iansltx

VZW didn't say when they would meet that mmW traffic % number though. Given that they didn't specify a date, "after 2025" seems like a pretty good guess. I don't expect them to invest much in mmW beyond this year for awhile. Also, VZW is likewise combining mid-band and mmW into a single marketing term. TMo is calling it Ultra Capacity, VZW is calling it UW. Yes, their 60 MHz of C-Band will be branded the same as hundreds of MHz of mmW.

Per today's investor call, T-Mobile still expects 7-8 million home internet subscribers on their network eventually. They had 100k by the end of last year. Wouldn't be surprised if that number has doubled since then.

As of tomorrow, home internet is $60/mo, up from $50. Apparently $50 is so disruptive a price point that TMo can't keep routers in stock I guess, across their now-much-larger service area for the product.

Was finally successful in convincing a friend to switch from Spectrum, which has given him constant issues, to T-Mobile, as there's an n41 site <1200' from him, plus another ~3500' in a different direction. 306/36 with 22 ms ping and 6 ms jitter. If I had a better n41 signal I'd absolutely pick a unit up myself. EDIT 2: From a few minutes ago. That ping is downright excellent for cellular.

Looks like 80 MHz is not yet universal; the Spicewood Springs and Mesa site is still running 40 MHz, while the Spicewood Springs and 360 (up the hill a bit) site is running 80. The former overlaps basically completely with the bottom half of the latter. Both sites appear to have 2CA B41 deployed right below (as in, eating into guard bands of) the NR carrier (2538, 2558 center freqs). The site near 360 appears not to be backhaul limited

Mom's S20 on Ting is now picking up 5G. It appears that n2 and n66 are both being used (VZW doesn't have band 5 spectrum here), but I'm not convinced that Samsung Band Selector is actually selecting NR bands so it could actually be one or the other. This is mainly notable as the first time Ting-on-VZW has been seen to use 5G, though of course it's the crappy DSS type. I'll save the discussions on C-Band for other threads, beyond noting that VZW got 60 MHz in A here just like everywhere else that clears early, and will have 140 MHz once everything clears.

80 MHz n41 is now live in Austin! Center frequency is 2607.75 MHz, so the carrier runs from 2567-2647. B41 2CA is below that. That could leave room at the top of the band for one or two Sprint B41 carriers, but the site nearest me on Sprint has been down since nearly two weeks ago so I'm not sure what's there.

Not an interference issue, not a spectrum efficiency issue. Just a matter of throwing the signal as far as possible.

I've seen n41 in rural-ish areas already, plus some B41 on sites that were 25/26 only a year ago. They seem to be getting better about not just deploying a single band in places, though from what I've seen the more rural setup appears to be whatever B/n71 they have, plus a 5x5 B2 carrier to use as an NR anchor. Narrower bandwidths go further, hence running 5x5 when they definitely have the spectrum for more.

I expect them to use it; they paid above what VZW did to grab some in a ton of major markets. Dish is 100x more likely to just sell their lone license. Interestingly, TMo only got 20 MHz in Little Rock, Rochester, and SYracuse, but 60 MHz in Albany...40 literally everywhere else. We'll find out what their strategy is on March 11, but my guess is still that n77 will provide a distinct set of freqs for a small cell build out, probably CA'd with 24 GHz, allowing for islands of extra capacity that'll interfere with neither the macro network nor, for the most part, themselves.

Confirmed that the site behind the Randall's at Spicewood Springs and Mesa in NW Austin has n41, as well as some pretty well optimized B2. Will swing by at some point later to get panel shots. 2CA B41 was also deployed but latency/jitter were unreasonably high for some reason.

So your area is outside the top bunch of markets then? Re: equipment, should look quite similar to 2.5 M-MIMO gear.

Barely. No VoNR on either so they'd have to do some weird non-QoS'd IMS thing or fall back to TMo VoLTE. Also no n26/29/70 support. But n66 and n71 are there so they *could* work, just with unimpressive performance as at launch they'd be missing 30 MHz of downlink and 15 MHz of uplink.

Looking at the results more closely, actually looks like T-Mobile just grabbed 40 MHz in the top 70-odd markets (exceptions being Rochester, NY and Little Rock, AR, where they only got 20 MHz). So this feels like less of a play to shore up contiguity issues. My new guess is that this is for small cells. By 2024 there'll be areas where added capacity above and beyond n41 will be useful, but those areas may be larger than something mmWave could handle nicely. Cool thing about using a completely different band for small cells is you're not running the risk of self-interfering with the n41 macro network, and n77 (TMo will end up with precisely zero licenses in Block A) can be set up as islands of capacity where needed to avoid self-interference there. Which should mean better performance. One weird thing is that n41 currently can't aggregate with n77, so folks going from a 100 MHz n41 channel to a 40 MHz n77 one might get a drop in speed, but my guess is that CA combo will show up in the next three years anyway. Or maybe we'll get 24 GHz + n77 CA, similar to plans for n41 + n71 CA now, so you won't actually see a perf hit when going from n41 to n77. One thing I doubt we'll see is n77 being used for fixed wireless on T-Mobile. It's not a huge chunk of spectrum (basically everywhere with n41 has at least that much deployed), coverage will be significantly less than n41, and the Nokia gateways don't have support for the band (not that that particularly matters nearly three years out). Could be wrong though.

So, AT&T got 80 MHz of C-Band on average, with 40 of that showing up in December. Not a horrible showing, given how much VZW spent.

Guessing they spent in areas where they have contiguity issues on 2.5. They basically grabbed two licenses per PEA, so 40 MHz. Not a ton, but if they can find 60 MHz contiguous in 2.5 that gives them 100 total, which is plenty.

Dish is apparently behaving like they didn't know T-Mobile was going to drop CDMA relatively quickly post-merger: https://www.fiercewireless.com/financial/dish-sheds-363k-wireless-subs-warns-t-mobile-3g-shutdown This is the sorta thing that you price into your acquisition of Boost et al.; they're just posturing here to get money/devices out of T-Mobile. Or an extension to the CDMA EOL. They're weirdly silent about capacity being allocated away from Sprint on the LTE side.

Yep. Only reason AT&T is doing B25 MFBI is for Sprint roaming as far as I can tell. They do the same thing on B5, which they also broadcast as B26. No need for CA on either because you're looking at ~256 kbps capped speeds for roaming anyway, and reasonable CA combos don't really exist for 25/26 vs. anything else on AT&T.

Yep. The $70 plan still isn't great...not a ton of hotspot and still SD-only video...but the 100GB deprioritization limit is nice and of course 5 GB of hotspot is better than 3. Bumping the top-tier plan from 720p to UHD for video is significant though, as is doubling the hotspot cap...and removing the deprioritization limit on the entire network is a testament to how string TMo feels their network is. Guessing they figure they can add mid-band capacity quickly enough to deal with network congestion. They also probably know that VZW and AT&T can attempt to match this once C-Band comes online, so they might as well give themselves a 9+ month head start. THe other two can compete with this now, but VZW will have to use CBRS to do it, and AT&T will have to get creative via other means, so it'll cost those two more vs. just dropping n41 on a site.

Single line. So my guess is that the cost of the shared data pool would be excessive for me (and it would be nice not to guess at usage as it varies for me month to month).

Stuff's somewhat recovered here cell network wise, though the Sprint site I was using before is now offline. TMo finally figured out how to run B41 again from the NR-enabled site, which is nice, as that covers a mile or so radius, including a fair number of folks without power.

So, all of my nearby T-Mobile sites are offline right now due to blackouts. Closest signal is B12 in the mid -120s...no B71 etc. Fortunately the Sprint rooftop site near me still has power somehow, and TMo very recently (last hour or two) added back a B41 carrier centered at 2680 MHz, next to the 2660 one, so connectivity is fine as long as you're close enough to the site to get B41. B25 is a mess though...probably 26 as well.

Apparently ROAMAHOME is no more for new LTE-only device swaps; MOCN is the new hotness: MOCN looks to be an upgrade, as ROAMAHOME only allows seamless bouncing between both networks for keep sites; for everything else you have to lose signal first (or force band selection). With MOCN there's a band priority list that doesn't put all Sprint bands at the bottom. This *sounds* equivalent to making every Sprint site a keep site, though from the Reddit post B66 will get priority over B41 LTE (fine except in areas that have B41 CA on either carrier), and B66 will get priority over B2 (which is annoying here as B2 is 5 MHz wider unless you're doing non-contiguous CA). ROAMAHOME is still in effect for 5G devices apparently, which tells me that keep sites are slightly better integrated than the rest of Sprint's sites, as keep sites don't serve as anchors for NR either way. They probably *could* be, but it would require hosting spectrum entirely within PCS A-F and MFBI'ing that spectrum to B2...so probably not worth the effort.

Let me know what plan name you get moved to. I'm on the Plus Subsidy business plan, which isn't TNX-eligible, and when I called in I was only given Basic/Essentials/Plus/Premium for $60/60/70/80 as options, all of which are either significantly more expensive or significantly inferior to my $55/mo plan. Between keep sites and T-Mobile's native network I'm comfortable enough hopping over to TNX to get SA and NR CA, but it's not worth me spending $15/mo extra to make the switch.

Same update. Unlocked S21, Sprint SIM/FW (update explicitly said SPR in the URL). Looks to be a pretty small one; took a few seconds to download.