iansltx

Given that T-Mobile is adding 500k FWA customers per quarter, guessing that in some areas they have enough customer density for it to be worth bumping site backhaul now, and if the trend continues add mmW and have high-usage customers swap CPE to mmW-capable gear. But T-Mobile also isn't tapping out 140 MHz of n41 backhaul-wise, and their existing FWA CPE is all X55 I think so it's limited to one 100 MHz channel even as current-gen flagships can do the full 140.

Maybe Google buys it and pulls it under the Webpass banner?

Seems like this is planned to be a SPAC spinoff to inject capital into Dish for more network build. Dish could keep the roaming/MVNO agreements on their side, but guarantee comparable terms to Boost for an extended period...and include per-GB pricing on DishNet lower than any of the roaming to incentivize Boost to stay with them (say, 40 cents per GB to T-Mobile/AT&T's $1).

Albuquerque network seems to be getting a bit more reliable, with 200/10+ speeds becoming a little more common on my Nighthawk. Additionally, they seem to be routing AT&T roaming through closer AWS Local Zones rather than always through major regions, though that's inconsistent. On the other hand, T-Mobile roaming seems to be routed through Local Zones, and is live on hotspot lines: So now Project Genesis is, if you're willing to pay the latency penalty, unlimited hotspot on 2.5 different networks (sorry, native DishNet) for $20 per month. Easily the best deal in wireless out there.

I think you read the article wrong. $1.6B is AT&T's total power bill, not savings.

Betting this is just n77. n66/2 is DSS so doubt they'd turn that off.

What's funny about this is Chinese telecoms have been doing this for a year or two. But Huawei/ZTE gear is a bit less efficient IIRC

T-Mobile's basically saying backbone and transit are undifferentiated and even at their scale it makes more sense to grab connectivity from the lowest bidder of Zayo, Lumen, and now Cogent. Not terribly surprising as they have a similar attitude to backhaul, while Verizon and AT&T will run their own fiber to sites (VZW does here despite not being the ILEC). Plus SprintLink was a boat anchor cost-wise I suppose, such that $30MM per month plus $35MM severance, plus ~$8MM per month to Cogent after the first year, was a better option. Which, yeah, T-Mobile probably spends on FWA gateways in a quarter (or less) what they'll be paying Cogent for a year of transit, so fair enough.

Would be entertaining if T-Mobile came to Verizon in those areas and offers to pay what they originally bid, maybe less, for a 30-year lease of that spectrum, since VZW isn't going to bother building any of it out.

Found a site where Dish and TMo both are. Speeds weren't bad once I got my hotspot to stop cutting out. https://twitter.com/iansltx/status/1565916798939267072?t=DfbQYtn10mbfwajNazFH-g&s=19

I imagine the first order of business, similar to STAs and the temporary pandemic authorizations, would be to reconfigure radios that are already live, since most of those can take the additional spectrum with no changes. Tuning would happen after. The real question is what happens after that, in terms of hanging new n41 equipment...did these winnings change how many n41 sites there are in a given area? If so, that's probably about capacity requirements...it's easier to justify throwing n41 up when you have 100 MHz to play with than with 40, though there are plenty of places where 40 was enough to put something live.

T-Mobile won all three licenses for both Gillespie and Hays, TX, both of which were limited to 40 MHz before. Will be interesting to see how quickly they bumo bandwidths there, and what they end up with between LTE and NR short-term.

I have family in the Gillespie County, TX area, which historically topped out at 40 MHz for n41 and didn't have enough spectrum for Magic Box on Sprint. Guessing this will allow a bump all the way to 100 MHz, providing plenty of capacity for T-Mobile Home Internet in an area where n41 sites cover a lot of territory that fiber or cable isn't (plus of course some where it is). So, this is significant.

There's no way they'll be able to do terrestrial-orbital handoff. They also mentioned 2 kbps for voice calls, which is a fraction of standard codecs. This'll be messaging plus the odd voice call only. Still better than nothing, particularly as T-Mobile pulls the rug out from under an increasing number of roaming agreements. Was surprised backhaul basically wasn't part of this equation, but maybe that'll come later. That, or Starlink feels like they'll be capacity constrained for the foreseeable future. Guessing this'll be 1.4x1.4 at the top of PCS-G, as B25 LTE, but we shall see.

My guess here would be T-Mobile officially partnering with Starlink on rural backhaul. There isn't quite enough capacity to run n41 off of Starlink and get a significant throughput bump out of it, but n71+n25+n66+LTE? Absolutely. Which would allow T-Mobile to plunk down new rural sites wherever, and quickly bump any sites that can't get sufficient backhaul right now. Maybe that's 5k rural sites...which would massively improve coverage and reduce the need for roaming. Basically anything Starlink charges will be less expensive than roaming data, though I wouldn't expect T-Mobile home internet to be available on Starlink-fed sites. I doubt it's a Spacemobile-like thing in part because getting that type of equipment into orbit would've leaked.

Saw a bit more Sprint B2 both in Austin (at the airport) and in MO/IA/IL north/west of St. Louis. Also saw a site (Quincy, IL) capped at 100 Mbps backhaul despite broadcasting 140 MHz n41. The 20x20 n71 site 45 minutes north had better speeds. Fair amount of n71+n41 in NSA configurations. USCC roaming data didn't work at all, so seems like T-Mobile is restricting when they (think they) have a network of their own.

Weird that they'd go back to the Edge+. Would think they'd let folks use the S22 just like with Genesis. In other news, St. Louis has 10x10 n71 + n66 SDL live. A bit more info here:

Looks like Dish has already taken back the 5x5 of n71 they leased to T-Mobile, and instead of narrowing NR here T-Mobile has gone for broke and made 600 NR-only. They can afford to do that here thanks to B12, and don't need to do that west of here because they weren't leasing 600 from Dish. Does mean that Dish is 10x10 for n71 here (which explains the 30ish Mbps upload peak I saw yesterday). Darned speculators hogging the remainder of the band So T-Mobile is running 140 + 15x15 MHz sub-6 NR here. AT&T is 40 + 15-45x15-45 (15x15 n5, occasional 15x15 DSS on n2 and/or n66 though I haven't seen both in the same area). VZW is 60 + 15x15, with the latter being n2 DSS. Wonder how soon VZW will try n48.

Headed back down to San Marcos today and this time got Dish 5G (see my tweets from today). Decent amount of coverage, all the way up through Kyle, though there were parts of San Marcos where supposedly Dish sites were live that I was roaming on AT&T. Saw as much as 30 Mbps up and 120 Mbps down, though typical speeds were more like 35 Mbps down and 5 Mbps up. So n66 SDL is live but the network isn't dense enough to have it on all the time. Traffic hits the internet in Dallas (yay AWS Local Zones!) but latency isn't great, at around 70ms to Dallas. Better than hairpinning to Columbus like AT&T roaming does, but I've seen comparable latency to Columbus on AT&T vs. Dallas on Dish. Coverage peters out around where SH 45 SW turns into MoPac, which is encouraging. Maybe it'll hit Austin proper in a few months. If they can tune all the sites like the one on 35 with 120/30 peak speeds on really good RSRP (-70s), they could wind up as the #2 fastest network in areas AT&T/VZW haven't hit with C-Band yet.

Yep, that's new as of this rev. Doesn't matter much for T-Mobile yet, unless you're in NYC I guess.

No change in upload speeds. AFAIK the S22 doesn't aggregate uploads across NR carriers. You can CA LTE-LTE or LTE-NR but not NR-NR. The difference here was just that what was going on CA-wise was visible...no perf change to my knowledge (UL CA on B41 *might* be but that only works closer to the site). I didn't actually see Sprint B41 at all last night (and I can't get it from where I'm sitting right now), but from earlier, elsewhere in town, I know that it's centered at ~2685 MHz. So last night I saw "only" 180 MHz, of which I was able to to connect to either 140 (n41) or 40 (B41) MHz at any given point...not both at the same time. For n41, I don't recall whether I was able to lock onto an LTE SCC on top of the NSA PCC (the 40 MHz carrier won't show up in SA), but 99% sure I was at least able to use B2 (20x20) in addition to the two n41 carriers. Definitely was able to anchor with B66 (10x10).

Nope. You have to band-select with *#2263#, and if you can't get there with a given SIM, you aren't selecting bands.

Upgraded to One UI 5 earlier tonight, which allows me to see when I'm connected to multiple NR carriers on NSA. T-Mobile n41 CA is definitely live here, with 2500-2600 and 2640-2680, roughly speaking, being the two channels. LTE from the same equipment is at 2600-2640, and supports UL CA, for ~19 Mbps up on 2CA B41 if you're close to the site. Then 2680-2690 is Sprint B41. So T-Mobile is using ~190 MHz of the 194 MHz they own here, and I expect a similar configuration in other places where they own or lease the entire band. I figure they'll bump the higher n41 channel to 50 MHz once Sprint B41 is completely gone, then 70 MHz as VZW gets wider C-Band channels, then 90 MHz (dropping B41 LTE) as the final bump, as all of C-Band clears. Before anyone asks, no, backhaul hasn't been bumped...no gigabit speeds in sight despite all that spectrum. And my phone can't do n25 yet either.

The update does allow you to see UL CA on LTE-only and SCC on NSA NR though. Will post more on those in the network thread.

I signed up for updates. If they wind up offering a decently priced plan with a bunch of tethering data and decent streaming caps, I wouldn't mind consolidating my current Sprint and Boost-on-AT&T lines down to Boost Infinite. Just need to have phone options that aren't a downgrade from my S22, or allow me to bring my S22.