T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2

[clbowens]

So, any guesses as to what they are going to announce?

 

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-to-announce-next-un-carrier-move-on-october-27

[dewbertdc]

46 minutes ago, clbowens said:

So, any guesses as to what they are going to announce?

 

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/t-mobile-to-announce-next-un-carrier-move-on-october-27

Perhaps the re-launch and re-branding of their T-Vision TV streaming service?

[clbowens]

1 minute ago, dewbertdc said:

Perhaps the re-launch and re-branding of their T-Vision TV streaming service?

Yeah, with that play image up there, that seems like a good guess.

[Trip]

If it's anything other than making the two networks appear native to each other, I'm not interested.

- Trip

[chamb]

1 hour ago, Trip said:

If it's anything other than making the two networks appear native to each other, I'm not interested.

- Trip

EXACTLY.

[mdob07]

Sometime in the past week or so T-Mobile has fired up a 2nd B41 LTE carrier. They are now using 40MHz for LTE and 60 MHz for NR here. Plus I believe the 3 Sprint B41 carriers are still up and my MB gold in my office is still on a unique channel. 

[Paynefanbro]

3 hours ago, mdob07 said:

Sometime in the past week or so T-Mobile has fired up a 2nd B41 LTE carrier. They are now using 40MHz for LTE and 60 MHz for NR here. Plus I believe the 3 Sprint B41 carriers are still up and my MB gold in my office is still on a unique channel. 

That's interesting. Are they doing any carrier aggregation between both Band 41 carriers?

[mdob07]

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

That's interesting. Are they doing any carrier aggregation between both Band 41 carriers?

Yes, and I also noticed CA is active on Sprint B41 on my T-Mobile phone tonight for the first time. It also seems my home Sprint site has gotten a backhaul upgrade under T-Mobile, which is interesting since its got an actual T-Mobile site co-located on the same water tower with it so its definitely not a keep site. Sprint used to top out at about 120 mbps even at 3am in front of the tower, now in my house I'm hitting 280+. 

[mdob07]

56 minutes ago, mdob07 said:

Yes, and I also noticed CA is active on Sprint B41 on my T-Mobile phone tonight for the first time. It also seems my home Sprint site has gotten a backhaul upgrade under T-Mobile, which is interesting since its got an actual T-Mobile site co-located on the same water tower with it so its definitely not a keep site. Sprint used to top out at about 120 mbps even at 3am in front of the tower, now in my house I'm hitting 280+. 

Adding Screenshot of B41 CA on T-Mobile. 

Also, I hope they don't start changing GCIs here like @Trip is reporting in his area. Here only B41 LTE is on a seperate GCI, and all B41 shares the same instead of being different eNB Id for each sector on the same site. Sprint had 5 GCIs on sites around here and I'm pretty happy to be getting away from that. 

[Paynefanbro]

I've been complaining about the split eNB IDs in the NYC forum. T-Mobile has been doing upgrades super fast here but they're also splitting eNBs on every sight they touch. My home site currently has 3. One for Band 2/66, one for Band 12/71, and one for Band 41.

A local site near my home used to have Band 2/66/12/71 on one eNB and when I connected to n71 it would aggregate Band 2 + Band 66 + Band 71 + n71. T-Mobile recently swapped out the antennas for newer multi-band antennas which caused an eNB split and now n71 will only aggregate with Band 2 and Band 66 because Band 12 and Band 71 have a separate eNB ID. 

It has also caused issues for tracking site upgrades in Cellmapper.

[Terrell352]

On 11/2/2020 at 7:50 PM, Paynefanbro said:

I've been complaining about the split eNB IDs in the NYC forum. T-Mobile has been doing upgrades super fast here but they're also splitting eNBs on every sight they touch. My home site currently has 3. One for Band 2/66, one for Band 12/71, and one for Band 41.

A local site near my home used to have Band 2/66/12/71 on one eNB and when I connected to n71 it would aggregate Band 2 + Band 66 + Band 71 + n71. T-Mobile recently swapped out the antennas for newer multi-band antennas which caused an eNB split and now n71 will only aggregate with Band 2 and Band 66 because Band 12 and Band 71 have a separate eNB ID. 

It has also caused issues for tracking site upgrades in Cellmapper.

Why would they do this? It's making the network slower. Will they fix this?

[Paynefanbro]

11 hours ago, Terrell352 said:

Why would they do this? It's making the network slower. Will they fix this?

I'm uncertain. It's been happening for a while now. Typically T-Mobile fixes the sites weeks or months down the line.

[Terrell352]

54 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

I'm uncertain. It's been happening for a while now. Typically T-Mobile fixes the sites weeks or months down the line.

Well the same thing is happening here. That's why I asked. Its really hurting the network. Something so basic and they couldn't get it right. They are throwing up equipment and spectrum now and optimizing later.

[mdob07]

Upgrade in progress on my local water tower site, both 600 and 2500 being added. Thought I'd share since its different that the usual "tower" setup. This is also a 4 sector site for T-Mobile, a true 4 sector site in that it has 4 distinct groups of antenna, instead of using the split sector antenna on a traditional 3 sector setup. Typical B71 GCI pattern here is 3D, 3E, 3F. 40 is the 4th sector and this is 1 of only a few true 4 sector sites I've come across, usually on the split sector setups only mid-band is split. I circled the Sprint equipment in yellow, T-Mobile in magenta. And as is typical here with the upgrades all sectors have been moved onto 1 eNB ID. Previously the 4th sector was on its own ID. B41 LTE isn't live yet but the pattern would be for it to go live on the old 2nd eNB ID. 

 

[dewbertdc]

23 hours ago, Terrell352 said:

Well the same thing is happening here. That's why I asked. Its really hurting the network. Something so basic and they couldn't get it right. They are throwing up equipment and spectrum now and optimizing later.

That's probably exactly it - they're dispatching folks to do the equipment upgrades faster than the backend networks team can optimize it.  They're acting like an agile software developer - work quickly and "break" stuff, incur some technical debt on the backend that they can fix behind the scenes.  

[mdob07]

On 12/4/2020 at 12:51 PM, mdob07 said:

Upgrade in progress on my local water tower site, both 600 and 2500 being added. Thought I'd share since its different that the usual "tower" setup. This is also a 4 sector site for T-Mobile, a true 4 sector site in that it has 4 distinct groups of antenna, instead of using the split sector antenna on a traditional 3 sector setup. Typical B71 GCI pattern here is 3D, 3E, 3F. 40 is the 4th sector and this is 1 of only a few true 4 sector sites I've come across, usually on the split sector setups only mid-band is split. I circled the Sprint equipment in yellow, T-Mobile in magenta. And as is typical here with the upgrades all sectors have been moved onto 1 eNB ID. Previously the 4th sector was on its own ID. B41 LTE isn't live yet but the pattern would be for it to go live on the old 2nd eNB ID. 

 

Stopped by next to this site on my way in tonight to see how this site performed with minimal load, I was not disappointed. This is my fastest test on T-Mobile so far.

[mdob07]

Anybody have any idea when SA N41 will be turned on?

[Paynefanbro]

On 1/6/2021 at 10:56 PM, mdob07 said:

Anybody have any idea when SA N41 will be turned on?

It's already on in some areas but it's not nationwide like n71. It probably won't be any time soon though.

The main reason why SA n71 arrived so fast is because T-Mobile's choice to only deploy spectrum as needed came back to bite them. Currently T-Mobile's anchor bands for 5G are 2/4/66. In many rural areas, the only bands T-Mobile has available on their sites are Band 12 and Band 71 because they were deploying for coverage first and capacity second. This meant that if they didn't enable SA 5G they would have a bunch of sites that have perfectly capable 5G antennas and that are actually broadcasting 5G signals but that their customers were unable to use. 

n41 on the other hand is pretty much only being deployed on sites that already have Band 2/4/66. Because of n41's range and the fact that there will virtually never be a scenario where n41 available but not any of the anchor bands, T-Mobile doesn't need to rush to enable it. Once more spectrum is dedicated to 5G and 5G carrier aggregation is no longer a novelty but the norm, we may see T-Mobile transition from NSA to SA 5G for lower latency reasons rather than coverage reasons.

 

 

[jthawks]

so im sure its been brought up but to lazy to search sorry. 

How do you know if you are connected to a small cell? Here in colorado we are getting a big jump on small cell deployment and besides the obvious of looking at scp signal strength isnt there a different gci? thank you 

 

[mdob07]

Found an interesting find today, this site was one of the earlier 600 upgrades, probably over a year ago at least. Noticed today that they are adding 2600 equipment and also appear to be swapping out the existing low/mid band antenna panel for a new one. On the latest permits around here that are adding 600 they are using Commscope FFHH-65C-R3 antennas, so I wonder if the existing one was an older revision and the new one has enough improvement to be worth replacing already. 

[Paynefanbro]

40 minutes ago, mdob07 said:

Found an interesting find today, this site was one of the earlier 600 upgrades, probably over a year ago at least. Noticed today that they are adding 2600 equipment and also appear to be swapping out the existing low/mid band antenna panel for a new one. On the latest permits around here that are adding 600 they are using Commscope FFHH-65C-R3 antennas, so I wonder if the existing one was an older revision and the new one has enough improvement to be worth replacing already. 

Seems to be the norm in many markets. They're replacing nearly all existing antennas on sites here in New York too. 

[dkyeager]

14 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

They're replacing nearly all existing antennas on sites here in New York too. 

 

15 hours ago, mdob07 said:

Found an interesting find today, this site was one of the earlier 600 upgrades, appear to be swapping out the existing low/mid band antenna panel for a new one. On the latest permits around here that are adding 600 they are using Commscope FFHH-65C-R3 antennas, so I wonder if the existing one was an older revision and the new one has enough improvement to be worth replacing already.

What was the previous 600Mhz antenna?

[clbowens]

Well this looks good for T-Mobile:  T‑Mobile 5G Is Fastest Based on New Independent Test | T‑Mobile Newsroom (t-mobile.com)

[jroepcke51]

36 minutes ago, clbowens said:

Well this looks good for T-Mobile:  T‑Mobile 5G Is Fastest Based on New Independent Test | T‑Mobile Newsroom (t-mobile.com)

Users only spent 5% of time on Verizon 5G ultra wideband. Ouch.

[clbowens]

Just a quick comment on the "Sprint" 5G experience in my area.  I have a Sprint S21 (Sprint SIM).  The closest T-Mobile tower is about .5 miles away.  

In my basement, I hang onto 5G, with speeds of at least 110Mbps down, and about 3Mbps up.  So they have my area covered pretty nicely.