iansltx

So, between the S22 and probably some AT&T improvements, seems like mmW in downtown Austin is getting a little better. Also means that n5 and LTE just outside mmW coverage is less loaded, so I can get much better speeds (200+/70+) than where there's no mmW for offload.

So this is new: 15x15 dedicated n5 in an area where AT&T has all of 850. Means they have as much low-band NR las T-Mobile does (way less mid-band though, even counting the occasional n2/66). https://twitter.com/iansltx/status/1527426642301403145?t=n2MWeh4psvOy-HMzvLYWBQ&s=19

I'll reboot later but seems like my SIM still has the throttle to 2.5 Mbps rather than 8 😕

By contrast, I actually got shunted to B25 last night. I think they were rebooting the radio on the n41 site near me or something. We still have 10 MHz B41 too.

Ergen was quoted as saying they don't have phones with n70 yet, so apparently, well, they don't have phones with n70 yet. So it's not even a deal of "oh this one phone supports n70"...it doesn't. So anything that supports n71, n66, and 3CA should be allowed onto the network, even if it's just via a SIM kit.

S22 showed up today. Graphite color is meh, but don't care enough to swap it. Already transferred most of my stuff over. Radio perf is noticeably better than on the S21; where I usually get ~400/30 indoors a half mile away from my nearest n41 site, I just hit 540/38. Still not "Nokia home modem" levels of perf, but surprising that it's that good in an area that has decent service to begin with.

Apparently the initial rollout is only on n71 and n66; the Edge+ phones they're handing out don't even support n70. At which point, why not let anyone with an S22 onto the network, as the S22 has n71, n66, and the same chip as the Edge+ (8G1, so you can do 3CA). I get why they won't let just anyone with n71/n66 on as they probably need 3CA for perf reasons (would get them 35x15 as they have 10x10 n71, 5x5 n66 FD, 20 MHz n66 SDL), but there's more than one phone that can do that, and they'd have a lot more beta testers if folks could just pick up an S22 and roll. Hopefully they get to the point of doing a SIM kit with an IMEI whitelist to anything with an 8G1, if they're not gonna bother running n70 on even the phones they're handing out. Would absolutely head down to New Braunfels and San Marcos to do some network testing on my brand new S22.

Nope. 26/29/71 on low-band, 66/70 on mid-band-ish.

TX markets would be DFW, Houston, San Marcos, El Paso I believe.

Multi-tenancy as in cheap share-ish plans? I'm just using the pooled plan, as it's rare that I want to actually speedtest...since most of the time I'm not on C-Band heh.

Will be interesting to see when the service is available. The site north of me has n77, but given that 3.45 gear isn't out yet I don't know how quickly they'll retrofit for 3.45. Though maybe one of the sites south of me will get that treatment, as one like a mile south of me already has n66.

Was in Albuquerque yesterday and this morning. n41 is 80 MHz there. Something funky is going on, as the ARFCN there was 501390, which maps to 2506.95 MHz. There's LTE B41 at 2587 or so, which would put that at the top of the NR channel I think if that ARFCN mapped to the bottom of the NR channel...but that wouldn't map right for the 100 MHz channel in Austin... There's also a B41 LTE channel at 2668.4 MHz. Both that and the 2587 one appear to be native T-Mobile; didn't see Sprint B41 there. Pretty sure TMo could eke out 100 MHz if they dropped the 2587 B41 carrier, though as it stands the network is easily faster than anyone else's (unless you count the patches of VZW mmW in a few areas). I thought I saw a B2/25 MFBI carrier as well at 15x15 but not 100% on that; will have to check when I'm back in town. Did see 5x5 B25 in PCS A-F though, in addition to the G block. And of course B26. On the TMo side there's 15x15 n71, B12, and 20x20 + 10x10 B66 in addition to the aforementioned B2. GF is on VZW (US Mobile) and performance was generally lackluster; n5 across town is nothing to write home about. My fault that she's on USM (was trying to get redundancy as she was going to do TMo home internet), but almost certain TMo/Mint would be a much better idea.

Ordered a graphite one (no hurry so I don't mind it taking weeks to show up) as, net of me sending in my S21, it'll be $225 for the 256GB version. Given that I got my S20 heavily subsidized and got the S21 for $150 with trade-in, I'll take it. Slightly shorter phone will be nice, as will n77 and eventual 71+41+41 NR CA.

Confirmed this morning that the bottom B41 carrier is still at 2609, so things haven't moved around yet, as the NR carrier is at 2500-2600.

Can't say about Ireland, but when I was in the UK in February, I got solid connectivity with the $5 day passes (got day passes because if you get throttled on a week pass you stay throttled until the end of the pass...it hurts less on a day pass). Only big limitation was no carrier aggregation despite being on an S21, but I tried with a local SIM from 3 and there was no CA there either so that was definitely a phone issue 😠 Won't be going internationally for awhile yet...probably not for the rest of the year at this rate...so won't know whether they've fixed the travel issues with TNX. Guessing the $5 day passes are toast, which is sad, given that they seem to include multiple networks and tethering support.

Sprint B41 is still live here, albeit at 10 MHz at the very top of the band (2684.3 MHz). B25 is still 10x10 (G + adjacent), and B26 is still live, so that's 40 MHz still on Sprint. They're actively pushing traffic onto that B41 carrier too, when other bands are available. I'll check later, when locking B41 won't throw me onto the Sprint carrier, but IIRC T-Mobile B41 is still 2CA right above the 2500-2600 NR channel. So, no spectrum Tetris yet to ad in another n41 channel. Wouldn't be surprised if it's because most sites don't have more than 1 Gbps of backhaul, so it'd be pointless to add the capacity. And it's not like AT&T or VZW are competitive speed-wise anyway. n71+n41 NR-CA seems to work fine here, though speeds and latency are generally nothing special, and I don't see that config unless I band-select NR only (which means no voice calls because VoNR is still MIA). I expect that T-Mobile won't shut down Sprint B41 here until the entire network goes offline, since they've shown they're willing to self-interfere between T-Mobile B41 and Sprint B41 (back when Sprint has 2640, 2660, 2680) and they're only using 140 MHz of 2.5 on the T-Mobile side right now. Likewise, it doesn't make sense to do anything with B25 until they can flip the whole spectrum slice over to 10x10 n25, so that'll stick around until network shutdown. So locking B25 will continue to be helpful if T-Mobile's own network is congested here, which at this point basically only happens if you're in one of the few pockets that can't get n41. Or it's a super packed event...which tend to happen in the same places so T-Mobile should really drop some n41 SCs in those areas.

Swapped SIMs to TNX last night. SIM was present with my number so it was literally a SIM swap. So now I have NR CA, but streaming is down below 2 Mbps 😠

n77 is the superset, not n78. Source on Rel 16, but I don't know anything further:

Apparently 3.45 requires NR Release 16, which is only available on X65 modems. So the only phones that can take advantage are the S22 series right now. Plus whatever comes out with the 8G1 otherwise. Which annoys me because I'm not hearing great things about the S22, so I don't particularly want to upgrade, but I also want to take advantage of that spectrum. Might have to buy two new phones this year as a result: one for 3.45, one for n70 😐

...and I've now found a place where my phone will hop onto O2 B3. Only 5x5, at least the channel I'm on, but better to have a usable signal than nothing in here, and it seemed like EE wasn't quite able to reach consistently.

Correction: stuff's now backhauling through Chicago rather than Omaha, so we're talking about only a 120ms latency penalty rather than double that...so, basically what you get on Visible in the States 😛 Annoyingly, the Three SIM I had my friend pick up won't do 5G in my phone. The firmware that switches on when I throw that SIM in doesn't include n78 in band selection. And, to add insult to injury, CA works just as well on Three with a native SIM as it does when roaming on EE with my Sprint SIM. That is to say, it doesn't. Which means that Three on native is slower than Sprint on roaming, as EE has 20x20 of both B7 and B3 to play with. So, unless I get throttled for some reason, my Sprint SIM is staying in my phone for the rest of this trip.

Looks like T-Mobile has changed roaming partners a bit. Maybe expanded them. Currently sitting on B7 LTE on EE while sitting on the ground at LHR. Was on B3 earlier. Am also able to connect to Vodafone, but speeds were miserably slow so I pushed my phone back to EE (which is considered to be the best LTE network in the UK anyway). A coworker here grabbed me a 3 SIM so I should be able to see what 5G here looks like on the best network for it according to Ookla (the only one with 100 MHz TD NR AFAIK). But of course that's unrelated to Sprint roaming. Glad that $5 unlimited day passes exist either way; makes holding onto my TNA SIM worthwhile, even with the 200ms latency penalty of backhauling through Omaha.

The thing with roaming is, T-Mobile could roll a bunch of Starlink-backhauled 600-only sites with both LTE and NR and largely get the coverage they need. But that requires more cpex. Sounds like they intend to coast once they hit 2024, which is when AT&T and VZW will be going ham on C-Band. If VZW and AT&T execute, T-Mobile will have to invest in the network rather than doing share buybacks because they have nothing better to do with the money. Hopefully that competitive dynamic actually happens.

SBS doesn't work for things that can't be the PCC. Since VZW doesn't have SA, I can't band-select away from certain NR bands. Nor can I band-select only CBRS, as CBRS is always anchored by 2/13/66 (AT&T owns all of 850 here). In any event, I already know the band plan here: B13, 15x15 PCS DSS, 10x10 each of AWS-1 and AWS-3 for sub-2.4. Then up to 4CA CBRS, plus C-Band (3700-3760) for mid-band. Then 800 MHz n261 (AT&T has n260 deployed here, at least downtown) in a few places. Of those, 2/13/66 are on every site IIRC, though not all sites have DSS, so really all I'm looking for is B48/n77/n261, which means either CellMapper or ServiceMode, and I prefer ServiceMode.

Austin/San Antonio and further west was actually reasonably decent in terms of B41. A lot of that for Austin was due to inheriting a decent WiMAX network, and B41 LTE performed better than WiMAX for coverage. But Sprint had enough customers here that they kinda had to have that density AFAIK.