AT&T LTE and Network Discussion

[belusnecropolis]

5 hours ago, RAvirani said:

• B12/B14 and B5 at 4x4 through the lowband ports via a 700/850 diplexer
• B2 and B66 at 4x4 through one of the mid/highband arrays via a PCS/AWS diplexer
• B30 at 4x4 though the other mid/highband array

It seems like it would make sense to run the widest channel on it's own without a diplexer and that probably is not WCS.

Especially in areas that require a filter for satellite so they are not at 5MHz.

[RAvirani]

6 minutes ago, belusnecropolis said:

It seems like it would make sense to run the widest channel on it's own without a diplexer and that probably is not WCS.

Especially in areas that require a filter for satellite so they are not at 5MHz.

That would make sense, although in Seattle they generally run PCS/AWS through the same array and WCS on its own. I know the PCS/AWS diplexers they're using boast quite low insertion loss; maybe this loss is lower than the alternatives that split WCS from either PCS or AWS?

[belusnecropolis]

10 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

loss is lower

Probably. I see WCS here on 2x ports on that same antenna. I have no idea why. We have 15MHz carriers here, one in PCS and one in AWS1 that do 4x according to my radio. the 10MHz carrier in AWS 3 is 2x and WCS is 2x on father sites that have it.

We have 15MHz here in 700MHz A/B/C blocks and the PS block at 10MHz, T-Mo/VZW has L850. I think they run WCS on the antennae that they port low band out of.

[Sprke]

11 hours ago, RAvirani said:

Yes. 

So the only reason to have multiple panels per sector is capacity?

[mdob07]

The September update for my S20 Ultra enabled NSA N2 and N66. Hopefully they start transitioning some PCS and AWS to NR soon.  I'm hoping in areas like mine where they have 2-3 PCS and 3 AWS carriers that they just flip 1 of those completely to NR and forget DSS. 

[red_dog007]

Yeah, maybe after the iPhone 12 is released we can see more spectrum transition to 5G, or see widespread DSS.

[Paynefanbro]

Verizon and AT&T will almost certainly turn on DSS nationwide with the launch of the new iPhone.

T-Mobile has been working tirelessly on leasing more 600MHz so they can have more capacity for all the new 5G customers. By year end T-Mobile will be expanding a lot of their initial n41 markets from 40-60MHz or from 60-80MHz. There may even be some 100MHz markets before year end.

[mdob07]

Went from absolutely no service to this now in Milan Indiana. Its about the only place I travel to for my job that had no service at all with AT&T. Glad to see expansion is still full steam ahead.

Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk

[Paynefanbro]

On 10/10/2020 at 4:40 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Verizon and AT&T will almost certainly turn on DSS nationwide with the launch of the new iPhone.

T-Mobile has been working tirelessly on leasing more 600MHz so they can have more capacity for all the new 5G customers. By year end T-Mobile will be expanding a lot of their initial n41 markets from 40-60MHz or from 60-80MHz. There may even be some 100MHz markets before year end.

Verizon just announced DSS is live at the iPhone event. They call is their "5G Nationwide Network" covering 200 Million people.

[mdob07]

I finally got some decent pictures of the new style equipment shelter AT&T is using. They're been using this around here for the last couple of years on new sites.

For reference here is what the older shacks looked like. Theres a ton of these out there, Verizon and Nextel also used shacks similar to these. 

 

Here's the new shack:

 

 

[iansltx]

Ports for family just finished from TIng/Sprint to PureTalk/AT&T. Needed somewhere to go with decent connectivity and higher data caps vs. Ting, and porting from a Sprint MVNO to another Sprint MVNO would've been annoying. Since three of the four phones don't have B71, nor do they do VoLTE on VZW AFAIK, AT&T was the one to switch to.

One of those lines is getting ported to Mint next week.

The cell site 5 mi west of where one brother lives is enough for okayish B26 VoLTE indoors, and perfectly serviceable 1x voice in the same place. AT&T has 5 MHz of B12 in the area but apparently that's full up, so it's sub-megabit H+ indoors or B5 LTE outdoors...and even then the H+ is shaky. That's on an OG Pixel that won't do VoLTE on AT&T but will on T-Mobile.

For the other three family members, they'll stick with AT&T based service a bit longer. VoLTE is only available on one phone (the S20) but service quality is better 3.5 hours south (though AT&T similarly has half of B5 + 5 MHz of B12, plus the usual B4/14/66/30). Still plan to migrate everyone over to T-Mobile once I've confirmed either RMOCN to the outlying Sprint sites works or there's otherwise sufficient reception in the area.

[red_dog007]

On 10/18/2020 at 3:52 AM, iansltx said:

Since three of the four phones don't have B71, nor do they do VoLTE on VZW AFAIK, AT&T was the one to switch to.

Any of those phones do VoLTE on AT&T? Where I go often, AT&T doesn't own CLR so HSPA coverage is very poor.  I have a V30 US998 that works just fine on VZ VoLTE but AT&T does not.  Very annoying to have a good B12 signal only for it to drop to no service when trying to place a phone call. 😕

[mdob07]

1 hour ago, red_dog007 said:

Any of those phones do VoLTE on AT&T? Where I go often, AT&T doesn't own CLR so HSPA coverage is very poor.  I have a V30 US998 that works just fine on VZ VoLTE but AT&T does not.  Very annoying to have a good B12 signal only for it to drop to no service when trying to place a phone call. 😕

For VoLTE to work on AT&T the device almost has to be an AT&T branded version for it to be whitelisted. For some reason they don't allow factory unlocked or other provider unlocked phones to use VoLTE and some other network features. I dont know what their reasoning is for that. 

[iansltx]

8 hours ago, mdob07 said:

For VoLTE to work on AT&T the device almost has to be an AT&T branded version for it to be whitelisted. For some reason they don't allow factory unlocked or other provider unlocked phones to use VoLTE and some other network features. I dont know what their reasoning is for that. 

Yep. Mom's S20 does VoLTE just fine. The rest of the family (Moto X4, Moto E4 Plus, first-gen Pixel) are stuck on WCDMA for calls even though I know all three phones can do VoLTE if you shove them in T-Mobile's direction.

[iansltx]

Confirmed that AT&T is running dedicated n5 here, at 10 MHz, by process of elimination. LTE is 10x10, and H+ is 5x5. They might be running DSS or n2 or n66 but I kinda doubt it. Guessing they aren't running H+ on every site anymore either; signal appeared a good bit weaker than the B5 LTE signal when I band selected to it.

Also, B14 is pretty obviously not on every site here; signal levels at my place are comparable to B2 and, well, 700 should be a lot better than that. Explains why I wasn't seeing B14 aggregated normally. Though apparently they have 25 MHz of B66...one 15 MHz carrier, one 10 MHz.

Edited October 25, 2020 by iansltx
More info on band availability

[Destroyallcubes]

Haven't seen any 10x10 n5 yet anywhere. Id have to see pictures to believe it. I work for ATT, and my store is getting a brand new small cell and should have 5G. Our city of over 100k has had 5G since April unofficially,  and August officially. I have done some stuff on my note 20 ultra to enable DSS, all phones its disabled to my knowledge. With the android 11 beta they enabled SA 5G on the U1 ATT software. Also saw N2, and N66 enabled. N12 should follow suit next. 

 

SA will be when DSS is enabled my guess. Not sure if DSS can work in NSA mode.

 

 

By the way if yall need anything let me know I can try my best to answer questions,  and site questions (Have internal access to site maps,  and what's deployed on sites to a general degree)

[JossMan]

20 hours ago, Destroyallcubes said:

By the way if yall need anything let me know I can try my best to answer questions,  and site questions (Have internal access to site maps,  and what's deployed on sites to a general degree)

Nice, I'll PM you have a question about a cell site.

[iansltx]

20 hours ago, Destroyallcubes said:

With the android 11 beta they enabled SA 5G on the U1 ATT software. Also saw N2, and N66 enabled. N12 should follow suit next. 

SA will be when DSS is enabled my guess. Not sure if DSS can work in NSA mode.

VZW is running DSS on NSA, so it's definitely possible. I've seen reports that AT&T is running DSS on n2 at the very least.

On my mom's unlocked S20 n5 is the only NR band visible when running in AT&T mode.

Where she lives, it appears as though AT&T has turned off B5 LTE entirely, running a dedicated 5 MHz for NR (speculated), plus 5 MHz for H+ (confirmed). My guess is that they have enough subscribers that can't do VoLTE that moving H+ to PCS here would be a disaster coverage-wise, and there's no point running DSS on a 5 MHz channel when they have, from what I can tell, 15x15 of PCS, 15x15 + 10x10 of AWS, 10x10 B30, 5x5 B12 + 5 MHz B29, and of course 10x10 of B14 to play with.

By contrast, the brother that just got a Moto g fast is in an area where AT&T is still running B5 LTE, as well as H+ on 850. No n5 at all. Betting that's because that cell site hasn't been touched in awhile (no AWS, no B30, no B14 AFAIK), so there's no NR to turn on and not enough low-band capacity if you dropped B5 LTE. But VoLTE works fine on the new phone, just not sure whether his suddenly better reception is due to using B12 or whether the radio in the g fast is just that good compared to the OG pixel while still using B5.

[RAvirani]

28 minutes ago, iansltx said:

I've seen reports that AT&T is running DSS on n2 at the very least.

AT&T is running n66 as well!

[Destroyallcubes]

Unfortunately no phones have those nr bands turned on. The only way to have those enabled is thru the android 11 Beta, or doing some trickery in a menu. I haven't seen full iPhone specs on NR yet, or to even know what's enabled. But DSS is disabled on all phones unless you manually turn it on deep into a special menu. N5 is the main NR band across the US, and DSS was being tested in a very small part of North Texas that's not been named yet. Now not to say it's not on but I've not seen a valid report of anything other than N5 proved on phones. I would love to see it, and to see DSS on. Now if anyone has seen it I am very curious about what it will show on phones if it'll be anything different or something will show up. 

 

Also the note 20 has support for N2, N5, N12, and N66 for ATT N71/N41 is obviously supported but no enabled on ATT software. Let's hope DSS is live nationwide soon .

 

 

And if you still see B5 still on LTE chances are you will not have 5G live until DSS is up and running, or SA is implemented 

[Destroyallcubes]

 

On 10/27/2020 at 11:52 PM, iansltx said:

VZW is running DSS on NSA, so it's definitely possible. I've seen reports that AT&T is running DSS on n2 at the very least.

On my mom's unlocked S20 n5 is the only NR band visible when running in AT&T mode.

Where she lives, it appears as though AT&T has turned off B5 LTE entirely, running a dedicated 5 MHz for NR (speculated), plus 5 MHz for H+ (confirmed). My guess is that they have enough subscribers that can't do VoLTE that moving H+ to PCS here would be a disaster coverage-wise, and there's no point running DSS on a 5 MHz channel when they have, from what I can tell, 15x15 of PCS, 15x15 + 10x10 of AWS, 10x10 B30, 5x5 B12 + 5 MHz B29, and of course 10x10 of B14 to play with.

By contrast, the brother that just got a Moto g fast is in an area where AT&T is still running B5 LTE, as well as H+ on 850. No n5 at all. Betting that's because that cell site hasn't been touched in awhile (no AWS, no B30, no B14 AFAIK), so there's no NR to turn on and not enough low-band capacity if you dropped B5 LTE. But VoLTE works fine on the new phone, just not sure whether his suddenly better reception is due to using B12 or whether the radio in the g fast is just that good compared to the OG pixel while still using B5.

Yep any phone not on Android 11 will be stuck on N5 selectively.  They will enable more bands in the coming months. N2 would be impossible to connect to on phones currently unless they ran a specific dialer code and enabled them. But even then it may not connect to them. I've changed the CSCs to other carriers on my U1 version and 5G will not ever show up. Something in the ATT csc is allowing the NR to connect. 

 

I still can't go off of hearing about n2 or n66 being live until a screenshot of the engineering screen is posted unfortunately. I am sure in someplace it could be on. DSS is live in a very few select places , specifically know in North Texas it was being tested 

[Destroyallcubes]

https://forum.xda-developers.com/galaxy-note-20-ultra/how-to/guide-service-mode-csc-guide-enable-lte-t4182293

 

For anyone who would want to test out their locals for NR bands other than N5, you have to have a Samsung(possible on other androids, unsure of that though), and you can enable LTE/NR bands, and enable DSS as well

[iansltx]

6 hours ago, Destroyallcubes said:

 

Yep any phone not on Android 11 will be stuck on N5 selectively.  They will enable more bands in the coming months. N2 would be impossible to connect to on phones currently unless they ran a specific dialer code and enabled them. But even then it may not connect to them. I've changed the CSCs to other carriers on my U1 version and 5G will not ever show up. Something in the ATT csc is allowing the NR to connect. 

 

I still can't go off of hearing about n2 or n66 being live until a screenshot of the engineering screen is posted unfortunately. I am sure in someplace it could be on. DSS is live in a very few select places , specifically know in North Texas it was being tested 

See Techxstremist on YouTube. He's in Phoenix and has shown engineering screens with 15 MHz n2.

In other news, Fredericksburg, TX appears to be getting small cells: https://www.fredericksburgstandard.com/news/att-works-toward-5g-installation. Curious what all they'll deploy there, as they only have enough 850 in the area to run 5 MHz of n5. As the article says, they aren't doing mmWave, but they have plenty of PCS and AWS so maybe they'll run NR there. Maybe 10 MHz B30 as well. LAA would be a long shot but no reason they *couldn't* do it I suppose.

 

[Destroyallcubes]

Well no phones run N30 yet, and there is no N46 to my knowledge. 3G is going to be sunset and it'll be completed by what 2022 iirc. Could always just turn that off on sites early. Doubt it though. Most likely will use DSS though

[Destroyallcubes]

Quick look, looks like it was a 20mhz connection on N2, that's not too bad. Wonder if it's DSS or all n2 being converted from LTE. Also noticed B1w being the Primary carrier with N2, that's interesting. From what I've seen in my locale is B2 is the primary LTE carrier with N5 being the NR band of choice.