MReiser4670

There's a new tower transmitting LTE around Franklin Mills Mall / along Woodhaven Rd as of today. I was finally able to carry a 4G signal from end to end on the expressway. Still seeing rapid rollout here in NE Philly & the northern suburbs.

So far, no LTE sites have been accepted in the Delaware market. So this new discovery is either coming across the border from the Philadelphia Metro market, or there is a site in Delaware that is doing testing, but not been accepted from Sprint.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

 

Looking at Sensorly & knowing the locales in Delaware, I'm pretty sure the LTE reception is coming from a couple of Philadelphia market sites. I would love to see that change soon though; Wilmington would fill in the coverage gap between Philadelphia & Baltimore in the I-95 corridor.

Any hints of lte

There are pockets of LTE just south of Ardmore in Havertown. It looks like there is a big hole surrounding the Bryn Mawr / Heverford / Ardmore area. Does anyone know if Lower Merion Township has hindered any Network Vision work? I hope Sprint can get major upgrades going there really soon; the US Open is at Merion in 6 weeks. There will tens of thousands of visitors there every day so The network is going to be put under a lot of strain...

I had a pretty cool moment this evening. My wife & I went out to dinner at her favorite Chinese restaurant in Glenside, and for the first time had LTE service inside the building. Prior to that, 3G service had always been so bad it wasn't even worth trying to use my phone. While waiting for her to use the ladies room, I was browsing around on my Note 2, checking Facebook & Twitter, etc. speeds were fast & everything was great. I even decided to run a speedtest & had 5+ Mbps download speed. I asked my wife to do the same on her iPhone 5 from Verizon...it was showing LTE on her phone but she couldn't even get her Facebook newsfeed up on it! I told her to get used to my gloating because this was gonna happen more & more. She just rolled her eyes.

It seems that the rollout in Philly is going forward relatively quickly. But I have not seen any reporting lately in the Lehigh Valley area. I am now skeptical if LV actually a part of the greater Philly area. The Valley was not included in the WIMAX roll out and I am guessing the LTE may end up looking the same way. Any insight here?

I agree I live in Allentown and I see no upgrades and sprint keeps telling me there doing it now

 

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I should also add, if you look at Sensorly, there has been LTE signal detected in both Easton & Hellertown. I realize it's not a big area, but you can see LTE active in the Lehigh Valley.

It seems that the rollout in Philly is going forward relatively quickly. But I have not seen any reporting lately in the Lehigh Valley area. I am now skeptical if LV actually a part of the greater Philly area. The Valley was not included in the WIMAX roll out and I am guessing the LTE may end up looking the same way. Any insight here?

 

If you become a Sponsor, you will have access to several maps that show where each market is defined, where the towers are located within those markets, and which towers have had Network Vision upgrades completed, both for 3G & 4G.

Do you drive around with the app running just to see the Sector ID change when you drive by a cell tower to see if it is the one serving LTE?

 

I've been doing this, and it helped me identify a LTE complete tower that was missed in an earlier update. It's a great way to identify operational towers.

I saw that tower this morning and it actually was not the one I was thinking of...but either way, lots of progress is good.

 

Yeah, the one that's been turned on is a couple miles due south of the one you had referenced.

It's possible that it could be the tower on Bristol rd. north of 611 in Warrington. That site is on a farm and has been 3G complete since at least November 2012.

 

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Actually, Robert updated the Sponsor maps last night & there is an LTE site in Warrington which would make total sense. I love the Sponsor maps...you can follow the progress in almost real time. It also shows just how many more sites will be coming on board as the NV rollout continues. We haven't seen anything yet!

I'm not sure. If it's the one on Rt 82, it's disappointing. I lost LTE right around Rt 1. Hopefully, it is a farther tower or they still need to do some adjustments. Otherwise, I wonder what kind of LTE coverage we're going to have in Southern Chester County.

 

The 2-3 mile mapping is up on Sensorly. You can see the LTE signal die just around Rt 1.

 

I noticed when they turned on LTE at a solitary site, it was tough to get a strong signal on the ground anywhere, especially close to the tower. From what I've heard, they adjust downtilt later once there are other towers local enough that users can transfer between towers, mitigating the need to broadcast to the widest possible area. Not saying that's the case, but it sounds like the situation here.

It seems like a new tower was turned on up in the Warrington area....I picked up a signal today on Rt 611 adjacent to the old Willow Grove NAS & then across County Line Rd up to BJs Wholesale Club. The signal wasn't real strong, but th network was still nice & quick. I'll have to do a little tower hunting...

I'm giddy...I'm finding a 4G signal just about everywhere I go on a regular basis now. I get perfectly strong & useful LTE signal just about anywhere I go now in Willow Grove. I'd say close to 100% of the town has a 4G signal, with maybe 90% bringing better than 3G speeds. The remaining 10% will be good to go when they light up one more tower just north of town. And even with all that, there are more towers still scheduled to get NV upgrades. Knowing where they are, I'm confident that I will be able to eventually carry a good, usable LTE signal into any building in town and outperform my wife's iPhone 5 on the Verizon network. Hell, I already beat her speeds in my back yard, and my closest tower hasn't even seen an NV crew yet!

I have wanted to post an answer in this thread for a while. The short answer is yes, it's worth it...but there's so much more to the response and my service area is currently changing daily. It's a very fluid situation when they start rolling out NV upgrades in earnest. The search for LTE is like an Easter egg hunt, but sometimes the tower you found yesterday is off today, or the tower that's been pumping out 0.1-0.6 Mbps one day is connecting only via 1x for a week only to find consistent 1.5-2.0 Mbps 3G for a few weeks, then your seeing a -75 dBm LTE signal blanketing the area for a few days. But the cool part is that you're watching real progress happen before your eyes.

 

Two months ago, I had good 3G coverage, but terribly slow network speeds almost everywhere I went. I'm not gonna lie, I was a little disillusioned. Here I was in one of the largest metro areas in the country, and I had never had the privilege to see the 4G light up on my phone within 75 miles of my house. I was beginning to wonder the same thing; is this wait going to be worth it?

 

Suddenly, my 3G service improved dramatically. It literally seemed like overnight. Within a few weeks, I happened upon a 4G signal...and it was less than a mile from my house! Now, one month later, more than 90% of my daily commute is covered in sub -100 dBm LTE with great network speeds. yesterday, the tower in downtown Willow Grove, PA lit up with LTE for the second time ( hopefully for good), and that covers almost every square foot of real estate I travel to & from on a daily basis. Inside Willow Grove Mall, deep in the center? sub -100 dBm LTE service. Inside my supermarket? Same thing. I can count on my phone to provide a legitimate high speed hotspot for my laptop. I can attend a video conference call at my son's little league field so I can be there when the game starts. It is SO worth the wait. 3G or 4G, I have a solid Internet connection that allows me to conduct business seamlessly anywhere I go.

 

I really could go on & on, but I think I got my point across...NV is bringing a state-of-the-art network to me wherever I need to be so I have more flexibility to balance work & family. I can't give it a better testimonial than that.

Best Buy. I normally don't buy it, but it was cheaper than Sprint, and I somehow was getting some additional credits, so it didn't cost me much.

 

I did the same thing when I bought my wife's iPhone 5 on Verizon at Christmas. It covers more without deductible and doesn't have a limit on replacements. The only drawback is they don't cover a lost phone.

I said to myself I would post when I seen LTE in my neck of the woods, sooo...

 

I picked up my first whiff of LTE driving through Sharon Hill, PA while driving on Chester Pike. I kept a signal even in my house where I have an Airave because my house is a black hole for most cell phones, Verizon being the only one with a good signal.

 

Before you ask, Yes I turned LTE off in favor of my very fast home wifi. I want mine and your speeds to stay as fast as they can be. But it was nice to see the LTE in my area.

 

Ill go map my area later if it is still active. Sensorly was the last thing on my mind when I heard that LTE chime from my SignalCheck App. GO SPRINT!!!!

 

Every time I drive through your area on my way to or from Delaware now, I can count on getting an LTE signal along 95 from US 322 up to 476 & then on & off up the Blue Route for most of the ride to the turnpike. I swear my EVO LTE learns the towers on it's own so it improves every day. My Note 2 just picks up LTE right off the bat and carries the signal for longer distances.

 

I think you'll find that your EVO will pick it up a little better now every day. It's a blast figuring out where you can pick up LTE once you start mapping it.

4G was back on in Horsham today.

 

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I'm happy to see this...I think it's been on all week. Hopefully this tower (which is in Willow Grove) stays active as it also gives moderate LTE coverage in my neighborhood. As I sit on my living room couch, my phone shows -112 dBm. If I step outside, it improves to -107 dBm or slightly better. Not great, but definitely usable. If I step far enough away from my house that I lose my WiFi, I don't really lose much performance.

 

Relative to the rest of the Philly metro area, we're very lucky in the northern suburbs to have the LTE coverage we do. I sat with my son today in the McDonalds in Southampton and was extremely happy with the Network speed. It was as good as being connected to my at home network.

just got off the phone with sprint the network vision is to be complete 4/18/13 by 7pm central time for the allentown area i find that hard to belieave.

 

Yeah, that's not going to happen. But compared to where things were not so long ago, it's obvious the Philadelphia market (which includes the Lehigh Valley) has Network Vision upgrades going at a rapid rate. We've all watched for almost a year as dozens of other markets turn on their LTE sites before us, but now we're seeing real, tangible progress. It's never fast enough to satisfy everyone, but take comfort that Sensorly is showing more & more purple every day.

What a difference a month makes...this was my commute this morning. I drive from Willow Grove to Horsham to drop my son at school, then head over to the PA Turnpike & head east to Bensalem. I then take Street Rd east to my office, which is 2 blocks from the interchange with I-95. You can't ask for much more than this:

 

 

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It is a business account, that is how I have a dedicated care rep. I do, however, have a phone addiction and carry two phones with me daily. Also, I basically have the ability to upgrade my phone whenever I want so that doesn't help me with the phone addiction lol.

 

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Same here...hence the EVO LTE & Note 2. Probably overkill, and I'm fighting the urge to upgrade to the One next week. I need help.

 

 

Ok, now I have to take back what I said in regards to MReiser's post...70 lines?!?! Please tell me you own a business, or have a REALLY large family plan.

 

Mine is a business plan, that's why I said 'only' 8 lines. If I had that many on a personal account, I'd think it was huge!

 

My personal plan is with Verizon & has 2 phones; wife & daughter.

There are sites that have been fully lit with just T1 backhaul (Delaware Avenue across from Pier 70 comes to mind) so the process is moving.

 

Onto other news, my company is now focusing on South and Central Jersey with the majority of the work that still have to be done is new fiber construction, which slows things down considerably. We are focusing mostly on coastal communities and several of those sites have directional LTE arrays (the one site in particular in Margate has all three LTE attennas on a rack together all facing towards Wildwood instead of AC.) Philly itself has taken a slight back burner temporarily since Sprint and Alcatel-Lucent wants those sites on yesterday!!

 

This is good news because the coast is a trouble spot for quality signal. when I'm in Brigantine, I usually end u having to put my phone in airplane mode unless I needs make a call. Otherwise I drain a ton of battery hunting for signal.

So it looks like they are doing some testing in Horsham, my neighbor got a real brief LTE signal on his Galaxy S3, by the time I cycled airplane mode, it was gone...

 

I was getting great LTE today around the Pennsylvania Business Campus along Witmer Rd. Did a lot of mapping, and someone else hit some spots before I did including the power line trail off Dresher Rd.

 

 

Excellent! Thanks for the info.

 

I spoke to my Sprint dedicated care rep last week and she offered me a Note 2 on an upgrade for $149. I got her to throw in a second for $149 on a line that wasn't upgrade eligible for 4 more months. Try talking to someone at Sprint to see if they'll give you a deal like that. I didn't even ask...she offered it. We don't have a big account either...only 8 lines.

So far, the Motorola Admiral, the Kyocera Rise, and the LG Optimus Elite all use the Qualcomm MSM8655 chipset, pointing to some kind of hardware requirement for SDC to work. Interestingly, the Torque uses the MSM8960, the chip in both the EVO 4G LTE and the Samsung Galaxy S3, meaning it could (theoretically) work in the near future. If so, Sprint could (if they wanted to) bring back PTT in a big way.

 

Least of its troubles? I work as a S&R tech in a high SDC-usage area, and the issues with the Dura- line seemed to far outweigh those of the Admiral. What issues have you noticed?

 

Well, the three Admirals we had in our fleet have all had the same problems. We've had phones replaced & software updated several times, but nothing resolved our issues.

 

- The dialer is prone to lagging for several minutes or crashing altogether.

- The function that shuts off the screen when the user would put the phone to their ear would malfunction, not allowing you to touch the screen without shutting off. Very very frustrating

- The physical keyboard is prone to double-typing letters...when I would type 't' the output would be 'tt', etc. It was bad enough that the only way I would use the phone was through the touch keyboard which pretty much negates the need for the phone style in the first place.

 

The DC had some issues, such as users complaining about clarity and extended connection lags, but overall it was functional. It was the rest of the phone issues that caused me to retire mine early. I really really wanted to like it too...it was the first legitimate Android phone with Direct Connect functionality.

 

 

Similar things going on in Center City. All day at 18th & Market (normally 5 bars of [slow] 3G service), it's been flipping between one bar of 3G, one bar of LTE, and a few bars of 1xRTT. I'm assuming they're doing something with our closest tower (1701 JFK). Maybe it'll go live with LTE soon! Even just being 3G NV complete would be nice; it's been "in progress" for a very long time

 

Definitely agreed. The closest LTE tower to my office is close enough that I can barely pick up the signal in the parking lot & the closer towers are definitely not NV complete yet...my 3G speeds are only maybe 5-10% or so of what I'm seeing at home in Willow Grove (0.1-0.2 Mbps vs 1.5 - 2.5 Mbps). It makes a big big difference.