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There must be a threshold value.  In Alexandria, some of the towers have it and others don't.  (I need to drive around and check on Old Town to see what's what there; haven't been in a while.)  Based one what I've seen, I'd say it's probably less than half, but they're pretty spread out, so I could see the argument.

In some smaller towns, there might only be one tower, so upgrading that one tower would get it listed.  Not sure if any of the places on the list fit that bill yet.

- Trip

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Well that was quick:
https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/supercharged-midband-5g
What’s the news: T-Mobile lit up a supercharged 5G experience in another 121 cities and towns with mid-band 5G, delivering up to gigabit-per-second peak speeds and average download speeds around 300 megabits-per-second for capable 5G devices. And, this faster 5G experience will be in thousands of cities and towns by end of year. To celebrate, T-Mobile is giving away $100,000 on Twitter over the next several months, with #5Gsfor5G. 
 
With today’s announcement, this supercharged 5G experience is live in a total of 210 cities and towns across the country with thousands more on the way by end of year.
Go Magenta!

I saw Neville tweeted that and was pumped to see New T-Mobile light it up in Amsterdam, NY as I grew up in that area. Definitely was quick to forward it to my family as Sprint always underperformed in that area since we became customers in 2008. Really looking forward to future upgrades in speed and coverage. The Mohawk Valley and Adirondack Park need it desperately!


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15 minutes ago, Trip said:

There must be a threshold value.  In Alexandria, some of the towers have it and others don't.  (I need to drive around and check on Old Town to see what's what there; haven't been in a while.)  Based one what I've seen, I'd say it's probably less than half, but they're pretty spread out, so I could see the argument.

In some smaller towns, there might only be one tower, so upgrading that one tower would get it listed.  Not sure if any of the places on the list fit that bill yet.

- Trip

The first Missouri town (Jennings, which is part of St. Louis) showed up after one tower had an install. It's not like it's a small town either, there are dozens of sites.  I'm sure some parts of the country have had more of a head start before they were listed, but if the threshold is one tower for Missouri, I'm sure it is elsewhere. 

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I am in the SF Bay Area, where I had decent B41 coverage with Sprint.  It was good enough that I didn't switch and kept on for quite a few years, enough that people think I am a fanboy. I thought the network transition would be slow and orderly, but as a shock to me, a bunch of Sprint B41 sites are gone, all seem to have happened in the last few weeks..  They seem to be refarmed as T-Mobile. I am really shocked on how quickly the Sprint network is deteriorated in Silicon Valley.  Before, my phone is nearly stuck on B41 all the time sans the times I walked into a large box store.  My phone now connects to B26 as primary and B25 if I am lucky.  Data speed on B26 is nearly non-usable, constantly sub 1mbps.  I am in the middle of a densely covered Sprint area, so this seem to be a very purposefully done tactic.   My plan is not eligible for ROAMAHOME.  I really don't care about top speed, just good enough for my day-to-day usage but it's degraded to a point that I think I will switch to ATT or VZW, it's that bad now...  Anyone else from the SF Bay Area?

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14 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

The first Missouri town (Jennings, which is part of St. Louis) showed up after one tower had an install. It's not like it's a small town either, there are dozens of sites.  I'm sure some parts of the country have had more of a head start before they were listed, but if the threshold is one tower for Missouri, I'm sure it is elsewhere. 

I only say I think there's a threshold because on 9/2 when they made their first news release, they already had at least three sites with the gear installed and running at least Band 41 LTE in Alexandria, but they waited until yesterday's release to announce it. 

- Trip

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1 hour ago, Trip said:

I only say I think there's a threshold because on 9/2 when they made their first news release, they already had at least three sites with the gear installed and running at least Band 41 LTE in Alexandria, but they waited until yesterday's release to announce it. 

- Trip

That certainly sounds like the case. According to their release:

Quote

T-Mobile is lighting up 1,000 mid-band 5G sites a month, so customers will find this faster 5G experience in thousands of cities and towns by end of year.   

I'm pretty impressed. It seems faster than Sprint has ever done any site upgrades and it's during a pandemic/shutdown to boot. If T-Mobile focuses on the site locations with the greatest need, a substantial number people will benefit as a result of each upgrade rather quickly I'm thinking.

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I noticed for at least a couple hours yesterday that I was on the T-Mobile network but using the 311-490 PLMN. I only noticed because the 5G icon was gone and I wasn't getting NSA N71. It held thought a reboot and multiple airplane mode cycles. I wonder if they are getting close to making that the primary for both networks?

ETHfizih.jpg

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1 hour ago, RedSpark said:

I'm pretty impressed. It seems faster than Sprint has ever done any site upgrades and it's during a pandemic/shutdown to boot. If T-Mobile focuses on the site locations with the greatest need, a substantial number people will benefit as a result of each upgrade rather quickly I'm thinking.

1,000 sites per month sounds impressive (up from 800/month we heard previously), but if they're talking about having an 85,000 site network, it would take them 7 years to touch all of them.  They actually need to speed up more, IMO.  Especially given how weak the network continues to be outside of populated areas.

If they kicked me off of Sprint's network today and said I couldn't have it back, I'd switch carriers as soon as possible.  (Not possible right away, mind you.)

- Trip

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20 minutes ago, Trip said:

1,000 sites per month sounds impressive (up from 800/month we heard previously), but if they're talking about having an 85,000 site network, it would take them 7 years to touch all of them.  They actually need to speed up more, IMO.  Especially given how weak the network continues to be outside of populated areas.

If they kicked me off of Sprint's network today and said I couldn't have it back, I'd switch carriers as soon as possible.  (Not possible right away, mind you.)

- Trip

I agree with you. I hope they do speed up.

I look at these improvements as an S-Shaped curve. If they focus on the sites with the most customer touchpoints/interactions, the most people will benefit in the shortest period of time, even if they don't get to all 85,000 sites in the medium term.

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1 hour ago, Trip said:

1,000 sites per month sounds impressive (up from 800/month we heard previously), but if they're talking about having an 85,000 site network, it would take them 7 years to touch all of them.  They actually need to speed up more, IMO.  Especially given how weak the network continues to be outside of populated areas.

If they kicked me off of Sprint's network today and said I couldn't have it back, I'd switch carriers as soon as possible.  (Not possible right away, mind you.)

- Trip

And let's say they only plan to put it on half their sites, that's still abut 3.5 years.

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On 9/3/2020 at 1:00 PM, clbowens said:

interesting.  I'm sitting in my house, where I've always had good Sprint coverage.  All of a sudden, my phone now says no service available.  Something about unable to connect to T-Mobile.  I wonder what they are doing.

I live out in Leesburg, VA and I have a s20+.  Since they switched me over to Tmobile, my overall experience is better.  The top end speeds aren't as good, but i think we were overloaded out here on 800mhz, so with sprint it was often very slow.  no Band 71 out here that i have noticed.

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46 minutes ago, clbowens said:

And let's say they only plan to put it on half their sites, that's still abut 3.5 years.

The problem with that is many of their sites in rural areas need attention even if they're not putting 2.5 GHz on them.  I'm aware of sites that are 700 MHz-only (so only 5x5 LTE available!), for example, or PCS-only (so if co-located with a Sprint site, that site would lose the low-band advantage of Band 26). 

If they do it right, they'll put 600 (and 700, where available) on every site.  If they are serious about also being a fixed ISP, they'll do AWS and PCS as well.  And pick up a lot of Sprint sites.

- Trip

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2 hours ago, Trip said:

1,000 sites per month sounds impressive (up from 800/month we heard previously), but if they're talking about having an 85,000 site network, it would take them 7 years to touch all of them.  They actually need to speed up more, IMO.  Especially given how weak the network continues to be outside of populated areas.

If they kicked me off of Sprint's network today and said I couldn't have it back, I'd switch carriers as soon as possible.  (Not possible right away, mind you.)

- Trip

I hear that switching part from a lot of my Sprint friends. Locally, Sprint's network is nothing to crow about and T-Mobile has a better network so I keep telling them to hold on and test the T-Mobile network before they jump ship but T-Mobile brought this upon themselves.

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15 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

I hear that switching part from a lot of my Sprint friends. Locally, Sprint's network is nothing to crow about and T-Mobile has a better network so I keep telling them to hold on and test the T-Mobile network before they jump ship but T-Mobile brought this upon themselves.

You may have missed the part over the weekend where I was suddenly shunted onto the T-Mobile network without warning.  In the places I go, the T-Mobile network is certainly not better.  I was fortunately able to get that reverted on the three lines of my account where it was relevant, with a lot of fighting Support's attempts to keep me on the T-Mobile network. 

I'm holding on for now, but I suspect a time will come when they don't give the choice, and if the network still isn't ready by then (I'm skeptical), then I'll be switching to a carrier who is less prone to the "move fast and break things" method of operation.  Verizon is definitely worse than Sprint in the places I want to go, but it's head and shoulders above T-Mobile. 

Honestly, I was expecting them to merge the networks, so a T-Mobile site and a Sprint site could hand off to each other.  That would be the ideal way to go.  Then, to the extent that T-Mobile decommissions things gradually, it wouldn't shock people so much all at once.  This wholesale pushing people off Sprint mere months after the merger closed and before any Sprint sites have been integrated (as far as I can tell) seems like the worst possible path.

- Trip

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4 hours ago, Trip said:

The problem with that is many of their sites in rural areas need attention even if they're not putting 2.5 GHz on them.  I'm aware of sites that are 700 MHz-only (so only 5x5 LTE available!), for example, or PCS-only (so if co-located with a Sprint site, that site would lose the low-band advantage of Band 26). 

If they do it right, they'll put 600 (and 700, where available) on every site.  If they are serious about also being a fixed ISP, they'll do AWS and PCS as well.  And pick up a lot of Sprint sites.

- Trip

They don't need 600/700 on every site. That just raises the noise floor in areas where sites are less than a mile apart. They should definitely have 600 on every site that has 700 though.

Also, the 1k sites/month figure they're throwing around is just 2.5 upgrades. Site upgrades where they're just doing band 71, PCS/AWS M-MIMO, etc., are on top of that. So year-end 2023 for a completed 2.5 rollout seems reasonable, given that there will be sites where 2.5 doesn't cover enough people to matter.

Re: fixed wireless, I doubt that the wide rollout for fixed wireless will use anything other than 2.5 and maybe mmWave. Even when they start running n2/n66.

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52 minutes ago, iansltx said:

They don't need 600/700 on every site. That just raises the noise floor in areas where sites are less than a mile apart. They should definitely have 600 on every site that has 700 though.

That would make T-Mobile the only carrier not running low-band on every site.  I'm not sure why they would want to be at such a disadvantage.  Not that there are many sites less than a mile apart in rural areas.

(Note that when I say "every site" I'm referring to macro sites, not small cells.  Though there are plenty of Verizon 700 MHz small cells, as well.)

- Trip

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This is the lowest ping I've ever seen on mobile internet wow! This is n71 but hot damn. My WiFi on my phone is pulling 12ms wow! Granted much faster speeds but damn didn't think I would see this on a mobile connection.

 

Screenshot-20200930-234311-Speedtest.jpg

Edited by BlueAngel
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18 hours ago, Trip said:

You may have missed the part over the weekend where I was suddenly shunted onto the T-Mobile network without warning.  In the places I go, the T-Mobile network is certainly not better.  I was fortunately able to get that reverted on the three lines of my account where it was relevant, with a lot of fighting Support's attempts to keep me on the T-Mobile network. 

I'm holding on for now, but I suspect a time will come when they don't give the choice, and if the network still isn't ready by then (I'm skeptical), then I'll be switching to a carrier who is less prone to the "move fast and break things" method of operation.  Verizon is definitely worse than Sprint in the places I want to go, but it's head and shoulders above T-Mobile. 

Honestly, I was expecting them to merge the networks, so a T-Mobile site and a Sprint site could hand off to each other.  That would be the ideal way to go.  Then, to the extent that T-Mobile decommissions things gradually, it wouldn't shock people so much all at once.  This wholesale pushing people off Sprint mere months after the merger closed and before any Sprint sites have been integrated (as far as I can tell) seems like the worst possible path.

- Trip

I am also disappointed in their integration strategy. I was expecting them to integrate the 2 networks market by market starting with the biggest markets first. That would include 4G & 5G. Is there an actual strategy?

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1 hour ago, jreuschl said:

I'm sure part of the problem is TM feels they already had a superior network and didn't have to worry that Sprint may have been better in areas.  Sprint was better in more areas than we think.

Fine, in those cases that you had the superior network, just add a B41/NR41 128x128 M-MIMO antenna on every T-Mobile site and then for a particular market move everybody to the T-Mobile network. When you have accomplished that, then you can reuse the Sprint B41 spectrum for added NR41 bandwidth.

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1 hour ago, bigsnake49 said:

I am also disappointed in their integration strategy. I was expecting them to integrate the 2 networks market by market starting with the biggest markets first. That would include 4G & 5G. Is there an actual strategy?

It seems like they've got a multi-pronged strategy, at least from what we can observe, with many of these things happening in parallel:

  1. (Pre-Merger) Roaming agreement for Sprint subscribers to use the T-Mobile network when Sprint isn't available
  2. Implement the ROAMAHOME SOC for certain Sprint subscribers to use the T-Mobile network as primary
  3. Network integration: decommission Sprint 5G, begin to refarm 2.5GHz spectrum for T-Mobile 5G and LTE, similarly begin to reallocate PCS spectrum from Sprint to T-Mobile in markets where spectrum is contiguous.  Additionally, it appears they're working on a "hybrid" of the two networks, currently with the 311-490 PLMN, that will handoff between the two legacy networks, but that does not appear to be the default network for subscribers yet.  Eventually the tower work will be done to harmonize spectrum and radio assets, that's going to take some time.
  4. Begin SIM-swapping eligible and willing Sprint customers to T-Mobile, currently happening in Seattle and Kansas City: https://www.sprint.com/en/support/solutions/device/t-mobile-network-experience.html

There are a lot of moving parts to this, and they have to execute them carefully.  From the looks of things, they're moving too aggressively on #2, and not quickly enough on #3.  I imagine #4 is going to continue to roll out and will become the default for new lines and handset upgrades (especially to 5G) on Sprint accounts.  

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6 minutes ago, dewbertdc said:

It seems like they've got a multi-pronged strategy, at least from what we can observe, with many of these things happening in parallel:

  1. (Pre-Merger) Roaming agreement for Sprint subscribers to use the T-Mobile network when Sprint isn't available
  2. Implement the ROAMAHOME SOC for certain Sprint subscribers to use the T-Mobile network as primary
  3. Network integration: decommission Sprint 5G, begin to refarm 2.5GHz spectrum for T-Mobile 5G and LTE, similarly begin to reallocate PCS spectrum from Sprint to T-Mobile in markets where spectrum is contiguous.  Additionally, it appears they're working on a "hybrid" of the two networks, currently with the 311-490 PLMN, that will handoff between the two legacy networks, but that does not appear to be the default network for subscribers yet.  Eventually the tower work will be done to harmonize spectrum and radio assets, that's going to take some time.
  4. Begin SIM-swapping eligible and willing Sprint customers to T-Mobile, currently happening in Seattle and Kansas City: https://www.sprint.com/en/support/solutions/device/t-mobile-network-experience.html

There are a lot of moving parts to this, and they have to execute them carefully.  From the looks of things, they're moving too aggressively on #2, and not quickly enough on #3.  I imagine #4 is going to continue to roll out and will become the default for new lines and handset upgrades (especially to 5G) on Sprint accounts.  

All good observations. I'm curious how the launch of the iPhone 5G will be handled, because that's going to represent a substantial surge of new 5G devices on T-Mobile and Sprint's network within a short period of time. How will the device be treated by the T-Mobile and Sprint networks?

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4 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Fine, in those cases that you had the superior network, just add a B41/NR41 128x128 M-MIMO antenna on every T-Mobile site and then for a particular market move everybody to the T-Mobile network. When you have accomplished that, then you can reuse the Sprint B41 spectrum for added NR41 bandwidth.

I think you are missing the point.  Sprint, in enough places to matter, had (and still has) the superior network - wether it is talking about LTE coverage or speeds.

The issue is that (legacy) T-mobile simply does not have towers in a lot of areas, and instead rely on their low band to give the guise of coverage.  Its easy to paint an area pink to show 'coverage', yet when you go into that area, you get zero service.  Sprint, on the other hand as an example, in my basement, is getting download speeds of 90+mbps. 

The attached image is a great example - it is painted pink, yet if you are in a car driving by that address, you quite literally get NO SERVICE.  Nevermind trying to get anything realistic inside of a business or home.  There are towns like this all over the place.  We still have not seen plan from tmobile (that i know of) that indicates which towers/locations will be retained from Sprint but converted to tmobile. 

Throwing up B41/N41 128x128 M-MIMO antennas on every tmobile site would be of no help at all.  The issue, IMO, is lack of site density outside of urban areas.  

Screenshot_2020-10-01 10.27.01_I2Dd0n.png

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