AT&T putting up new antennas and RRUs

[WiWavelength]

Nope, it won't, because it's AT&T and not Magic Magenta. [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23]

 

Coming soon for girls, Bronies, and Magentans...

 

"My Little Pony: Magenta is Magic"

 

AJ

[WiWavelength]

Coming soon for girls, Bronies, and Magentans...

 

"My Little Pony: Magenta is Magic"

 

Or, as Robert likes to sing to his daughters...

 

My little pony, Legere's such a phony,

Pink horse shit should be shot on sight.

 

AJ

[S4GRU]

Or, as Robert likes to sing to his daughters...

 

My little pony, Legere's such a phony,

Pink horse shit should be shot on sight.

 

AJ

 

[Dkoellerwx]

Also: the tech claimed that the ALU equipment around here sucks and the Ericsson stuff is better after I mentioned Sprint using Ericsson elsewhere in the US. I chuckled a bit and said "whatever." Is this the first positive review of Ericsson gear ever?

 

Ericsson gear doesn't suck. Ericsson management sucks. 

[caspar347]

Ericsson gear doesn't suck. Ericsson management sucks. 

I was just puzzled about him saying ALU gear sucks. But good to know that the Ericsson gear itself doesn't necessarily suck. I just thought I remembered Digi saying otherwise.

[lilotimz]

Alu gear does actually suck when compared to the other vendors equipment.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Dkoellerwx]

I was just puzzled about him saying ALU gear sucks. But good to know that the Ericsson gear itself doesn't necessarily suck. I just thought I remembered Digi saying otherwise.

It was never about the equipment, it was the way it was installed (badly), and then tuned (not).

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

[caspar347]

Alu gear does actually suck when compared to the other vendors equipment.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

 

 

It was never about the equipment, it was the way it was installed (badly), and then tuned (not).

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

Thanks for clarifying. Learning new stuff every day!

[Paynefanbro]

What's much worse about it? I've only been in ALu areas so far (NYC, Boston, Greenville)  and my experience has been good. Improved coverage and no dropped calls whatsoever, but that's to be expected of Network Vision sites.

[milan03]

What's much worse about it? I've only been in ALu areas so far (NYC, Boston, Greenville)  and my experience has been good. Improved coverage and no dropped calls whatsoever, but that's to be expected of Network Vision sites.

It's the combination of older release equipment, coupled with poor installation and network planning.

There is so much more, but here is some of the data from a third party research:

http://www.signalsresearch.com/Docs/SRG%20Antenna%20Workshop%20Presentation.pdf

 

 

[digiblur]

I was just puzzled about him saying ALU gear sucks. But good to know that the Ericsson gear itself doesn't necessarily suck. I just thought I remembered Digi saying otherwise.

It was all about the maintenance, installers, and acceptance teams. AT&T uses Ericsson's gear here and it works just fine.

[Handyman]

What's much worse about it? I've only been in ALu areas so far (NYC, Boston, Greenville) and my experience has been good. Improved coverage and no dropped calls whatsoever, but that's to be expected of Network Vision sites.

Oh, no. You can still drop calls in areas that are not 100% NV, which is most places. If an old 3G tower gets ahold of your call, all bets are off. Data issues are even worse.

[Paynefanbro]

Oh, no. You can still drop calls in areas that are not 100% NV, which is most places. If an old 3G tower gets ahold of your call, all bets are off. Data issues are even worse.

 

I understand that, but dropped calls have never been an issue with me on Sprint. Sprint's issues in my 4 years with them have always been data speed and reliability. They fixed the reliability part and speed is increasing day by day. Calls have never been blocked or dropped for me.

[caspar347]

Woah. Wasn't expecting this thread to ever get bumped. Thanks for reminding me to post my latest info on this tower.

[caspar347]

OK, here it is.

 

So in addition to the AT&T work, Verizon showed up recently and replaced their old 700/CLR antennas with (what I assume are) better ones. They also added AWS AIRs.

 

http://imgur.com/a/W4XXm (11th image from the bottom is where the new photos start)

 

But more interestingly, AT&T crew came back (in fact I think both crews were working simultaneously at one point) and put some of the old antennas back up on one of the sectors and added another new antenna (from the ground it looks identical to the antennas I mentioned at the beginning of the thread) to two of the sectors. The guy I spoke to said something about the tower being overloaded. Also, the longer antennas pictured in my original post with identical connectors to the shorter ones are nowhere to be found. Only the short ones are on the tower. Back when I first saw the AT&T guys they mentioned an incorrect part being sent. Could that have been the longer antennas, and could it explain why one of the sectors is running legacy antennas?

 

On a semi-unrelated note, I visited my home site for the first time in nearly a month. I found this:

 

 

 

Some newer model combiner? Did the old one break? The other two old ones are still there. http://imgur.com/a/v7msu

 

And this was on one of the PCS RRUs

 

The sticker is smaller than the "real" correct ones. Anyone know how this could have happened?

 

And last but not least, do we have any 2-antenna-per-sector Clearwire sites on record?

 

 

It's an old picture, but the contrast is decent. I can get wayyy better photos if necessary. The Clearwire rack has looked this way as long as I can remember, but I always forget to ask about it.

[JWMaloney]

This is what AT&T is doing -- rip/replace with new CommScope SBNHH-1D65C tri-band antennas to create a penta-band LTE network.

 

Antenna 1 (new)

Port 1 - GSM 850

Port 2 - GSM 1900

Port 3 - LTE WCS

 

Antenna 2 (new)

Port 1 - LTE 700

Port 2 - LTE 1900

 

Antenna 3 (legacy)

Port 1 - UMTS 850

Port 2 - UMTS 850

Port 3 - UMTS 1900

Port 4 - UMTS 1900

 

Antenna 4 (new)

Port 1 - LTE 850

Port 2 - LTE AWS

 

http://www.commscope.com/catalog/andrew/product_details.aspx?id=3767

 

 

 

[JWMaloney]

Update: Found a recent AT&T penta-band LTE permit that has everything, including UMTS, on new tri-band antennas and RRUs. This one doesn't mention GSM at all, so unless it's coming out of the UMTS RRUs, it's not there.

 

[MacinJosh]

Update: Found a recent AT&T penta-band LTE permit that has everything, including UMTS, on new tri-band antennas and RRUs. This one doesn't mention GSM at all, so unless it's coming out of the UMTS RRUs, it's not there.

 

There was a rumor at some point in the last 2 years that AT&T was going to stop broadcasting GSM and stick to UMTS and LTE only.

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 6+ using Tapatalk

[gnoj]

There was a rumor at some point in the last 2 years that AT&T was going to stop broadcasting GSM and stick to UMTS and LTE only.

AT&T is sunsetting their 2G GSM/GPRS/EDGE network on January 1, 2017. Like Sprint did with iDEN, I would not be surprised if they begin to more aggressively thin out that network next year.

[Conan Kudo]

There was a rumor at some point in the last 2 years that AT&T was going to stop broadcasting GSM and stick to UMTS and LTE only.

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 6+ using Tapatalk

It's not a rumor. AT&T has been putting up sites that are UMTS/LTE only as of late. Expect the density of GSM sites to fall over time.

[Handyman]

It's not a rumor. AT&T has been putting up sites that are UMTS/LTE only as of late. Expect the density of GSM sites to fall over time.

 

AT&T has a history of doing this -- as they did with AMPS/TDMA sites when they phased over to GSM.

[Conan Kudo]

AT&T has a history of doing this -- as they did with AMPS/TDMA sites when they phased over to GSM.

That's true, so it's not really a surprise.

[payturr]

Question: Is AT&T using a standard 2T2R type of panel? Or are they futureproofing with another form of set up?