MrZorbatron

 

And thank the obstructionist GOP.  But we are not going down that path.  Partisan political discussion has no place at S4GRU.

 

AJ

 

We have the party of stupid and the party of stupid.  Which is stupider seems to depend on the day of the week, the direction the solar wind blows predominantly on that day, whichever direction more coins land coming out of the machines at the mint on that day, and whatever other nonsense.

 

As much as I have my own political views, events over the last few years really have me scratching my head as to if either major party even remembers what its true principles are, or which is more important between whatever is on its particular agenda and what is truly good for this country.

Lowest I've had a successful call on the note 2 is -117

 

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My GS3 fades badly if you push it below -112 or so.  I can text ok at -118. but the lowest voice call I've had work well was -116 way up north just a couple of weeks ago, and I had to very carefully adjust how I held the phone and the place where I was standing.  Side note...  Whoever laid out the cells in northern MI along US-23 is a moron.

Lots of shopping centers with cellular stores tend to also have cell towers in their parking lots.

I hate American politicians.

Also, "human attenuation" such as is caused by hand position and the way you hold your head, becomes so much more of an issue in cases of very weak signal.  After all, a 3dB attenuation on a -106dBm signal is a lot bigger a problem than it is with a -98dBm signal.

I don't know where you figure you can get a 115dbm signal on 1x but on my EVO LTE and my girlfriend's GS3 Sprint's 1x band is completely gone at 105 dBm. Someone correct me if I'm wrong but on 1x goes to 105dbm, evdo is around 118 dBm and LTE is about 125 dBm

In a low interference (rural) setting, CDMA of either type tends to remain usable, though not exactly stable, down to about -112 dBm signal levels.

Me

Take it from someone who has a CDMA carrier in a rural area, and that's Big Red. The edge of cell performance that Qualcomm says and the reality are two different things. What really happens on 1 bar of 1X? Usually a dropped call. Usually. The fascination with keeping CDMA around past 2021, I'm kind of confused by. By then LTE should be able to handle edge of cells issues better than CDMA. It's like Microsoft wanting to keep their legacy tech around, how is that working for them?

I would rather have some dropped calls than no service at all. I have a different experience with one bar service on CDMA. I have had many, in fact the vast majority of, such calls go perfectly well even for an hour or more. FYI, check the algorithm that Verizon phones use to calculate bars and it will really surprise you.

Neither does Sprint which is putting LTE 800MHz on every 1900MHz spaced tower.

Bull. Familiarize yourself with IBEZ.

 

Trust me, that will not be resolved before a nominal timeline would expect to see a widespread VoLTE transition. Unless Sprint wants to regain its hard-shed reputation for operaring an often substandard network, they will not make that mistake.

If you want better signal increase the number of rural towers. Or apply to the 3GPP for an exception to increase the power level. I don't see either AT&T and Verizon complaining about it. They might have to built a few hundred more sites for rural areas, but so be it. The super-boomer sites won't reach forty miles they will reach 35. We had to go through the same things with the transition from AMPS to CDMA. Long live 5W bag phones!

3GPP's allowable power levels don't harm equipment petformance because current radios can't hit 3GPP's max numbers anyway, and you would need a very much narrower focus on a directional antenna (and therefore more radios/antennas and likely therefore narrower cells) to hit the FCC's ERP limits. Same goes for FCC limitations.

 

ATT and VZW don't complain because they have LTE in the 700 MHz band, which maintains a usable signal at a greater distance at a given power level. Couple that with the fact that both 700 and cellular 850 have band power limits that are higher than PCS, and you get the answer to why they do not care.

Just want to know, if Network Vision is capable of adding support for GSM or other technology?

The MMBS and backhaul architecture can host whatever technologies.  GSM is dead though, no one deploys it anymore.  It would work fine to host UMTS, which is the migration path from GSM.

So much misinformation, I don't know where to begin. CDMA 1x and UMTS (WCDMA) are spread spectrum techniques, OFDMA is not. Edge perfomance for LTE is enhanced by Inter-Cell Interference Coordination at the PDCCH (Physical Downlink Control Channel). Basically the PDDCH reduces co-channel interference by increasing the cell edge SINR.

 

It does that by coordinating both in the frequency and power domain. ICIC can allocate different resouce blocks to users in different cells to minimize or totally avoid co-channel interference with direct neighbors. LTE also uses a few other mechanisms to avoid interference within the same resouce block, among them HII, OI, RNTP with the first two being uplink measures.

 

On the power domain, the power level on selected resource blocks can be changed to favor cell edge users. On the uplink the cell edge use power levels can be increased.

 

Now, that means that the PDCCH will have to be very robust because all this coordination is processing intensive. VOLTE, is particularly troublesome since you have a high number of low rate users, instead of small number of high rate users.

Didn't say WCDMA isn't spread spectrum.  I just said its signaling doesn't work with a negative SNR.  LTE, by the way, with its multiple subcarrier approach over a wide frequency range, does qualify as a spread spectrum technology.  It isn't a frequency-hopping spread spectrum, but it is a wideband spread spectrum signal.

 

Inter cell interference coordination improves performance where cells overlap, not where cell sites are too far apart.  Your post didn't tell me anything I didn't know, and trust me, I would have considered it or even wrote it if it mattered.  Unfortunately, it doesn't matter at all in rural cell's edge coverage.  This is all great and quite necessary in an urban cell situation, in which case one cell might be overlapped by 10 others or more, in varying degrees and in varying locations.  This does no good at all in widely spaced environments.  On rural PCS site spacing, VoLTE simply will not work well because those sites were spaced for a technology that was more robust in the case of fade and weak signal.

 

Why don't you do this...  Take a compass or circle template and draw a few circles, much as a cellular network would be laid out, trying to cover as much as possible of your paper with as little overlap as possible.  Remember, your anti-interference techniques are great and all, but each and every one reduces capacity, so it's best to marginalize their use whenever possible.  Use red ink.  This is your CDMA2000 coverage.

 

Now, dial your compass down about 5-6% and make new circles using green ink, using all the same center points.  This is your effective LTE coverage.  Even though the signals on both technologies extend beyond the circles we have drawn, the circles visualize the usable range in which there will still be sufficient signal for your phone's radio to operate properly.  Look at all the holes!  "Hole"y s**t, there are a lot of dead zones!  Now, it should be noted that this only takes open air signal losses into account.  In a wooded area, or with building obstacles, this problem becomes even more serious..

 

Plain and simple, LTE needs more signal to operate at all, and where that signal isn't there at that level, your phone won't work.  Shifting power within a signal won't work to fix this.

 

Incidentally, I agree with your last paragraph and will add something to it.  Pushing LTE technologies so far in order to service edge of cell users will absolutely destroy performance closer to the center of the cell.

 

Re: LTE having a fragile airlink, it's probably not in the current LTE spec but one could envision a "high reliability" mode for VoLTE, where the voice conversation was confined to one or two subcarriers, possibly with frequency hopping for the subcarriers to keep from sitting on problem frequencies. This mode only happens in areas of low signal, but when it does the handset concentrates its Tx power on those subcarriers, and the tower does the same. That should bump RSRP and SNR up a few notches, allowing VoLTE to perform a bit better in marginal areas.

 

No.  LTE already does some of this.  It IS a spread spectrum signal, it DOES prioritize subcarriers with lower interference, it does use an adaptive downlink at the base station end according to what the mobile reports back for its reception.  RSRP wouldn't change there, as it is a composite of all subcarriers.  Prioritizing subcarriers makes no sense because adaptation to interference is a much better idea.  All subcarriers need to be transmitted and received with approximately the same amplitude for the signal to work properly, so it is unlikely that you could improve the strength of a very few subcarriers for voice.  Also, if you limit LTE to just a few subcarriers for high reliability, its spectral efficiency drops substantially below CDMA2000/1x, which can make it through this level of interference without a hitch already.  This makes no sense.

I think by the time the integration is well underway, VOLTE will be ready. AJ, are you trying to scare the kiddos, again?

VoLTE will NOT improve coverage and penetration.  It will WORSEN it!  The LTE signal is far more fragile and no amount of tinkering with the standard will both reverse that and maintain compatibility with other LTE devices!

Perhaps Alltel wasn't for sale yet at the time Sprint bought out Nextel.  I didn't mean specifically cash, I just meant the means to buy it.  Either way, taking over a compatible carrier is substantially cheaper than an incompatible one, any way you look at it.

They had no money plain and simple.  This was pre-Softbank deal by 6 months.  I actually prefer that we have Softbank if that means we give up on MetroPCS.  The spectrum assets actually fit Tmobile more than Sprint since their main band was AWS spectrum.  MetroPCS did have some nice PCS spectrum assets that would have benefited Sprint but Sprint was in dire straits.  

 

Lets not go back and start reminiscing what coulda shoulda woulda happened with MetroPCS.  Right now we have Softbank and whether you like it or not, Softbank is the single reason why Sprint is able to buy Clearwire entirely and provide the liquidity for Sprint to complete Network Vision.  Think about it, who would have imagined that we would be talking about LTE 2600 nationwide on all Sprint sites + Clearwire sites + more to fill in some gaps. I am sure any of us would have ran someone out of town if they suggested nationwide LTE 2600 due to the enormous costs of equipment and manpower.  Surely Sprint (pre-Softbank) would not have the funds to do this and I am so relieved that we never went into the LTE wholesale agreement with Clearwire where they provide hotspot coverage for LTE 2600.  It would have been a nightmare and wouldn't have worked out so well.  

 

At the end of the day, I am so glad Softbank swooped in and saved Sprint and now Softbank wants to turn Sprint into a wireless powerhouse.  What more can you ask for?

This isn't what I meant.  Sprint did have the cash to buy Metro but the board didn't accept it.

 

I agree that Sprint is in a better position with Softbank, though the complications go far beyond.

 

You look at things through simplifying glasses I am afraid.

wouldnt shutting of 3g evdo be best and edge network. Then keep hspa+ and 1x 800?

No.  This makes no sense at all.

Incidentally, the problem with VOLTE remains no matter which frequencies it uses.  LTE doesn't live with a negative SNR.  CDMA does.  This means that CDMA is an inherently better technology in cases of either marginal to weak signal strength or high interference areas.

It doesnt matter. No matter how u spin it, it is still going to be a mess to integrate both sprint and tmobiles network. If u ask me it makes more sense to wait at least another 5-6 years when VoLTE becomes a reality. If they merged with tmobile at that point , sprint could just make the transition straight to VoLTE or could allow both networks to still exist for another 2 years.

 

The key right now is that sprint and tmobile both still low band 600 mhz spectrum. Until that happens no deal should happen.

 

Sent from my Motorola Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

Absolutely a mess.  It would be Nextel all over again.  This is why Metro is the only piece of TMO that would have been worthwhile to Sprint, and it strains reason to try to figure why they did not buy Metro when they could.

Doesnt tmobile have a decent amount of edge coveragr that sprint could take advantage of by just installing new gear?

No.  Sprint "installing new gear" in a TMO area post acquisition would be no more cost effective than simply leasing tower space and installing their own machinery in those areas now.

I don't really want to see Sprint and Tmobile merge at this point.  Both companies have too much on their plate right now with both companies working on their own Network Vision and expanding LTE.  Tmobile is also in a transition process to shut down the MetroPCS CDMA network as well and refarm PCS spectrum for HSPA+.

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Yes and no.  Moving Metro to Sprint CDMA would be EXTREMELY easy, far easier than migrating them to UMTS,  In fact, as more time passes and the more migration work of Metro users to the TMO network happens, potential of a merger between TMO and S becomes all the more distasteful.

So keep the one they have. Although they will definitely not need it. Between Sprint and T-Mobile's PCS holdings, T-Mobile's AWS holdings, Sprint's 800MHz, possible PCS H auction winnings and possible lease of Dish's 2000-2020 AWS-2 holdings as a a supplemental downlink, they will have plenty of spectrum. That's not even counting 600MHz

Yeah but once 2500 is built out in a market, it will not be cost effective to divest it. To me, this means that they ate stuck with it unless they can sell Clearwire in its entirety to somebody else for a fair price. To keep it iin some markets and not others would just introduce another bastard frequency/technology that is barely deployed but many devices will have to support, just like WiMAX all over again. Also, do not forget Softbank's compatible network in Japan.

In some markets they do not have both, but one or the other.

 

They can keep BRS that they own and get rid of EBS that they lease.

Sprint's TD-LTE offerings are all based in BRS and EBS, so they can't lose it right now.

I am always surprised how many strange, totally nonsubstantiatable things regarding batteries that are floating around out there, often perpetuated by people who place themselves in a position to advise.

For example, Verizon tells people it is best to charge a phone only when the battery is below ten percent charge and then to charge it all the way without interruption. The latter part is accurate, but the former couldn't be more wrong. It also happens to be the same recommendation given with by Verizon with my old analog Motorola DPC550, which used a NiMH battery, in which case, as with all nickel based chemistries, it is the correct recommendation for proper battery care.

I love debate, but I steer clear of the battery subject now, since 9/10 things popularly perpetuated are wrong.