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

[bubretti]

I was cruising sensorly earlier and seen new blip of purple south of Charleston.

[S4GRU]

I was cruising sensorly earlier and seen new blip of purple south of Charleston.

 

According to Sensorly, that blip is from January 2015.

[shawneyboy123]

That blip is in an area with absolutely no coverage. Between the tolls of Beckley and Charleston no one except I believe AT&T have any coverage at all.

 

 

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[JDP121]

In my research on that tower, I concluded that Verizon, T-Mobile, and US Cellular were the companies on it. AT&T and Nextel were on a nearby utility pole (behind the recycling center) but the two were so close together that AT&T and T-Mobile could have been reversed. nTelos was on a different utility pole near the off-ramp from US-250 East onto Grove Road.

 

My guess is that it's US Cellular.

 

- Trip

I believe this is the nTelos pole you are refering to. This was taken at the kroger across the street from kmart/whole foods

[dkyeager]

I was cruising sensorly earlier and seen new blip of purple south of Charleston.

I have unsuccessfully tried to find that LTE on several trips through the area (It has been there for a while).   I also once dragged a Sensorly 50Mbps B41 blip 20 twenty miles to my backyard via a problem with my phone.  I contacted Sensorly, even had logs showing exactly where I go it with the same speed an time, but they would not remove it.  Fortunately it did not become a tourist attraction like I feared.  

[Trip]

This also confirms what I have seen in one other report, that the nTelos site identification codes are two letters for the town plus three numbers, which is what you should look for if you go to look at a site. This is no guarantee that it will be there, but you often see the carrier's number, but the carrier's name is only mentioned in some cases. Electric meters sometimes have the names listed as well. Then you will be certain about your possible site.

 

That's definitely the case, as best I can tell.  I've seen numbers matching that pattern for nTelos in FAA registrations all over their coverage area. 

 

(AT&T uses a similar scheme, but also uses an integer number, depending on what information I'm looking at.  I'm not entirely sure why there appear to be two different ID numbers for each tower site with AT&T.)

 

I believe this is the nTelos pole you are refering to. This was taken at the kroger across the street from kmart/whole foods

 

That's definitely what it would look like.

 

- Trip

[dkyeager]

I believe this is the nTelos pole you are refering to. This was taken at the kroger across the street from kmart/whole foods

 

In my and other Sprint territories, powertower sites are finished last.  In Samsung territory the disparate cabinets were replaced  with Network Vision cabinets around the same time as everyone else.  Each site was then a Ground Mount Option with new cabinets and remote radio heads (RRHs) mounted on the ground yet still using the old antennas.  Then many months later, electric company contractors would replace the antennas, cables, and ground mount RRHs with new antennas with RRHs behind the antennas or nearby in the towers, hybrid cables (fiber optic cables with RRH power) .  These contractors will only work in conditions with almost no wind or rain (think high voltage) plus this is not their normal work, so installation times can take two to three times longer (sometimes more than a month).  They may or may not remove old equipment at that time.

[shawneyboy123]

This is a tower I pass frequently during the week. the top portion is for sure nTelos and for the longest time was the only equipment on the tower but on Wednesday I passed by and noticed workers climbing the tower installing new equipment beneath nTelos. I'm curious as to who's equipment it is I'm at a total loss. I know all of AT&T's new towers around here have 4 Panels per (sector?) and Verizon's have 4 as well. It's extremely low to the ground and has a directional antenna on one side (left in picture) while the other 2 have "normal" tall thin ones just like the nTelos setup above. I've never been able to find anything specific about USC's equipment but I believe they have a HUGE mess of antennas given the ones I've seen around here. The RRU's behind the antennas looks like a cross between Ericsson and ALU. I might head out later with my DSLR for a better photo.

My curiosity has clearly got the best of me on this one!

 

 

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[dkyeager]

I will try to look up the microwave later.  Did not find any active under nTelos before, but will attempt under their subsidiaries' names.

[shawneyboy123]

I forgot to include the location in case that would help out. I think the directional antennas are aimed towards the airport but the top and bottom ones are aimed a little differently but that's about all that's in that General direction

 

 

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[shawneyboy123]

 

 

 

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[caspar347]

Looks kinda sorta maybe a little like some of the older Verizon setups here but without new AWS antennas. Verizon definitely uses those antennas here and I recognize that little gray RRU-looking box.

 

But the RRUs don't make sense.

[jfcooley]

Am I the only one who's having issues within Charlottesville today. Nexus 6 shows 3g but signal check showed only 1xRTT. Had to toggle airplane mode to pull 3g back. I know its not the device...

[davidtm]

It's been weird for a couple of weeks - hopefully, nTelos is (finally!) doing something to the network

 

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[bretton88]

Am I the only one who's having issues within Charlottesville today. Nexus 6 shows 3g but signal check showed only 1xRTT. Had to toggle airplane mode to pull 3g back. I know its not the device...

Nexus devices now show 3G for everything, 1X and ev-do.

[jfcooley]

Perhaps, although I have never noticed it before. Usually (on the N6, I can't remember on all the others I've had) the signal indicator will have an "!" instead of the 3g.

 

I have never seen 3g indicated when I was not actually receiving a 3g signal on this device. I will admit I could have missed it before and only noticed then because things have been wonky lately.

[bretton88]

Perhaps, although I have never noticed it before. Usually (on the N6, I can't remember on all the others I've had) the signal indicator will have an "!" instead of the 3g.

 

I have never seen 3g indicated when I was not actually receiving a 3g signal on this device. I will admit I could have missed it before and only noticed then because things have been wonky lately.

The 5.1 update changed it to always showing 3G on ev-do or 1x. So a recent change.

[davidtm]

Thanks to having to pick up my lovely wife at RIC yesterday, I was able to see that my new M9 was completely happy in a better network environment.  

 

Interestingly, it stayed on 800 RTT/eHRPD going around 295, and once it picked up 800 LTE near the airport, it held onto that back around 295 on the way home.  Upon getting back to C'ville, it held onto the last Sprint tower east of town for quite a while before finally giving up near Monticello.  I also see that my data connection is better able to tolerate the LTE/CDMA setting in Mobile networks by reverting to EVDO after a minute or two.

[dkyeager]

nTelos announced yesterday in their quarterly results that they are at 44% of pops covered with LTE, and their plan is 66% by years end.  Initial focus is the Roanoke, Charleston, and Huntington market.  Zoning and structural issues were listed as impediments.  Small cells were listed as future possibilities in those markets primarily in indoor spaces. 

 

nTelos said they were port positive for the first time in several years against all four major carriers.  They have always been port positive against Verizon and AT&T.  They did mention that they did lose some customers to US Cellular at the end of last year.  They implied that they have now made up lost ground on customers.

 

There was no mention of Sprint interoperability in the Q&A. Presumably this will be part of the semiannual discussions with Sprint in May.

 

P.S.: Recent travels by passive spotters have not revealed the presence of LTE available to Sprint users in the Charleston Market.

[davidtm]

I just received a "friendly warning"-type email from Sprint Re my roaming data usage. I have CDMA roaming set to Automatic, and have had the Domestic Voice, CDMA and LTE Data Roaming boxes checked. I had always thought of those as permissive, not mandatory in function. So, I've unchecked them and will see how I do with data connectivity this weekend. Maybe there's a difference in these between my former M7 and the M9? Or, the M9 being triband behaves differently in a weak signal situation?

 

Sent from Tapatalk on either my HTC One M9 or Tab4 10.1, it kinda depends

[dkyeager]

I just received a "friendly warning"-type email from Sprint Re my roaming data usage. I have CDMA roaming set to Automatic, and have had the Domestic Voice, CDMA and LTE Data Roaming boxes checked. I had always thought of those as permissive, not mandatory in function. So, I've unchecked them and will see how I do with data connectivity this weekend. Maybe there's a difference in these between my former M7 and the M9? Or, the M9 being triband behaves differently in a weak signal situation?

 

Sent from Tapatalk on either my HTC One M9 or Tab4 10.1, it kinda depends

 

The biggest consumer of data when roaming for me is navigation, which can use up your allowance in about three hours of use.  The Navigator app allows you to download maps so you don't use roaming data.  The roaming limit for Sprint is 100MB or 300MB depending on your contract. 

 

If you were not traveling, get SignalCheck to see what you are connected to.

[davidtm]

As I've posted before, this was a sudden change in my phone's behavior in my home area. At the time (and still), I can't really sort out whether its network changes or differences in my new phone. Especially since others have noticed this, too.

 

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[S4GRU]

If it's caused by roaming in normal coverage areas, you need to contact Sprint. They will likely waive your roaming cap if it is temporary network issues and upgrades.

 

Using Moto X² on Tapatalk

[davidtm]

I disabled roaming in the settings, and it's behaving more like my M7 did with roaming enabled. It does seem reluctant to use EVDO sometimes though, leaving me on 1x. I'm starving for any info regarding anything nTelos might be doing to the network here!

 

UPDATE: Going to work this AM, I noticed on SCPro that handoffs between towers was less smooth, in that the data would blink off more awkwardly than I remember from the past.  Also, a new tower would come up as Sprint for about 1 sec, then switch over to nTelos.  I couldn't notice if the other tower info was different between the two.

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[davidtm]

Well, this was interesting today:

 

 

This is in the middle of nTelos-land, where I've seen only fleeting glimpses of "Sprint" on SCPro during a tower change. This was around maybe over a minute (long enough for me to catch a somewhat leisurely screenshot) after I noticed it at my desk. I was on CDMA Only at the time. When I switched over to CDMA/LTE (hoping for something even more dramatic!), it reverted to usual nTelos 1xRTT.

 

I'm dying of curiosity here!

 

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