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T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2


lilotimz

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Thought this was interesting:

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/verizons-hans-vestberg-touts-new-myplan-options

  • More than 50% of all Verizon’s radios are using Verizon’s fiber. The question then is, why not the other 50%. Some of them are very rural and fiber isn’t available, they’re renting fiber or using some other technology for backhaul.

What's the current percentage breakdown for T-Mobile?

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Almost 2M FWA customers. I wonder if FWA is causing carriers to do full builds in more rural sites.

With 50% of their sites using VZW fiber, I wonder why not get into the FTTH business, at least a long the path of their fiber runs. 50% seems pretty wild to me considering they don't service much of the country with residential services. Maybe they focus largely on big business services, kinda like what Sprint did.

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I imagine running fiber to specific locations is a lot quicker and easier than wiring entire residential neighborhoods, and I say this as someone who has Verizon FiOS.

- Trip

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On 5/25/2023 at 12:36 PM, Trip said:

I imagine running fiber to specific locations is a lot quicker and easier than wiring entire residential neighborhoods, and I say this as someone who has Verizon FiOS.

As someone who followed and was somewhat involved in the construction of Fios (and who has had Fios for over a decade), I agree.. it's a lot more complicated when you get into residential business like that. Lots of red tape and individual agreements with every individual municipality.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Looks like I'm seeing 180 MHz of n41 in Charlotte,  NC. This is the first I've seen the 2nd carrier expanded to 80MHz, is this live in other areas also now too? I'm just traveling through here today. 

oU8SR0Sl.jpg

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29 minutes ago, mdob07 said:

Looks like I'm seeing 180 MHz of n41 in Charlotte,  NC. This is the first I've seen the 2nd carrier expanded to 80MHz, is this live in other areas also now too? I'm just traveling through here today. 

oU8SR0Sl.jpg

I believe 180MHz was spotted in parts of Connecticut sometime last year too.

Edit: Reddit showing a few examples in Florida, California, and NY as well from earlier this year.

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  • 4 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...
9 hours ago, RedSpark said:

I would be pretty upset if I spent hundreds of millions of dollars on something and the person I was buying it from said they couldn't give it to me. Hopefully Congress can grant the FCC its authority back soon, but I have yet to read an article that is optimistic on that. Very interesting that there seems to be bipartisan support to restore the power but no legislation seems to be pending.

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I think people are forgetting that AT&T filed an objection to T-Mobile's winning bids.  Unless I missed it, that has yet to be resolved.  The FCC literally can't grant the licenses until they rule on the objection, and without auction authority, they can't pay people to work on auction-related tasks. 

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/att-urges-fcc-not-grant-t-mobiles-latest-25-ghz-licenses

Further, if people work on such things without pay, that risks violating the Anti-Deficiency Act, which is a criminal statute.  That's how government shut-downs are enforced. 

- Trip

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I knew about the petition, but didn't realize the FCC can't consider it without the authority they lost in March. It didn't seem abnormal for something like that to take months to be ruled on. So even if the FCC got its auction authority back tomorrow, that petition probably still has some amount of unfinished work remaining..

Combined with the current interpretation that the licenses can't even be granted on a temporary basis, the entire thing is at a standstill until Congress acts.. gotta love it.

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The real problem is that the statute is not entirely clear in cases like this.  Suppose the FCC decides to act based on its non-auction authority to find the obviously-auction-related petition from AT&T is without merit and issue the licenses.  Does AT&T then sue claiming the agency violated the Anti-Deficiency Act?  Does a court agree with AT&T?  Does that court ruling then land the staff involved with criminal charges for violating the Anti-Deficiency Act?

Seems like a big risk, one that could easily be eliminated if Congress would just pass a bill restoring auction authority--or even a targeted bill saying that auction authority is extended for the sole purpose of resolving issues related to auctions that are already completed. 

EDIT:  Here's a link to Chairwoman Rosenworcel's response, which says basically the same thing.  https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-396632A2.pdf

- Trip

Edited by Trip
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And AT&T just sits backs and laughs.

"Look Ma!  See what I done did to Tmo?  It's a hoot!  I knew I'd git revenge sum day.  Just didn't know duh Feds would do my biddin' 'fer me.  Woo hoo!"

Robert

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As Phonescoop points out, this makes a fair amount of sense given that Comcast's subscriber base includes a bunch of phones that don't support n71. So even if Comcast deployed it (which would be in a limited area as in most places they don't have 600 bought) not everyone would be able to get the coverage benefits.

On top of that, you can make a surgical offload network with n48 small cells, but you don't really use 600 for that. The capacity fills up too quickly. Just as T-Mobile. And you kinda have to put it on macros.

To this point, I expect Comcast/Cox/Spectrum to build networks hooked into their own backhaul primarily as another means of offload from the base network they're MVNO'ing to (Verizon). Using n48 for outdoor/large-area offloading and WiFi for indoor offloading gets traffic share on the base network down to the point of diminishing returns. Kind of like Dish building 250 million pops of coverage and then filling the rest in with $1-1.50 per GB, which is probably the ballpark of what Comcast is paying.

I figured there was a chance of a cable 3 GHz offload-focused network, though my initial thought was that it'd happen in C-Band. CBRS makes plenty of sense though, as cable networks are dense enough that you can just strand-mount small cells as needed, and with GAA you can probably find 40 MHz somewhere on the band, which is enough NR bandwidth that folks aren't going to complain about perf when each cell doesn't cover much area.

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  • 2 weeks later...
2 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

T-Mobile's DC folks were definitely able to get the system moving on this. Good work.

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  • 3 weeks later...
2 hours ago, RedSpark said:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/spacex-debuts-new-website-for-cellular-starlink-service

https://direct.starlink.com

Text starting in 2024

Voice/Data starting in 2025

IOT starting in 2025

This is amazing stuff... Wow.

Was on a cheap airline flying for a major carrier over the weekend -- no wifi. Wonder if this would work for data on planes -- at least for window seats?

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