Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[dewbertdc]

15 hours ago, RedSpark said:

I agree. So far, my experience has been much better. With Sprint's network, I routinely ran into congestion or coverage issues in a number of areas in the DMV, especially the Central Business District (Downtown DC), Columbia Heights and National Harbor. Indoor coverage has definitely been better too. Curious where T-Mobile would put mmWave....

T-Mobile's LTE network was pretty close to unusable in the Union Station during business hours before COVID-19 hit.  My office is right next to there, and has a DAS with Verizon, AT&T and legacy Sprint on it, but they never added T-Mobile.  I have to go in tomorrow, I'll be interested to see if my phone grabs on to the legacy Sprint PCS carrier on the DAS.

[bmoses]

with the comments around not all towers getting all bands just wanted to add that in the central iowa area they are currently doing upgrades and so far i've seen 3 towers that got upgraded with all bands and 3 towers that got upgraded with everything but B/N71 😕 

[RedSpark]

4 hours ago, dewbertdc said:

T-Mobile's LTE network was pretty close to unusable in the Union Station during business hours before COVID-19 hit.  My office is right next to there, and has a DAS with Verizon, AT&T and legacy Sprint on it, but they never added T-Mobile.  I have to go in tomorrow, I'll be interested to see if my phone grabs on to the legacy Sprint PCS carrier on the DAS.

Interesting. I'm sure at some point T-Mobile will take an audit of what's going on with that DAS and either terminate the legacy Sprint support or have support added for T-Mobile.

Curious what you find out when you go in. Let us know!

I've always been bewildered by the fact that carriers didn't prioritize coverage and speed improvements at major points of transit. I pestered Sprint about its Union Station coverage issues for years to no avail. That's where the most people actually use their phones the most (likely because they're talking, texting or surfing/streaming while arriving/departing/waiting for a train), and improvements at major transit points would readily affect and help the most people when they need their devices the most and need their service to be reliable and fast. You'd figure Sprint would see the substantial ROI from network improvements at these locations... Perhaps they did and simply had no money to do anything to improve things. Who knows, but T-Mobile shouldn't pass up on this either. 

Ultimately if a device doesn't perform at that type of location for a customer, it can lead to them switching to another carrier. Oh well. Hopefully T-Mobile takes this ball and runs with it.

Edited November 12, 2020 by RedSpark
Clarity

[stlman314]

3 hours ago, dewbertdc said:

T-Mobile's LTE network was pretty close to unusable in the Union Station during business hours before COVID-19 hit.  My office is right next to there, and has a DAS with Verizon, AT&T and legacy Sprint on it, but they never added T-Mobile.  I have to go in tomorrow, I'll be interested to see if my phone grabs on to the legacy Sprint PCS carrier on the DAS.

If the DAS is anything like my job you will be fine. I have the S20+ and when I'm in the tunnels under the building my phone flawlessly switches over B25 with no issues. 

[cyclone]

Went to a T-Mobile store today and did the TNX SIM swap. Ran into an issue with my phone not getting any service after getting the SIM swapped and confirmed in the system. The lady helping me had to call some support number to try and figure out why my phone showed to be activated on T-Mo, but "no service" was showing on my phone. After doing some digging, apparently Sprint had not been updating my devices the last few years. Was told that my "current" device was an iPhone 6s. Now, I've done annual upgrades since then and always activated through Sprint's website with no apparent issues. Could this be related to why I would get intermittent service problems over the past few years? I would get random signal drops or cycles as if I had put the phone in Airplane Mode.

On a side note, the lady also stated that TNX allowed me access to more towers than using a Sprint Tower...is that true? Just got this today, so haven't had much of a chance to test known areas with bad service. Will be doing PoGo Community Day this weekend and the two parks I hit are places where I normally switch to 3G to avoid data drops, so can test it out and update.

[BlueAngel]

2 hours ago, cyclone said:

Went to a T-Mobile store today and did the TNX SIM swap. Ran into an issue with my phone not getting any service after getting the SIM swapped and confirmed in the system. The lady helping me had to call some support number to try and figure out why my phone showed to be activated on T-Mo, but "no service" was showing on my phone. After doing some digging, apparently Sprint had not been updating my devices the last few years. Was told that my "current" device was an iPhone 6s. Now, I've done annual upgrades since then and always activated through Sprint's website with no apparent issues. Could this be related to why I would get intermittent service problems over the past few years? I would get random signal drops or cycles as if I had put the phone in Airplane Mode.

On a side note, the lady also stated that TNX allowed me access to more towers than using a Sprint Tower...is that true? Just got this today, so haven't had much of a chance to test known areas with bad service. Will be doing PoGo Community Day this weekend and the two parks I hit are places where I normally switch to 3G to avoid data drops, so can test it out and update.

Well yeah you get T-Mobile service now so you have access to all of their towers now.

[bigsnake49]

Overall I am really impressed with the coverage that I get with T-Mobile particularly in the cement bunker that is my high-rise condo. It was the same coverage that I got with Sprint until 4-5 years ago when Sprint decided to thin out their macro sites and replace them with mini macros, hence my Magic Box. I have disconnected the Magic Box. I now get great signal by my bedside which is for some reason a dead zone for Verizon and AT&T. I have been parked mostly on B4, occasionally on B2. Have not encountered B66 yet.

Now I would like to eventually have my T-Mobile line part of an e-sim.

Edited November 13, 2020 by bigsnake49
spelling

[cyclone]

14 hours ago, BlueAngel said:

Well yeah you get T-Mobile service now so you have access to all of their towers now.

I should have clarified that I was already on ROAMAHOME since late September. Wouldn't I already be accessing all of T-Mo's towers? So far I haven't noticed too much of a difference, but I also have only been in strong 5G signal areas

[dewbertdc]

23 hours ago, RedSpark said:

Interesting. I'm sure at some point T-Mobile will take an audit of what's going on with that DAS and either terminate the legacy Sprint support or have support added for T-Mobile.

Curious what you find out when you go in. Let us know!

I've always been bewildered by the fact that carriers didn't prioritize coverage and speed improvements at major points of transit. I pestered Sprint about its Union Station coverage issues for years to no avail. That's where the most people actually use their phones the most (likely because they're talking, texting or surfing/streaming while arriving/departing/waiting for a train), and improvements at major transit points would readily affect and help the most people when they need their devices the most and need their service to be reliable and fast. You'd figure Sprint would see the substantial ROI from network improvements at these locations... Perhaps they did and simply had no money to do anything to improve things. Who knows, but T-Mobile shouldn't pass up on this either. 

Ultimately if a device doesn't perform at that type of location for a customer, it can lead to them switching to another carrier. Oh well. Hopefully T-Mobile takes this ball and runs with it.

Greetings from the B25 signal on the DAS in my office building. My iPhone is showing the PLMN as 311-490. It did have to drop the T-Mobile LTE signal entirely before it would pick up the legacy Sprint signal. 

[RedSpark]

4 minutes ago, dewbertdc said:

Greetings from the B25 signal on the DAS in my office building. My iPhone is showing the PLMN as 311-490. It did have to drop the T-Mobile LTE signal entirely before it would pick up the legacy Sprint signal. 

Interesting. I imagine that as part of its network integration that T-Mobile will eventually get around to either shutting off Sprint on that DAS (and relying on native T-Mobile coverage) or putting in for the addition of T-Mobile to it. It's something they're going to keep track of... After all, I'd imagine Sprint (and now T-Mobile) is paying a recurring fee to be on that DAS? Someone has to notice that line item expense, right?

[dewbertdc]

1 hour ago, RedSpark said:

Interesting. I imagine that as part of its network integration that T-Mobile will eventually get around to either shutting off Sprint on that DAS (and relying on native T-Mobile coverage) or putting in for the addition of T-Mobile to it. It's something they're going to keep track of... After all, I'd imagine Sprint (and now T-Mobile) is paying a recurring fee to be on that DAS? Someone has to notice that line item expense, right?

I'm not sure what the financial arrangement is for our particular DAS.  I know it was installed and is maintained by a third-party integrator, but the building we are in is owned by the US Government, who I cannot imagine is charging the carriers to be on it (though I could be wrong).

Legend has it that when the DAS was installed (now coming up on a decade ago), there was a reasonable monetary difference between installing one that could support 3 carriers, and one that could support 4.  Leadership decided to stick with the "big 3" carriers at the time: AT&T, Verizon and Sprint.  My how the tables have turned.

[bigsnake49]

I actually saw B25 on my phone now on TNX. I guess they are have not moved the spectrum over yet.

[DurhamHusker]

I had TNX with new T-Mobile SIMs for a few days. I would lose all signal and phones would not pick up the very strong Sprint network in the area so we put the old SIMs back in and reactivated on Sprint. It's all apparently a work in progress.

[bigsnake49]

Does the TNX hack use a proxy instead of going directly to the network. My ping times are upwards of 100ms.

[comintel]

On 11/14/2020 at 3:12 PM, DurhamHusker said:

I had TNX with new T-Mobile SIMs for a few days. I would lose all signal and phones would not pick up the very strong Sprint network in the area so we put the old SIMs back in and reactivated on Sprint. It's all apparently a work in progress.

I have a similar experience as to loss of very strong Sprint signals with now only weak intermittent TMobile signals once I added TNX.

But I am interested in whether you were able to fall back yourself on the S20 or did you need help?

I tried putting the old Sprint sim in my S20.  It does reboot with the bars showing a strong connection but it will not use the connection.  

I tried reactivating on the online portal/dashboard but it says the IMEI is already active.  It also will not let me change the ICCID in the portal.   - it says it is invalid.

Thanks.

[BlueAngel]

2 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

Does the TNX hack use a proxy instead of going directly to the network. My ping times are upwards of 100ms.

As far as I know it's directly connected to the T-Mobile network.

[javon23]

Did the TNX switch on my Note 20 Ultra yesterday. So far so good 
Was able to retain my Advantage Unlimited Talk Text & Data $59.00 plan for now 

[jporter12]

On 11/14/2020 at 11:07 AM, bigsnake49 said:

I actually saw B25 on my phone now on TNX. I guess they are have not moved the spectrum over yet.

I have been seeing my TNX S20 Ultra switching to the Sprint network quite often, may times in places that it would go to n71 SA previously.  It has been doing this the past week or 2.  I switched to TNX about 5 weeks ago, right after it was released nationwide.

[bigsnake49]

I wonder why I am getting relatively high ping times (>100ms). I noticed that I only have these high ping times at home and they are usually accompanied with packet loss. DAS instead of regular macro. Am I signing on to somebody's T-Mobile's equivalent of a Magic Box in my high rise building.

[jreuschl]

From Reddit..  not much detail:

Enhanced T-Mobile Network Access. (TNA)

Info

Legacy Sprint customers can look out for it in the coming days. It would focus on an enhanced calling experience.

 

[floorguy]

So sitting here at my mom's, doing some "techy"stuff lol.. and it dawned on me.. let's check the difference in phones and connectivity.. needless to say I hope things come together sooner than later.

 

LG g6, vs s20 ultra. I was on band 2 (just can't upload all 4 photos....

 

I wish they could just set the prl to grab what ever the best signal is for your area... Instead of parking you on Sprint or TMO, unless it's gone (true roaming type)

 

I know in the end it'll be better... But this is worse than the Sprint lte roll out. IMHO

 

 

 

 

[BlueAngel]

2 hours ago, floorguy said:

So sitting here at my mom's, doing some "techy"stuff lol.. and it dawned on me.. let's check the difference in phones and connectivity.. needless to say I hope things come together sooner than later.

 

LG g6, vs s20 ultra. I was on band 2 (just can't upload all 4 photos....

 

I wish they could just set the prl to grab what ever the best signal is for your area... Instead of parking you on Sprint or TMO, unless it's gone (true roaming type)

 

I know in the end it'll be better... But this is worse than the Sprint lte roll out. IMHO

 

 

 

 

Why don't you get TNX on your S20 Ultra?

[mdob07]

On 5/1/2020 at 5:44 PM, mdob07 said:

They just started upgrading a T-Mobile tower by my office. The first picture below was taken on 4/22, the others were from today. I'll check again next week and see how its progressing. They installed the two new antennas so close together I'm wondering if they are adding more. 

 

And today I noticed this tower is now getting 2500 M-MIMO added. I can't tell if they are removing that crooked antenna or just relocating but all 3 sectors are sitting like that, that's what caught my eye as I was driving by. 

They are deploying in clusters here, wherever you find one of these there's likely more nearby. Here is a quick look at sites I've found so far in south Louisville with 2500 M-MIMO installed. There's another cluster in the northeast part of Louisville, and I found a couple of these over in southern Indiana this week as well. At least 2 of these got both 600 and 2500 gear on this install, the rest already had the 600 MHz equipment. So far except for the initial site they did over in New Albany several months ago I haven't seen them not add 600 if it wasn't already there. 

[JonnygATL]

4 hours ago, mdob07 said:

And today I noticed this tower is now getting 2500 M-MIMO added. I can't tell if they are removing that crooked antenna or just relocating but all 3 sectors are sitting like that, that's what caught my eye as I was driving by. 

They are deploying in clusters here, wherever you find one of these there's likely more nearby. Here is a quick look at sites I've found so far in south Louisville with 2500 M-MIMO installed. There's another cluster in the northeast part of Louisville, and I found a couple of these over in southern Indiana this week as well. At least 2 of these got both 600 and 2500 gear on this install, the rest already had the 600 MHz equipment. So far except for the initial site they did over in New Albany several months ago I haven't seen them not add 600 if it wasn't already there. 

I will see what they're up to in Lexington. We'll be there for an extremely bizarre and socially distanced Thanksgiving. I will take notes.  It's also the first time they're all meeting the boyfriend.  Nervous AF but not too nervous to scout for *T4GRU.  😏

[mdob07]

4 hours ago, JonnygATL said:

I will see what they're up to in Lexington. We'll be there for an extremely bizarre and socially distanced Thanksgiving. I will take notes.  It's also the first time they're all meeting the boyfriend.  Nervous AF but not too nervous to scout for *T4GRU.  😏

I know there's at least 3 in Lexington, New Circle and Newtown Pike, New Circle and Nicholasville rd, and Man o War and Harrodsburg rd. Likely more than that but those are the ones I noticed in my brief trip through there earlier this week.