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AT&T LTE and Network Discussion


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My signal at work[emoji19]9c5378ff6b2d5c68f8eb6e31954b5718.jpgdcd809612c43be1ff8c8c3043afe637a.jpg

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My office is about the same, this building is a black hole for all cell service. The only carrier that works in here is T Mobile since our LAN admin put in a Cell Spot for his phone. Thankfully we have good wifi and wifi calling works great on my S9 plus.398155f6b300ed88471ed73bbcb98bf8.jpg32a16e4ae9ffb0b0ccedd6c612877368.jpg

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My office is about the same, this building is a black hole for all cell service. The only carrier that works in here is T Mobile since our LAN admin put in a Cell Spot for his phone. Thankfully we have good wifi and wifi calling works great on my S9 plus.398155f6b300ed88471ed73bbcb98bf8.jpg32a16e4ae9ffb0b0ccedd6c612877368.jpg

 

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I have the unlocked model so no wifi calling for me. I had it on this phone with TMO and Sprint. Might see how VZW does next. Maybe. Vzw and Sprint work best at my work. Sprint is on the roof and I think VZW put up a new tower.

 

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You're phone was not active/authenticated on the network if it said emergency calls only. That being said, the fact that your phone continued to show signal is interesting. It could have just been a software glitch. Or a roaming agreement could be imminent. 
Ive also noticed recently while sitting at my desk in my office, if wifi is on it will connect to our T Mobile cell spot. It doesn't actually connect and pass traffic if I turn off wifi but it will sit on it for hours as long as I keep wifi with wifi calling on. I wonder if they are getting ready to start refarming the last HSPA spectrum in some markets and are about to enable domestic LTE roaming? Either way, I don't remember my phone showing Verizon or T Mobile until recently. The PCI is wrong on the service mode screenshot, 67 is the weak AT&T site I hit at my office. But it shows the T Mobile PLMN of 310260 and correct EARFCN. Interesting either way.a6fccaa72dfa90a49ab14f0a3db006b3.jpg5748c4c1a9f2fcd01927056c9e19a16d.jpg0ecc0a297675f195b348f62c86799407.jpg

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Applications for about 60 permits for new AT&T small cells have been filed in the last few months and are being constructed rapidly.  At this rate AT&T could have more small cells than Sprint by the end of the year.

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  • 4 weeks later...

I found 21 new permits for AT&T CRAN installations for Louisville, and I've found more installed that I can't find the permits for so the count is likely higher. Louisville just switched to a new permitting system and everything filed prior seems to be hit or miss on finding the permit.

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4 hours ago, mdob07 said:

I found 21 new permits for AT&T CRAN installations for Louisville, and I've found more installed that I can't find the permits for so the count is likely higher. Louisville just switched to a new permitting system and everything filed prior seems to be hit or miss on finding the permit.

So far I've found 5 or so of these small cells. I wasn't able to locate either a building or electrical permit for any of these, but I'm attributing that to the new permitting system that went live last month. Between all cellular permits in the last 2 years I only found 91 records, so a lot seems to be missing. But I am pretty confident that these are AT&T as one is in the shadow of a Verizon/TMO tower. None of them have the electric meter installed yet so not sure how long it will be before these get fired up. These have a pretty minimal footprint, it looks like the radios are under the antenna in the brown enclosure. The only thing on the ground is an H bracket setup for the power meter and fiber termination. This particular one was installed on an existing pole, but most are on newly installed poles. 

SjZCQd7l.jpg

2Z4IC0ol.jpg

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Map of AT&T small cell permits, as I mentioned earlier, this list is just what I pulled from the permit portal. 

View AT&T CRAN in a full screen map

 

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I don't get why VZW hides that you very view it on everyone else. The unlocked models will say LTE+ when on CA and it goes away when on a single carrier.

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This is why am getting a pixel three XL. I can view the screens through reading it and using network signal guru. Anyways interestingly enough AT&T has a primary 10 MHz PCS carrier and then a secondary 5 MHz carrier aggregated with the PCC


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Another new small cell, this was installed in April and went live in June. These things are popping up all over the place, definitely a benefit of AT&T having their own fiber everywhere around here.4b58c6fee95b52097c48e66b15b1c29d.jpg6208afbcda0b1fd18dbe32d296511d63.jpg5e19b5ee6e572b7fec6a9faa6416fec9.jpg

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16 minutes ago, mdob07 said:

Another new small cell, this was installed in April and went live in June. These things are popping up all over the place, definitely a benefit of AT&T having their own fiber everywhere around here.4b58c6fee95b52097c48e66b15b1c29d.jpg6208afbcda0b1fd18dbe32d296511d63.jpg5e19b5ee6e572b7fec6a9faa6416fec9.jpg

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Just to confirm I am reading this right. You are connected to a 20mhz Band 2 aggregated with two 20mhz Band 46 (LAA TDD),

How far away from the location do you lose Band 46? Very interesting. Proven FDD with TDD aggregation.

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4 minutes ago, jroepcke51 said:

Just to confirm I am reading this right. You are connected to a 20mhz Band 2 aggregated with two 20mhz Band 46 (LAA TDD),

How far away from the location do you lose Band 46? Very interesting. Proven FDD with TDD aggregation.

Correct. It's actually 3 TDD B46 carriers aggregated to the B2 carrier. This config has been live for over a year here on other small cells. Other regions have seen B2/B66/B46 all aggregated together also. Distance wise it doesn't seem to travel very far. I was practically under the thing and you see what the RSRP values are. The B2 carriers up to I'd say 1/4 mile give or take. This particular location has 3 of these around an apartment complex.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Just found some more CRAN permits, and one is literally my office address!! Maybe all those Mark The Spot reports actually do something after all. Permits were just filed today so it'll probably be several months before I see any construction. They're going to have CRAN nodes everywhere at the pace they are going, I guess that's a benefit of being the ILEC and having fiber everywhere. 

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I found yet another variation of the new small cells, this is the 4th style I've seen so far around here. I think this design looks a lot cleaner that the H bracket setup next to a wooden pole. Now if only they could get the power meters installed and turned up as fast as they are getting the rest of the equipment installed. This particular installation is back in an office park. Ansco is the contractor AT&T is using for everything around here. http://anscollc.com/

I1WsUKHt.jpg

https://imgur.com/I1WsUKH

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2 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

Wow.  They are in WiFi Channel 153 and 157.  Unless you go with a 20MHz channel below or above there is no way to avoid interference specifically from LAA.  40MHz channel will overlap these. 😕 

At the power levels these seem to be broadcasting, I wouldn't be too worried about indoor interference from these.

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I was in Fort Lauterdale and Palm Beach most of last week and wanted to quickly share my experience using AT&T down there. 

This was undoubtedly the worst non-rural cellular experience I have had in the US in a long time. This was very unexpected because of the amount of spectrum AT&T has in the area.

They are broadcasting 10x10 L700 (5110/5780), 10x10 L850 (2501), 10x10 L850 (2600), 10x10 L1900 (750), 5x5 L2100 (2175) and 10x10 L2300 (9820). Despite all of this spectrum, I found that probably 80% of the time I was either on weak L700, weak L850 or UMTS/HSPA, even outdoors. This was in both urban and suburban settings. There were two restaurants I ate in which had no service at all, not even voice. By contrast I never lost LTE on my Verizon or Sprint devices.

It seems that AT&T's poor coverage is due to a combination of poor site spacing and seemingly poor quality equipment. The AT&T and Sprint sites that served my hotel were atop the same building with the same sector alignment, but I found that AT&T would very quickly drop to weak lowband LTE while Sprint was able to maintain usable L1900 in the lobby. All of AT&T's sites I saw used three relatively short antennas which I assume were not very high gain. I believe radios were manufactured by Ericsson.

For reference, the Qrxlevmin on all of AT&T's bands except WCS is their usual national standard: -122. Sprint's were -122 on 800/1900 and -128 on 2500. 

Overall, I was very unimpressed with AT&T's performance and would not recommend them to anyone living in the area. 

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5 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

 

For reference, the Qrxlevmin on all of AT&T's bands except WCS is their usual national standard: -122. Sprint's were -122 on 800/1900 and -128 on 2500. 

 

Why is Sprint going to -128 or even into the -130's for Qrxlevmin?????   This just does not work and is very aggravating. Trying to use data below about -120 is almost impossible, no matter what band. Why do they insist on holding me on 2500 at a -130 level and having everything time out??  Sometimes in a bad spot, they hold me on 1900 at -130 and things crash bad.  What happened that they will not allow a transfer to a lower band?  This new Qrcminlev is a disaster. They are causing people to experience really bad service.

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17 minutes ago, chamb said:

Why is Sprint going to -128 or even into the -130's for Qrxlevmin?????   This just does not work and is very aggravating. Trying to use data below about -120 is almost impossible, no matter what band. Why do they insist on holding me on 2500 at a -130 level and having everything time out??  Sometimes in a bad spot, they hold me on 1900 at -130 and things crash bad.  What happened that they will not allow a transfer to a lower band?  This new Qrcminlev is a disaster. They are causing people to experience really bad service.

Because of HPUE devices can use a -128 signal on B41.  It is the upload that is timing out not the download when you are not using a HPUE enabled device.

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1 hour ago, radem said:

Because of HPUE devices can use a -128 signal on B41.  It is the upload that is timing out not the download when you are not using a HPUE enabled device.

Mine sure can not.  I have an S9 with HPUE and it absolutely can not use -128.  Also, I suspect that when we use carrier aggregation on 2500, HPUE is disabled. I doubt if the cell phone can transmit at the high levels of HPUE on two channels.

Somebody please verify that I am right or wrong on using HPUE on 2 aggregated channels.

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1 hour ago, chamb said:

Mine sure can not.  I have an S9 with HPUE and it absolutely can not use -128.  Also, I suspect that when we use carrier aggregation on 2500, HPUE is disabled. I doubt if the cell phone can transmit at the high levels of HPUE on two channels.

Somebody please verify that I am right or wrong on using HPUE on 2 aggregated channels.

CA is disabled when HPUE is active.

HPUE devices should be able to use L2500 at signal levels down to -128. If the you often wind up in scenarios where the uplink is too congested, then the Qqualmin value is likely set too low. 

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1 hour ago, RAvirani said:

CA is disabled when HPUE is active.

HPUE devices should be able to use L2500 at signal levels down to -128. If the you often wind up in scenarios where the uplink is too congested, then the Qqualmin value is likely set too low. 

Please expand on the Qqualmin value.  Many of us often have the same issue.  Thanks

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32 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

Please expand on the Qqualmin value.  Many of us often have the same issue.  Thanks

QQualMin is one of the cell reselection parameters included in SIB1/SIB3. It is the minimum RSRQ for a UE to connect to a particular LTE carrier. When correctly configured, it can kick UEs off an LTE carrier at higher signal strength (RSRP) if the carrier is congested (noisy with a low SNR/RSRQ), while allowing UEs to remain connected at a lower signal strength when the carrier is less congested (SNR/RSRQ are higher). 

Like the QRxLevMin, this value also has a corresponding offset value (called the QQualMinOffset) which is taken into account during inter-PLMN cell reselection (e.g. to allow you to connect to a weak native carrier over a strong roaming carrier). 

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16 hours ago, mdob07 said:

At the power levels these seem to be broadcasting, I wouldn't be too worried about indoor interference from these.

What are they? The max allowed isn't much and APs tend to not get close to max allowed specs for 5GHz. If they do even twice what APs do, being outside, a good AP is going to be sensitive enough to know that something is there taking up airtime. Half the time I see pictures of these it looks like they are just in some neighborhood. 😕 

11 hours ago, RAvirani said:

I was in Fort Lauterdale and Palm Beach most of last week and wanted to quickly share my experience using AT&T down there. 

This was undoubtedly the worst non-rural cellular experience I have had in the US in a long time. This was very unexpected because of the amount of spectrum AT&T has in the area.

Overall, I was very unimpressed with AT&T's performance and would not recommend them to anyone living in the area. 

I was up at Cocoa Beach this summer I had a bad time on Sprint and my family was having a bad time on VZW.  At least on Sprint one step you are on 1x800 and the next step you could have B41.  I started looking for towers and only found a few.  The ones I found were barely taller than any of the buildings and would have 3 or 4 carriers on them. The place also doesn't have very many tall buildings to put sites on so the sites were very short. 

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9 hours ago, chamb said:

I suspect that when we use carrier aggregation on 2500, HPUE is disabled. I doubt if the cell phone can transmit at the high levels of HPUE on two channels.

Somebody please verify that I am right or wrong on using HPUE on 2 aggregated channels.

Upload signals from your mobile device almost always die out faster than download signals to your mobile device because your mobile device with its small antennas and limited battery power cannot possibly broadcast to the network antenna with the same power that a large high power network antenna can broadcast to you.

A device that supports both upload CA and HPUE uses upload CA to get faster upload speeds until the signal starts to get weak. At that point upload CA is disabled and HPUE is enabled so that rather than two quiet voices whispering quickly to the network antenna (Upload CA), you have one loud voice using a megaphone (HPUE) to talk at half the normal upload CA speed to the network antenna.  If your signal gets stronger, upload CA is re-enabled and HPUE is disabled.

The net effect is that you stay on usable B41 for a longer period of time.  Now if you get to the point where B41 is no longer usable even with HPUE, then refer to the others in this thread who know about noise levels and how that affects signal strength.

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  • 1 month later...

I noticed over the weekend that one of my local AT&T sites is getting all new antennas and radios as part of the ongoing upgrades. Most sites are just getting an additional antenna added and some radio upgrades, I'm not sure why this one is getting the rip and replace treatment. Those are old Nextel antennas still mounted on the top rack. The new pictures were taken from about 1/8 away as the crew was still working in the yard tonight. Once they finish up and move on I'll get some better pictures. This looks to be using a new or at least different Ericsson radio model that in use else where around here currently. 

Old Setup:

https://imgur.com/U0ydQeP

https://imgur.com/Zf7AEpR

https://imgur.com/rHxL5rY

https://imgur.com/q5TQrMj

https://imgur.com/eu539cY

New Setup:

https://imgur.com/Dovlp2n

https://imgur.com/PJ96vhZ

https://imgur.com/E1NDqu9

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