T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2

[red_dog007]

Wind Mobile isn't very big still though.  It has been around for 8 years and their coverage is ahh yeah. lol. Not even LTE.  The plans are pretty decent, especially that $60 plan, but that is the promo price and to use your in-network data, you gotta pretty much live and work at home, lol. 

 

Wiki says they cover 44% of the population and their coverage map shows they only have a handful of cities with actual native coverage.  I'd imagine that any expansion would hit pops hard, but would still result in extremely poor coverage and not have the "nationwide" coverage the big three offer.  Even the other little four carriers cover most all the pops in the province which they operate in.

 

They are really doing a minimalist approach and they are being successful, but with that coverage Im sure that the big three aren't going to worry at all. 

[WiWavelength]

There is no "Arysyn" wireless draft, AJ. btw, you are way too occupied with using the word "fantasy". It is a bit disturbing coming from someone who tries to be/is a wireless expert. After all, I thought you were all about dealing in real. Is thinking of fantasies, sports, and Seinfeld, along with bullying people as a staff member on a wireless forum helping you age well, AJ?

 

With my technical expertise and years of historical experience come some baggage -- mostly, clever, punny, referential quips in good fun. That is what you get with me. Or you can walk away and leave the baggage on the carousel.

 

AJ

[Destroyallcubes]

AT&T has a lot of 10x10 spectrum frequencies here in the Chicago area, but one of them just recently went to 15x15. I can't remember if it was AWS or PCS though.

No AWS for AT&T here. There is a 10x10 block held by Atlantic wireless though. The other held by AT&T was sold to Tmobile years ago IIRC

[MacinJosh]

Wind Mobile isn't very big still though. It has been around for 8 years and their coverage is ahh yeah. lol. Not even LTE. The plans are pretty decent, especially that $60 plan, but that is the promo price and to use your in-network data, you gotta pretty much live and work at home, lol.

 

Wiki says they cover 44% of the population and their coverage map shows they only have a handful of cities with actual native coverage. I'd imagine that any expansion would hit pops hard, but would still result in extremely poor coverage and not have the "nationwide" coverage the big three offer. Even the other little four carriers cover most all the pops in the province which they operate in.

 

They are really doing a minimalist approach and they are being successful, but with that coverage Im sure that the big three aren't going to worry at all.

Actually, Wind just launched LTE in Calgary last month. Took long enough, that's for sure.

[Deval]

They're deploying 5x5MHz band 2 in a ton of markets right now. I see a new post about it almost every day.

 

Basically refarming their existing 2G for expanded LTE.

[danlodish345]

Basically refarming their existing 2G for expanded LTE.

Edge is still up in my area

 

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[Deval]

You can find that info on sprint and T-Mobile quarterly income statement. Each quarter tmobile's cost of service is about 1.35 billion but for sprint that figure is 2.3. To me it is very perplexing. They spend more on capital expenditure but their network is still inferior in the cities. Their cost of service is higher but customers still rate them less favorable.

 

Which is very interesting, makes me wonder what other costs are included in that.

[Arysyn]

With my technical expertise and years of historical experience come some baggage -- mostly, clever, punny, referential quips in good fun. That is what you get with me. Or you can walk away and leave the baggage on the carousel.

 

AJ

 

No AJ. With my disability, I'm completely unable to walk and carry baggage at the same time. Not much that I can carry actually, considering another negative affect of my health. My fingers are almost completely locked up. 

[Arysyn]

No AWS for AT&T here. There is a 10x10 block held by Atlantic wireless though. The other held by AT&T was sold to Tmobile years ago IIRC

 

Does AT&T have the newer 2300 band there, at least? It seems quite a major loss not to have the AWS spectrum there though.

[Fraydog]

Does AT&T have the newer 2300 band there, at least? It seems quite a major loss not to have the AWS spectrum there though.

 

 

Here it's just 2 and 17 I've seen in Chester. B4 can be deployed later but there aren't a lot of AT&T customers here so there isn't a real need for it yet. 

[danlodish345]

Here it's just 2 and 17 I've seen in Chester. B4 can be deployed later but there aren't a lot of AT&T customers here so there isn't a real need for it yet.

It's heavily populated here yet AT&T has only deployed 10 megahertz of PCS and 10 megahertz band 17 plus scattered carrier aggregation I don't know what the deal is they shutdown PCS Edge but left 8:50 up I don't know what the deal is

 

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[Arysyn]

It's heavily populated here yet AT&T has only deployed 10 megahertz of PCS and 10 megahertz band 17 plus scattered carrier aggregation I don't know what the deal is they shutdown PCS Edge but left 8:50 up I don't know what the deal is

 

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That is an odd thing about AT&T. There are some market areas where they have a great (well, based on how things are with carrier spectrum amounts) amount of spectrum. The Chicago market is one of those with a great spectrum deployment, Yet, other areas are falling behind. Verizon in that regard seems to do better than the other carriers, well maybe except for Sprint now. AT&T will be really incredible in Chicago more than it already is once they get their AWS-3 deployed, then if they happen to capture the lost AWS-3 spectrum from Dish Network, then it'll be the only carrier that will really be able to compete with Sprint here. All Sprint needs to do around here is improve their sites and activate all sites to the latest new tech set ups, then it'll be an interesting battle around here between Sprint and AT&T. Verizon then will be third, followed by a very weakened T-Mobile.

 

This is why I'd really like for T-Mobile to at least go out and get 3 blocks of the 600mhz spectrum for this area, if not more. I'm expecting a shipment in the next week or so of my Vivo XPlay 5 Elite, which will only work with T-Mobile. Since it is the ultimate device currently, I'll have to deal with T-Mobile. In the future if T-Mobile does get that extra 600mhz spectrum, I'll of course need to upgrade to a device that has it, and I'm hoping these international phones get more frequency bands capable in them by then, but I expect that whatever I get still likely will only work on T-Mobile even then.

[Destroyallcubes]

Does AT&T have the newer 2300 band there, at least? It seems quite a major loss not to have the AWS spectrum there though.

I'm pretty sure sprint had/has half of the was In East texas. But they sold it to AT&T I thought. Not showing up as all ATT'so on the face spectrum dashboard though. But they have those 3 different bands of lte active.

[Fraydog]

That is an odd thing about AT&T. There are some market areas where they have a great (well, based on how things are with carrier spectrum amounts) amount of spectrum. The Chicago market is one of those with a great spectrum deployment, Yet, other areas are falling behind. Verizon in that regard seems to do better than the other carriers, well maybe except for Sprint now. AT&T will be really incredible in Chicago more than it already is once they get their AWS-3 deployed, then if they happen to capture the lost AWS-3 spectrum from Dish Network, then it'll be the only carrier that will really be able to compete with Sprint here. All Sprint needs to do around here is improve their sites and activate all sites to the latest new tech set ups, then it'll be an interesting battle around here between Sprint and AT&T. Verizon then will be third, followed by a very weakened T-Mobile.

 

This is why I'd really like for T-Mobile to at least go out and get 3 blocks of the 600mhz spectrum for this area, if not more. I'm expecting a shipment in the next week or so of my Vivo XPlay 5 Elite, which will only work with T-Mobile. Since it is the ultimate device currently, I'll have to deal with T-Mobile. In the future if T-Mobile does get that extra 600mhz spectrum, I'll of course need to upgrade to a device that has it, and I'm hoping these international phones get more frequency bands capable in them by then, but I expect that whatever I get still likely will only work on T-Mobile even then.

 

 

Some of the things I see with the Vivo device are promising. That said, I think any device that is on AT&T and T-Mobile had better support band 12 at this stage. I don't see why Vivo didn't add B12 and B28 for that matter. 

 

May not bother you in Chicago but if Laser Leap 700 goes to T-Mobile you might regret not having B12, or if you go to AT&T for that matter. 

[Arysyn]

Some of the things I see with the Vivo device are promising. That said, I think any device that is on AT&T and T-Mobile had better support band 12 at this stage. I don't see why Vivo didn't add B12 and B28 for that matter. 

 

May not bother you in Chicago but if Laser Leap 700 goes to T-Mobile you might regret not having B12, or if you go to AT&T for that matter. 

 

Well. to be fair, the Vivo ought to work on AT&T too, not only on T-Mobile. I was being too specific on making sure I wasn't describing the Vivo as a fully U.S. GSM-based carrier-capable device. It just won't work on some important AT&T bands. While band 12 is important, I now admit that fully despite some months ago I made criticisms of T-Mobile for getting the spectrum on its network. My thinking at the time was why not save the money for the 600mhz auction and purchase more of that spectrum instead of the 700mhz spectrum. I realize that while it still is important for T-Mobile to try on getting as much of the 600mhz spectrum as they can. the 700mhz spectrum helps them now. Even despite only being 5x5, that is good in-building penetrating spectrum which my experience on AT&T using Cricket some time ago showed me how important no matter how much or how little that low-band spectrum is for wireless carriers and their customers. The more spectrum the better is my major opinion regarding wireless I've been making very well known about here on S4GRU lately, but that even 5x5 of it, if that is all the low-band spectrum T-Mobile can get and deploy the sooner - the better, still is important and worthwhile.

 

I like the quote on your signature, Fraydog. While I support the idea of carriers making the network the priority and then lowering rates for customers at the same time, with the exchange of having lower costs when purchasing the important spectrum they really need to help with their networks, even without such deal, I agree with the notion of paying a bit more for a better network, so long as its true. Problem is, and this may not even be a spectrum issue, with Verizon getting best network ratings still, my friend who lives in Connecticut has Verizon and gets reduced network quality in a lot of places. He mentioned to me that sometimes the connection drops down to 1xRTT. Talk about "Better Matters". Better than what, GPRS? It has been such a long time since I've been on either that I don't remember the speed difference.

 

Anyways, I looked this up and now I have a question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands

It says T-Mobile uses band 66? Is that a frequency utilized here in the Chicago market? While I'm alright enough though not thrilled about not having band 12 on the Vivo, I'm concerned about any other incompatible spectrum. A few weeks ago, I saw some band listed on Wikipedia - I think it was Wikipedia, though it either has the listing removed now, or it was band 66 I saw then but forgot its specific name. Any incompatibility with AWS/PCS frequencies is a concern to me. Otherwise, I'm really looking forward in getting this device. I think of it as a Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge Elite HiFi Audio Edition with Dual Sim and 128gb Memory (sadly though in place of the MicroSD Card). Still, it has some other advantges, not that they are really important to me, such as the higher mp count on the front (8mp) and on the rear (16mp) camera. Plus, I've read various reports online regarding the operating system. Some stating it is Android 6, while others stating it is Android 5.1. My preference is Android 6, however Android 5.1 is fine. The main aspects I like about the device are the 5.43 2k Super AMOLED display which means no sacrificing the display quality for premium audio quality in the LG G5's B&O HiFi dac/amp combination (which I can't get here in the U.S. anyways), or in the HTC10. The other aspects are the audio, of course (2 dacs and 3 amps built-in) and the Qualcomm Snapdragon 820. I really wish T-Mobile were to sell this device here in their U.S. sales channels. Although I grudgingly understand why.  

[payturr]

Anyways, I looked this up and now I have a question. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LTE_frequency_bands

It says T-Mobile uses band 66? Is that a frequency utilized here in the Chicago market? While I'm alright enough though not thrilled about not having band 12 on the Vivo, I'm concerned about any other incompatible spectrum. 

Band 66 is AWS 1, 3, and 4 all packed and wrapped nicely in a superset band. It's obviously not yet in use, but give it a few years and you'll be upgrading again to a B66 armed device.

[Fraydog]

Ars, I sense that if you moved to my town, you'd be on AT&T. Compare one tower on L1900 to two running L2 and L17 with a third running those same frequencies across the river. No B12 here either, USCC has it but will probably sell it at some stage as they left this market.

 

I'm still on Verizon but I have thought of moving to AT&T. Primary reason being Verizon has got too congested here due to everyone here having Verizon. That said no low band in a rural zone like this is no good.

 

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[Arysyn]

Band 66 is AWS 1, 3, and 4 all packed and wrapped nicely in a superset band. It's obviously not yet in use, but give it a few years and you'll be upgrading again to a B66 armed device.

 

That is interesting... is this a way for the carriers to have wider spectrum? It seems like that to me. Well, hopefully either U.S. devices catch up to devices sold in Asia audio-wise by then, or else those international devices get band 66.

 

Ars, I sense that if you moved to my town, you'd be on AT&T. Compare one tower on L1900 to two running L2 and L17 with a third running those same frequencies across the river. No B12 here either, USCC has it but will probably sell it at some stage as they left this market.

 

I'm still on Verizon but I have thought of moving to AT&T. Primary reason being Verizon has got too congested here due to everyone here having Verizon. That said no low band in a rural zone like this is no good.

 

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I think so too. AT&T seems like the carrier to go with as a service that just works well most everywhere, even if it isn't great in all places. I was thinking that AT&T was slowing down when all I was hearing about it in the media was the DirecTv acquisition and their plans in Mexico. It seemed to really take a toll on their network status in many places being neglected, though now it seems AT&T is making a bit of a comeback with their progressed 2300 rollouts and their Unlimited Data options. Where they've increased spectrum is a good sign of things too. I also like how AT&T is determined to spend money getting spectrum, regardless of my opinions about how spectrum ought to cost less. This shows AT&T is serious about their network here in the U.S., which is good to see, especially sfter all the stuff they were doing elsewise for quite some time.

[payturr]

That is interesting... is this a way for the carriers to have wider spectrum? It seems like that to me. Well, hopefully either U.S. devices catch up to devices sold in Asia audio-wise by then, or else those international devices get band 66.

It's the way to simplify number of bands in a given handset. Band 66's existence also allows Dish to aggregate it's rather boutique spectrum holdings (not including AWS 2), so in a universe where T-Mobile acquires AWS 3 or 4 or both, any existing B66 devices would be able to connect to that as well as the original AWS-1 based network, and aggregate carriers through intraband CA.

[Deval]

Noticed today on the Tmo sub that B2 LTE is now popping up in places, which makes me wonder just how much PCS they will refarm. Right now it's only being used for EDGE and GSM, right?

[lilotimz]

Noticed today on the Tmo sub that B2 LTE is now popping up in places, which makes me wonder just how much PCS they will refarm. Right now it's only being used for EDGE and GSM, right?

Seems like 5 Mhz fdd LTE to begin with though some reports of 10 MHz.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5X

[reedacus25]

Noticed today on the Tmo sub that B2 LTE is now popping up in places, which makes me wonder just how much PCS they will refarm. Right now it's only being used for EDGE and GSM, right?

GSM and EDGE are for all intents the same thing in this discussion.

 

T-Mobile's modern approach has been to shoehorn all the AWS to LTE, and all of the PCS to UMTS and GSM.

 

So in your post, the UMTS layer(s) were excluded.

 

T-Mobile has been very steadfast in their desire to maintain at minimum 2 UMTS carriers in each market. So in this Chicago example, since Nokia is the market vendor, they have 3.8 MHz wide UMTS carriers in the tool chest, and applied that to both UMTS carriers. Leaves 11 GSM channels, which is an aggressive k=3 reuse factor.

[Fraydog]

GSM and EDGE are for all intents the same thing in this discussion.

 

T-Mobile's modern approach has been to shoehorn all the AWS to LTE, and all of the PCS to UMTS and GSM.

 

So in your post, the UMTS layer(s) were excluded.

 

T-Mobile has been very steadfast in their desire to maintain at minimum 2 UMTS carriers in each market. So in this Chicago example, since Nokia is the market vendor, they have 3.8 MHz wide UMTS carriers in the tool chest, and applied that to both UMTS carriers. Leaves 11 GSM channels, which is an aggressive k=3 reuse factor.

Do you think T-Mobile is doing the PCS refarm in St. Louis yet? I'm going to look for PCS LTE next time I'm up.

 

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[reedacus25]

Do you think T-Mobile is doing the PCS refarm in St. Louis yet? I'm going to look for PCS LTE next time I'm up.

 

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same spectrum configuration as Chicago, same vendor, I would be very surprised if the approach weren't shockingly similar to that of Chicago.

[Fraydog]

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1605217-T-Mobile-why-do-you-hate-Nebraska?p=16660284#post16660284

 

Finally T-Mobile is getting local number prefixes in Omaha.