iansltx

Internet Air arrived at my parents' place last week, and got set up over the weekend. Upload speeds were respectable at ~30 Mbps in some areas. Downloads, less than 100 Mbps. T-Mobile performs a lot better, off of AFAIK the same site (albeit with lower upload speeds). So after some more testing the AT&T box will probably get returned.

Correction: T-Mobile has 100+80 MHz n41 live here. I didn't see it yesterday so either they just turned it on, it's temporary capacity for the eclipse, or maybe something else. But that means that T-Mobile has as much mid-band online here as they do in Austin, though I'm 99.9% sure their sites here only have a gig of backhaul (which is plenty for the area tbh). Also, VZW has B48 on some of their macros here, so a bit better than just AWS-or-less LTE. And AT&T actually *does* have n77 here (standard 80+40 setup), albeit with hit-or-miss coverage so I'm guessing it's only on a couple of sites.

So, I have some corrections to the above on...all four carriers. Dish: has native service AT&T: has n77 80+40 MHz, though it doesn't appear to be on every site VZW: has B48 20+20+20 MHz on some sites, including tall macros T-Mobile: has 100+80 MHz n41; I didn't see the other 100 MHz pop up until today So, T-Mobile went from 40 MHz n41 to 180 MHz as a result of Auction 108, I believe. That's...phenomenal.

Not seeing it on my S24, but the AT&T side of my Dish/Project Genesis Edge+ 2023 is pulling AT&T n77 as of this morning (didn't test yesterday), with 200+ Mbps download speeds outdoors despite being a few miles from the nearest cell site. Maybe someone used the eclipse as an excuse to build out here after all (not VZW, to be clear). Hopefully I'll catch the signal on my S24 as well (swapped in my Boost AT&T SIM to check), I want to see whether they have both 3900-3980 MHz and DoD spectrum online...at which point they'll have the same amount of 5G deployed to T-Mobile (10x10 n5 + 120 MHz C-Band vs. 10x10 n25 + 20x20 n71 + 80 MHz n41), albeit in a config that *should* allow for higher peak speeds. AT&T seems to be aware they have C-Band here, as this location is marked as covered by Internet Air. So...think I'll try setting that up for the family. EDIT 2: T-Mobile actually has 100+80 MHz here, so they've deployed more mid-band than AT&T owns. Still nice to see AT&T turning theirs on.

So, Dish is continuing to build out their network, it seems. Fredericksburg, TX now has n70 strong enough to be usable (100+ Mbps) indoors a few miles outside town, which means that for most of the area they're now the second-fastest network (behind T-Mobile), since neither AT&T nor VZW have C-Band deployed here. I did lose service for a bit earlier this morning, so this coverage may have just come online and is being optimized as a result. But I'll test later with the Edge+ 2023 to see what state things are in.

As mentioned on the other thread, thanks to Auction 108 my parents' place (Gillespie County, TX) is now up to 80 MHz n41, which can deliver 600+ Mbps outdoors, at least when CA'd (e.g. with 10x10 n25 that's live here). That means indoor FWA with 3/5 bars on an X55 modem is getting 300-400 Mbps download speeds. The drive between Austin and here on US-290 drops to n71 for a few miles, but that's 20x20 with 15x15 B2 and 10x10 B66 so capacity is still fine. Other than those small stretches everything's either 80 MHz (further west) or 100+80 MHz (closer to Austin) n41. Not sure the sites have more than gigabit backhaul, but they don't need more than that to be pretty consistently the fastest. Meanwhile VZW drops from n77 100+40 to LTE-only, and AT&T from n77 80+40 to n5 10x10, once you get a bit outside Austin, which is disappointing given that VZW could light 100+100 n77 if they wanted here, and AT&T of course has 80+40 everywhere.

I checked using field test mode on my S24 rather than SCP. Didn't see any SA. Both NR carriers were used concurrently basically every time I checked. Same with AT&T n77.

I'm back in the land that used to be 40 MHz n41. Now getting 80 MHz, which is enough to get 300+ Mbps on FWA (technically not in the geofence) at my parents' place outside town. Could get more, and better uploads, on either newer hardware or outdoors. By way of comparison, AT&T has mmW down Main Street and n5 elsewhere, while VZW is LTE-only here. They had the perfect excuse to add some C-Band for the hordes descending on this area for the eclipse, and...didn't. So I expect T-Mobile to be the only reliable carrier around here unless you're within range of a small cell in town.

On the Florida Atlantic coast this weekend and have watched VZW and T-Mobile. FLL had VZW mmW in Terminal 4. T-Mobile has decent (not perfect) n41 coverage with 100+50 MHz, with 20x20 n25 on top of that. Heading north, n41 switches pretty quickly to 100+80 MHz, with pretty consistent coverage along I-95 and the Turnpike. A-1A coverage is patchier between Stuart and Fort Pierce, so I switched to VZW (which was more consistent there) on part of that drive. VZW has 100+60 MHz n77; coverage is less consistent than n41 but there are a number of areas where VZW clocks 500+ Mbps when T-Mobile is 300-400 Mbps. Some TMo sites do have gig+ backhaul though; I got a 1.1+ Gbps test indoors yesterday in Stuart. I'll report on AT&T and Dish later.

100+80 works in Nokia markets though (e.g. here).

Wait, third 10 MHz? All I'm seeing is people posting 100+90 MHz, which makes miles more sense, as n41 definitely has the 90 MHz channel width.

SES has done n5 tests, so I wouldn't be surprised at all if AT&T eventually did B14 with them.

They're asking for permission to deploy another shell closer to the earth's surface, so short answer is yes, this will get better over time, but you're not going to have cell sizes smaller than a terrestrial rural site, and you're not going to have capacity more than that 5x5 block, so in emergency areas the better option will be to get power to an existing site or COW and backhaul that site via Starlink, at like 30x the capacity.

Splitting hairs, but sat capacity is fine. Issue is sat coverage area is rather large, and there's only a 5x5 LTE channel (likely at low modulation) worth of capacity to play with. The satellites themselves have tens of gigabits of capacity, but require a proper terminal to tap into that.

IOT would be a decent use case, assuming it'd run on B26 LTE. As for replacing B71 LTE, if B26 phone support isn't a superset of 71, it's super close, with another bunch of phones that support 26 but not 71. Recall that 71 was tricky to add in at first due to antenna design issues, IIRC impacting phone size, so even now B26 is probably slightly more common than B71 on phones that aren't specifically made for T-Mobile. And then there are markets that have <= 15 Mz of 600 (e.g. here) where B71 has already been retired, so bringing B26 (back) online would represent a straight-up capacity increase, plus indoor strain relief for B12 when necessary on voice...'cuz we *still* don't have VoNR here.

As mentioned on the other thread, this morning (IIRC 9:20a) T-Mobile dropped B41 here, adding the 40 MHz previously allocated to the n41 secondary carrier, bringing that to 80 MHz. Theoretically there's another 10 MHz here but B41 is completely offline from what I can tell so TBD if we'll ever see that.

On the T-Mobile side of things, as of probably 9:20am this morning Austin is now 100+80 MHz n41; B41 is now gone. I can now hit 750ish Mbps indoors a half mile from the cell site, and wouldn't be surprised to break 1.5 Gbps closer/outside. So TMo now has 10x10 n25 + 15x15 n71 + 100+80 n41 here, for a total of 230 MHz 5G. With the C-Band they'll have 270. Re: 800, the band class is wrong for anything other than B26 LTE and n26 NR. Though I wouldn't be surprised if T-Mobile could throw Ericsson and Nokia enough cash to add band 26 support to their existing gear, so we *could* see B/n26 come back if there's nothing better to do with the spectrum. B26 probably makes more sense as that would allow for dropping B71 LTE everywhere with negligible coverage drops.

Re: Dish, cable providers still exist. Comcast/Charter probably wouldn't mind instantly having a nationwide network to drastically improve their economics, and their existing agreement with VZW could be swapped to roaming, so a cable network SIM would suddenly have better coverage than any other carrier. Samsung is a vendor to both Dish and Charter/Comcast so n48 strand mount overlays in areas that need it could be deferred thanks to n70, but would integrate reasonably well with the Samsung macro gear. That, or Amazon buys.

I'm definitely in the "this is still a big deal" camp, as e.g. where my parents are T-Mobile is still the only one with mid-band 5G. VZW doesn't even have 5G there. So going from 40 MHz n41 to...more than that...makes FWA tenable in a market where the existing options aren't great. Gonna check with family to see what channel width is live there now...

I checked existing spectrum holdings and selling 5x5 PCS to each of VZW and AT&T in Kauai would get them to 20x20 apiece there, which should make them happy. In Maui it makes more sense to sell 5x5 each of PCS and AWS to get VZW 20x20 AWS and AT&T 15x15 PCS. I figure it would be a sale rather than a swap, as neither of the other two have spectrum T-Mobile would want that's high-frequency enough to avoid the spectrum screen. Honestly, T-Mobile is strong enough in Hawaii from a capacity perspective that cutting down PCS/AWS holdings won't hurt, particularly in exchange for finally unlocking 2.5 (though in Maui I saw 140 MHz n41 regularly in September if I remember correctly).

Haven't swapped in the AT&T SIM, but I have my TMo SIM in right now and it's fine. Likewise my US Mobile VZW eSIM.

So, best I can tell, swapping SIMs (Dish to AT&T) and rebooting with my S24 connected to my laptop (no adb connection or anything) corrupted things badly enough to "unauthorized factory reset" the device. Fortunately I had a full Samsung cloud backup from Monday morning (right before resetting/boxing up my S23; this screwiness happened last night), an incremental Google backup from Tuesday morning, and a lot of stuff synced to the cloud, so all I lost was on-device Signal messages (so Signal history is now limited to desktop/laptop, which means I'm missing a handful of messages from when I cut over from my S23 to S24, and if I fully unlink then that message history is gone), a little bit of WhatsApp, and some time. But hoo boy *that* was a fire drill. I would've been extra hosed if I wasn't near home/didn't have a recent full backup this would've been a ton more pain than it ended up being.

Re: insurance, what I got was more like an extended warranty, with potentially quicker repairs by walking into a ubreakifix. I've had Pixels/Nexuses/Essential phones replaced due to charging port jankiness thanks to getting the added protection plan, so for the times I've gotten a plan like that (not always) I've come out ahead overall. Absolutely wouldn't pay $10+ per month for phone insurance though. Of note, I go caseless, so mechanical breakdown is more likely than someone using a case. But it's also been...15 years or more since I've cracked a phone screen?

NR to LTE would a switch from native to roaming, so 100% chance the call drops. This isn't some sort of Republic Wireless bonded calling magic. Not gonna even bother testing it As for call symbols, easiest way is SignalCheck I think. But Dish is going to hold on super tightly to native if VoNR is set up in the market (and won't sit on native at all if VoNR isn't) so ..pretty easy to assume. Likewise SignalCheck is going to be easier to spot for roaming vs. native, as IIRC T-Mobile roaming does *not* throw up the triangle as I guess Dish's rates are cheap enough to not care. As with the hotspot, they don't throttle, so roaming data experience may be better than native if you're picking between n71 and CA n41. Only caveat is latency.

Yep, BYOD