iansltx

Albuquerque now has only 10x10 B2 LTE, with 15x15 thrown at n25. I'm seeing 3x CA on 80 MHz n41 + 15x15 n71 + 15x15 n25. LTE still has plenty of bandwidth, with 20x20 + 10x10 AWS and some B41. In bigger news, I just placed a VoNR call there (forced n25-only). I'll force NR-only for the next bit and see if that's the case elsewhere in town.

Seems like Dish is slowly dialing things in in some markets; Albuquerque indoor coverage seems to be improved at 170+ Mbps down, 15 Mbps up on my Netgear. I also saw 313-340 in Austin last night/this morning, so maybe when I'm back in a week it'll actually be live. As it stands, roaming service in Austin on T-Mobile is excellent; I hit 600 Mbps down, 100 Mbps up last night (my S22 exceeded 800 Mbps in the same spot, but 600 ain't shabby).

I definitely noticed more interesting CA combos in Samsung markets than in Ericsson ones, though I was late to that party. 25+41 (that was a thing, right?)/25+26 weren't a thing in Ericsson markets.

That'll be super helpful. If it's a tall tower running at least n71 + B12 that should go a *long* way toward filling that coverage hole.

Were further south, I think. Shark Valley, Anhinga Trail, and down to the Flamingo visitor center.

Was in South Florida and the Keys until earlier this evening. Saw some sites with 100+50 MHz n41, with reasonable amounts of 10x10 n25...not contiguous, but enough to ensure consistent performance. One big coverage hole: the Everglades. VZW had spots of coverage, including n77, but was a bit hit or miss. AT&T was a bit better, including my first sighting of 10x10 n2 DSS. T-Mobile should throw 600 MHz on whatever sites AT&T and VZW have because otherwise their customers will be sitting on Starlink once that finally launches.

Won't require another climb to use the extra spectrum.

Speed topped out at 113/28 or so on the n25 channel. It's definitely not on every site, but in town there are enough sites including it to provide contiguous coverage at this point. Outside town, doesn't look like sites have it as much.

Now that my S22 can do n25 SA, I can 100% confirm that the top 10x10 of band 25 is deployed as NR here now. Have CellMappter turned on so maybe I'll be able to paint the map a bit today as I'm bouncing between downtown and further north.

Got the March security update this morning, which made me look in *#2263# again to see if they had enabled SA n25 finally. Sounds like it may have been an earlier carrier update, but either way I now have n25. Got it single-band locked now and might throw CellMapper on to track how many sites have it enabled in Austin. Only 10x10 here (PCS-G and adjacent 5x5) but low enough traffic I guess as I'm getting ~80 down ~22 up, so plenty enough for tethered connectivity.

Impressive that they're already at 20x20 n25 when phone support is as spotty as it is tbh. Not that I'm complaining...

Additional math: VZW customers consumed on average 760 MB on Sunday, though my guess is that the number was actually lower because VZW probably had some non-fan macro traffic in there. Wonder what the breakdown on customer count was between AT&T and T-Mobile. In order for AT&T to have used less data per person, T-Mobile market share would need to have been pretty small.

In San Antonio and Austin, VZW doesn't have 850, so they've been running n2 DSS for awhile now, though increasingly phones don't use it because n2 coverage is poor enough to be subsumed by C-Band. I've seen AT&T n2 and n66 DSS here, but hadn't seen any n30. Can you point to proof of the latter? Seems like 2300 would be an ideal band to not bother with DSS and switch entirely over to NR, as it's only 10x10 anyway and there's plenty of spectrum below 2300 for phones to connect to.

Welp, TNX international roaming is still borked for me. I can get the low-speed roaming, but can't log into T-Mobile to get day/week passes, nor can I buy Sprint day passes. Which is all the more awkward because the TMB CSC on my S22 allows n78, so I can get EE 5G...throttled to a near standstill. The US Mobile eSIM I grabbed and the 3 physical SIM both use XAA so n78 isn't available. Girlfriend's Pixel 7 seems to be getting 5G on 3 at least...

The Kendall/Kerr/Gillespie PCS swap is a very nice win-win for AT&T and T-Mobile. Means both of them will have a 20x20 PCS channel, though in exchange T-Mobile goes from 10x10 to 5x5 on one of their spectrum blocks. I figure AT&T will start running n2 DSS on that channel, as they have enough customers in those areas to need the capacity, while T-Mobile will probably just run B2 LTE, as once Auction 108 finally clears they'll have plenty of n41 to play with. Guessing we'll see the non-G-block 5x5 slice running n25, but it would get aggregated with n71 rather than n41 I figure as n71 will remain 20x20 there until the STA goes away (and maybe after that, as if T-Mobile gets 700 MHz as the result of VZW buying West Central Wireless's spectrum there's no reason to run LTE in 600). Which makes me think that the next move is T-Mobile trading 700A for the 5x5 of orphaned PCS (E block) to VZW once the WCW transaction closes, as that would give VZW 20x20 PCS in the area, and would give T-Mobile 700 MHz in an area where they have none. Then VZW can either trade 700B to T-Mobile as well in exchange for the AWS I block in those areas (gives T-Mobile 10x10 B12, gives VZW 15x15 B66) or they can cut a deal with AT&T to give AT&T 10x10 B12 (AT&T has the lower C block), but I'm not sure what that deal would be if trading like for like (vs. AT&T handing VZW their upper tiny slice of B5, giving VZW 15x15 to play with in that band post-WCW-acquisition). EDIT: Just looked at AWS spectrum again, and if AT&T would rather have 10x10 B12 than 2x 10x10 AWS, they could swap AWS-D for VZW's 700B block. That would give VZW 20x20 AWS, and would take AT&T down to 10x10 + 5x5...which they'd likely be fine with as they have 20x20 PCS, small cells in the busy areas, and as a result of the transaction three 10x10 chunks of spectrum in the area below 1 GHz. And if VZW traded 700A to T-Mobile for PCS-E VZW would have 20x20 PCS as well. Which is quite useful in an area that's macro-only for VZW and likely not dense enough for proper mobile usage of CBRS or C-Band (and an area where VZW doesn't even run DSS now).

Yeah, $250 credit for an S22 is awful. tbf last year they didn't have solid upgrade credits until mid-late April, which is when I paid $225 to swap my S21 for an S22. Happy to wait 'til then for that kind of deal, though I'll be annoyed at battery life in the mean time.

I've only seen DSS in 2/66 here, but AT&T also only has 15x15 PCS here, and only one block of AWS wider than 10x10. By contrast, n5 is a dedicated channel now as it's 15x15 (and n5 was dedicated west of here back when it was 5x5, and stayed that way when they widened to 10x10). So with that said I'd expect 10x10 LTE and 20x20 n2 DSS in the situation mdob07 described. At 20x20 DSS should perform pretty well. Nice thing about DSS is it seems NSA NR and the LTE PCC can always CA on upload, so you'll wind up with 10 MHz LTE and 20 MHz DSS on the uplink, for upload capacity in the 100 Mbps range (AT&T actually tends to have better upload speeds than T-Mobile in a lot of places here, though for downlink there's still no contest).

Remember, they have n66 nationwide as 20 MHz SDL. 5 Mhz uplink is tight but they have n26 as well. FWIW the iPhone 14 supports n70 so that takes care of a lot of the phone issue in one fell swoop.

Until the entire band opens up, VZW has the bottom 60 MHz of C-Band, while AT&T has the next 40 MHz. In areas where more C-Band has cleared, VZW IIRC continues to have the bottom of their band at 3700, with AT&T above that, though AT&T might be 3820 MHz center freq in those markets rather than 3780. Once C-Band clears entirely, specmap will be accurate.

I've seen this on n41, and from what I can tell it's on the network side, not the phone side, as IIRC (I'll check this later) phones with Samsung (Pixel) and MTK (Moto) modems spit back the same info. The NR ARFCNs don't reflect center frequency, at least what's visible in debug modes that the phone displays. There's no way T-Mobile is transmitting out-of-band (if they were, they would be pushing more than 140 MHz). I haven't seen this issue on any other band, including n77, so it's not an NR or TDD NR issue.

Hmm, I'd still need to grab a Windows machine, which I won't be able to for the next few days, to run Odin. Went ahad and added Network Pass to gf's Pixel 7 since IIRC that phone *can* do n25 OOTB

Am aware, but that would require a factory reset and a Windows machine, and I'd rather not do the former right now, and don't have a Windows machine with me for the next week. GF's Pixel 7 may support n25 out of the box anyway, so I may be able to test with hers.

Seeing n25 in both Fredericksburg, TX and Austin, though the former actually has more of it. Had to force it with my brother's Moto Edge 2022. In Fredericksburg, it doesn't look like they're using PCS-G at all right now, as it's on a 5x5 island and it appears that Sprint sites have all been converted. B2 LTE is 15x15 in PCS-A, while n25 is 10x10 in PCS E-F. Coverage isn't contiguous, but it's available a pretty decent % of the time, though n41 is available more from what I can tell. In Austin, T-Mobile has 5x5 adjacent to PCS-G so that's where the n25 carrier runs here (10x10). If the Edge 2022's field test mode is to be believed, there are significant gaps in n25 coverage in town, where n41 is effectively contiguous. I imagine this is because sites that aren't relatively new n71 builds don't have n25, and we have plenty of sites that have n41 and no n71. Not that we direly need the n25 layer here with 100+40 MHz n41 and 20x20 B2, but...it's a thing. Looking forward to getting SA n25 on my S22 eventually to do further testing...

I was seeing n41+n41 SA earlier, so it's definitely a thing, though lately my phone's been on NSA, 2/66+n41+n41.

Just got the December update on my unlocked S22. N25 NSA (and a few international NR bands) are now available. No n25 SA though.