Network Vision/LTE - Shentel Market (Shenandoah Valley/Hagerstown/Harrisburg)

[Galaxyguy]

Here it is.

 

 

Sent from my Note 4

[Galaxyguy]

Between this one and the one behind Lowes, yes.

 

Expect more, especially in Winchester.

Winchester has been brutally bad lately. I had to switch to 3G at the Apple Blossom Mall to get usable data.

 

Edit: I have an appt in Winchester tomorrow so I can check a couple more towers up there.

 

Sent from my Note 4

[ajm8127]

Winchester has been brutally bad lately. I had to switch to 3G at the Apple Blossom Mall to get usable data.

 

Edit: I have an appt in Winchester tomorrow so I can check a couple more towers up there.

 

Sent from my Note 4

 

I'm surprised about the Mall. Shentel has a small cell in there near their (Sprint branded) store.

 

No more 10 MHz FDD except Woodstock for now. That is brand new this week. First ALU equipment to do it I think.

[Galaxyguy]

I had my engineering screen active all the way from Woodstock to near the Winchester Hospital area today. I didn't find any other 10x10. I didn't get to check that other tower you mentioned yesterday, but I should be able to get there sometime tomorrow or this weekend to confirm it.

 

Sent from my Note 4

[stealth]

Looks like the other water tower in Hanover is getting some activity. They have the crane up, gonna drive by to investigate

[Galaxyguy]

For the first time since I found out 10x10 is live on my "home" tower last week, I noticed my work phone was on the primary carrier (5x5) and my personal phone was on the secondary (10x10). I took the opportunity to compare the speeds. I just did this at 8:30am so the towers are under some load, but I wouldn't say this is peak usage time.

 

5x5 carrier: 7.44 down, 5.75 up

10x10 carrier: 18.39 down, 18.85 up.

 

It is quite a difference.

 

Interestingly enough, I noticed as soon as the speed test was done, my work phone then bounced to B26, then to the B25 2nd carrier. I've noticed both my phones seem to prefer using the 2nd carrier since it was made 10x10, which makes sense. The carrier balancing seems to take that into consideration.

 

 

 

Sent from my Note 4

[kineticman]

 

In Carlisle PA - not familiar with your guys area but showing EARFCN of 8334. Didn't see that reported on here.

[ajm8127]

In Carlisle PA - not familiar with your guys area but showing EARFCN of 8334. Didn't see that reported on here.

 

That is a 5 MHz LTE channel in the PCS B band. Carlisle is in the Philadelphia MTA, so the channels are different than Woodstock which is PCS A in the BAWA MTA. 8158 is the normal PCA A band 5 MHz channel and 8133 is the 10 MHz channel.  I haven't heard of any PCS B band 10 MHz channel yet for Shentel.

[ajm8127]

5x5 carrier: 7.44 down, 5.75 up

10x10 carrier: 18.39 down, 18.85 up.

 

Nice. A 10 MHz channel should theoretically peak at about 60 and a 5 MHz one at around 30. The highest I've seen on a 5 MHz channel is 27ish so I would expect peak in-the-field throughputs of around 54 for the 10 MHz channel. You'd have to in an extremely good SINR area to see speeds like that though and of course loading matters too. 

[lilotimz]

Nice. A 10 MHz channel should theoretically peak at about 60 and a 5 MHz one at around 30. The highest I've seen on a 5 MHz channel is 27ish so I would expect peak in-the-field throughputs of around 54 for the 10 MHz channel. You'd have to in an extremely good SINR area to see speeds like that though and of course loading matters too.

Theoretically iirc it's 36.7 dl for a 5 mhz FDD and 72.2 dl for 10 mhz FDD using 2x2 at UE.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5X

[Galaxyguy]

AJM,

 

Do you know if Shentel will have to sacrifice some CDMA to accommodate the larger 10x10 carrier, or do they have enough spectrum to just add to it without sacrificing CDMA carriers?

 

Sent from my Note 4

[ajm8127]

Theoretically iirc it's 36.7 dl for a 5 mhz FDD and 72.2 dl for 10 mhz FDD using 2x2 at UE.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5X

 

Thanks for the clarification.

[lilotimz]

AJM,

 

Do you know if Shentel will have to sacrifice some CDMA to accommodate the larger 10x10 carrier, or do they have enough spectrum to just add to it without sacrificing CDMA carriers?

 

Sent from my Note 4

The minimum cdma buffer for all markets is 10x10 total of PCS or around 5-6 cdma carriers worth of spectrum. Anything else is on the cutting board to be refarmed to LTE.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5X

[ajm8127]

AJM,

 

Do you know if Shentel will have to sacrifice some CDMA to accommodate the larger 10x10 carrier, or do they have enough spectrum to just add to it without sacrificing CDMA carriers?

 

Sent from my Note 4

 

I think the PCS A and B bands are 15 MHz wide each. If 10 MHz is devoted to LTE, the remaining bandwidth can support exactly four CDMA carriers. However, I believe there are guard bands so realistically this is only three CDMA carriers. If I had to guess I would say they are using one PCS voice carrier and two EVDO carriers plus the 800 MHz voice carrier.

[dkyeager]

Network Statistics at 9/30/15

 

548 Cell Sites

 

93% have a second LTE carrier at 800 MHz

 

187 sites have three carriers, including a second carrier at 1900 MHz

 

Traffic

 

89% of data traffic is on LTE, with 33% on 800 MHz

 

Data usage grew 11% in Q3’15

 

Average

speeds of approximately

4 Mbps

 

Average customer uses approximately 4 GB per month

 

Dropped calls

-

0.5%

 

Blocked calls

-

0.3%

 

source: http://files.shareholder.com/downloads/SHEN/942950566x0x857622/2F625FC9-200D-4A64-A9B2-F065536DDBD0/SHEN_Earnings_Call_Q3_2015_v6_-_Final.pdf

 

extra credit: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3625856-shenandoahs-shen-ceo-christopher-french-on-q3-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single

[leozno1]

I'm not sure what happened last night or if anything changed at all because of the whole WiMax ruling, but I woke up this morning to faster LTE speeds than usual. For several months while at my home I was unable to get speeds over 2 mbps on LTE. Then about 3 weeks to a month ago I was pulling about 4-5 mbps at home.

 

This morning I woke up and my WiFI wasn't working so when I started scrolling through Instagram on LTE it was loading everything MUCH faster. I ran a speed test and I was getting between 15-18 mbps down and 4-7 mbps up.

[ajm8127]

 

Found this today at 39.97188, -76.78632. I was able to pull 35 Mbps consistently from it. This is the first B41 in Shentel's network as far as I know. I am sure more will follow very soon!

 

What is up with that UL Channel? That must be a bug. The phone is a Samsung S5.

[lilotimz]

 

 

 

Found this today at 39.97188, -76.78632. I was able to pull 35 Mbps consistently from it. This is the first B41 in Shentel's network as far as I know. I am sure more will follow very soon!

 

What is up with that UL Channel? That must be a bug. The phone is a Samsung S5.

 

 

Android gets confused at times due to downlink and uplink being on the same frequency for TDD with the difference being time allocated for DL or UL. So when it's doing one or the other it tends to put a null value since it doesn't know what to report for EARFCN since both are the same and one is inactive. 

 

Also 41176 is typically the 2nd B41 carrier EARFCN. 40978 would be the first so off the bat it looks like 2 Band 41 carriers live if the shentel site follows the standard Sprint pattern. 

[ajm8127]

Android gets confused at times due to downlink and uplink being on the same frequency for TDD with the difference being time allocated for DL or UL. So when it's doing one or the other it tends to put a null value since it doesn't know what to report for EARFCN since both are the same and one is inactive. 

 

Also 41176 is typically the 2nd B41 carrier EARFCN. 40978 would be the first so off the bat it looks like 2 Band 41 carriers live if the shentel site follows the standard Sprint pattern. 

 

I can confirm those are the two carriers on the nearby site.

 

I am pretty sure the licenses exist to have five carriers in the Harrisburg/York area. I believe the hardware is limited to two right now. Regardless the bandwidth is going from 30 to 70 overnight with two TDD carriers. They will soon be aggregated so things are going to be interesting when RootMetrics comes back around 1H 2016.

 

Fortunately Shentel is expanding it's fiber network into PA, so it will be a lot more cost effective for them to deliver the big FTTT backhaul to support the throughput on the air link.

[lilotimz]

I can confirm those are the two carriers on the nearby site.

 

I am pretty sure the licenses exist to have five carriers in the Harrisburg/York area. I believe the hardware is limited to two right now. Regardless the bandwidth is going from 30 to 70 overnight with two TDD carriers. They will soon be aggregated so things are going to be interesting when RootMetrics comes back around 1H 2016.

 

Fortunately Shentel is expanding it's fiber network into PA, so it will be a lot more cost effective for them to deliver the big FTTT backhaul to support the throughput on the air link.

Software limits the hardware to two. The next one should be located on earfcn 41374 as that would be the next adjacent 20 MHz continuous spectrum to the existing 40 mhz continuous. That is if they hold the spectrum for it.

 

Any more than 3 you're looking at high capacity setups and split sectors.

[ajm8127]

Software limits the hardware to two.

 

Definitely a more concise way to put it.

[jonathanlc2005]

Just came home for the holidays. Noticed a significant improvement in coverage. My house has an airave because we used to have 1 bar of 3g... But now I am full bars LTE at home on b25.

 

Guess we don't need the airave anymore

 

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

[Fraydog]

 

 

Guess we don't need the airave anymore

 

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Words that warm our hearts.

 

 

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[jonathanlc2005]

Words that warm our hearts.

 

 

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Won't argue with that... I used to work for the camp hill Sprint store and visited the corporate office. You guys are very kind and driven especially Mr. French

 

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

[ajm8127]

Just came home for the holidays. Noticed a significant improvement in coverage. My house has an airave because we used to have 1 bar of 3g... But now I am full bars LTE at home on b25.

 

Guess we don't need the airave anymore

 

Sent from my XT1575 using Tapatalk

 

Do you mind sharing your approximate location such as a nearby intersection? I'm glad to hear progress is being made.