Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[PedroDaGr8]

30 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

That makes a lot more sense. We know that T-Mobile started activating higher order MIMO across Sprint's LTE network when they took over. 15x15 with 256/64QAM is absolutely capable of those speeds that they're seeing.

Yeah 15x15 sounds about right. 

Checking ##DATA#, my phone has 256WAM/64QAM enabled and 4x4 MIMO enable for both B25 and B41

[PhillipJames89]

4 hours ago, Bennyjet29 said:

I figured New T-Mobile was sandbagging us with the 600 mbps download estimation. Don’t get me wrong, that’s plenty of speed as most fiber optic WiFi speeds are between 200-500 mbps. Just thought N41 could potentially average 800+ mbps download with full 5G capacity.


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1.2  gbs in nyc 
 

 

Edited May 19, 2020 by PhillipJames89
Adding link

[Paynefanbro]

I'm not sure what they cannibalized to do this. I think we have about 120MHz here so either Band 41 LTE shrank or small cells are no more.

He's also squeezing 900Mbps out of the NR layer which is insane.

[dro1984]

Wow!  Way to be happy.   That's awesome speed.      T-Mobile doesn't have more than 60mHz deployed anywhere yet from what I heard on the calls last week.  Their plan is to get to 120 in some markets but also use some for Relay.    They have between 120 and 160 mHz of 2.5 spectrum nationwide.   

[Bennyjet29]

1.2  gbs in nyc 
 
 

PhillipJames89, thanks for sharing!

New T-Mobile will be a force to be reckoned with if they can keep up this progress as it will allow them the opportunity to keep deploying the 2.5 GHz everywhere without having to worry about churn.
I was worried about simple minded people seeing Verizon and AT&T MMWave in action, resulting in them ditching T-Mobile for faster 5G. Hopefully, people give Ray and Saw some time to keep fine tuning the network.


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[dro1984]

I agree.   Even with all the advanced planning that went in while the merger was on stand-by going through regulatory approval... you can only build so fast.    It's going to take time to get thousands and thousands of sites upgraded... the planning of crews, the permits with cities and townships... there are just so  many crews and equipment to do it.    Next year, I'm thinking we'll see some very large areas of the country done and running.    

Some of us endured this with Sprint's rip and replace but never did I ever have the hope of a hugely better network.     This time is different.   There is hope and there is additional sites to build as well.   There is more spectrum being brought together.    This time it's exciting.   It's basically going to be a entirely new network.   

[Bennyjet29]

I agree.   Even with all the advanced planning that went in while the merger was on stand-by going through regulatory approval... you can only build so fast.    It's going to take time to get thousands and thousands of sites upgraded... the planning of crews, the permits with cities and townships... there are just so  many crews and equipment to do it.    Next year, I'm thinking we'll see some very large areas of the country done and running.    
Some of us endured this with Sprint's rip and replace but never did I ever have the hope of a hugely better network.     This time is different.   There is hope and there is additional sites to build as well.   There is more spectrum being brought together.    This time it's exciting.   It's basically going to be a entirely new network.   

Amen to that! [emoji1431]


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[Bennyjet29]

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/tmobile-intel-nasa-launch-5g-open-innovation-lab

 

Some good things should come out of this 5G Open Innovation Lab. Definitely excited to see New T-Mobile trying to position itself for success and reinforce the brand.

 

 

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[twospirits]

2 hours ago, PythonFanPA said:

I never knew Papa Robert was Catholic.

Originally Sexy Robert set up an auto-correct script that would preface his name with "Daddy", but for some reason it never worked correctly and kept adding other words instead. This time it was Father. lol

[BlueAngel]

My two week trial with my iPhone 11 Pro Max has ended, it's going back to apple. Back on my S20 Ultra and boy what a difference in signal strength and 5G has improved a bit in the last two weeks. Was getting about 70 or so on average now it's 200+, T-Mobile sure does move fast.

[Bennyjet29]

I give Intel credit for doing a decent job with the latest XMM 7660 Advanced LTE modem found in the iPhone 11 lineup. However, the signal strength is not much of an improvement over my iPhone 8 Plus that had the Qualcomm x16 modem. Bottom line, it is hard to compete with the Apple iPhone when it has a Qualcomm modem in it as the Snapdragon 865 still cannot touch the A13 Bionic. The iPhone 12 with 5G will be a big improvement but I argue that the return to Qualcomm will be just as big. In the video below, the S20 Ultra barely edges out the 11 Pro Max and it makes me wonder if things would be different if it had the Qualcomm modem that is in the Note 10+.

 

 

 

 

 

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[BlueAngel]

2 hours ago, Bennyjet29 said:

I give Intel credit for doing a decent job with the latest XMM 7660 Advanced LTE modem found in the iPhone 11 lineup. However, the signal strength is not much of an improvement over my iPhone 8 Plus that had the Qualcomm x16 modem. Bottom line, it is hard to compete with the Apple iPhone when it has a Qualcomm modem in it as the Snapdragon 865 still cannot touch the A13 Bionic. The iPhone 12 with 5G will be a big improvement but I argue that the return to Qualcomm will be just as big. In the video below, the S20 Ultra barely edges out the 11 Pro Max and it makes me wonder if things would be different if it had the Qualcomm modem that is in the Note 10+.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The S20 is leagues better than the iPhone in signal strength and speeds, I was averaging 1-2 bars in places I would have full bars on my S20. Or worse case in some stores I would lose signal completely with the iPhone where I know my S20 would have almost full bars. Regardless of LTE or 5G signal. Definitely wasn't happy with the signal strength, it was a big downgrade.

[Bennyjet29]

The S20 is leagues better than the iPhone in signal strength and speeds, I was averaging 1-2 bars in places I would have full bars on my S20. Or worse case in some stores I would lose signal completely with the iPhone where I know my S20 would have almost full bars. Regardless of LTE or 5G signal. Definitely wasn't happy with the signal strength, it was a big downgrade.

Apple may have bought out Intel’s wireless division with the goal of building their own modems but Qualcomm is still the undisputed king. Apple and Samsung know it to be true as they both prefer to use Qualcomm over their in house or other modems.

Therefore, I hope Apple scratches their plans to make a modem and just sticks with Qualcomm. Apple can most certainly afford to do biz with Qualcomm and should not go cheap when asking $1k+ for a flagship device.

 

 

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[BlueAngel]

57 minutes ago, Bennyjet29 said:

Apple may have bought out Intel’s wireless division with the goal of building their own modems but Qualcomm is still the undisputed king. Apple and Samsung know it to be true as they both prefer to use Qualcomm over their in house or other modems.

Therefore, I hope Apple scratches their plans to make a modem and just sticks with Qualcomm. Apple can most certainly afford to do biz with Qualcomm and should not go cheap when asking $1k+ for a flagship device.

 

 

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I agree 100%, Qualcomm is king with modems. I have seen this first hand, one of the main reasons I am returning my iPhone.

[bigsnake49]

9 hours ago, BlueAngel said:

I agree 100%, Qualcomm is king with modems. I have seen this first hand, one of the main reasons I am returning my iPhone.

How do you know that you have an Intel modem in your phone? You could have the Qualcomm modem on your iPhone and just a a bad antenna design. Or a case that is very RF absorbent. Don't look at bars because one company might size the bars differently than the other. Only the pure numbers can tell the story side by side, hopefully on the same band, dbm vs dbm. Now the S20 is a 5G phone and the 11 is not so why not be future proof?

[stealth]

When I was testing a factory unlocked s20 ultra 5g against my 11 pro and s6 active on att on edge of cell signal in a state forest in Pennsylvania the iPhone did better then the s20. I’m back on sprint again due to better coverage thanks to shentel. My iPhone has been able to place a call up to -126dbm. As far as the s6 active goes, it’s by far the best phone for reception I’ve ever owned. It’s held onto a useable signal where att coverage map says no service. I just ordered the new Se from apple and will test that out. It has much better antenna gain over the last few generations of the iPhone. 

[Tengen31]

Just incase you guys haven't seen this Reddit post. N41 is now 60 MHz up from 40

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[Bennyjet29]

https://www.imore.com/apple-vs-qualcomm-what-happened-who-won-and-what-comes-next

Long article but perfectly explains the legal battle that took place between Apple vs. Qualcomm. For the iPhone 7,8,10 models, Apple split the modem suppliers 50-50 as Intel supplied all AT&T/T-Mobile/GSM devices and Qualcomm supplied all Verizon/Sprint/CDMA models. Once things fell through in 2017, Apple went exclusively with Intel for the 10s series with their new XMM 7560 modem that had mixed results as reception greatly lagged behind the Android devices with Qualcomm modems. This past fall, the iPhone 11 lineup still went with Intel as the settlement had happened too late for Qualcomm to meet the iPhone production timeline. For myself, I enjoy my iPhone 11 Max Pro but was definitely expecting much better cell reception than my iPhone 8 Plus and that’s not the case. Hence, I will most likely upgrade to the iPhone 12 Pro Max by the end of this year.


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[RedSpark]

Here's what Verizon's been up to for 5G: 

Quote

 

The company will use 100MHz of millimeter-wave 5G spectrum for uploads, Hemmer confirmed. Currently, the company generally uses no more than 20MHz of LTE for uploads.

Some T-Mobile 5G devices use a combination of 4G and 5G for uploads, but as T-Mobile is using relatively narrow channels in its long-range low-band 5G network, I've seen speeds more like 33Mbps up in my tests with the OnePlus 8 Pro.

 

Of course, that only benefits people who can access mmWave... which has an 800 foot radius off of the cell site and poor building penetration.

In fact:

Quote

Another announcement today aims to deal with that. Verizon said it is partnering with Movandi, Pivotal Commware, and Wistron to provide mmWave extenders that can improve signal strength and range.

Verizon is having to go with the "Magic Box" approach for mmWave here. How about that...

[dewbertdc]

Looks like the first "Uncarrier" event of the New T-Mobile will be tomorrow at 8AM PDT (11AM EDT)... will be interested to see if it's anything of substance, or just another marketing stunt like they have been lately.

 

[Bennyjet29]

Here's what Verizon's been up to for 5G: 
[/url]

 

The company will use 100MHz of millimeter-wave 5G spectrum for uploads, Hemmer confirmed. Currently, the company generally uses no more than 20MHz of LTE for uploads.

Some T-Mobile 5G devices use a combination of 4G and 5G for uploads, but as T-Mobile is using relatively narrow channels in its long-range low-band 5G network, I've seen speeds more like 33Mbps up in my tests with the OnePlus 8 Pro.

 

Of course, that only benefits people who can access mmWave... which has an 800 foot radius off of the cell site and poor building penetration.
In fact:

Another announcement today aims to deal with that. Verizon said it is partnering with Movandi, Pivotal Commware, and Wistron to provide mmWave extenders that can improve signal strength and range.

Verizon is having to go with the "Magic Box" approach for mmWave here. How about that...

Hmmm, I was looking to invest in Pivotal Commware last week as I had saw it in a market mover report last week. Thanks for sharing, this just might be another 5G stock to keep an eye on going into this summer. [emoji1417]


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[Bennyjet29]

https://www.pcmag.com/news/t-mobile-busts-gigabit-barrier-with-mid-band-new-york-city-5g

 

This definitely validates the tweet that PhillipJames89 shared yesterday! [emoji41][emoji1430]

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[clbowens]

32 minutes ago, Bennyjet29 said:

https://www.pcmag.com/news/t-mobile-busts-gigabit-barrier-with-mid-band-new-york-city-5g

 

This definitely validates the tweet that PhillipJames89 shared yesterday!

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And that's with 60Mhz.  Just imagine the speed if/when they bump it up to 100Mhz

[PhillipJames89]

3 minutes ago, clbowens said:

And that's with 60Mhz.  Just imagine the speed if/when they bump it up to 100Mhz

Can’t wait. I won’t be surprised if they shut off LTE on b41 completely by end of the year. I latched on to b66 the other day and i couldn’t tell the difference. Plus bands 2/4/12/25/66 and some of 71 should be sufficient to manage LTE traffic for both sprint and T-Mobile customers 

 

[clbowens]

2 minutes ago, PhillipJames89 said:

Can’t wait. I won’t be surprised if they shut off LTE on b41 completely by end of the year. I latched on to b66 the other day and i couldn’t tell the difference. Plus bands 2/4/12/25/66 and some of 71 should be sufficient to manage LTE traffic for both sprint and T-Mobile customers 

 

I think they'll shut off B41 for LTE also.