the phone will seamlessly be able to choose the best available frequency at any given moment.

 

So what does this mean to Cleveland? Sprint is actively deploying LTE on its 1.9 band. With the rate I've observed, I would estimate a fairly robust LTE rollout by Spring 2014, so most of the areas you see 3G today you should experience LTE by that time (no guarantees, just an estimate). Sprint Spark is still a ways off, especially considering the challenges of the IBEZ. It should be noted that sprint has worked out some sort of agreement to be able to deploy it's 800 spectrum for voice and 1x data coverage, but in what appears to be in a powered down state. The rollout of LTE in 800 is TBD in this market. 2.5 has actually already begun deployment, however you need a tri-band device to be able to utilize any of that at this time. S4GRU has a ton of information on all of this if you want to find out more just start digging around.

[SID3232]

IBEZ = International Boundary Exclusion Zone. It refers to the roughly 70 mile area from the Canadian and Mexican borders (there's varying accounts of the actual area, but 70 miles is what I've seen the most of). The US and Canada / Mexico must reach an agreement for the use of the 800 MHz SMR spectrum that Sprint owns before Sprint can fully deploy that spectrum, otherwise there will be interference with the owners of the same spectrum on the other side of the border (Telus Mike on the Canadian side). The SMR (800 MHz) spectrum is what Sprint obtained from Nextel and is far better at building penetration and traveling distances than the 1.9 ghz PCS spectrum Sprint operates on now.

 

In addition to the 800 and the 1.9 frequencies, Sprint acquired a huge swath of 2.5 ghz from the acquisition of Clearwire earlier this summer . Sprint Spark refers to Sprint utilizing the three of these frequencies together as one contiguous unit - in essence the phone will seamlessly be able to choose the best available frequency at any given moment.

 

So what does this mean to Cleveland? Sprint is actively deploying LTE on its 1.9 band. With the rate I've observed, I would estimate a fairly robust LTE rollout by Spring 2014, so most of the areas you see 3G today you should experience LTE by that time (no guarantees, just an estimate). Sprint Spark is still a ways off, especially considering the challenges of the IBEZ. It should be noted that sprint has worked out some sort of agreement to be able to deploy it's 800 spectrum for voice and 1x data coverage, but in what appears to be in a powered down state. The rollout of LTE in 800 is TBD in this market. 2.5 has actually already begun deployment, however you need a tri-band device to be able to utilize any of that at this time. S4GRU has a ton of information on all of this if you want to find out more just start digging around.

Great answer!

 

 

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[joevehar]

thanks for the response- I figured as much for ibez. 

as far as the lte- i guess my expectations were set high begining from wimax and my nexus s with cleveland being an early market.  fast forward i was hanging on to my ns4g months after upgrade past for the sepcific reason of the 4g wimax vs lte rollout. when i finally pulled the trigger and got a great deal on the galaxy s3 (free) i was comfortable "thinking" lte was around the corner in NEO....i heard 3rd quarter, then 4th quarter, now srping of'14....and most recently the 3g coverage has been spotty as best (.55 mbs down, .06 up) so its a challenge.   Sprint has been good to me and I think the softbank deal is great...I would just hope the bugs get worked out sooner than later.

[Dfarley]

thanks for the response- I figured as much for ibez.

as far as the lte- i guess my expectations were set high begining from wimax and my nexus s with cleveland being an early market. fast forward i was hanging on to my ns4g months after upgrade past for the sepcific reason of the 4g wimax vs lte rollout. when i finally pulled the trigger and got a great deal on the galaxy s3 (free) i was comfortable "thinking" lte was around the corner in NEO....i heard 3rd quarter, then 4th quarter, now srping of'14....and most recently the 3g coverage has been spotty as best (.55 mbs down, .06 up) so its a challenge. Sprint has been good to me and I think the softbank deal is great...I would just hope the bugs get worked out sooner than later.

I'll do my best to sum up the issues you've brought up and add a couple others you may not be aware of:

-CLE was an early WiMAX market, why not LTE? WiMAX was deployed by a third party, Clearwire, and is a different technology than LTE. Sprint acquired Clearwire this summer (along with a huge swath of 2.5 ghz spectrum) and is now converting all Clear's sites to LTE. In our market that is done via a software upgrade and should be done rapidly. Issues with this is that the Huawei equip Clear rolled out in CLE isn't compatible with Sprint equip so it will all have to be replaced to experience the advantages of Sprint Spark; however with a Triband device you should be able to grab the 2.5 ghz when it's up and running.

-Issues with slow 3G. That's been Sprint's issue for years and is due to legacy equipment and legacy back haul incapable of being upgraded to handle today's capacity. Hence the rollout of Network Vision; every facet of a Sprint site is being upgraded: backhaul, base stations, and antennas. However CLE is a "third round" market and work just began last spring. 3G upgrades are roughly 50% of the way complete here and being upgraded daily.

-Issues with 3G upgrades: our market's legacy equipment is Motorola; Moto's equip doesn't work with the new Samsung equip Sprint is using for NV here. Therefore, upgraded sites are being rolled out in large clusters to try and avoid the dropped calls and data issues caused by the equipment conversion.

-Upgraded 3G sites still don't offer 3G speeds that I would expect. That's due to the fact that Sprint is laying fiber optic lines to each site to handle the back haul (data traffic to the internet). Until that fiber is installed the speeds will still be similar to the legacy equipment (FYI a site won't go live with LTE unless is has fiber backhaul, unless it's a former Clear site but again you'll need a Triband for that).

-eCSFB (Enhanced Circuit Switch Fall Back). That's a whole new issue just realized when tri-band devices were released. Basic explanation is that if you have a Triband phone it will park on the LTE channel and not "talk" to the site on 1x or 3G (which is what voice and text traffic works on). Instead the site will see voice traffic trying to reach your phone and tell the phone to switch from LTE to 1x. The problem is that in many cases a site will be upgraded to LTE but still run on legacy for 3G and 1x due to the equipment incompatibility issues mentioned earlier. This isn't a problem if a site is 3G and LTE upgraded. There is an entire thread devoted to this; bottom line Sprint is aware of the issue and working swiftly to fix it. If you don't have a newer Triband don't worry about it.

Summary: there are a lot of issues when taking on a major overhaul like Sprint is doing. CLE is in the tail end of deployment so we're feeling many of the negative effects of the rollout right now. It's going to be a long couple of months, but in 2014 there should be some very significant progress in our market.

Lastly, become a sponsor, you'll be able to see exactly what I'm talking about.

[joevehar]

thank you, I appreciate you taking the time for the explanation. where can I get sponsor info?

[joevehar]

this is one reason I'm anxious to get some lte in NEO.

[Dfarley]

thank you, I appreciate you taking the time for the explanation. where can I get sponsor info?

Sponsorship info can be found here:

 

http://www.s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/1195-Information-about-S4GRU-Sponsorship-levels-and-how-to-become-a-Sponsor/page__view__findpost__p__23387

 

The mods and creator of the forum do not take any pay, your donations are strictly to keep the place running. Anything helps and if you're interested in this stuff at all the sponsor level info is well worth it. And no problem about the responses - all the info that I know I've gotten from this site. It becomes addicting after a while.

[sergiobanks001]

Any updates?

 

 

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[tprevett]

Any updates?

 

 

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Yah.. the Cleveland Market Sucks for LTE on sprint..

[sergiobanks001]

Yah.. the Cleveland Market Sucks for LTE on sprint..

I wish we actually had a close estimate for 30%-40% done. 3G SUCKS at my house

 

 

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[Dfarley]

I wish we actually had a close estimate for 30%-40% done. 3G SUCKS at my house

 

 

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Here's the official running accepted totals that is viewable for non-sponsors: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/212-network-visionlte-deployment-running-list/page-3&do=findComment&comment=145610

Just keep in mind that the Cleveland market is basically Sandusky to Ashtabula, and Mansfield to Youngstown, so a very large territory. As is the case with many markets, they seem to be working from the outside in here in Cleveland. Although 26% accepted rate may seem low, I've personally seen new Samsung equipment on probably 50% of the sites that I frequently travel by but they're not turned on yet. I have a feeling that due to all of the equipment compatibility issues between Motorola & Samsung Sprint is waiting to accept 3G sites in large clusters so we may have massive areas get flipped on all at once.

[sergiobanks001]

Here's the official running accepted totals that is viewable for non-sponsors: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/212-network-visionlte-deployment-running-list/page-3&do=findComment&comment=145610

Just keep in mind that the Cleveland market is basically Sandusky to Ashtabula, and Mansfield to Youngstown, so a very large territory. As is the case with many markets, they seem to be working from the outside in here in Cleveland. Although 26% accepted rate may seem low, I've personally seen new Samsung equipment on probably 50% of the sites that I frequently travel by but they're not turned on yet. I have a feeling that due to all of the equipment compatibility issues between Motorola & Samsung Sprint is waiting to accept 3G sites in large clusters so we may have massive areas get flipped on all at once.

THANK YOU! For this post that actually put my heart at a certain ease.

 

 

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[sergiobanks001]

Any updates?

 

 

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[Dfarley]

Any updates?

 

 

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Go to that thread that I linked earlier - if there's any updates those percentages will change. Then throw a couple bucks to S4GRU to be a sponsor and you'll get access to all the update info you can handle. Other than that, it's against the rules to share sponsor only info outside of the sponsor section.

 

 

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[sergiobanks001]

Go to that thread that I linked earlier - if there's any updates those percentages will change. Then throw a couple bucks to S4GRU to be a sponsor and you'll get access to all the update info you can handle. Other than that, it's against the rules to share sponsor only info outside of the sponsor section.

 

 

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cool, thanks man. I'll donate tomorrow (payday).

 

 

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[NiteSnow]

Well, after talking to a very helpful Sprint employee for a good hour it seems just about every tower in and around North Ridgeville is scheduled to go live within 3 months. This is according to Glance. I was also told that just about every cell site in the area will have 800MHz turned on when everything else goes live.

[sergiobanks001]

Well, after talking to a very helpful Sprint employee for a good hour it seems just about every tower in and around North Ridgeville is scheduled to go live within 3 months. This is according to Glance. I was also told that just about every cell site in the area will have 800MHz turned on when everything else goes live.

3 months!? Gosh. Cleveland sucks. She could be lying but who knows.

 

 

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[Dfarley]

3 months!? Gosh. Cleveland sucks. She could be lying but who knows.

 

 

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3 months is not that long and this fits in with the theory of large cluster acceptances for our market. The other great news is that 800 will be live here in our market since we're inside the IBEZ and I haven't seen any official documentation allowing Sprint to utilize that spectrum here.

 

 

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[sergiobanks001]

3 months is not that long and this fits in with the theory of large cluster acceptances for our market. The other great news is that 800 will be live here in our market since we're inside the IBEZ and I haven't seen any official documentation allowing Sprint to utilize that spectrum here.

 

 

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is 800 LTE?

 

 

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[tprevett]

The 800 being talked about in this thread is not lte...

 

On another note... Sandusky is peppered with 800mhz active towers... And it is closer to the Canadian border.. So I would think that we are good as far as IBEZ ..

 

The thing that is the hardest to swallow for me is that the two towers closest to my house in North Ridgeville were the first towers to be reported as being worked on in ohio.. And they still are not complete... :-(

Edited November 21, 2013 by tprevett

[Dfarley]

The 800 being talked about in this thread is not lte...

 

On another note... Sandusky is peppered with 800mhz active towers... And it is closer to the Canadian border.. So I would think that we are good as far as IBEZ ..

 

The thing that is the hardest to swallow for me is that the two towers closest to my house in North Ridgeville were the first towers to be reported as being worked on in ohio.. And they still are not complete... :-(

I realize 800 1x has already been deployed in our market, but it still has not been officially announced that it can be deployed here so the more it's rolled out the better our chances that 800 LTE will be allowed.

 

There's towers all over my home, work, and commute that have everything in place to be accepted yet it's just been a waiting game.

 

 

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[eml626]

Here is a speed test I took this morning in Strongsville on evdo of all things. Something must have been upgraded on this tower. I could care less about lte if we could get consistent 3g at these speeds. 18780 Westwood tower.

 

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[eml626]

I have been seeing some testing at my office downtown at 55 Public Square. 2 days ago I saw lte for literally 1 minute. Did not have time to check and see if it was 25 or 41. I have also twice seen 1x 800 at old courthouse in basement where no phones work coming from the Erieview tower which seems to be the best tower downtown. Wish I could force connect to it. That was on Note 3 with 16016 prl. On G2 I have not modified prl and have not once seen 800mhz. Trying to find the 56016 prl somewhere to test. For lte I have bands 25 and 41 enabled and have 800smr enabled. I will say the g2 gets signals in elevators which my galaxy s2 and even the note 3 never dreamed of. Wifi antenna on g2 also very strong.

 

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[eml626]

I realize 800 1x has already been deployed in our market, but it still has not been officially announced that it can be deployed here so the more it's rolled out the better our chances that 800 LTE will be allowed.

 

There's towers all over my home, work, and commute that have everything in place to be accepted yet it's just been a waiting game.

 

 

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Whenever I have seen 800 1x downtown it has shown up as roaming. Not sure which prls will actually direct phone to these towers while in testing. Has anyone else seen this.

 

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[eml626]

Downtown outside of justice center I swapped my g2 from global to lte/cdma and connected to band 41 lte. Weird though there was no Internet even tough connection was good enough for Internet access. Internet on 3g keeps swapping between eharpd and evdo and is nearly unusable in speed. Signal on band 41 very week if you move even a few steps. Hope they turn the power up once it is actually active.

 

 

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Edited November 21, 2013 by eml626