T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2

[orangeblue]

I noticed the last couple of days that TMo's LTE network is more and more replaced by it's 4G network on my iPhone 6plus. Not sure if the LTE network is congested or down.

[EvanA]

Legere is hyping a big announcement regarding T-Mobile's network this week. He says he's gonna "take away any reason not to use T-Mobile." /r/tmobile seems to think a new 700a purchase or roaming agreement.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/3k1q7d/john_legere_periscope_7_sep_2015/

[richy]

He's going to drown himself?

 

It would be nice to see something concrete not just half baked marketing. Looking at the permits here they are basically doing nothing. There's one area of the island with no service and they have a full building permit for a tower, had it since 2011, they never built it. I reached out to them to find out if they would as part of their current network build and they said no.

 

This area has a low population but tons of visitora, plus the locals go there to escape tourists but there's no roaming so no measure of demand. They just see a low population. It would be nice to see them announce a serious build out and or more low band spectrum.

[Johnner1999]

Unless I missed it, he doesn't say new York. Except that he is running in new York, but he does seem to live there when away from Washington.

 

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[techfranz]

Well right now their plans and phones cost more than Sprint and their contract buyout takes 8 weeks to get processed and their website is extremely antiquated once you login to your account.

 

I wonder if they are going to do a aggressive version of Cut Your Bill in Half -like you GO into the store, they take all your phones, give you the GIft Card on the spot and reduce your plan by 30%.

 

Also, Sprint's Customer Service is better too. T-mobile doesn't work with you nearly as much.

[Fraydog]

Right now, T-Mobile is ranked first in JDP customer care. However, if that's the case, that's a sad statement of how bad the customer care is in this industry. Even on T-Mobile's Reddit, which tends to skew evangelistic, I hear stories of screwed up returns, buyout issues, and having to e-mail John Legere just to get things fixed, which usually happens after that e-mail to his credit.

 

T-Mobile's apps and website are dung at this point, I know because I'm currently using the $30 plan as my primary plan for the time being. A new MyT-Mobile app that doesn't suck and a new website have been asked for more times than I can count.

 

I can say T-Mobile is working on a new customer service system and store redesign from the last quarterly conference call but the website is also a big need. Oh, and you have to go into a store to do a lease with T-Mobile. Not a big fan of that given the nearest T-Mobile store is an hour from me.

[Fraydog]

http://www.cbronline.com/news/mobility/networks/o2-joins-t-mobile-in-slamming-rootmetrics-4651564

 

O2 isn't happy with RootMetrics methodology either.

[Fraydog]

http://www.rcrwireless.com/20150908/carriers/t-mobile-fcc-from-cca-ceo-tag15

[Deval]

Legere is hyping a big announcement regarding T-Mobile's network this week. He says he's gonna "take away any reason not to use T-Mobile." /r/tmobile seems to think a new 700a purchase or roaming agreement.

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/3k1q7d/john_legere_periscope_7_sep_2015/

 

The challenge with roaming agreements are that they are limited in scope to rural and suburban areas which are not their primary focus market anyway. 

 

I would think it would be a kickass plan, perhaps wrapped around their "jump on demand" promotions. 

[Deval]

http://www.rcrwireless.com/20150908/carriers/t-mobile-fcc-from-cca-ceo-tag15

 

That could be what Legere was alluding to, announce a new partnership, in production.

[joshuam]

Back in early August... Legere made comments about doing an acquisition of some type. That could be pretty interesting depending on who/where.

 

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[Fraydog]

At Busch Stadium on T-Mobile $30 SIM. It works. Just not the giant e-peen T-Mobile markets. I got e-peen in the Suburbs and Waterloo, IL. Kind of reverse of what I expected.

 

 

That's Busch and here's Waterloo:

 

[greenbastard]

At Busch Stadium on T-Mobile $30 SIM. It works. Just not the giant e-peen T-Mobile markets. I got e-peen in the Suburbs and Waterloo, IL. Kind of reverse of what I expected.

 

That's pretty good for a sports venue. Is T-Mobile the sponsor for the stadium or team?

[Fraydog]

That's pretty good for a sports venue. Is T-Mobile the sponsor for the stadium or team?

Nope. AT&T. I suspect AT&T is the lone inhabitant of the stadium DAS. My Mom had more issues on Verizon. Sprint worked OK from what I could tell. People I talked to at the bar were giving credit for being way better. There's light at the end of the tunnel Sprint fans!

[greenbastard]

Nope. AT&T. I suspect AT&T is the lone inhabitant of the stadium DAS. My Mom had more issues on Verizon. Sprint worked OK from what I could tell. People I talked to at the bar were giving credit for being way better. There's light at the end of the tunnel Sprint fans!

That's usually how it works at every stadium/arena I've been to. Went to a game at NRG Stadium in Houston and only their corporate sponsor, Verizon, worked. At&t was fine for slow browsing, messaging and calls. Sprint was only fine for texts only (over LTE), never tried a phone call; data was not working at all on B25/26/41, EVDO, or 1x.

[EvanA]

At Busch Stadium on T-Mobile $30 SIM. It works. Just not the giant e-peen T-Mobile markets. I got e-peen in the Suburbs and Waterloo, IL. Kind of reverse of what I expected.

 

That's Busch and here's Waterloo:

 

Last time I was at Busch T-Mobile was useless...but so was Sprint. This was before T-Mobile upgraded STL to 15x15.

[Fraydog]

Last time I was at Busch T-Mobile was useless...but so was Sprint. This was before T-Mobile upgraded STL to 15x15.

15x15 was a help for the stadium but it seems like the biggest gains are edge of coverage places like Waterloo. I was pulling 61 Mbps outside Ted Drewes. Oddly enough some of the surrounding areas that have PCS LTE like Route 3 south of Waterloo and Red Bud are only 5x5. I have no idea why they didn't go 10x10 there when Chester and Perryville are 10x10. Almost no one has T-Mobile south of Waterloo if I had to guess, it's like having a fat pipe to yourself. Lots of people on Sprint are going to have the same phenomenon with B41 not to mention rural places with enough CDMA cleared for 10x10 PCS.

[WiWavelength]

That's Busch and here's Waterloo:

 

With that bandwidth, you easily should have been able to stream some ABBA with no buffering...

 

 

AJ

[jasonsteele]

At Busch Stadium on T-Mobile $30 SIM. It works. Just not the giant e-peen T-Mobile markets. I got e-peen in the Suburbs and Waterloo, IL. Kind of reverse of what I expected.

T-mo is taking a huge dump where I live (suburbs of LA/OC). During the day I'm pulling an average of 15/9 Mbps on my hotspot, evenings around 0.5/1.5 Mbps. HSPA+ is unusable. I guess I can understand the download speeds, I didn't realize people are uploading so much as well.

 

 

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[Paynefanbro]

T-mo is taking a huge dump where I live (suburbs of LA/OC). During the day I'm pulling an average of 15/9 Mbps on my hotspot, evenings around 0.5/1.5 Mbps. HSPA+ is unusable. I guess I can understand the download speeds, I didn't realize people are uploading so much as well.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

 

As apps like Snapchat, Instagram, and Periscope continue to grow in popularity, upload speeds will become more important than ever.

[WiWavelength]

T-mo is taking a huge dump where I live (suburbs of LA/OC). During the day I'm pulling an average of 15/9 Mbps on my hotspot, evenings around 0.5/1.5 Mbps. HSPA+ is unusable. I guess I can understand the download speeds, I didn't realize people are uploading so much as well.

 

People are not uploading that much.  Downloading is swamping both the downlink and uplink -- because even downloading requires acknowledgement and signaling on the uplink.

 

Look at your evening downlink/uplink ratio.  It is 1:3.  For unloaded FDD, we normally would see about 3:1.  If you do the back of the napkin math, your downlink is getting slammed at something like 9x the uplink.

 

AJ

[jasonsteele]

People are not uploading that much. Downloading is swamping both the downlink and uplink -- because even downloading requires acknowledgement and signaling on the uplink.

 

Look at your evening downlink/uplink ratio. It is 1:3. For unloaded FDD, we normally would see about 3:1. If you do the back of the napkin math, your downlink is getting slammed at something like 9x the uplink.

 

AJ

Thanks for explaining, adds to my armchair wireless "cred". Is TDD affected the same way,, with the shared channels? I apologize if it's been discussed prior...

 

 

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[Fraydog]

http://www.howardforums.com/showpost.php?p=16056844

 

And here we go on Montana expansion.

[jgoff1]

I test drove one of their phones a week ago and found that their network was pretty saturated. I would get sub-meg LTE download speeds and considerably higher upload speeds. Their HSPA network seemed faster in most areas. Speeds would be great when you are with in a block of a tower, otherwise it was crap. 

[mozamcrew]

Thanks for explaining, adds to my armchair wireless "cred". Is TDD affected the same way,, with the shared channels? I apologize if it's been discussed prior...

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

With TDD you can set different ratios for uplink and downlink. The catch is they can't vary from site to site, or they would step all over each other.