Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[gusherb]

Where is 'here'?

In the Chicago area.

[Tengen31]

 

IME B12 is only good for a call or SMS. I’ve hung onto calls for miles driving through areas that I can’t use any data. T-Mobile B12 is basically a voice-only carrier.

B71 since they widened it to 15 MHz in this region will have usable data all the way out to cell edge, about 10 or so miles from the site.

Here in Minnesota I see B12 way more than B71. I keep doing airplane mode over and over to try to get it off of 12 and onto 71 with no luck

 

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk

 

 

 

[gusherb]

Here in Minnesota I see B12 way more than B71. I keep doing airplane mode over and over to try to get it off of 12 and onto 71 with no luck 
Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk
 
 
 

They’ve been rolling it out very aggressively in Chicago and across the metro. It’s not as ubiquitous as it should be in rural areas here yet.

[JonnygATL]

5 hours ago, RAvirani said:

Both. iPhone 8. 

Lucky you. But I have faith in TMobile making that experience ubiquitous across the board. 

[JonnygATL]

5 hours ago, dro1984 said:

Sprint's VoLTE here north of Detroit worked, (finally around Jan or Feb this year.) but was pretty bad.   Similar experience as yours... so i opted to turn it off.   Wasn't ready for prime time IMO.    I still struggle to use it.   I am anxious for T-Mobile to take over around here.   T-Mobile has a tower with AWS on it about 1/2 mile from my house.  Had tried T-Mo about 2 years ago with a pre-pay carrier.   The AWS worked great at the house.    Hoping to be able to tap into that again once things are integrated.  

I agree with you. Was not ready for prime time. They held out for so long likely for this very reason and only just released it last winter on the eve of their merger with a seemingly much more technically savvy entity.  I can't wait to see what magenta brings to the table. 

[though]

2 hours ago, gusherb said:

In the Chicago area.

Which is not in the East Nebraska/West Iowa market.

[Dkoellerwx]

5 hours ago, bretton88 said:

So with T Mobile taking over, what happens to our extended roaming? Especially uscc coverage.

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk
 

Most of the Sprint initiated roaming agreements should remain in effect. USCC will likely continue indefinitely since I believe T-Mobile also roams with them.

 

5 hours ago, though said:

Wish I could get some of this upload in my market (East Nebraska/West Iowa)...

I get uploads like that occasionally in Omaha. 55th and Center, 38th and I-80, 49th and I-80, 38th and Dewey, 45th and Cuming. Physicians Mutual and the VA center sites usually have heavy traffic. Physicians Mutual is probably running a lot better at the moment with fewer people in the area.

[ingenium]

I figured out how to get to Field Test/Engineering Screens on my LG V60 DS (*#546368#*600#).  I went to the Downtown site with the 5G NR live and went to the Engineering Screen and see this. 

So this probably explains why it's not populating in Cellmapper.  It's not even populating any data in the LG hidden screens. It just shows connected to 5G and that's it. No band info, no bandwidth info.  No PCI.  No signal strength.

I also noticed that as I drove away and my 5G signal transitioned to 4G LTE, the signal bars never dropped from full signal.  So it never was showing the "bars" for 5G in the signal indicator.  It was the 4G LTE strength. Because where I drove out of 5G NR coverage was near another 4G LTE tower.

So I wasn't able to determine which NR band I was on using Engineering Screens or Cellmapper. But I was able to turn on and off NR bands using the LG Field Test options under Modem Commands.  

So I first tried under NR bands, n71 only and then hit Save. The signal indicator changed to 4G LTE for 2-3 seconds, and then the 5G indicator came back. Still nothing on the engineering screen or Cellmapper, except to say 5G = True.  So I then went back and changed it to Auto select NR band.  It flickered back to LTE and settled back on 5G signal indicated. 

Next I selected n66 only.  Save.  5G disconnects.  Connects to 4G LTE. Then nothing.  After 5 seconds, 10 seconds. Nothing. Stays on 4G LTE. Does not connect NR.  Go back to automatic, reconnects to 5G.  Try it again with n71 only...connects.  Try again with n66 only...stays on LTE.  OK, maybe I can determine that I was on n71 then.

Next I tried n41 only and saved.  It too immediately went back to 4G LTE indicated.  But, BAM!!!  It settled back on 5G indicated. Is it actually connected n41? 

Excited by the prospect of finding n41 in WA State, but highly skeptical, I decide to try other NR bands only.  I was thinking that maybe the phone was overriding my selection and forcing it back to n71, though requested not to.

I went back to auto select NR bands, and reset. It then went thru its normal reset...first 4G LTE and then settling back on 5G indicated.

OK.  Try with n2 only.  Nothing, stays on 4G LTE.  They with n12 only.  Nothing.  When it comes to NR, it would connect to the local site using n71 only, n41 only, or automatic.  No other NR band selections.

Does this mean NR is broadcasting on n41 in my town?  I cannot definitively say. I did run speedtests. But these are not revealing. On n71 I was getting approximately 6-8Mbps up and down. On supposed n41, I was getting approx 10-12Mbps up and down. On 4G LTE I was getting 50-60Mbps. But I hear new 5G sites start out very slow and then drastically approve.

So I don't know what to think.  I can't really get access to this site to take pictures of equipment.  Thoughts?

Robert

 

 

 

T-mobile has the 5G indicator set to show when connected to any site that supports EN-DC, regardless of whether or not your phone is connected to NR. T-mobile allows NR aggregation between different sites (ie, you can be connected to one site for LTE, and another for NR). Since to my knowledge, no phones at the moment support B71 as the anchor band for N71, it's not uncommon to be using B2 as an anchor on a closer site, and N71 from a further site. For this to work, the sites without NR need EN-DC enabled. So what ends up happening is that if you're near a site that has NR deployed, it shows 5G in the indicator even if you're not connected to NR.

 

 

Sprint does not have their 5G indicator configured this way. Also, with N41, usually using B41 as the anchor band, you're like getting NR and LTE from the same site. I'm not sure if Sprint even supports NR+LTE from separate sites.

 

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

 

 

[Tengen31]

I get uploads like that occasionally in Omaha. 55th and Center, 38th and I-80, 49th and I-80, 38th and Dewey, 45th and Cuming. Physicians Mutual and the VA center sites usually have heavy traffic. Physicians Mutual is probably running a lot better at the moment with fewer people in the area.

Doesn't TMobile want their own coverage without any roaming?

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk

[Dkoellerwx]

5 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

Doesn't TMobile want their own coverage without any roaming?

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk
 

Not sure what you mean? T-Mobile has roaming partners. They continue to expand coverage yes, but they're not everywhere yet. And won't be for a while.

[S4GRU]

25 minutes ago, ingenium said:

T-mobile has the 5G indicator set to show when connected to any site that supports EN-DC, regardless of whether or not your phone is connected to NR. T-mobile allows NR aggregation between different sites (ie, you can be connected to one site for LTE, and another for NR). Since to my knowledge, no phones at the moment support B71 as the anchor band for N71, it's not uncommon to be using B2 as an anchor on a closer site, and N71 from a further site. For this to work, the sites without NR need EN-DC enabled. So what ends up happening is that if you're near a site that has NR deployed, it shows 5G in the indicator even if you're not connected to NR.

Sprint does not have their 5G indicator configured this way. Also, with N41, usually using B41 as the anchor band, you're like getting NR and LTE from the same site. I'm not sure if Sprint even supports NR+LTE from separate sites.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

This makes sense.  The site is in a bowl, surrounded by hills with no other sites in view.  But the site was just upgraded.  So this makes sense.  Possibly they have turned on ENDC on this newly upgraded site, but not NR yet.  Maybe NR will come on in the next few days.  And maybe this is the reason why people say 5G speeds are slow when the site first goes live.  And then gets much faster after a week or few weeks.  Maybe they are on a LTE site supporting ENDC, then NR goes live after awhile.  THey just see 5G the whole time, not realizing they are not even connected.

However, if I wasn't connected to NR, and I was actually on LTE, why wasn't the speed similar?  There was a distinctive difference.  Also, why could I only get the 5G icon when I had the radio on n41 and n71 and not other NR bands?  Is the ENDC only visible thru certain bands?

Robert

[Tengen31]

This makes sense.  The site is in a bowl, surrounded by hills with no other sites in view.  But the site was just upgraded.  So this makes sense.  Possibly they have turned on ENDC on this newly upgraded site, but not NR yet.  Maybe NR will come on in the next few days.  And maybe this is the reason why people say 5G speeds are slow when the site first goes live.  And then gets much faster after a week or few weeks.  Maybe they are on a LTE site supporting ENDC, then NR goes live after awhile.  THey just see 5G the whole time, not realizing they are not even connected.
However, if I wasn't connected to NR, and I was actually on LTE, why wasn't the speed similar?  There was a distinctive difference.  Also, why could I only get the 5G icon when I had the radio on n41 and n71 and not other NR bands?  Is the ENDC only visible thru certain bands?
Robert

What do you think they will do for midband 5G in South Dakota as they don't own B41? CBRS maybe?

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk

[ingenium]

However, if I wasn't connected to NR, and I was actually on LTE, why wasn't the speed similar?  There was a distinctive difference.  Also, why could I only get the 5G icon when I had the radio on n41 and n71 and not other NR bands?  Is the ENDC only visible thru certain bands?
Robert

I'm not sure why there was a speed difference honestly. Possibly it was using NR?

I don't have an 5G phone to test with, but my guess is that the network might only report EN-DC if the UE supports the NR bands it asks about. When your phone connects to the network, the network asks if it's capable of bands x, y, z, etc. And the phone reports back which of those bands it supports, all CA combinations of those bands, 4x4 capabilities on those bands, etc. So if you had N41 and/or N71 disabled, the phone wouldn't report that it supports them, and the network would probably not advertise EN-DC.

Here's an example of a UE capability inquiry signaling message asking about LTE and NR


Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

[S4GRU]

17 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

What do you think they will do for midband 5G in South Dakota as they don't own B41? CBRS maybe?

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk
 

They have quite a bit of B41 in South Dakota.  Just not hundreds of MHz like other markets.  They have most of the BRS licenses in Sioux Falls and Brookings.  They also have EBS licenses in every city they had WiMax Protection sites...Rapid City, Pierre and Sioux Falls.  Since the rest of the state outside those 4 cities is pretty rural, I think that could be very good if they can offer really wide 5G NR in those 4 cities on n41, coupled with n71 over the rest of the state's Tmo sites.

Robert

EDIT - Also, Sprint has a relationship with Golden West Wireless in Rapid City.  They manage and deployed Sprint sites in Western South Dakota since 2015.  It's not a far reach for them to work out an arrangement to lease BRS in Western South Dakota too.

[Tengen31]

They have quite a bit of B41 in South Dakota.  Just not hundreds of MHz like other markets.  They have most of the BRS licenses in Sioux Falls and Brookings.  They also have EBS licenses in every city they had WiMax Protection sites...Rapid City, Pierre and Sioux Falls.  Since the rest of the state outside those 4 cities is pretty rural, I think that could be very good if they can offer really wide 5G NR in those 4 cities on n41, coupled with n71 over the rest of the state's Tmo sites.

Robert

Oh I didn't know that. I thought it had been said they didn't own any

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk

[tybo31316]

This place used to be a Sprint weak area. Dropping calls and unusable date. Now I’m connecting to multiple T-Mobile bands 2,4,12,66 and 71.

Here’s a few screenshots of what I could capture.

[dro1984]

Tybo.... give us a speed test... Let's see those numbers. 

[tybo31316]

This is one test I was able to screenshot. I’m not sure which band I was connected to because it was jumping around quite a bit.

[dkyeager]

15 hours ago, S4GRU said:

Does this mean NR is broadcasting on n41 in my town?  I cannot definitively say. I did run speedtests. But these are not revealing. On n71 I was getting approximately 6-8Mbps up and down. On supposed n41, I was getting approx 10-12Mbps up and down. On 4G LTE I was getting 50-60Mbps. But I hear new 5G sites start out very slow and then drastically approve.

So I don't know what to think.  I can't really get access to this site to take pictures of equipment.  Thoughts?

Robert

NSA is like a special kind of CA.  Hard to get info on what you are exactly connected to with standard tools other than the primary carrier.

There have been reports of people either seeing noticable speed increases with 5g or none.  Ingenium gave us the reason why, noting the 5g indicator just indicates the presence of 5g and not whether you are connected. Therefore, by restricting your phone 5g to only n41 and none, repeated alternating speed tests done at a non peak time should indicate whether you are connected to n41 or not.

Edit: I suggest picking a site where you can see the equipment else try a drone. Being in the edge of another site may not give detectable speed increases. My hunch is we will only find n41 at sites with n71.

[greenbastard]

17 hours ago, bretton88 said:

So with T Mobile taking over, what happens to our extended roaming? Especially uscc coverage.

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk
 

As long as you're on "Sprint", it's business as usual.

But down the road when you're moved into the T-Mobile network, you'll be treated to T-Mobile's roaming partners (or lack thereof). T-Mobile does have a roaming agreement with USCC, but it's limited to VoLTE devices purchased from T-Mobile and only available in certain areas.

Overall, you should prepare yourself for less roaming. Don't expect much from T-Mobile if you're outside of their native network.

[twospirits]

16 hours ago, S4GRU said:

I figured out how to get to Field Test/Engineering Screens on my LG V60 DS (*#546368#*600#).  I went to the Downtown site with the 5G NR live and went to the Engineering Screen and see this. 

Excited by the prospect of finding n41 in WA State, but highly skeptical, I decide to try other NR bands only.  I was thinking that maybe the phone was overriding my selection and forcing it back to n71, though requested not to.

I went back to auto select NR bands, and reset. It then went thru its normal reset...first 4G LTE and then settling back on 5G indicated.

OK.  Try with n2 only.  Nothing, stays on 4G LTE.  They with n12 only.  Nothing.  When it comes to NR, it would connect to the local site using n71 only, n41 only, or automatic.  No other NR band selections.

Does this mean NR is broadcasting on n41 in my town?  I cannot definitively say. I did run speedtests. But these are not revealing. On n71 I was getting approximately 6-8Mbps up and down. On supposed n41, I was getting approx 10-12Mbps up and down. On 4G LTE I was getting 50-60Mbps. But I hear new 5G sites start out very slow and then drastically approve.

So I don't know what to think.  I can't really get access to this site to take pictures of equipment.  Thoughts?

Robert

 

 

 

Thanks for the code. Took me a few minutes to finally get to the right spot. (*#546368#*600#) then -->Field Test -->Modem Settings-->Engineering Mode-. Supposedly on my V60 I also get 5G as per speedtest (connecting to the server in Wayne NJ which is 35 miles away from my location in JFK. I performed the same steps you did last night and also ran a speedtest and it was 10.9 download and 13.1 upload. This morning tried it again, set it to do N41 and got the following screenshot below. I then ran a speedtest I got connected to Syosset, NY and my speeds dramatically increased. Today it is 36.6 download and 28.7 upload.  This is the highest I've ever gotten on 5G with the V60. usually it falls back to 4G with better speeds. 

 

[S4GRU]

6 minutes ago, twospirits said:

Thanks for the code. Took me a few minutes to finally get to the right spot. (*#546368#*600#) then -->Field Test -->Modem Settings-->Engineering Mode-. Supposedly on my V60 I also get 5G as per speedtest (connecting to the server in Wayne NJ which is 35 miles away from my location in JFK. I performed the same steps you did last night and also ran a speedtest and it was 10.9 download and 13.1 upload. This morning tried it again, set it to do N41 and got the following screenshot below. I then ran a speedtest I got connected to Syosset, NY and my speeds dramatically increased. Today it is 36.6 download and 28.7 upload.  This is the highest I've ever gotten on 5G with the V60. usually it falls back to 4G with better speeds. 

This is great.  Yours is populating some data like signal strength and PCI. 

Robert

[Trip]

4 hours ago, greenbastard said:

As long as you're on "Sprint", it's business as usual.

But down the road when you're moved into the T-Mobile network, you'll be treated to T-Mobile's roaming partners (or lack thereof). T-Mobile does have a roaming agreement with USCC, but it's limited to VoLTE devices purchased from T-Mobile and only available in certain areas.

Overall, you should prepare yourself for less roaming. Don't expect much from T-Mobile if you're outside of their native network.

Yuck.  The whole reason I'm a Sprint customer is because it roams on US Cellular.

- Trip

[1dante]

Does anyone know if T-Mobile will be sending out OTA updates for iPhone users? I have an 8 plus. I’m only missing B71. 

[Tengen31]

Does anyone know if T-Mobile will be sending out OTA updates for iPhone users? I have an 8 plus. I’m only missing B71. 

What do you mean? You will never have B71 with that phone

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk