NR Watch: Texas

[greenbastard]

9 hours ago, Yuhfhrh said:

In Houston, T-Mobile could probably get Verizon to swap their AWS-3 I block for T-Mobile's PCS E block, giving them both 10x10 contiguous.

I'm not sure Verizon wants to do this just yet. It all depends on what percentage of their mobile phones can support B66.

But definitely something to keep an eye on down the road.

Quote

It sucks ATT has PCS F&C, which basically forces the G block to remain 5x5 for T-Mobile as I doubt ATT would ever want to move.

As it has happened in the past, it wouldn't surprise me to see TMUS help AT&T in one market in exchange for AT&T helping T-Mobile in this market. 

Having said that, it is not going to be easy. Outside of the FCC stepping in, I'm not sure T-Mobile will ever be able to defragment their entire holdings nation-wide.

Edited August 1, 2020 by greenbastard

[Yuhfhrh]

6 hours ago, greenbastard said:

I'm not sure Verizon wants to do this just yet. It all depends on what percentage of their mobile phones can support B66.

Verizon would be getting the PCS E block in this scenario, which I'm sure they'd much prefer over their line 5x5 AWS-3. That actually moves Verizon from 5x5 AWS-3 & 15x15 in PCS, to 20x20 PCS. T-Mobile from 5x5 PCS & 5x5 AWS-3, to 10x10 AWS-3.

Though the covered area of the PCS and AWS licenses are slightly different, I don't see any other swaps possible in the Houston area, except like you said if other markets are brought into the equation.

The dream would be for the FCC to take up a forced spectrum defragmentation project across the country, and just force swaps to make everyone contiguous. I'm not sure if all the carriers would actually like that to happen or not.

[iansltx]

2 minutes ago, Yuhfhrh said:

Verizon would be getting the PCS E block in this scenario, which I'm sure they'd much prefer over their line 5x5 AWS-3. That actually moves Verizon from 5x5 AWS-3 & 15x15 in PCS, to 20x20 PCS. T-Mobile from 5x5 PCS & 5x5 AWS-3, to 10x10 AWS-3.

Though the covered area of the PCS and AWS licenses are slightly different, I don't see any other swaps possible in the Houston area, expect like you said if other markets are brought into the equation.

The dream would be for the FCC to take up a forced spectrum defragmentation project across the country, and just force swaps to make everyone contiguous. I'm not sure if all the carriers would actually like that to happen or not.

Another thing they could work on is remapping B5 to be 10x10+15x15 in areas where AT&T or VZW don't already control the whole thing. Whoever "wins" the extra 5x5 should be happy to give up 5x5 of PCS or AWS to the owner of the other half of the band.

Right now, there's a sizable advantage to owning both sides of B5, but that's harmful for low-band competition.

[greenbastard]

13 hours ago, Yuhfhrh said:

 That actually moves Verizon from 5x5 AWS-3 & 15x15 in PCS, to 20x20 PCS. T-Mobile from 5x5 PCS & 5x5 AWS-3, to 10x10 AWS-3.

 

In Houston? I believe Verizon only owns 10x10 in the PCS band, don't they? I know from the A-F blocks, T-Mobile owns 30 Mhz, Sprint owns 20 Mhz, AND AT&T owns 50 Mhz.

This leaves 20 Mhz unaccounted for (which I assume belongs to Verizon).

[Yuhfhrh]

7 hours ago, greenbastard said:

In Houston? I believe Verizon only owns 10x10 in the PCS band, don't they? I know from the A-F blocks, T-Mobile owns 30 Mhz, Sprint owns 20 Mhz, AND AT&T owns 50 Mhz.

This leaves 20 Mhz unaccounted for (which I assume belongs to Verizon).

Ah, I guess ATT has 10MHz of the PCS B block then? I assumed all of B was Verizon.

[iansltx]

5 MHz of AWS-3 is now live near me, in addition to the two 10 MHz carriers in AWS-1. Unfortunately it looks like my S20 can't aggregate three B66 carriers, so the benefit I get is more network breathing room in general rather than higher peak speeds. Thinking it would absolutely be worth T-Mobile's while to swap spectrum to get some contiguity there, ven if that means swapping 10 MHz of AWS-1 for 10 MHz of AWS-3.

In the mean time, AT&T has 15 MHz each of B2 and B4, and appears to be running DSS on most of B5, allowing for a whopping 20 mHz channel there, shared with NR. My guess is that anyone not on FirstNet with B5 on their phone will use B5 as the PCC here as a result by default, so other bands may have a decent amount of upload capacity unused for folks who band-select to them (I believe AT&T's UL-CA usage is still hit-or-miss).

[greenbastard]

Seems like T-Mobile has expanded their Band 2 from 10x10 to 15x15 in the A block. The A block used to be 10x10 for LTE and 5x5 for WCDMA. This likely means that the WCDMA carrier was moved to Sprint's D block or E block. I don't have root to check at the moment. 

This merger is going faster than I thought.

[iansltx]

Finally something NR-related! I just saw B71 aggregated with n71 on my S20. Previously I'd only see a single B2 or B66 carrier aggregated, but this time I got 10 MHz B2, 10 MHz n71, 5 MHz B66, and 5 MHz B71, netting me download speeds a bit above 80 Mbps. I can't hit those speeds on LTE alone from this location unless I switch to Sprint B41.

I also saw a higher SNR than usual on both n71 and B71, so I need to check tonight on whether T-Mobile just lit a site nearer me with band 71.

[iansltx]

Checked things out and it looks like this isn't a band 71 retrofit...just the same site, configured a bit better.

That particular carrier combination disappeared for a few days, but now it appears to be back, this time with more reliable uploads. Still seeing a bunch of jitter whenever I'm on 5G, but speeds are now 70+ Mbps when you were doing well to get 40 Mbps before. A god chunk of that speed has to be coming from the B66 carrier that won't normally get selected because it's 5x5 and there are two other carriers at 10 MHz in B4 (MFBI to B66) here.

Feels a bit silly that 4CA (including NR) nets you all of 30 MHz of spectrum, but speeds are a little better than 4+4+2 at 10 MHz apiece so I'll take it. FWIW the anchor band is still definitely B2 here...B71 is just aggregated...but that's fine because TMo has B2 on way more sites (so no coverage benefit to SA or a low-band PCC) and the channel is double the width of the B71 channel.

[jordanlong20]

I4L

[iansltx]

Based on the "toggle 5G off and look for the different color" trick on the T-Mobile map, appears that there are two n41 sites in the Austin area. One around Cedar Park, one near Round Rock.

The one in RR (monopole site) is near Sam Bass Road and Hermitage Dr in Round Rock (near the parking lot of the shopping center First Star Bank is in). The other (full-on big ol' tower near CP) is near where Lone Star Dr turns north to meet W Whitestone Blvd (aka 1431).

Maybe I'll decide next week that it's a good day to take a 20-mile bike ride and check 'em out, if someone doesn't beat me to doing the field testing. Doesn't look like either of 'e cover a super dense area, so I imagine speeds should be solid.

[greenbastard]

On 10/3/2020 at 10:07 PM, iansltx said:

Based on the "toggle 5G off and look for the different color" trick on the T-Mobile map, appears that there are two n41 sites in the Austin area. One around Cedar Park, one near Round Rock.

The one in RR (monopole site) is near Sam Bass Road and Hermitage Dr in Round Rock (near the parking lot of the shopping center First Star Bank is in). The other (full-on big ol' tower near CP) is near where Lone Star Dr turns north to meet W Whitestone Blvd (aka 1431).

Maybe I'll decide next week that it's a good day to take a 20-mile bike ride and check 'em out, if someone doesn't beat me to doing the field testing. Doesn't look like either of 'e cover a super dense area, so I imagine speeds should be solid.

That map has not been updated to show the rapid rate of upgrades in Houston. If I had to guess, this map was last updated in mid to late August. 

[iansltx]

Bit of a cross-post but in Austin they're (back) up to 15x15 n71 as of today. They've moved the 5x5 B71 LTE carrier up to their newly rented block from Dish to make this happen, and interestingly B71-only performance seems to be a good bit better than usual, sitting at 15/5 rather than single digits. If I had to guess, previously they were including B71 in CA combos (I've seen 2+4+12+71 before I think), and widening NR let them be way less aggressive with what actually gets CA'd, dropping down to a single 10x10 2 or 66 channel rather than the previous grab bag. This relegates B71 back to its rightful spot as the band of last resort when you can't get coverage another way, with positive implications for speed when that really is all you have.

[iansltx]

Went on an expedition this evening to check out the two sites in the Austin area that have n41.

In both cases they were running B41 as well. The first one was colo'd with Sprint, so they were running 100 MHz of 2.5 off of the site (60 TMo, 40 Sprint). The second wasn't; I was able to get a -123 signal from the nearest Sprint B41.

I maxed out around 100 Mbps down on both, with B41 downloads basically as fast as n41 (uploads were faster). Hopefully they get the backhaul in gear. Site range was a mile or so. Had CellMapper turned on for part of the trip so y'all can check my work

[greenbastard]

2 hours ago, iansltx said:

Went on an expedition this evening to check out the two sites in the Austin area that have n41.

In both cases they were running B41 as well. The first one was colo'd with Sprint, so they were running 100 MHz of 2.5 off of the site (60 TMo, 40 Sprint). The second wasn't; I was able to get a -123 signal from the nearest Sprint B41.

I maxed out around 100 Mbps down on both, with B41 downloads basically as fast as n41 (uploads were faster). Hopefully they get the backhaul in gear. Site range was a mile or so. Had CellMapper turned on for part of the trip so y'all can check my work

So T-Mobile+Sprint only have access to 100 MHz of the BRS/EBS band in Williamson county?

That would be disappointing. Were you able to confirm if it was all contiguous?

[iansltx]

2 hours ago, greenbastard said:

So T-Mobile+Sprint only have access to 100 MHz of the BRS/EBS band in Williamson county?

That would be disappointing. Were you able to confirm if it was all contiguous?

They may have access to more, but no point in lighting more than 40 MHz of NR when you're backhaul constrained.

NR carrier was at 2575.35 for both sites. For the 2xCA site you have 2545.6 and 2525.8 for B41, so they're packing stuff pretty tightly. For the colo'd site you had 2525.8 for TMo, 2640.4 and 2660.2 for Sprint. The Sprint EARFCNs match what I see where I'm sitting now in Austin proper. So we're looking at 120 MHz deployed between the 2CA site and the nearest Sprint B41 site, with the 80 MHz on TMo's side contiguous and the 40 MHz from Sprint contiguous, but a huge gulf between them.

I've occasionally seen a Magic Box in SCP so maybe they need to reclaim 40 MHz from there to bump up n41 bandwidth, or they may not have the spectrum to play with. If they indeed have a dedicated uplink channel for MBs/small cells and another slice for MB broadcast, that gets us up to ~160 MHz. Which I wouldn't be surprised if that's all they have here.

I will say that if they were worried about running out of spectrum, I wouldn't have seen the 2CA at the second site. T-Mobile could run an 80 MHz NR channel now if they ignored B41, but my bet is they will move their B41 around once MBs are gone and expand to 80 MHz anyway.

One caveat here is I know in 78624 MBs don't work due to spectrum availability, though I don't think that's an issue I'm WilCo.

 

 

[iansltx]

Just saw a 312-250 site just west of where 3232 intersects 290 well west of Austin. Had 55 MHz of B41 deployed, plus the typical couple of B25 carriers. Pretty quickly switched back to T-Mobile, with 10 MHz B2 + 20 MHz n71. Before that site I was seeing 5 MHz B2 + 15 MHz NR.

EDIT: A bit east of Stonewall, seeing 15 MHz n71 plus 10 MHz N71, with a tiny 5 MHz of B2 serving as the NSA anchor. Saw B71 and n71 aggregating on my S20. You definitely want band 71 support in this area.

EDIT 2: The site south of Fredericksburg has 15 MHz n71 + 15 MHz N71, plus 5+10 MHz of B66 (at least the 10 MHz is MFBI with B4). And yet B2 is preferred despite having 5 MHz to play with. Bizarre.

[jfstx1]

Site au33xc228 is getting new panels. Installer had been there since Friday. Not sure which carrier though.

[iansltx]

Northwest of Fredericksburg on 87 there's a site or two with 15 MHz n71 and a 5 MHz B66 anchor. Hit in excess of 150/15 there, though I had to force B71 for a few seconds to stop my phone from roaming on AT&T LTE at 256 kbps. Found a spot where AT&T only has WCDMA so I couldn't roam there at all.

Anyone know what T-Mobile (e.g. TNX) has roaming-wise with AT&T? T-Mobile is world's better than Sprint along this route (with a few exceptions closer to Fredericksburg where Sprint has B41 etc deployed)b butwithout AT&T roaming there are sizable dead zones.

EDIT: the B66 carrier looks to be configured pretty universally as 4-rank MIMO guessing the point there is to extend range as much as possible so NSA 5G devices have the best chance of connecting. Thinking that's also why they're running a narrower channel, to concentrate Tx/Rx power.

EDIT 2: I've seen a couple 312-250 sites on the way up, including a triband site in Sweetwater. T-Mobile is B2+12 here at 5 MHz each...surprisingly no band 71 of any type. B2 is a bit of a mess but B12 seems fine, though the Sprint network performs better (10x10 + 5x5 of B25, plus 2CA B41, plus B26). The T-Mobile site is significantly closer than the Sprint site to the Wal-Mart parking lot I'm currently sitting in, so if I don't force band selection I wind up on that site, but I imagine the Sprint site gets preferred elsewhere in town, as well it should.

[iansltx]

Just caught, but couldn't connect to, n41 a little north of the 183/183A split north of Leander. 40 MHz. So that's at least a third site on top of the two I scoped out a few weeks back.

Coming back from Sweetwater, I saw 10 MHz B71 doing the lion's share of the work keeping coverage, but my guess is that SA-capable SIMs would've locked into the 15-20 MHz of n71 that was there for most of the way. Around Goldthwaite there didn't seem to be native TMo service, though south of there I latched onto a rank-4 MIMO 10 MHz Sprint B25 carrier...first time I've seen that on Sprint...with 60+ Mbps speeds with no CA. This site was *not* 312-250, interestingly enough. By that point, AT&T roaming no longer appeared to be allowed.

There were maybe 15 miles of that trip where I was roaming on AT&T, and maybe another 5-10 where I had Sprint but no TMo native. Saw a few 312-250 sites, one of which was a bit south of Sweetwater.

The amount of ground TMo now covers thanks to B71 actually makes it a reasonable option in those areas. AT&T is still better in terms of time without service, with basically 100% coverage along the route, but particularly on postpaid I think Sprint-on-TMo qualifies as Good Enough. You couldn't say that four years ago (not sure when exactly the B71 came online).

[iansltx]

Not sure when this happened, as I haven't been watching field test info lately, but just noticed that T-Mobile has widened their PCS LTE carrier here to 15x15. Guessing they did that by dropping Sprint's 5x5 carrier that was in the B2 range, and moving the PCS-based H+ carrier into that slot. PCS CDMA is still around, though forcing 1x puts me on 800 (forcing EvDO drops me on one of the PCS channels, specifically channel 475), and when I forced B25 I locked onto a 10x10 carrier extending into the G block. I still hit 40/20 or so on that carrier though...though admittedly we're talking after midnight in an area that has good B41 coverage. Interestingly, B41 wasn't going above ~70 Mbps, despite aggregating two carriers, though upload speeds were fine (~9 Mbps).

All this means that I pulled ~114/38 over 15x15 n71 + 15x15 B2 + 5x5 B66. Will have to check how things fare at peak, but that's an admirable showing without even touching the two 10x10 carriers in B4. Will have to see how things fare during peak times, but with these changes T-Mobile is up to 10 MHz of new LTE (the 5x5 B66 carrier plus the B2 widening) and 5 MHz of new NR (going from 10x10 to 15x15 on iPhone Day via the lease from Dish) over the past few months. Not complaining

[iansltx]

Saw TMo B41 at the Chipotle on Anderson Ln in Austin earlier today. Couldn't stay connected, and didn't get any n41, but was definitely using the part of the band I saw used for B41 on n41 sites when I investigated the two n41 sites north of here a few months back (~2540 MHz; Sprint B41 carriers are ~2630 MHz). Signal was rather low at that location so we're talking about neither the Sprint site on top of the Chase building nor the TMo one at Anderson and Burnet. May investigate tomorrow if weather is reasonable.

[iansltx]

T-Mobile now has a live n41 site (at 40 MHz) within a mile or so of where I live:

I was unable to connect to B41 from home, and n41 faded in and out as I got closer to the site, but I think I actually caught them as they were optimizing the site because things seemed to get more reliable during the hour and change I spent walking around.

The two TMo B41 carriers are at 2525 and 2545 MHz center frequencies, with n41 right above that. Sprint B41 is at 2660...I'm not seeing B41 CA anymore on Sprint and I want to say Sprint B41 was at 2640 and 2620 before so they're definitely moving stuff around now. At home the TMo B41 comes in at ~-110 but I can't connect...closer to the site I'm able to connect.

The above speedtest is using 45 MHz of spectrum; the channel is anchored by 5 MHz B66, hence the low upload speed and unimpressive downlink contribution.

My guess is that TMo will get better speeds/coverage as they dial this site in, but as it stands the site should already take a fair amount of network load off in a relatively dense area with a lot of vehicle traffic, so that's great for everyone else stuck on n71 (or LTE for that matter). Then eventually when TMo decides they don't need 3-4 B41 carriers active they can run 80 MHz of n41 here without issue. Aggregate that with 15 MHz n71 and 15 MHz B2...both of which are live now...and I could totally see gigabit down, 100 Mbps up near the cell site.

UPDATE: They seem to have done a little more optimization. I can now pull ~120/3 over 2CA B41 a mile away indoors. No n41, and I have to force B41 because apparently TMo would rather put me somewhere with better upload performance. But that's long enough range that LTE offloading will cover enough territory to matter...and if the B2/66 network is running slowly I know where to go

[iansltx]

Was wondering last night why B41 was down to 15 MHz in Fredericksburg when I arrived yesterday. Turns out, n41 is live here too (on one site). n71 is missing for some reason, but I'm betting it'll be back at 20x20 since with the STA TMo has access to 30x30 here and they dropped B71 LTE from 15x15 to 10x10 since Thanksgiving.

If I had to guess, I'll bet Kerrville similarly has n41 live on at least one site, with Sprint B41 shaved way down. There's no TMo B41 here, and the n41 carrier is above 2.6 GHz here so I think TMo is rather spectrum constrained here.

[iansltx]

Confirmed that Kerrville's Sprint B41 has been narrowed to 15 MHz. No n41 as of yesterday, but n71 is 20x20 there, so I was able to hit ~210/50: 

 

Did some scouting out west of Kerrville. There were a few places on 27 that were 1x-only before dropping out entirely. VZW kept service a bit further out, but eventually fell off as well. T-Mobile 5x5 B2 was available even further west (Mountain Home area). In some cases Five Star Wireless/West Central Wireless CDMA/GSM were the only signals available from anyone.

...and then I found a 320' tower at 29.991162, -99.690123. That site only has T-Mobile on it, at basically the top of the tower, with 5x5 B12, 5x5 B2, 10x10 B71, 15x15 n71, and I believe 10x10 B66. Outdoors, I could pick up a usable signal (~12 Mbps down) ten miles away, with B2 being surprisingly durable (guessing the narrow channel width allows for more output power). B71 would pass traffic indoors at that distance but I couldn't get web pages to load. I was on a hill at the far end of that 10-mile link, so the site height definitely helped.