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Shentel / Sprint LTE - (was ntelos - West & N&W Virginia)


marioc21

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In Elkins today, took corridor H to get here off I81. No service for most of the way but there is very usable 3G in Elkins. It will be nice to see the progress shentel will make in the next couple years. I'm thinking 2 years to get it on par with AT&T.

 

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I took Corridor H a few weeks ago.  It's a lovely drive, even if the cell service left something to be desired.  Parts of the drive had only AT&T, and parts had only US Cellular.  The entire drive had Verizon roaming onto US Cellular, though.

 

Also will they remove ntelos as the provider in the SCP app?

 

 

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Who's "they"?  The name is associated with the SID, which is in an internal database maintained by SignalCheck Pro.  At some point, probably when the nTelos network is more integrated, it will probably make sense to change the label, but probably not yet.

 

- Trip

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I took Corridor H a few weeks ago. It's a lovely drive, even if the cell service left something to be desired. Parts of the drive had only AT&T, and parts had only US Cellular. The entire drive had Verizon roaming onto US Cellular, though.

 

 

Who's "they"? The name is associated with the SID, which is in an internal database maintained by SignalCheck Pro. At some point, probably when the nTelos network is more integrated, it will probably make sense to change the label, but probably not yet.

 

- Trip

Oh ok. I thought hat was information given out by the tower that shentel would change.

 

 

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Google maps kept trying to take me off onto side roads, I guess because it hasn't been updated on the progress of the road yet. I did have us cellular in some spots but I never got Verizon roaming on my phone.

 

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Google maps kept trying to take me off onto side roads, I guess because it hasn't been updated on the progress of the road yet. I did have us cellular in some spots but I never got Verizon roaming on my phone.

 

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No, what I meant was that on my Verizon phone, I roamed onto US Cellular the whole time--Verizon dropped west of Elkins and was gone until Virginia.

 

- Trip

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No, what I meant was that on my Verizon phone, I roamed onto US Cellular the whole time--Verizon dropped west of Elkins and was gone until Virginia.

 

- Trip

Ah, that makes sense. AT&T for that part of rural VA and WV is the standard. Shentel's expansion will be great for increased competition. 

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I took Corridor H a few weeks ago. It's a lovely drive, even if the cell service left something to be desired. Parts of the drive had only AT&T, and parts had only US Cellular. The entire drive had Verizon roaming onto US Cellular, though.

 

 

Who's "they"? The name is associated with the SID, which is in an internal database maintained by SignalCheck Pro. At some point, probably when the nTelos network is more integrated, it will probably make sense to change the label, but probably not yet.

 

- Trip

I drove Corridor H from 81 to Lost River on vacation 3 years ago. There was a surprising amount of LTE, back then, in bizarre little places, but other than that I literally had no service almost the entire way. Not even roaming.

 

Of course I had an EVO LTE at the time, so maybe that was part of the problem...!

 

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Not sure if anyone else in the Albemarle/Ch'ville area caught this yesterday like I did. Apparently the Albemarle County Board of Supervisors have approved a new 125' cell phone tower next to Albemarle High School. Been trying to find out some info on what providers are suppose to be going on it. But will def. help with coverage in the area. Gonna keep looking into it today and see if I can find any info. Unless anyone else in my area knows anything about it. 

 

http://www.nbc29.com/story/33044328/albemarle-county-board-of-supervisors-approve-cell-tower

 

**UPDATE**

I did find that it can hold up to 5 cell phone carriers. But no carrier's have signed on yet or they haven't said what ones have yet. Couldn't find any info yet on which ones have or haven't yet.

 

This is the company that will be building the tower:

 

http://www.milestonecommunications.com/

 

http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/local/albemarle-high-school-cell-tower-proposal-approved-by-supervisors/article_a989efde-8371-5876-a358-dfc7ba494f08.html

 

*Update* 

 

I did happen to come across this today. Shows that apparently AT&T orig came forward with the idea. To put the cell phone tower up in that area. No arguments there seeing how it will help coverage with what ever other carriers decide to put equipment on the tower. Hoping that Shentel puts up some stuff for Sprint on the tower considering I do have a hard time holding on to LTE in that specific area of Hydraulic Road where AHS is located at. This was orig. done back in Jan. of this year as well. 

http://www.dailyprogress.com/news/education/albemarle-school-board-approves-cell-tower-plan/article_00e0924b-04bb-5f96-b465-a5e018e30065.html

 

 

This one was posted up on the Albemarle Public School Systems website. Posted back in Dec. 2015. By looking at the PowerPoint Presentation on this. It looks like it wont be to much of an eye sore tbh. Which is a good thing. 

http://esb.k12albemarle.org/public_itemview.aspx?ItemId=6549&mtgId=554

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  • 3 weeks later...

I noticed yesterday on Route 53 passing Monticello a nearby site now has Band 26. I drive this road every day and it's full of LTE gaps but this helps(for a few minutes anyway) I still have the 3G fallback issue when I lose LTE I will get full 3G get the "unable to activate cellular data" and then go to 1X. Thought this would change since we have had LTE for a good while now.

 

Also anyone else in Charlottesville noticed any new Band 41? There are several areas that really need it. The tower near UVa Hospital is only Band 26 and is slow as molasses!

 

 

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I'm still hoping that the changes we've had were just the nTelos last gasp, and Shentel will swoop in and upgrade everything lickety-split. #optimistictoafault

 

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I sure hope so, I was hoping it was going to be a huge push over the summer. I have seen some improvements but there is still a lot to be completed. Would love to see Charlottesville turn into a Richmond like market with high speeds and LTE all over. Big Dreams!

 

I know Shentel has another forum on the site but I was headed up 81 yesterday and am not certain where the old nTelos market ends and Shentel begins but wasn't having good luck holding on to LTE around Harrisonburg.

 

 

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Yes, and that hand-off can be kinda ugly, as I recall

 

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Every time I go by there I hope the ntelos towers have been reprogrammed with Sprint GCIs, but I've been disappointed every time so far. I go to Weyer's Cave a few times per year and it keeps bouncing between decent ntelos LTE and a distant 1x800 Sprint site. Sprint (Shentel) needs to fix it so the old ntelos towers have the same priority as Sprint towers. That would fix the issue at least temporarily until they reprogram the GCIs.

 

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The old market split is about 10 miles south of Harrisonburg. It's the Rockingham / Augusta Co line.

 

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That would make sense then. It was rough around that mark.

 

I also saw about a month ago that the nTelos corp office now has no signage. Wonder what they will do with it

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Anyone else not able to connect to LTE all day in Charlottesville? Working on that one tower near UVA is brutal to do anything with all these users on 3G.

 

 

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Anyone else not able to connect to LTE all day in Charlottesville? Working on that one tower near UVA is brutal to do anything with all these users on 3G.

 

 

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I couldn't get LTE anywhere in Charlottesville today.

 

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Hmm, I didn't notice that, but I wasn't particularly looking. I think I had LTE from the West main tower as usual.

 

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I was out at the UVA Research Park on 29 North and can see the tower from my office but today only full 3G. Went back to Stacey Hall in the afternoon and same thing 3G only.

 

Speaking of that tower on W.Main how does that work for you? I seem to only get Band 26 and most of the time it's unusable

 

 

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I was getting bad ping up at the towers in Greene tonight making lte pretty unusable between Standarndsville and Ruckersville towers up to route 29 and 33.

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I was getting bad ping up at the towers in Greene tonight making lte pretty unusable between Standarndsville and Ruckersville towers up to route 29 and 33.

I was still locked to 3G this morning and did a ##update and LTE came back. Not sure what that was about

 

 

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I was still locked to 3G this morning and did a ##update and LTE came back. Not sure what that was about

 

 

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ya same thing last night. Did the ##update and connected to lte but was still having problems with lte getting bad ping times though. Not sure what was going on last night. 

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ya same thing last night. Did the ##update and connected to lte but was still having problems with lte getting bad ping times though. Not sure what was going on last night.

I haven't had good luck with LTE around town recently anyways. Speeds have been so slow around UVA and the college and my Lake Monticello site near my house is now overloaded most of the day as well. Hoping for some improvements [emoji17]

 

 

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