Verizon 5G Coverage

[iansltx]

Found some more CBRS yesterday afternoon, including 4CA (plus B13 and maybe 2/66)? My my estimation, I was 0.8 mi from the macro broadcasting, with signal in the mid -120s, but ~10 SNR. I don't think B48 contributed much to speeds, but the fact that the noise floor was so low meant that the connection still happened.

So VZW is definitely using GAA here, as they should. Just checked CA combos on my phone and it looks like they could aggregate n77 with a single B48 carrier, plus 2+13, so at the end of this year they could wind up with 25x25 FD + 80 MHz TD on X60-based devices, not far behind T-Mobile's 30x30 (2+66) FD + 80 MHz TD (n41) that they can run now.

[iansltx]

One thought I had here is that VZW may lean on CBRS as additional capacity for their home broadband, aggregated with C-Band, particularly in 2022-2023 when they only have 60 MHz of n77 available. Unfortunately, current modems can only aggregate one B48 carrier with n77, but in urban areas VZW has at least 20 MHz of PALs so that kinda works out. If they can get someone to make CPE that aggregates multiple B48 carriers, they'll be even more competitive.

[Paynefanbro]

4 hours ago, iansltx said:

One thought I had here is that VZW may lean on CBRS as additional capacity for their home broadband, aggregated with C-Band, particularly in 2022-2023 when they only have 60 MHz of n77 available. Unfortunately, current modems can only aggregate one B48 carrier with n77, but in urban areas VZW has at least 20 MHz of PALs so that kinda works out. If they can get someone to make CPE that aggregates multiple B48 carriers, they'll be even more competitive.

Seems like CBRS will be to Verizon what LAA is for T-Mobile in some areas. The difference is that LAA range is abysmal. It's usually worse than mmWave. However, thanks to there already being a mature ecosystem of n41 and LAA capable devices, T-Mobile is able to take advantage of all of the spectrum they have deployed here. In NYC we have seen T-Mobile aggregate 60MHz n41 + 20MHz Band 66 + 20MHz Band 2 + (20MHz x 3) Band 46.

[Paynefanbro]

Tutela released a new report analyzing Verizon's 5G network: https://www.tutela.com/blog/impact-analysis-user-experience-improvements-from-verizons-5g-rollout

Quote

• Mobile experience for 5G capable users is virtually indistinguishable from non-5G capable users using modern handsets, on Verizon's network, in 5G-enabled areas.

 

• Verizon's implementation of Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) quickly delivered 5G coverage but does not deliver material mobile experience improvements versus 4G. This is somewhat unsurprising considering the high quality of Verizon's existing 4G network.

 

• The biggest difference to performance is noticeable during peak hours, where Verizon's 5G network is barely impacted by the increase in traffic but where 4G performance dips as the network is loaded. This means that 5G users are advantaged during these busy, congested periods.

 

[iansltx]

Folks are starting to see VZW C-Band here and there. I'll start rotating my Visible SIM in more often to see if I catch it here. The site just to the north of me is a pretty new (April?) CBRS build, so hopefully the equipment they added can do C-Band NR as well. If so, I should be able to get it at home, as CBRS (barely) reaches indoors.

[iansltx]

Aaaaand C-Band is delayed for another couple of weeks. Welp.

[Paynefanbro]

The power of Verizon 5G Ultra Wideband coming to 100 million people in US this month

https://www.verizon.com/about/news/power-verizon-5g-ultra-wideband-coming

Interesting how Verizon isn't advertising very high average speeds:

Quote

3 Typical download speeds of 90-170 Mbps with higher speeds and peaks over 1 Gbps in certain areas. Typical upload speeds of 15-30 Mbps with peak upload speeds over 100 Mbps. 

[red_dog007]

VZW is supposed to have a C-Band coverage map.  Seems like C-Band is all over the place.  People on reddit testing from all over the nation.  Kinda impressed really.  Most tests seem to be like 400~700Mbps.  Though as long as I get like 5Mbps when I need it, Im good, lol.  I personally have been rocking 500MB to 4GB plans for the last 4 years.

[iansltx]

Did some exploring yesterday/last night and didn't find a shred of C-Band, including with my brand new US Mobile SIM. Did find 4CA CBRS but the site seemed backhaul constrained; both that plus 15x15 B2 and band-locked 2/66 got me 190 Mbps or so.

[dkyeager]

5 hours ago, iansltx said:

...didn't find a shred of C-Band, including with my brand new US Mobile SIM.

Verizon has a reputation for being frugal with MVNOs. After looking around, I also decided US Mobile was my best option. People have gotten C band on it.  Hoping for esim for my S21 Ultra.  No luck so far.  Red Pocket does not claim Verizon 5g, although they say Soon!(TM).  I do see some 5g with it.

Typically MVNOs are deprioritized, thus I am reluctant to claim truly getting top speeds with one.

[dkyeager]

1 hour ago, dkyeager said:

Hoping for esim for my S21 Ultra.  No luck so far.

Just figured out this is a waste of time. US Mobile and Verizon lock the eSim to the emei while T-Mobile only uses it to see that you have a capable phone, like Red Pocket does with physical sims (although RP does keep track of what phone you are using it on with the emei.)  So @Trip was right in this case on liking physical sims.

[iansltx]

Did some more exploring tonight. Saw n77 on both my USM and Visible SIMs, but never for long enough to take a screenshot, let alone do a speedtest. VZW's coverage maps are *massively* overstated for n77, at least here. Had to go pretty far north to even get those glimpses. Finding T-Mobile n41 was miles easier.

[dkyeager]

22 hours ago, iansltx said:

Did some more exploring tonight. Saw n77 on both my USM and Visible SIMs, but never for long enough to take a screenshot, let alone do a speedtest. VZW's coverage maps are *massively* overstated for n77, at least here. Had to go pretty far north to even get those glimpses. Finding T-Mobile n41 was miles easier.

Agree, at least by a factor of 2 (unless still tuning). Picked up what SCP says is n78 (n77 subset)@ -100db (Jan 24th edition) on S21 Ultra. Got 303/31 speeds.

[iansltx]

On 1/29/2022 at 6:36 PM, dkyeager said:

Agree, at least by a factor of 2 (unless still tuning). Picked up what SCP says is n78 (n77 subset)@ -100db (Jan 24th edition) on S21 Ultra. Got 303/31 speeds.

To be clear here, finding T-Mobile n41 when there were two towers live in the entire Austin metro back in October 2020 or so was easier than finding VZW C-Band with "95 million pops". Not comparing the current n41 build of course because that's taking a gun to a knife fight at this point.

Also tried finding n77 southwest of Austin. Couldn't. n2 for days.

[dkyeager]

On 1/31/2022 at 2:06 AM, iansltx said:

To be clear here, finding T-Mobile n41 when there were two towers live in the entire Austin metro back in October 2020 or so was easier than finding VZW C-Band with "95 million pops". Not comparing the current n41 build of course because that's taking a gun to a knife fight at this point.

Also tried finding n77 southwest of Austin. Couldn't. n2 for days.

The biggest issue is it's NSA, thus you need to be on main bands and try to force it using speedtest or other high data application.  If your not on unlimited, this could get expensive. Even then, only can really use signal strength to confirm sites which is quite primitive. Widespread VoNR can't come soon enough so SA can thrive!

 

P.S.: 0.5GB per speed test for n77/n78

[iansltx]

On 1/31/2022 at 1:45 AM, dkyeager said:

The biggest issue is it's NSA, thus you need to be on main bands and try to force it using speedtest or other high data application.  If your not on unlimited, this could get expensive. Even then, only can really use signal strength to confirm sites which is quite primitive. Widespread VoNR can't come soon enough so SA can thrive!

My phone will do 4CA on VZW even at (near) idle, and based on Ookla's stats in town C-Band just isn't here; AT&T speeds bumped up since 1/19 but VZW's were flat.

Right now I have two VZW lines: Visible and US Mobile Pooled. ServiceMode is locked out on the latter but speeds are uncapped and latency is better (VZW/Visible deprioritization here, like many places, is pretty brutal). But obviously for network sniffing the Visible SIM is better, so when I'm site hunting that's the one that's in my phone.

[dkyeager]

47 minutes ago, iansltx said:

Visible and US Mobile Pooled. ServiceMode is locked out on the latter but speeds are uncapped and latency is better (VZW/Visible deprioritization here, like many places, is pretty brutal). But obviously for network sniffing the Visible SIM is better, so when I'm site hunting that's the one that's in my phone.

Have you tried the Samsung band selector app when using US Mobile?  You could then get band info from cellmapper etc although you might lack bandwidth.

[iansltx]

14 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Have you tried the Samsung band selector app when using US Mobile?  You could then get band info from cellmapper etc although you might lack bandwidth.

SBS doesn't work for things that can't be the PCC. Since VZW doesn't have SA, I can't band-select away from certain NR bands. Nor can I band-select only CBRS, as CBRS is always anchored by 2/13/66 (AT&T owns all of 850 here).

In any event, I already know the band plan here: B13, 15x15 PCS DSS, 10x10 each of AWS-1 and AWS-3 for sub-2.4. Then up to 4CA CBRS, plus C-Band (3700-3760) for mid-band. Then 800 MHz n261 (AT&T has n260 deployed here, at least downtown) in a few places. Of those, 2/13/66 are on every site IIRC, though not all sites have DSS, so really all I'm looking for is B48/n77/n261, which means either CellMapper or ServiceMode, and I prefer ServiceMode.

[Paynefanbro]

Signals Research Group did some testing of n77 in the Twin Cities area and had some interesting findings: 

Quote

That was then, this is now.  Although 5G Nationwide (Bn5) performance and coverage was a disappointment, Bn77 was not. Coverage greatly exceeded what we observed with Bn5 back in Oct 2020 while average throughput was 15-20x higher.  Bn77 spectral efficiency was also much higher than all LTE bands and Bn5.

FDD-TDD CA and UL-256QAM is alive and well.  The Verizon network supported both features which we believe are critical for a successful mid-band 5G NR deployment.  Greater use of FDD-TDD CA and device support for UL-256QAM are important success factors.

Bn77 vs Bn41 Coverage.  Although the area covered by Bn41 was modestly larger than it was for Bn77, the Bn77 uplink coverage and performance (average throughput, spectral efficiency) was better than Bn41.  Data suggests a one-for-one overlay of Bn77 on the existing LTE cell grid with no obvious detrimental impact on overall performance (e.g., performance at cell handover, etc.).

Reading the actual report, they say that while n41 covers a larger area, at the edge of cell they're seeing better spectral efficiency and faster speeds on Verizon than on T-Mobile's n41. In my opinion, a number of factors play into that such as the fact that T-Mobile's n41 deployment is a lot more mature and a lot more saturated than Verizon's n77. In the U.S. n77 is still only able to be used by a few devices right now and is plan limited on Verizon whereas n41 is available to all T-Mobile users on virtually any 5G device released in the past two years.

I am incredibly surprised though to see Verizon using uplink 256QAM. That's definitely something I would've thought we'd see on T-Mobile first given their history of rolling out the latest network technologies pretty early.

It's too bad the C-band still isn't active throughout most of NYC even though a lot of sites have the equipment deployed already. I'd love to test it out here.

[dkyeager]

11 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Signals Research Group did some testing of n77 in the Twin Cities area and had some interesting findings: 

Reading the actual report, they say that while n41 covers a larger area, at the edge of cell they're seeing better spectral efficiency and faster speeds on Verizon than on T-Mobile's n41. In my opinion, a number of factors play into that such as the fact that T-Mobile's n41 deployment is a lot more mature and a lot more saturated than Verizon's n77. In the U.S. n77 is still only able to be used by a few devices right now and is plan limited on Verizon whereas n41 is available to all T-Mobile users on virtually any 5G device released in the past two years.

I am incredibly surprised though to see Verizon using uplink 256QAM. That's definitely something I would've thought we'd see on T-Mobile first given their history of rolling out the latest network technologies pretty early.

It's too bad the C-band still isn't active throughout most of NYC even though a lot of sites have the equipment deployed already. I'd love to test it out here.

I can attest to it being rarely used. I am the only person who has put n77 trails on cellmapper in Columbus as of earlier today.

In terms of it not being used, both US Mobile  (official) and Red Pocket (says it does not have 5g) have it, but not consistently.  Even at off hours ghe site does not appear to be fully tuned. Checking other nearby sites and so far no better. Primitive testing, but that is NSA.

[dkyeager]

The Verizon coverage maps remind me of Sprint's: more asperational than reality. Using US Mobile which officially supports n77 and is supposed to be at full priority and Red Pocket which does not officially support 5g yet but I certainly get it, thus I can not rule out that it is a priority issue, but the possible sites are thinly spaced.

Getting n77 consistently is an issue, even when restricting my bands to 2, 66, and n77. Trying it with s21 ultra and A32 5g both factory unlocked.

[mdob07]

Starting to see a lot of C band gear going up on Verizon sites here in Louisville. Interesting since this isn't one of the early markets. 

[dkyeager]

The number of sites with c-band equipment has increased in northwest Columbus. When they are turned on the published coverage map will become more plausible.

[Paynefanbro]

While Verizon has deployed C-band on a lot of sites in Brooklyn, the vast majority of them are inactive despite virtually the entire borough being outside of those exclusion zones and the coverage maps showing the entire city covered. Both Verizon sites that serve my home have been upgraded with C-band yet I get nothing besides Verizon's much slower DSS 5G in my home and outdoors. I'm patiently waiting for them activate the sites citywide.

 

[dkyeager]

Columbus n77 update:

Most of the prior sites with n77 are now not only active, but are no longer high demand only, ie your drive up to them and see n77.  New n77 sites have also been installed, thus the Verizon map is no longer grossly exaggerated, but rather is now just stretched, which the other carriers also regularly do.  For example my house is supposed to get n77.  I do not see it on the second floor, but it is now just a mile or two away.