chlen

The new tower in Latham broadcasting this.

Lake George will eventually get lit up as part of the i-87. If you follow the current towers they run through Warrensburg along the northway. I dont see why Lake Goerge would not see service, at least where the outlets are at some point. If you look down the map, the towers along I-87 are comming online first in the more rural places. Yesterday my phone held a signal and switched off correctly from around east geenbush on I-90 through 2W on i-87, then picked it back up around exit 6 and held through 10 going north. Also now much of Halfmoon gets some service, and good part of Clifton Park. I cat get 1 bar or so of LTE inside my house.

With LTE is see a massive drop in Speed based on signal speed. With -db in the 90 range the speeds are fine 15-20mbit, but most of the time unless there is a near clear line of sight to the tower, they come down to 3-8 with upload under 1 often. At fist I thought this was isolated to Albany, since we are not launched and are in the buildout phase. However in Boston and NYC this is the case as well. When the signal might look fine, but the LTE stength is different and speed drops off very quick. Is this a matter of the 1900mhz signal and penetration?

In addition, I can keep a signal up from northern part of Latham driving up to Mechanicville. Also the student ghetto in Albany is very well covered. They are tuning on and testing towers very actively right now. If you look at the map I beleve the goal is to connect the run from Lake George down I-87 to NYC. With Glenns Falls, Saratoga, Cliffton Park, Albany, and locations as far north as Poughkeepsie lit up along the highway. The gaps are filling in.

Few more towers in Albany downtown and north of Albany. So I am getting pretty good signal around downtown plaza area near Swan in Albany, which now allows you to drive essentially Almost the legnth of the city without losing LTE. Also the tower by the twin bridges is now broadcasting strong LTE signal (22/7 yesterday I may have been the one person using it though). Getting a very strong signal walking my dog in north part of Latham. LTE signal now stays up from about exit 6 to 10 on the northway. Albany is becoming usable with almost all the main areas doing tower to tower handoff correctly and broadcasting LTE.

A bit more testing around Clifton Park. It seems like there are two towers with upgrades and one broadcasting LTE. It can be seen near exit 9 from Clifton Commons. The other one on the Halfmoon Side seems to have NV upgrades for 3G. Speedtests on 3G were 1.2mbit symmertrical, and 3G on the LTE site is about 1.5 symmetrical. I ran nearly a dozen tests. What is neat is that LTE holds on as long as possible to your phone. So if you are comming up north you would have full 3G and then it drops to 1 bar of LTE. That being said, you can be right next to the tower as I was, went into Petco to get some dogfood and it signal dropped to 3G. 3G inside the store was still above 1 mbit barely, which is much better than the 200/100kbit we usually get. 1900 does not penetrate buildings at all even next to the tower. This is like WIMAX all over again. I had WIMAX for years when I lived next to St. Peters. It would for from full to 1-2 bars inside. We really need that 800Mhz penetration, because VZ here is LTE everywhere and building or not it stays up well. My work phone is VZ LTE and it is rock solid, we need this on sprint.

LTE up near 146 and 9 instersection in Halmoon/Clifton Park

I used to live on Pinewood between St. Peters and Albany Med. That whole neioghborhood had WIMAX. So the backhaul was already there and the connection was good, ~10mbit down 5 up. I saw people mapping LTE along the same route, but two days ago I did not pick up LTE there. I DID have LTE flip on my iPhone 5 while using Waze going down i-90 by the Everett Rd Exit. Fromn there to about Corporate woods the signal stayed on. Did get to test the speed as I was driving.