Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[ingenium]

13 minutes ago, jporter12 said:

Which one you device connects to can vary, dependent upon what you were connected to previously.  It's all as clear as mud right now!  

Generally I don't think it matters which you connect to. I haven't seen a difference between them. It seems 310-120 might be used to regular data, and 312-530 is used for the IMS session for text and VoLTE. Or at least on VoLTE capable devices, some Android APIs report 310-120, and some report 312-530, so they're both likely being used somehow. Signal Check and CellMapper seem to always report 310-120, but Network Signal Guru always reports 312-530. 

311-490 is only used for T-Mobile or ROAMAHOME. It's likely sticky and persists for a bit, but there should be no practical difference. 312-250 seems to only be accessible with a T-Mobile SIM. I don't know if they get routed any differently, or if it's like broadcasting multiple wifi networks from the same access point (and on the same vlan).

312-250 makes sense in that it's an easy way to restrict access to a subset of sites. Same for the Magic Box one. It makes it very easy to restrict which sites can be magic box and small cell donors, and they won't even try to connect to one that they're not supposed to. You don't want the UE trying to connect or get handed off to a site it's not supposed to be on and get rejections. You risk getting dropped calls or data interruptions. 

311-490 was likely the same, as a way to restrict roaming access to some sites. Then they rolled it out to all of them, and rather than reconfigure the roaming side, they just added the PLMN everywhere since the current config was known to work.

[PedroDaGr8]

23 hours ago, ingenium said:

Generally I don't think it matters which you connect to. I haven't seen a difference between them. It seems 310-120 might be used to regular data, and 312-530 is used for the IMS session for text and VoLTE. Or at least on VoLTE capable devices, some Android APIs report 310-120, and some report 312-530, so they're both likely being used somehow. Signal Check and CellMapper seem to always report 310-120, but Network Signal Guru always reports 312-530. 

311-490 is only used for T-Mobile or ROAMAHOME. It's likely sticky and persists for a bit, but there should be no practical difference. 312-250 seems to only be accessible with a T-Mobile SIM. I don't know if they get routed any differently, or if it's like broadcasting multiple wifi networks from the same access point (and on the same vlan).

312-250 makes sense in that it's an easy way to restrict access to a subset of sites. Same for the Magic Box one. It makes it very easy to restrict which sites can be magic box and small cell donors, and they won't even try to connect to one that they're not supposed to. You don't want the UE trying to connect or get handed off to a site it's not supposed to be on and get rejections. You risk getting dropped calls or data interruptions. 

311-490 was likely the same, as a way to restrict roaming access to some sites. Then they rolled it out to all of them, and rather than reconfigure the roaming side, they just added the PLMN everywhere since the current config was known to work.

I'm on ROAMAHOME and saw 312-250 in the engineering screen. 

[iansltx]

On 12/19/2020 at 2:16 PM, PedroDaGr8 said:

I'm on ROAMAHOME and saw 312-250 in the engineering screen. 

Same. 312-250 sites on ROAMAHOME behave like native TMo in that you can bounce between them and standard (B2/4/66/12/71) TMo seamlessly, versus having to lose a TMo signal first.

[PedroDaGr8]

10 hours ago, iansltx said:

Same. 312-250 sites on ROAMAHOME behave like native TMo in that you can bounce between them and standard (B2/4/66/12/71) TMo seamlessly, versus having to lose a TMo signal first.

I know, ingenium stated that 312-250 was only accessible with a T-Mobile SIM. I was just stating that isn't correct, that I could access it with ROAMAHOME as well. 

[jporter12]

On 12/18/2020 at 3:35 PM, ingenium said:

Generally I don't think it matters which you connect to. I haven't seen a difference between them. It seems 310-120 might be used to regular data, and 312-530 is used for the IMS session for text and VoLTE. Or at least on VoLTE capable devices, some Android APIs report 310-120, and some report 312-530, so they're both likely being used somehow. Signal Check and CellMapper seem to always report 310-120, but Network Signal Guru always reports 312-530. 

311-490 is only used for T-Mobile or ROAMAHOME. It's likely sticky and persists for a bit, but there should be no practical difference. 312-250 seems to only be accessible with a T-Mobile SIM. I don't know if they get routed any differently, or if it's like broadcasting multiple wifi networks from the same access point (and on the same vlan).

312-250 makes sense in that it's an easy way to restrict access to a subset of sites. Same for the Magic Box one. It makes it very easy to restrict which sites can be magic box and small cell donors, and they won't even try to connect to one that they're not supposed to. You don't want the UE trying to connect or get handed off to a site it's not supposed to be on and get rejections. You risk getting dropped calls or data interruptions. 

311-490 was likely the same, as a way to restrict roaming access to some sites. Then they rolled it out to all of them, and rather than reconfigure the roaming side, they just added the PLMN everywhere since the current config was known to work.

311-490 being "sticky" seems to define what I see leaving my house.  Connected to the MB, 311-490, it will stick to B41, B25, and I've even seen it drop to B26, then it's random on time and location that it finally switches to 310-260.  I drive past 2 T-Mobile sites, one older B12, B2, the other newer with B12, B2, N71/n71, and sometimes it will stick to Sprint bands, even though those towers are further and the signal gets weak enough that I've seen B26.  I'm thinking at least one of the 2 Sprint towers lacks the 312-250 PLMN, I don't have NSG, and it's never showed in the engineering screen.

[greenbastard]

Does anyone know if the current Free Line on Us 4 is available for legacy Sprint customers? This year alone, I've grown my plan from 5 to 8 lines. Getting a 9th line would mean changing my plan...not I want to leave T-Mobile One for Magenta.

[kckid]

17 hours ago, greenbastard said:

Does anyone know if the current Free Line on Us 4 is available for legacy Sprint customers? This year alone, I've grown my plan from 5 to 8 lines. Getting a 9th line would mean changing my plan...not I want to leave T-Mobile One for Magenta.

I have 1 Free Line supposedly,  but they keep charging me $40 for it.  I'm waiting for my refund. 

 

[dewbertdc]

This is interesting. Android Police just published a list of older devices that will no longer work on T-Mobile's network come January 29th due to their inability to receive an update that will allow them to continue working.  According to the article, "T-Mobile confirms the change is not connected to either VoLTE requirements in 2021 or its legacy network shutdown."  I wonder what is going to change then... 

Quote

• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (AT&T model)
• Samsung Galaxy Note 4 (Verizon model)
• Samsung Galaxy Note Edge
• HTC Desire 10 Lifestyle
• HTC Desire 650
• Google Nexus 9
• Huawei Mate 8
• Huawei P9
• Mikrotikls SIA_R11e-LTE6
• Netgear Arlo Security Camera System
• OnePlus 1
• Quanta Dragon IR7
• Samsung Galaxy S5 Duos
• Sony Xperia Z3 Compact
• Sony Xperia Z3
• Sony Xperia Z3 Orion
• Sony D6616 Xperia Z3 Orion
• Soyea M02
• ZTE ZMax

 

[Paynefanbro]

13 minutes ago, dewbertdc said:

This is interesting. Android Police just published a list of older devices that will no longer work on T-Mobile's network come January 29th due to their inability to receive an update that will allow them to continue working.  According to the article, "T-Mobile confirms the change is not connected to either VoLTE requirements in 2021 or its legacy network shutdown."  I wonder what is going to change then... 

 

At that point I don’t understand why they don’t just shut off HSPA+ nationwide and just go fully GSM/LTE only. There are plenty of markets where they’re still running it when that extra spectrum could boost LTE capacity.

[RAvirani]

5 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

At that point I don’t understand why they don’t just shut off HSPA+ nationwide and just go fully GSM/LTE only. There are plenty of markets where they’re still running it when that extra spectrum could boost LTE capacity.

1x/EDGE/LTE/NR would be ideal in my opinion. 

[iansltx]

2 hours ago, RAvirani said:

1x/EDGE/LTE/NR would be ideal in my opinion. 

You're thinking 1xA on SMR + EDGE in guard bands? If you run 1x in PCS you might as well run EvDO because there aren't three 1x carriers worth of voice traffic anymore and you don't want to bother with <5 MHz on LTE or NR

[RAvirani]

15 minutes ago, iansltx said:

You're thinking 1xA on SMR + EDGE in guard bands?

This is what I was thinking, yes. EDGE would be in PCS guard bands. 

16 minutes ago, iansltx said:

If you run 1x in PCS you might as well run EvDO because there aren't three 1x carriers worth of voice traffic anymore and you don't want to bother with <5 MHz on LTE or NR

Even if you did want to run 1x on PCS, you don't need to cut an entire 5 MHz of LTE. You can just blank the resource blocks that overlap with the 1x carrier. That would be less than 1 MHz of wasted LTE spectrum (provided some of the 1x carrier was in the guard band). 

[iansltx]

4 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

This is what I was thinking, yes. EDGE would be in PCS guard bands. 

Even if you did want to run 1x on PCS, you don't need to cut an entire 5 MHz of LTE. You can just blank the resource blocks that overlap with the 1x carrier. That would be less than 1 MHz of wasted LTE spectrum (provided some of the 1x carrier was in the guard band). 

Fair point. Somehow I completely spaced on the fact that VZW is doing exactly this for CDMA now.

I actually just cycled through bands + techs on my phone and T-Mobile does seem to be packing things more tightly now; the center for their 15x15 LTE channel is 1962.8 MHz, while EvDO is sitting at channel 475 (center 1953.75). GSM is at BCCH 636, or 1955 MHz. So you have a 525 KHz guard band between EvDO and GSM, and 200 KHz between GSM and the nominal edge of the LTE channel, though at 15 MHz channel width there's another 750 KHz of guard band before the channel actually starts (so TMo could stuff another GSM channel or two in there if they needed to).

My guess is that there's still 1x on PCS, below the EvDO channel, but when I forced 1x my phone hopped on channel 476 (in SMR). Also guessing that T-Mobile H+ has a center frequency around 1972.5 MHz, which fits just fine in the scheme of things. Sprint appears to be down to one 10x10 B25 channel centered at 1990 MHz (half in the G block), which is a config I've seen commonly here (yesterday I saw it at 5 MHz, solely in G, but that didn't last).

[superbluepsd]

On 12/21/2020 at 4:43 PM, greenbastard said:

Does anyone know if the current Free Line on Us 4 is available for legacy Sprint customers? This year alone, I've grown my plan from 5 to 8 lines. Getting a 9th line would mean changing my plan...not I want to leave T-Mobile One for Magenta.

The answer is no.   I tried to have Sprint add a free line with the free line on us 4 and after spending an hour with the sales chat team all they can say is that there is no deal on the account currently for the Tmobile 2020 Line On Us 4 promo.    2 different agents tried but returned the same answer.    Oh well.   I guess we legacy Sprint customers are still the red headed step children of Tmobile....

[schmidtj]

19 hours ago, dewbertdc said:

This is interesting. Android Police just published a list of older devices that will no longer work on T-Mobile's network come January 29th due to their inability to receive an update that will allow them to continue working.  According to the article, "T-Mobile confirms the change is not connected to either VoLTE requirements in 2021 or its legacy network shutdown."  I wonder what is going to change then... 

 

 

Is this the issue? If so looks like they have a workaround.

https://www.androidpolice.com/2020/12/21/the-internet-wont-break-on-older-android-devices-in-2021-thanks-to-certificate-authoritys-workaround/

[Paynefanbro]

It's being estimated that T-Mobile has spent $4 Billion on C-band so far. I'm most surprised to see that Dish hasn't spent more. While I'm not surprised that Comcast and Charter have spent a ton I didn't expect them to spend more than Verizon. I wonder what they plan to do with all of this spectrum that they're hoarding. 

 

[iansltx]

7 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

It's being estimated that T-Mobile has spent $4 Billion on C-band so far. I'm most surprised to see that Dish hasn't spent more. While I'm not surprised that Comcast and Charter have spent a ton I didn't expect them to spend more than Verizon. I wonder what they plan to do with all of this spectrum that they're hoarding. 

 

The thing about Comcast/Charter is they can run backhaul basically anywhere in their footprint cheaply. They may also want to use C Band to serve areas slightly outside their existing footprint...or make internet-only installs at lower tiers self-install-able.

Likewise surprised at how much they're spending, but there are some explanations here. Curious whether they're bidding on early- or late-clesring mostly.

[Paynefanbro]

12 minutes ago, iansltx said:

The thing about Comcast/Charter is they can run backhaul basically anywhere in their footprint cheaply. They may also want to use C Band to serve areas slightly outside their existing footprint...or make internet-only installs at lower tiers self-install-able.

Likewise surprised at how much they're spending, but there are some explanations here. Curious whether they're bidding on early- or late-clesring mostly.

I'm thinking that it's mostly late-clearing because they're in no rush to deploy the spectrum. What it does say to me is that between Verizon and AT&T bidding heavily for the 100MHz of early-clearing spectrum and Comcast spending even more than Verizon on (if I'm correct) mostly late clearing spectrum, Verizon isn't likely having the runaway auction that many anticipated. I'm still expecting 100MHz nationwide on average but probably not many markets over that amount.

I'm also curious to know what markets T-Mobile purchase C-band in. I'm hoping one of them is NYC as our BRS/EBS spectrum situation is weird.

[Trip]

2 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

It's being estimated that T-Mobile has spent $4 Billion on C-band so far. I'm most surprised to see that Dish hasn't spent more. While I'm not surprised that Comcast and Charter have spent a ton I didn't expect them to spend more than Verizon. I wonder what they plan to do with all of this spectrum that they're hoarding. 

 

What is the source for this?  I see a reference to "analysts" but no source link.  Auction participation data is confidential at this stage in the process, so as best I can tell, these numbers are made up. 

- Trip

[besiktas]

On 12/17/2020 at 5:01 PM, Wfmets45 said:

I have an iPhone 12 on Sprint but on TNX. I read a comment on Reddit from a person that said they did not get global roaming when traveling overseas.

Anyone experience this issue here?

I’m not traveling overseas anytime soon but when I do, I don’t want to encounter this issue. The person in Reddit said they had to revert back to a Sprint SIM.

I saw that post on Reddit too but can't find much else about the issue. Would be interested to know if it's still a problem and if T-Mobile is going to fix it as international travel starts to pick up again in 2021.

[iansltx]

Looks like NYC n41 is up to 60 MHz:

Seems like a lot of sites are coming online on n41, or being widened to 60 MHz, in a push to get mid-band to 100MM pops by year-end. I fully expect T-Mobile to hit that population goal...the next 100 million will be a bit more of a push but certainly doable by the end of next year. Entertaining that there's n41 in some places that still don't (for now) have VZW NR of any type.

[mdob07]

I'm 99.9% sure that the lower Sprint B41 carrier has been turned off here. I can still get the middle and upper carrier but nothing I try will even see the lower one in neighbor cells or connect to it. This carrier was adjacent to T-Mobile's 60 MHz N41 carrier, so I wonder if they will be widening that to 80 MHz soon, they haven't yet. I also noticed today that I no longer get CA on the 312-250 PLMN, either on B25 or B41. I used to get B25+B25 or B41x3, not sure when or why that stopped.  

[PedroDaGr8]

13 minutes ago, mdob07 said:

I'm 99.9% sure that the lower Sprint B41 carrier has been turned off here. I can still get the middle and upper carrier but nothing I try will even see the lower one in neighbor cells or connect to it. This carrier was adjacent to T-Mobile's 60 MHz N41 carrier, so I wonder if they will be widening that to 80 MHz soon, they haven't yet. I also noticed today that I no longer get CA on the 312-250 PLMN, either on B25 or B41. I used to get B25+B25 or B41x3, not sure when or why that stopped.  

I noticed that here I can only get 2xCA B41 rather than 3xCA. All three carriers are still there but I can only aggregate to two. I wonder if this is the first step at expanding n41 here as well.

[superbluepsd]

9 hours ago, mdob07 said:

I'm 99.9% sure that the lower Sprint B41 carrier has been turned off here. I can still get the middle and upper carrier but nothing I try will even see the lower one in neighbor cells or connect to it. This carrier was adjacent to T-Mobile's 60 MHz N41 carrier, so I wonder if they will be widening that to 80 MHz soon, they haven't yet. I also noticed today that I no longer get CA on the 312-250 PLMN, either on B25 or B41. I used to get B25+B25 or B41x3, not sure when or why that stopped.  

Lower Sprint B41 carrier is gone here in the Portland market as well.    The remaining 2 B41 carriers have also been moved up higher to 2660 and 2680 Mhz.   

[mdob07]

3 hours ago, superbluepsd said:

Lower Sprint B41 carrier is gone here in the Portland market as well.    The remaining 2 B41 carriers have also been moved up higher to 2660 and 2680 Mhz.   

Thats where the two remaining here are as well, EARFCNs 41292 & 41490. N41 was still at 60 MHz this morning here, I wonder how long before they adjust it. Honestly I'm not sure why they moved so fast if that is what they are doing, almost all of the sites I've tested don't have adequate backhaul to even max out 60 MHz, much less 80 MHz.