NR Watch: Texas

[greenbastard]

2 hours ago, iansltx said:

In Austin, n41 is now a non-event; you have to be deep in a building away from a cell site to drop connectivity. 

I'm noticing the same thing in Houston. It just goes to show you how bad Sprint botched this treasure trove spectrum. Any time Sprint deployed B41, the range was abysmal in this market. If you turn the corner and lost line of sight from a Sprint site, B41 would become non-existent. Indoor coverage was a joke, especially with those mini macros.

With T-Mobile, n41 performs very well indoors. I'd say even better than AWS does. There are still a few more sites they have to add n41 to. But overall, T-Mobile has managed to do more with the EBS/BRS band than Sprint ever got to do. And this was done in 1.5 years vs Sprint's 7 years of ownership (nevermind that they inherited a Clearwite infrastructure).

Sprint was who we thought they were.

[dkyeager]

6 hours ago, greenbastard said:

 Sprint was who we thought they were.

I think a lot of Sprint's behavior goes back to financing.  Almost every site would get upgraded. Vendors were locked in regardless of product merit.  Almost going bankrupt does not help the planning process.

T-Mobile has cash flow thus can approach the network on a more rational basis.

[iansltx]

12 hours ago, greenbastard said:

I'm noticing the same thing in Houston. It just goes to show you how bad Sprint botched this treasure trove spectrum. Any time Sprint deployed B41, the range was abysmal in this market. If you turn the corner and lost line of sight from a Sprint site, B41 would become non-existent. Indoor coverage was a joke, especially with those mini macros.

Austin/San Antonio and further west was actually reasonably decent in terms of B41. A lot of that for Austin was due to inheriting a decent WiMAX network, and B41 LTE performed better than WiMAX for coverage. But Sprint had enough customers here that they kinda had to have that density AFAIK.

[iansltx]

Fredericksburg now no longer has Sprint B41, it seems, and it looks like T-Mobile has n41 at 40 MHz (come on Auction 108!) on another site or two, allowing for n41 reception at my parents' place while outdoors (including NR CA of course, with 20x20 n71 for pretty decent speeds if you CA that way). LTE is 10x10 B71, 10x10 B2, 10x10 + 5x5 B66, as well as T-Mobile B41 at 2525 MHz in a spot or two. Saw nearly 400 Mbps on n41 + LTE on the way out of town eastbound.

Sprint still has G block and another 5x5 in PCS A-F turned on; didn't try B26 but I'm sure it's still there, so Sprint still has 15x15 total to play with, though at this point all of that is 312-250.

Further east I ran into Sprint B41 still live on 2626 MHz (no CA), clocking solid (~60 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up) speeds. T-Mobile B2 bumped up to 15x15 in the same general area (IIRC where Verizon has 850B so spectrum config is a little different than Fredericksburg), allowing for ~90 Mbps up on 20x20 n71 (~190 Mbps down).

Entertainingly, I had to power cycle my phone to get off of West Central Wireless roaming as I got into T-Mobile territory west of Fredericksburg. Which I definitely wanted to do, as their 10x10 B12 was clocking single-digit Mbps, and it didn't seem like it was due to throttling. I had also seen HSPA/HSPA+ (actually saw both) on WCW on 850 MHz (Boost could actually pass calls and texts on it...the Celero's H+ reception isn't half bad), as well as EDGE (!). Even saw at least one site using WCW's lone 5x5 of AWS spectrum (1730-1735 MHz).

Side note: T-Mobile should buy West Central Wireless. AT&T has basically completely overbuilt WCW (I roamed on AT&T more than I did WCW, to my chagrin as AT&T roaming is throttled to like 64 kbps), and all of the spectrum WCW has except 850 is complementary to T-Mobile's. TMo could trade the 850 licenses to AT&T for the other half of the PCS license WCW owns in the San Angelo area (going from 7.5x7.5 to 15x15), plus the bottom 10 MHz of AWS AT&T owns in the Concho RSA (which would bring T-Mobile to 20x20 in e.g. San Angelo). T-Mobile could even work out a swap such that they kept 5x5 of B5 long enough to get WCW subscribers off (say, 12/31/22), so AT&T could go from effectively 10x10 to 20x20, then go to the full 25x25 thereafter. No, it's not worth keeping 850 split to ensure Verizon gets some of it, given the amount of B13-only areas in that neck of the woods.

[iansltx]

Looks like Dish has already taken back the 5x5 of n71 they leased to T-Mobile, and instead of narrowing NR here T-Mobile has gone for broke and made 600 NR-only. They can afford to do that here thanks to B12, and don't need to do that west of here because they weren't leasing 600 from Dish.

Does mean that Dish is 10x10 for n71 here (which explains the 30ish Mbps upload peak I saw yesterday). Darned speculators hogging the remainder of the band

So T-Mobile is running 140 + 15x15 MHz sub-6 NR here. AT&T is 40 + 15-45x15-45 (15x15 n5, occasional 15x15 DSS on n2 and/or n66 though I haven't seen both in the same area). VZW is 60 + 15x15, with the latter being n2 DSS. Wonder how soon VZW will try n48.

[iansltx]

The spectrum swap in Gillespie County is very much live; T-Mobile now has 20x20 contiguous PCS, as does AT&T. AT&T is running theirs as LTE, while T-Mobile is splitting theirs between B2 and n25. This is actually a net *loss* for capacity on T-Mobile short-term; they previously has 10x10+15x15 all in PCS A-F; they were running n25 on the former and B2 on the latter. Now they have two orphaned 5x5 blocks. But long-term they'll have 20x20 n25, so I guess that works.

Or T-Mobile could be planning to trade away the 5x5 PCS A-F block to VZW in exchange for either some AWS (plus moving blocks around for better continuity) or maybe 5-10 MHz paired of B12 that VZW will get from the West Central Wireless acquisition (with the remainder going to AT&T in exchange for...something).

[Yuhfhrh]

https://imgur.com/a/WEe1wVf

Another visit to T-Mobile n77 in Houston

[RAvirani]

On 7/8/2023 at 12:51 PM, Yuhfhrh said:

https://imgur.com/a/WEe1wVf

Another visit to T-Mobile n77 in Houston

Is this site right off 288?

[Yuhfhrh]

12 hours ago, RAvirani said:

Is this site right off 288?

Yes

[iansltx]

4CA NR (15x15 n71 + 10x10 n25 + 100 MHz n41 + 40 MHz n41) is now live in Austin. Might be site by site as I haven't been downtown recently but I didn't see this last night further north, so they may have turned it on literally today.