jawknee530

Is there a thread for flashing a PRL to an HTC One? I would like to put 56015 on it instead of the 55015 it currently has.

The HTC One, sadly, has a broken EV-DO engineering screen.  My guess is that it is due to the loss of SVDO.  But CDMA1X and LTE engineering screens work properly.  So, the EV-DO engineering fields do not present valid data.  Band class 3, by the way, is limited to Japan.  And I trust that you are not in Japan.  Plus, the Sprint variant HTC One does not support band class 3 anyway.

 

AJ

Funnily enough I looked up band 3 and saw that it was for Japan. So I assumed one of three things. 1) I messed up. 2) The phone messed up 3) I had teleported without my knowledge. Thanks for clearing stuff up. So MIMO will be workable within carrier bands. And if I'm not mistaken carrier aggregation is having MIMO using connections from separate bands?

Let me guess, have you switched over from the HTC EVO LTE to the HTC One?

 

AJ

Yet again you have proven yourself a wizard in my eyes. Can you explain your impressive grasp of the situation?

That is true, but when posters have to ask this question about higher frequency and greater capacity, I guarantee that they are not well versed in MIMO.  They are physics newbies.  So, we are talking about one spatial channel, which conforms to the Shannon capacity equation -- the entry image to all of my science/engineering focused articles.

 

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-347-whats-the-frequency-kenneth-interpreting-your-engineering-screen-part-two/

 

AJ

Mostly my first question stemmed from a momentary lapse in brain function. I'm familiar with carrier aggregation and have actually read both of your "whats the frequency" posts. A question about those I have is that when I look at my EVDO engineering screen its showing that I'm on Band Class 3 and Channel 2262. What's Band Class 3? 

How much of the 2500 spectrum does clearwire have?

Higher frequency does not provide more or faster throughout for the same size channel, regardless whether it is 700MHz or 2600MHz.

 

What causes Clearwire's TD-LTE 2600 to be considerably faster than Sprint's LTE 1900 or LTE 800 is that it is being deployed in a 20MHz TDD channel, versus a 5MHz FDD channel.  And the reason why 2600 has more capacity than 800 is just simple because of site spacing is much tighter and wider channels.

 

Robert

Would you mind sharing the site spacing and channel width for 800, 1900 and 2500? Or provide a link. In the mean time i'll be diligently googleing for answers myself. Thanks.

I was wondering about connection throughput. Will a 5x5 LTE connection in the 2.5Ghz band give faster throughput than the same link in the 1900 PCS band? And if the higher frequency gives more throughput how much higher is that throughput?

Break out the Kool and the Gang.

 

Excuse me while I troll Joan Lappin.

I just googled her and read a few of her articles. Does she exist in our world?

All CDMA1X carriers deployed as part of Network Vision should be Advanced capable. But do not expect that to make much difference. Not all handsets seem to be including CDMA1X diversity capability to take advantage of the coverage and/or capacity gains of CDMA1X Advanced. Now, I may be a skewed sample, as I live in a strong coverage area and make relatively few voice calls, but I do not find CDMA1X coverage nor capacity to be a problem.

 

 

 

About a year ago, Robert and I decided not to write on this particular spectrum squatter, as we did not want to give it any additional publicity. But it does affect multiple markets across the country, though it is not TeleBEEPER, which I previously mentioned regarding Tulsa.

 

AJ

Oh man you are lucky then. I work for a Sprint reseller and there's a steady stream of customers all day every day complaining that they don't have proper coverage/are roaming too much/ and most commonly that they have to try four or five times to get a call out. I experience the same issues especially attempting to make a call only for it to ring once then give me a busy signal. It takes multiple attempts to get a connection probably 70% of the time I try and make a call. I'm really hoping 1xA helps with that issue.

Because the PCS A block 20 MHz is contiguous, seven CDMA2000 carriers are possible, but a city the size of Redding likely does not require that many. Yep, I just checked one of our internal documents, and all of your sites have just 1-2 CDMA1X 1900 carriers and 1-2 EV-DO 1900 carriers. So, 2-5 CDMA1X/EV-DO 1900 carriers plus one CDMA1X 800 carrier is a more realistic expectation.

 

Also, Sprint is locked in an FCC battle with an SMR 800 MHz spectrum squatter in your area. So, I would not hold out hope for LTE 800 -- not because of the timeline of Network Vision but because of the legal dispute.

Man, you're just a fountain of information. I have two (maybe three) more questions then I'll close the site for the day. First, those 1x carriers will be advanced and not RTT right? And is there somewhere that has info on a good comparison of the two 1x carriers? I can't find anything decent in my searchings. And finally, who is the SMR squatter in my area? I will find them and start punching faces if I have to.

In Redding, Sprint controls the following spectrum licenses:

 

PCS 1900 MHz A block 20 MHz

PCS 1900 MHz G block 10 MHz

SMR 800 MHz X block 14 MHz

 

Nearly 20 years ago, Sprint acquired at the FCC's first PCS auction the full PCS A block 30 MHz for the San Francisco-Oakland-San Jose MTA (which includes Redding), but over the years, Sprint has partitioned and disaggregated (i.e. sold or swapped) some 10 MHz slices to AT&TWS and VZW. In the case of the Redding BTA, Sprint partitioned and disaggregated the PCS A5 10 MHz block to VZW about five years ago.

 

AJ

So a realistic best case senario up here would be an LTE 5x5 carrier in the G block, an LTE 5x5 in the 800 X block (I know that this wont happen until after NV is already done), a CDMA1x-A in the 800 X block, and six or seven CDMA2000 carriers in the A block which would be a mixture of 1x-A and EVDO?

Also I've read about Sprint being the favorite to buy the PCS H block. If this happens would Sprint up their 5x5 to 10x10 in the PCS spectrum?

Holy shnikes, Verizon is a bloody spectrum hog...

 

In my area (mid michigan) Verizon has both sides of the Cellular spectrum, a 15x15 Mhz PCS license, and extra 5x5 PCS license in Lansing, the AWS Spectrum from the SpectrumCo deal, plus the 700Mhz upper and Lower licenses. Good god, no wonder others can't complete with the giant.

No single provider should be able to hold the licences to more than 50% of a spectrum in an area in my opinion. Holding both sides of the Cellular is just plain wrong. Having that along with ~ 30% of the PCS and all of the 700? And throw in a bit of AWS for good measure, it's just ridiculous. Regulators should never allow something like this.

I have been searching and searching and I am at wits end here. Is there a simple way to find out what spectrum sprint owns in what markets? I would love to know how much is owned up here in Redding but I also just want to know as much as I can about what Sprint owns and where.

Sounds like Redding has gone down hill in my absence. At least that part. Our best friends moved there in the Mid 90's and we visited them several times a year. But they moved back to Nevada around 2000, and haven't been back except driving through and maybe swinging by the In N Out drive thru.

 

Thanks for considering a donation to help support S4GRU.

 

Robert

Redding is still pretty great I think. About 90k people with two mountains and two lakes within an hour and plenty of trees and hiking. Those bars just attract all the idiots in the area on the weekends. Most of the town is pretty damn safe and Cal Trans if finally upgrading all of the freeways and bridges in the area and are about 90% done with the work.

CDMA Field Test app gets the coordinate from the 1x site it is connected to. In some markets it is the exact location of the site, and in other markets the site broadcast an offset location near the center of the sector. It looks like for you, it is broadcasting an offset sector location. So likely in you market, they all will be off.

 

In the S4GRU Sponsor maps, we show all the Sprint sites nationwide, including in Redding. Speaking of Redding, you ever been to Jack's Steakhouse downtown? I haven't been there in 15 years, but it used to be a place I enjoyed going to when in the area.

 

Robert

I definitely plan to donate Friday once I have the cash. And yes I have been to Jacks. Pretty good food. Unfortunately that street has been taken over by five or six bars and has become pretty crappy. There's a "rodeo" bar that attracts all the wannabe cowboys in the area and across the street is a punk/metal/meth head bar that likes to blare music and host rediculous dj parties. There's also several bars in between and the cops are called to that street multiple times per weekend. I actually walked out of Jacks once and was lucky enough to witness a mass arrest involving a dozen patrol cars and about 30 dudes in cuffs. Mass brawls in the middle of that street are kind of common unfortunately. Jonny's ( the cowboy bar) was actually shut down for a few months because of the level of violence going on in and around it.

On a slightly related note I used to work for Geek Squad in the area and actually set up all of the PCs, Networking and POS systems for that bar. Too bad its such a horrible place to go.

PN is short for PN offset, or more accurately, Pseudo Noise offset. Think of it as representing a site sector, as each local sector must use a different PN.

 

AJ

Oh man, I get one thing explained and it brings up two more questions. It's like I'm fighting a Hydra. So each Site is a tower or whatever the antennas are on right? And each Site has three sectors? That's why the antennas are in a triangle on the tops of the towers because each face of the triangle is a sector? So it's trying to find the best PN or in other words the best sector to use and it compares the Ec/lo of each sector that it has in range regardless of which tower the sector comes from?

On an unrelated note I used CDMA Field Test App to map my base station and it gave me this location on google maps for BSID 635 in SID 4183/12 http://tinyurl.com/cbxacwq. I went there and all i saw was what looked like a power cabinet which I've attached a picture of. There weren't any towers in sight and this is where the google maps pin sent me.

Your handset is not really concerned with RSSI. It is merely a means to calculate Ec/Io. So, your idle handset uses Ec/Io to determine on which PN it will camp. And at a typical slot cycle index setting, your idle handset reevaluates Ec/Io among available PNs every 5.12 seconds.

 

AJ

PN? Is that short hand for a tower or for what? Like I said if there's any recommended reading for a newbie I could gladly chew it up. I read the FAQ but it didn't list PN under any of the acronyms.

Think of Ec/Io simply as a measure of signal quality. It is the ratio of the pilot channel to the total power (signal, noise, interference) in the carrier channel. Ec/Io is always negative -- the more negative it gets, the worse the signal quality. CDMA1X devices track Ec/Io down to -31.5 dB, but below roughly -20 dB Ec/Io is unusable.

 

AJ

Ok, so the RSSI is like the power of the signal at my phone and the Ec/lo is the quality of that signal if I'm understanding correctly. And two towers could have an RSSI of -101 dBm but one could have a slightly higher EC/lo so my phone chooses that one. But not being satisfied my phone is constantly on the prowl for a signal with a better connection so it's jumping around because "the grass is always greener". Is there a simple way to compare two signals with different RSSIs and EC/los?

Generally the drop in dBm is the same, regardless of frequency when broadcast from the same site with similar transmit power and downtilt. So if you drop around 15dBm typically on PCS, you will likely drop 15dBm when you go indoors on SMR too. But the SMR would likely be a stronger signal than the PCS before you go indoors.

 

As AJ points out, to try to guess exactly what is going to happen in your instance is impossible. Too many variables. And you may get 800 service from a more distant site before the nearest one. This may really throw you off because your SMR signal strength may be worse.

 

Robert via LG Optimus G using Tapatalk

Thanks for the input. The tower I use at work is dead smack in the center of town with plenty of towers surrounding it. If I were sprint the first towers I'd upgrade with SMR 1x would be around the periphery of town so maybe my phone will be trying to decide whether to use the closer PCS tower or a farther off SMR tower. That's what you were saying right? Can't think of a possible complaint for a situation like that. Well, I'm an American upper middle class white 6' 4" male with a full head of hair, a job, a car (1970 VW Bus), and a girlfriend so really any complaint I have is pretty insignificant anyway.

That depends on what you consider to be the problem. Your -101 dBm RSSI on CDMA1X 1900 right now may be perfectly usable most of the time, but it certainly does not leave much margin for fades or cell shrinkage. CDMA1X 800 should give you a higher RSSI, but your pilot pollution likely will not change. Your handsets hops among four different PNs because they are of similar but varying Ec/Io. As long as CDMA1X 800 is deployed on all four PNs, you will still experience similar but varying Ec/Io among those four PNs. Thus, your handset will continue to jump around as signal/network conditions fluctuate.

 

AJ

Interesting. I'm new so excuse my ignorance but what exactly is the Ec/lo? If you can link me to some reading that you'd recommend I'd appreciate it. I definitely have dropping calls at home and often have calls going straight to voicemail which I know is not only caused by low signal but can also be caused by network congestion correct? Are the dropped calls caused by my phone trying to jump from one tower to another during the call or just because it loses a connection entirely?

Those questions cannot be answered with generalizations. No two situations are exactly alike. Depending upon the type of building construction, someone could have a strong signal outside and no usable signal inside.

 

Regardless, your CDMA1X 1900 signal is exceedingly strong outside and still quite strong inside. In that location, CDMA1X 800 will provide you little benefit because CDMA1X 1900 already serves you very well.

 

AJ

I understand that it's definitely strong both ways where I'm at. I work at a Sprint reseller and the tower is a block over. I was just curious as to how smr would compare to pcs. At my house my 1x PCS signal is usually hovering around -101 dBm and jumps a dozen times per hour between four base stations trying to improve but never does. So smr should help me greatly there.

At my work outside I have a -63 dBm signal on PCS and when I go inside the signal drops to -79 or -82dBm. Is this a normal drop for 1x on PCS? Once smr800 is available what kind of drop will be likely?

So this added 1x 800 smr for california?I noticed that it adds SID 22431 with Redding, CA listed after it and 1x on S/476 S/526 which are smr channels right? CDMA Field Test App shows me on SID 4183 which I'm assuming is PCS band. Does this mean that SID 22431 just hasn't been turned on in my area yet and this PRL is just in preparation for physical upgrades to come in the future?

 

Welcome to S4GRU. Thanks for taking the time to read through the past threads and getting up to speed. It helps to have that background info before diving in. Hope to see you around!

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

Thanks for the welcome. As I've read I've been keeping a notepad open with a list of questions. Half of them get answered as I read but new ones pop up as I go. Once I've spent a few days on my own research and gotten all caught up I'll probably drop a thread with half a dozen questions about whatever i still don't understand. Fair warning heh.