digiblur

Only thing that would persuade me to move to AT&T is a One Plus One invite. But that is unlikely.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Careful on that as the phone is missing LTE bands 2 and 5.

Seems like a great way to stop the d-bags from slamming a bunch of roaming traffic through to get out of contract.

 

Will all roaming traffic be EVDO now since it is capped?

Some sit under the coverage of a broken legacy site. Sprint shows no efforts to remediate this issue for them. Not the customers fault by any means.

And T-Mobile fools can't wait for 700 MHz to become active. Haha. I hope the 600MHz auction is stopped for a long time so the trolls get mad at their freak of a leader.

I hope it doesn't come anytime soon as I use it for TV in my household. Many people use OTA and don't realize it. Cable companies, satellite company feeds, etc. Some areas are too packed already and have co-channel interference issues. The Northeast US comes to mind. And you can't start sharing spectrum until they adopt MPEG4 as the standard.

This is my experience as well, on both site density and 'effectively available bandwidth'.

 

Density usually seems to go:

 

1) ATT

2) T-Mobile

3) Sprint

4) Verizon

 

Although, like nearly everything, this obviously varies on location.

Tmobile is kinda sparse here.

Judging from Sensorly, Verizon offers the most consistent coverage in Baton Rouge, at least on the 3G side of things.

ATT has more sites out of all here. I have mapped out most areas of town. Some areas are double or triple what Sprint has. Some more. LSU area is crazy. I can't even find two of them to narrow them down. I found 7 sites and Sprint only has two. You can consider it even double that since they have twice the bandwidth of LTE. Sprint has their work cut out for them here.

I can see an LTE Airave being useful when VoLTE is instituted. It would likely be required for any chance of a voice call handoff to the macro network.

 

Robert

Also useful in a situation where the house is semi covered by a non 800 site and the adjacent 800 site decides to creep inside the home at times. Screws with CSFB big time.

I recently switched from Ebay buying/selling for phones to Swappa. I tend to troll around the internet to flip phones now and then. Sprint phones are an easy target as they generally sell for less than the other carriers. I find I can buy them cheaper and if I am patient I can unload them for a decent profit.

 

Anyways my reasons for liking Swappa are:

1) I tend to get slightly higher prices from Swappa

2) The process is much better for buyers AND sellers

3) The quality of the phones tend to be higher

4) They do the ESN/IMEI/ETC checks for free as part of the process.

 

I'm probably going to stick to the Swappa thing.  Heard too many people selling Sprint phones and the idiots request the phone serial and activate on their account holding it ransom. I'm hoping you don't have to post the number with Swappa.

Nice to see some Ubiquiti equipment!  Love their gear, hard to beat their prices and value!  I've done a few backhaul shots with their stuff and its still kicking years later with no issues.

Sell...phones? What does that mean? I've never done such a thing. Why would someone get rid of their phones? They are MiN3!! alL m!Ne!!!!! Yeeaargh!!!!

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

Yeah, just like the old Samsung Epics I have sitting in my stash that I said I was going to use for wifi only music listening when mowing the grass.  Think I used one of them once for that.  Hate to see them just go to waste.

 

Craigslist is also not bad for local deals.  Just meet the person at a carrier store or inside a starbucks and you should have no problems.  With that you get cash and no worries of chargebacks. 

 

Online will be the only way, as I don't have the blessing of a positive Sprint market..aka..I won't get much.

 

What are you selling?

 

EVO LTE, S3, and Note2 with otterbox cases and few extra batteries.  (Not trying to turn this into a selling thread as I'm not sure on the rules on that one)

I have a few Sprint phones I need to sell to free up some tech storage space.  I've never sold any online as I've always hear about the scammers out there.  I hear the Swappa seems to do a decent job on things but before I take the plunge and I wanted to hear some tips from the pros that have purchased and sold phones online before. 

It is probably not a rip and replace site. They started doing that but had to stop it because of both cost and weight concerns. Follow the link in the original post.

I still don't buy anything on that article. Maybe if someone has some official docs to back it up. AT&T knows how much it costs to do things. This isn't their first rodeo of network upgrades. There was a PBS special a while back on how tower upgrades were paid and all the middle men involved. AT&T says this is what we pay for the work, do it or someone else will do it. It's not like you could turn around and bill them more. The OEM bids, then the tower company bids the OEM. I think that article was blown out of proportion by some ex-employee or someone tied somehow to their upgrades that pissed them off. There is probably some merit to AT&T stopping and making changes during this first test rollout. They probably pissed someone off and cost them money. So they made up some crap to piss them off back via the media.

50 LBS? Didn't realize they weighed that much. Then again I always see them on top of the tower so they look smaller then they are. How much do the antennas weigh?

Those typical RFS antennas that Sprint uses for NV are also right at 50 lbs IIRC. They are larger than you think as well.

Here are some screenshots I started to crop them but my laptop is heavy so I don't take it on trips anymore. I have some from the other 3 but comparisons maps are hard to sell to people. Mainly because people say the maps lie or there are more people mapping on sprint.

 

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/gj3090fbpknozna/AAAxDsifir0o8k8MHbRsw_Txa

That is true about the mapping on Sprint as people are looking for where that LTE signal is. I have mapped tons of high traffic areas on AT&T that were lit up a good 2+ years ahead of Sprint. And this was in a heavy AT&T customer market.

 

It's just the nature of the beast. I am sure there are many areas where Sprint isn't mapped as well.

 

 

Comparison of RRU12 to RRU11

 

 

It also has an expansion module available as well.

 

 

and

 

I found a few more sites around me that had band 4 added. I was able to determine they are using RRUS12 B4 models now.

Would a 5mhz band 5 have similar range to 10mhz band 17?

 

If most of the site parameters, tilt, power, etc are close I bet you wouldn't be able to a difference with a phone.

I'll be going through there in a couple weeks definitely have to schedule a fuel stop there. I've never been on band 5

 

Sent from my XT1060 using Tapatalk

 

Never seen that myself either.  I've only heard it's out there in areas.  I've seen the typical band 17, band 4, and quite a bit of band 2 I've seen popping up in various areas as well.

Just haven't been too impressed with Motorola recently. I'm open to changing my mind of course but I'd rather see an HTC Nexus 6.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Playing with the Moto G LTE side by side with the Nexus5 impressed me. Excellent phone in RF, speed, and definitely price. HTC's track record on phones has left me to not even look at their products the past couple years.

My area only needs permits for brand new sites so I rarely check for things.  Occasionally I'll see VZW or AT&T permits for new builds.  I saw this one this morning.  It's 3500 feet from another B4/B17 LTE site, not a low signal area by any means.  Nice to see proof that permits are still moving forward.

 

$185,000.00
07/21/2014
13100 COURSEY BLVD
At&t Wirless
119 Veterinarian Rd
Lafayette LA
3378966392
 
DYNAMIC TOWER SERVICES, INC.
421 Sonnier Road
Carencro LA 705203375652270
0.00
Install a new monopole cell tower 115' height with 138 sf. building for electrical equipment. and a new 50KW generator with 173 gallon diesel tank. Must have 5' from any structure or opening.

I noticed that ATT had widened their band 4 LTE to 10 MHz wide last I was in Baton Rouge. And I know that they are moving all UMTS to 850 and taking PCS for LTE soon, if not now.

 

Where in MS are they still overlaying LTE?

Yes, they have a 5mhz pair in AWS but after the Cricket purchase was approved they moved over to the 10mhz pair in AWS. I haven't seen them go back and light up the 5mhz pair yet.

 

In Mississippi I saw them South of Natchez working on finishing Highway 61. In the last few months they have lit up band 17 in the St Francisville, Angola, Jackson, Clinton, etc rural areas North of Baton Rouge. I have mapped some of it on Sensorly recently.

I'm the one who has mapped most of the Sensorly LTE coverage in South Dakota, except I-29 north of Brookings. Most of it is Band 17. Some of it is Band 4 and 5 though. All have been 5x5, so far. Although AT&T can do 10x10 Band 17 in Rapid City with their new purchase of Long Lines Wireless.

 

They just started installing LTE in Rapid City. I'm watching the spectrum analyzer to see if it comes up 10MHz channels from the beginning.

 

Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I drug one or two of them out a bit down the interstate in SD for you.

 

It was a nice surprise to see AT&T added 10x10 of AWS band on my home site while I was gone and it wasn't even needed. It is an easy install though. Mount three RRUs, wire into existing squid box on tower rack, attach RRU to existing AWS antenna sitting idle.

 

I saw some guys hanging antennas on an AT&T site in Mississippi that was HSPA only. I also ran into some guys doing AT&T band 4 work at the hotel I stayed at in Little Rock AR. Definitely not seeing this work stoppage talked about.

I think I account for all those except for B17 DAS and Band 5, but please go ahead and send it to me. I can make any changes or additions necessary.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

It's showing a -1 for band here on a standard band 17 site.

Possible to get the bands on the 310410 Mcc? I can send you the method of determining B17 DAS, B17 sites, B4, and B2 by the GCI. Not sure what band 5 has unfortunately.

The GMOs here in Springfield are broadcasting NV 3G and LTE, don't have any complaints about them except that they don't have 800 LTE. Get 1-2Mbps down on the 3G side.

 

Sent from my LG G3

Those new network edges created with the no 800 are a pain. Not as bad as the 3g only GMO's but nevertheless the one by house caused me to shut down the wife getting a triband device. That 800 network edge made the triband device on 3g most the time in the area and being a single evdo carrier it was slow.

The band 12 Lower 700 MHz deployment had to be significantly finished last year because of FCC construction requirement deadlines.

 

AJ

If only all the spectrum had deadlines. Some squatters sitting on spectrum forever needs to stop.