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It seems like T-Mobile is definitely keeping Sprint's long haul fiber network, as the network images on Sprint.net now say T-Mobile instead of Sprint. Here is to hoping the routing issues T-Mobile is having for some people is due to T-Mobile moving their traffic from 3rd party fiber providers and onto Sprint's (now T-Mobile's) fiber. https://www.sprint.net/tools/network-maps Also, T-Mobile has been working on tech to improve up link speeds and capacity of n41, specifically 256QAM upload and UL-MIMO. Description from Signal Research Group's benchmark study in California here: https://www.researchandmarkets.com/reports/5406477/5g-nr-benchmark-study-vol-18-enhanced-uplink

Yup! It's one of my favorite changes about the update. The Field Test mode in iOS 15 now shows you QAM, MIMO, and carrier size for NR and the LTE PCC. Should be much better for those of us who like to track network deployments. I just wish that Apple would let apps access that information so that we can do passive cell mapping. That's what I miss most about having an Android phone.

eNB 43383 in Gowanus is another one of those sites with more backhaul than normal. It's the first one I found that doesn't have LAA or mmWave. It's also a weird site to have so much backhaul since it's not in a particularly busy area with the exception that it covers a Whole Foods. I got this while in my car without LOS so I'm sure I could get faster if I got closer. This is the same site where I was getting nearly 500Mbps on LTE while indoors a couple of months ago.

Big shoutout to Mike for getting this one done - this will be huge for the quality of data coming into the nationwide database!

Saw this new deal.... $5/Month for 500 GB $10/Month for 2 TB Pretty good.

Band 41 Upgrades in progress in the Rapid City SD/Black Hills market as well as info on Sprint site transitions by EOY......we shall see. Hopefully this will be paired with NEW sites as T-Mobile is still at least 29 sites short of the other 2 in the Black Hills area....and DISH is starting to move in with sites.

T-Mobile? Being terrible? Never! I had ROAMAHOME blocked on my devices because the T-Mobile network was (and still is) so crummy in places I go. I'm now trying to have MULTOCN put on them since they've started turning off Sprint towers leaving gaps in the coverage. After nearly an hour, I finally got an answer trying to upsell me to new phones, then after another half hour I was told the G7 and G8X are somehow not compatible with MULTOCN even though the G8 is. Then I was called and put on hold to talk to "advanced support." After 25 minutes on hold waiting, they told me, oops! I am talking to T-Mobile support, not Sprint support, and they have to transfer me to Sprint support. I was dumped onto the main Sprint phone tree. At that point, I gave up. I'll try again later. That's 2 hours and 15 minutes of my life I won't get back. These people are so incompetent it's not even funny. I really want Sprint back. - Trip

@WiWavelengthAny chance you can do one of those antenna performance based on FCC filings for the iPhone 13 series? That would be amazing to see how far they've come with Qualcomm hardware and 5G!

n41+n71 carrier aggregation spotted in Los Angeles

Here's a better view of the high capacity site at Woodbury Commons. Verizon is still LTE only here. No 5G.

I was expecting to see the Commscope panel, but didn't, unless its on the south-ish facing sector. I'll take another spin around the site to see if I missed something. eNB 49619 is another with B66 being split on one sector, but I don't see the usual split sector antenna(s) on it. While eNB 55828 has it on only one sector, eNB 55976 had 2 facing the same direction! It has since been changed now with the 6449 up on it. eNBs 40989 and 41362 are other towers with one single split panel on one sector that I know of. To be honest, while I definitely want more spectrum, the backhaul is more of an issue. Even sites with the ancient RFS 2/12/66 panels, once they get upgraded, their speeds go up by a lot on LTE. Plus, its fairly easy to hit the 1G backhaul cap with 80 MHz n41 added to B2 and/or B66. I hope they start ramping the small cells with that spectrum though as Paynefanbro said, as adding them in places with a ton of pedestrian traffic/infill coverage would help to place the icing on the layer cake. -- T-Mobile 2xB41 seems to be expanding across Brooklyn, but it also seems targeted, as in for areas where they need/want the extra LTE capacity. Along Eastern Pkwy, most of the towers from Franklin Avenue (eNB 142953) to Rochester Avenue (eNB 475428) seem to have 2xB41 live. A trip along Fort Hamilton Pkwy only produced one tower with 2xB41, eNB 131646. I ran a test on 131646, and I think 2xCA uploads are active on the sites that have 2xB41, but that was the only site I ran the test on so I'm not 100% sure. Sprint definitely had it active when I tested eNB 7263, when 2660 MHz on Sprint was still around.

A fresh update for the Beta Crew is now live on Google Play! There are two significant changes, among some other smaller bugfixes: * If the device location is more than 10 seconds old, the accuracy will be recorded as "999" in the trail log. This will prevent entries with stale locations from being included in web uploads, and also be easy to quickly identify when looking at logs. * Fixed 5G-NR cell ID display; the values were previously wrong if the selected user preference was an option with sectors. A new hex cell - hex sector display option for IDs was also added. As always, any feedback is appreciated and thanks for your help!

Yup, I think you identified for me a while back that eNB 55828 has that same antenna. Though it looks like it's only on one sector and the others have Ericsson AIR32's. Same lol. The optimist in me want to believe that they're just waiting for the go ahead on deploying the new small cell design so that they can put LAA, CBRS, and mmWave all inside a single small cell instead of deploying it on macros where the antennas will take up space and site density makes it so you're always just out of range. Sidenote: Despite Verizon's continued push with mmWave in the city I find that I almost never connect to it. It feels like I have to stay in one place and deliberately attempt to connect by cycling airplane mode while standing within line of sight of the antenna. Recently I connected to a site in Gowanus and while standing near it with LOS, I couldn't get over 800Mbps down which was really weird. I guess not all Verizon sites have been provisioned with massive amounts of backhaul.

At least in the case of 58152, it seems as though they had only three sectors in late 2017 and then built a fourth in early 2018. The fourth sector was never upgraded from three APX16 antenas, though, so it's a bit hard to tell what exactly they were doing. I generally agree, though, I haven't noticed any active four-sector sites in NYC. Also, AFAIK the AIR 3246 is a single band antenna - Ericsson has a B66 variant and a B25 variant (though T-Mobile seems to only deploy the B66 variant). SOP for B2/B66 split sector sites typically seems to involve the deployment of two split sectors antennas, though I've seen them do it with a single 2HH-38A-R4-V2 (ie. eNB 43381). Very glad to see more split sector sites, but still waiting for more LAA/CBRS and mmWave deployment... 😭

I'm leaning towards the idea of changes in the sector azimuth and didn't take down the old sector. I don't know of any 4-sector sites within NYC, but I have realized sites with 2/12/66 setup that get upgraded to all bands may get one or 2 sectors split after the upgrade. I think T-Mobile knew some of these sites had capacity issues, and are now doing something about it when they do their 5G upgrades. Another example of this is eNB 40988, a former 2/12/66 tower with no splits, and now it has all licensed bands, and B66 is now split on it. I would assume B2 is also, but I didn't check when I passed by. Former view of the site, compared to the current view below:

what is this called and who do you think it is for? surely this cant be considered a "small cell" as its the size of some humans. wouldnt surprise me if its tomobile. right in this section there is a thousand or so feet of road where tmobile absolutely drops out and at least for me, I get put on to sprint band 25. very heavily traveled area too. one of the only areas i have found where i roam over on to sprint. kind of funny to cause just up the road is a tmobile store.

Agreed! Looks like it could be an APXVAALL15_43-U-NA20. Once again, agreed! Here's a similar setup in Williamsburg (eNB 58152). Kinda hard to tell what's going on - maybe these were four-sector sites that were downgraded to three-sector sites once they were upgraded with split-sector antennas? Or perhaps they changed sector azimuth at some point and were too lazy to take down the old sector?

Another Verizon C-band site, this time there appears it appears to be connected. eNB 84416

Another hour chat this evening but my lines are finally on MULTOCN. I actually had to argue with the person on the chat who didn't seem to know what it did and thought it would have no benefit for me. That was after she suggested it required a T-Mobile SIM and I had to show her that one of my lines already had it with a Sprint SIM... - Trip

Just checked out the iPhone 13 Pro upgrade information for our T-Mobile “Migrated” Unlimited Taxes/Fees Included Plan… and unless I’m missing something, there’s no way to do annual upgrades anymore. I’m only given the choices of 30 Month Payments or to Pay in Full upfront, and I’m only eligible to upgrade to a new device once it’s completely paid off. Wow, T-Mobile… This really sucks. Are others seeing this too?

iOS 15 out and so is the new indicator via Carrier Update.

Not sure if this is old news. Official T-Mobile Network shutdown dates: T-Mobile 3G UMTS: July 1, 2022 T-Mobile 2G GSM: December 2022 Sprint 2G/3G CDMA: January 1, 2022 Sprint LTE/5G: June 30, 2022 https://www.tmonews.com/2021/09/t-mobile-unveils-official-network-shutdown-dates/

Yep! But that mmWave spectrum has been deployable for quite a while now - last years iPhone supported n260/n261, and so did the Galaxy series as far back as the S10. The only phone that T-Mobile currently sells that supports n258 is the OnePlus 9 Pro 5G. Having a mainstream device such as the iPhone supporting n258 will greatly increase T-Mobile's amount of deployable mmWave. Tampa, for example, would go from 600MHz of deployable spectrum to 1000MHz (400MHz n260 + 200MHz n261 + 400 n258). NYC, which is currently only operating with 100MHz of n261, will go from 500MHz of deployable spectrum to 900MHz (400MHz n260 + 100MHz n261 + 400MHz n258). Hopefully, having more deployable spectrum will push them to expand deployment.

You sure it was n258, not n260? AFAIK the S21 series doesn't support n258.

Ah, thank you! I also haven't seen new 2HH-38A-R4-V2 deployments in either. The deployment of the AIR3246 lines up with most of the new B66-only eNBs I have seen on Cellmapper. Seems like some of the towers have the panel running with split-sector active, and some don't.

Looks like T-Mobile is planning to deploy on a few sites along OR-126. https://maprad.io/us/search/licence/WROE619?source=US

While that would be nice, it’s slowed down deployment in certain residential areas around Seattle where wooden utility poles are the only/best option today. In some cases, they’ve gone with lower masts on small grocery stores which really aren’t ideal (due to much higher clutter loss).

I will look into it; the method I implemented is not supposed to pester users, but I certainly could have done something wrong. I do not have an entry for 313690, so "T-Mobile" is what was being reported to the OS. I'll add an entry for that PLMN.. what would the most useful designation be? I intend to do it this week, with the version that went out to the Beta Crew a few days ago -- just need to ensure there are no lingering problems. So far it seems stable! It's still on the list!

That definitely hasn't been by experience since switching to Verizon a few weeks ago. Now that my iPhone 13 Pro can actually connect to mmWave I'm finding it everywhere the Verizon map says I should be, and even a little more. My phone immediately switches to it when available and routinely hits over 3 Gbps. But yea, move a few feet and it vanishes. I have gotten some impressive range, though. eNB 84364 has a new antenna added to a sector recently (Myrtle Ave at Ashland Pl) and I can pick that site up on the other side of Flatbush Ave at 3+ Gbps. Just like the map says, I can walk down Myrtle Ave in Fort Greene between about Washington Park down to about Pratt and my iPhone stays on mmWave. Ironically, though, the iPhone seems to hold on to it even when the speeds dip far below what even LTE could provide.

Went up to Woodbury Common again. Just like all the other times, T-Mobile outperformed Verizon by a significant margin. Verizon still doesn't offer 5G at Woodbury Common which is interesting considering it has heavy foot traffic year round. The nearest site to the outlet mall is actually brand new. There used to be a lattice tower that only T-Mobile was on up until 2019. In 2020 that tower was taken down and rebuilt as a traditional monopole and it has 3 carriers on it. I don't have a clear picture of the site but it's clear that everyone deployed as much capacity as possible. T-Mobile is on the top rack, I believe Verizon is just below them with those massive high capacity antennas, and AT&T was below that with a MatSing Ball. The only reason T-Mobile doesn't have high capacity antennas on this site is because they have another stealth site nearby that neither AT&T nor Verizon are on which also has all of their spectrum deployed on it inside this red building. I forced my T-Mobile line to LTE so that I could do a "fair" comparison of both Verizon and T-Mobile in the same place at the same time. These speeds I received made me question if the Verizon antennas were even active as they're not mapped on Cellmapper and neither is the AT&T site. Also thanks to the engineering mode in iOS 15 I was able to spot something really interesting while there. I managed to connect to a standalone 40MHz n41 carrier. P.S. Verizon eNB 84357 has C-band now

Another Deal: It's like they're doing everything that's not an annual iPhone upgrade program like we had with Sprint....

Yesterday Boost released the Celero 5G, made by WIngtech. Has a MTK Dimensity 700, a 6.5" screen, a big battery, and is $280 + tax including a year of unlimited Boost service. The current revision of the phone supports T-Mobile NR bands, precisely zero of which AT&T uses at the moment (unless AT&T is using n66 now and I missed it), and two of which (n66, n71) DishNet will use. There will be AT&T and DishNet specific versions of the Celero later. I took this opportunity to grab my dad a new phone...and this will move him back from US Mobile on VZW on a Moto e4+. If the phone works well, I'll get one for my brother before the intro deal expires, upgrading his Moto G fast. I'll grab the DishNet variant when it's available, assuming that'll be the first phone that can do n70 (I assume it'll be able to do n26 and n29 as well, but we shall see).

I thought there was supposed to be one last upgrade. I think people saud it was best to do it online as reps were usually unaware.

I was paying for the same thing on android with Samsung... Samsung forever or whatever it was called... but I found out when I tried to get that upgraded new note last year that they weren't doing that. Even though it was still on my bill every month. I paid 11 months into it and got nothing.

Dish moving into the Black Hills of South Dakota.......have seen 3 permits so far. Also, their are 5 NB-IOT sites that were put in back in 2019 that were basically part of a spectrum hold promise. I assume these sites will be transitioned as well.

Updates on MULTOCN. Went to Rennfest this weekend, and can report on it a bit. Contrary to what I had read, it prefers T-Mobile a lot rather than evenly splitting T-Mobile and Sprint, though 312250 sites appear as frequently (when available) as T-Mobile sites. However, when I was actually at Rennfest, where the service was bogged down, it did try to load balance over to Sprint sites. Neither T-Mobile nor Sprint was functioning with more than a trickle of data, so it bounced back and forth draining the battery without much to show for it. On Saturday I'll be in Shentel land again, and we'll see how it does there. - Trip

You can activate it on a Sprint plan and Sprint billing but it has to be a T-Mobile sim or esim for this model.

You can activate the new iPhone 13's on Sprint with a system-generated eSim. Or with a T-Mobile physical sim. But that is the first iPhone model where you can do that - not for older phones that would not take eSims. It is only allowed where the phone allows IMEI1 to be an eSim.

I was reading the FCC filing for the Pixel 6 yesterday and saw that it included n258 - I was wondering what that was. That will be my next phone so nice to know it will support this new spectrum.

The decommissioning of Sprint sites has started, the optimistic worrying starts about which sites they will keep and convert. Only 2 out of the 3 B41 sectors are on Cellmapper, and 0 B25/26 sectors. I think another site near me also got turned off/decom'd, but I haven't checked it yet. I guess its time to start paying more attention to Sprint sites... Link to street view of the site via Google Maps , Link to the site in Cellmapper . Nov 2020 view: Pic of the empty top and poles on the side of the building removed, taken 2 days ago:

Is there a cheatsheet somewhere that explains what the important indicators are and why I might want to watch them?

Interesting, this shouldn't be iPhone 13 specific in the future.

Went back Boston for the first time since February 2020 and got to experience T-Mobile and Verizon's network throughout quite a bit of the metro area. T-Mobile: T-Mobile has contiguous 5G coverage throughout most of the Boston region which was a surprise to me given that so few sites have been confirmed with Band/n71 or Ban/n41 on Cellmapper. My guess is that this is due to a combination of factors. The two most obvious are that: There are a lot of sites that have been upgraded with Band 41 or Band 71 that no one has mapped in Cellmapper yet. T-Mobile is achieving contiguous coverage in many areas through the use of SA 5G. In terms of speeds, I averaged about 20-50Mbps between LTE and 5G. 5G was only slightly faster than LTE in most areas. The network is not slow by any means but it pales in comparison to what I receive in NYC, a city that has n41 deployed on what seems like >75% of the sites. Speaking of n41, T-Mobile's coverage map is a complete lie in that regard. They claim that most of the city of Boston is covered in Ultra Capacity 5G however that is false. I encountered it only a handful of times while I was there. Most notably, at a few sites in Mattapan, Chinatown, and the Seaport District. Speeds while connected were fast as usual but it was disappointing to see that it wasn't as widely deployed as in some other cities. I also noticed a large amount of small cells throughout the metro area. In Newton, T-Mobile uses oDAS nodes to fill in coverage in areas where macros struggle to reach and I even found some newer Ericsson branded small cells in Revere that have been deployed sometime within the last few months. They were LTE only but provided speeds of 130Mbps+. Overall, T-Mobile isn't exceptional in Boston. Instead they" just work". This isn't a bad thing at all, but I'm hoping that soon they can upgrade more of their sites to include both Band/n71 and Band/n41 so that they can get much more capacity online. In areas where n41 exists LTE and 5G perform phenomenally. Verizon: Verizon on the other hand had a very strong LTE network in Boston. Everywhere I went I had strong signal and great speeds. Their network in Boston performs much better than it does in NYC. In many areas I was seeing 100Mbps+ on LTE. My only complaint about Verizon was that their 5G coverage isn't nearly as good as they claim it is. My Verizon line dropped out of 5G coverage frequently and while connected, speeds were often slower than on LTE in the same area. Luckily their LTE network more than makes up for their lacking 5G performance and coverage. I also got to experience Ultra Wideband 5G there. The coverage map was fairly accurate when it comes to showing where you can find mmWave 5G. I was seeing peak speeds of 2Gbps down and 190Mbps up. However mmWave's range is still not impressive even after 2+ years of deployments and optimizations. The second I broke line of site by turning a corner or going into a restaurant, mmWave would disappear. It was funny being on LTE inside a clothing store on Mass Ave and then the second I step outside within line of sight of the node, my phone shows the little 5GUW icon and I'm getting gigabit speeds. Overall: All in all, I actually don't think T-Mobile's slow n41 deployment is their own doing. It has a lot to do with Boston's site permitting laws and the fact that the carriers are virtually forced to conceal or sheath many of their sites to preserve the character of buildings. Because of this, T-Mobile has to redesign a ton of their sites to accommodate the larger antennas necessary to deploy n71 and n41. Verizon and AT&T are probably going to run into the same issue when it comes to deploying C-band. In the meantime, I think that T-Mobile should follow Verizon's lead and take advantage of Boston's more relaxed small cell regulations and deploy LTE and 5G small cells as widely as possible to free up capacity on their macro network since Band 2/12/66 alone is not enough for T-Mobile at this current moment.

Quick update to say a new beta is live on Google Play!

It's unfortunate that T-Mobile's lax security got them to this point, but it does appear that they've hired some of the best outside consultants to help them get to where they ought to be. Let's hope they mean what they say here. There's another security issue that needs tightening up, too... store employees are often all too willing to make changes to an account without properly checking ID or account PIN information. That should become an immediately fireable offense.

Agreed - that is what I do too - lock to band 71.

Starting to see more and more mentions of n25and n66 in local permits:

There are areas where I know T-Mobile underperforms in NYC but generally my speeds are more than sufficient and I don't encounter issues with using my phone. The only thing that worries me is that there are some areas where my phone will roam on Sprint's network to make up for T-Mobile's poorer performing network and I'm afraid that T-Mobile may just decommission those Sprint sites without integrating it into their own network, despite the enormous benefit integrating those sites would make.

Ooooo, Vo5Geez It drives me insane how WiFi-calling always reverts to "cellular preferred" and then I miss every. damn. call. when I'm at work until I switch it back over to "WiFi preferred". Apparently it's the network forcing this as it happens on many phones, not just the S21 line. Just an eternal frustration!!