iansltx

Fredericksburg now no longer has Sprint B41, it seems, and it looks like T-Mobile has n41 at 40 MHz (come on Auction 108!) on another site or two, allowing for n41 reception at my parents' place while outdoors (including NR CA of course, with 20x20 n71 for pretty decent speeds if you CA that way). LTE is 10x10 B71, 10x10 B2, 10x10 + 5x5 B66, as well as T-Mobile B41 at 2525 MHz in a spot or two. Saw nearly 400 Mbps on n41 + LTE on the way out of town eastbound.

Sprint still has G block and another 5x5 in PCS A-F turned on; didn't try B26 but I'm sure it's still there, so Sprint still has 15x15 total to play with, though at this point all of that is 312-250.

Further east I ran into Sprint B41 still live on 2626 MHz (no CA), clocking solid (~60 Mbps down, 7 Mbps up) speeds. T-Mobile B2 bumped up to 15x15 in the same general area (IIRC where Verizon has 850B so spectrum config is a little different than Fredericksburg), allowing for ~90 Mbps up on 20x20 n71 (~190 Mbps down).

Entertainingly, I had to power cycle my phone to get off of West Central Wireless roaming as I got into T-Mobile territory west of Fredericksburg. Which I definitely wanted to do, as their 10x10 B12 was clocking single-digit Mbps, and it didn't seem like it was due to throttling. I had also seen HSPA/HSPA+ (actually saw both) on WCW on 850 MHz (Boost could actually pass calls and texts on it...the Celero's H+ reception isn't half bad), as well as EDGE (!). Even saw at least one site using WCW's lone 5x5 of AWS spectrum (1730-1735 MHz).

Side note: T-Mobile should buy West Central Wireless. AT&T has basically completely overbuilt WCW (I roamed on AT&T more than I did WCW, to my chagrin as AT&T roaming is throttled to like 64 kbps), and all of the spectrum WCW has except 850 is complementary to T-Mobile's. TMo could trade the 850 licenses to AT&T for the other half of the PCS license WCW owns in the San Angelo area (going from 7.5x7.5 to 15x15), plus the bottom 10 MHz of AWS AT&T owns in the Concho RSA (which would bring T-Mobile to 20x20 in e.g. San Angelo). T-Mobile could even work out a swap such that they kept 5x5 of B5 long enough to get WCW subscribers off (say, 12/31/22), so AT&T could go from effectively 10x10 to 20x20, then go to the full 25x25 thereafter. No, it's not worth keeping 850 split to ensure Verizon gets some of it, given the amount of B13-only areas in that neck of the woods.

G block and B26 are live out here (near-ish London, TX), in addition to 5x5 B71 on what I believe is another site. Will know tonight what's live in the vicinity of Fredericksburg, but betting 2x 5x5 B25 and 20 MHz B41 is still live with how heavily TMo relies on keep sites there.

Posting this from AT&T n5 pretty close to the middle of nowhere; T-Mobile roams on West Central Wireless H+ (B12 doesn't make it here), though occasionally I can get Sprint B26. VZW is B13 only. AT&T has 10x10 n5 (H+ is gone). Plus 10x10 each of B66, B66, B2, B14, B30, plus 5x5 B12 and I think B2. Some sites around here only have 5x5 B30, and those sites also have neither NR nor B14. Saw in excess of 100 Mbps down at times on 50x50 5CA, including n5.

T-Mobile roams on AT&T out here, albeit at like 64 kbps. Boost on T-Mobile roams on West Central H+ for voice and SMS only. Maybe WCW B12 too but it doesn't reach to where I've been for the past 24 hours.

2 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

Kinda makes me wonder how hard mmWave is going to be pushed still.  AT&T has 160x160MHz of 3.45/3.7GHz. Makes that seem like mmWave might still see very limited deployment.  

What is AT&T doing with WCS these days? Still limited to 5x5? IIRC (could be completely wrong here) filters they used to make them 10x10 still had interference on Sirius, so had to go 5x5 unless AT&T broadcast Sirius off the towers. 

AT&T only has 40 MHz deployed right now; 80 will require the S22 or better (3.45) and combo radios, and 120 has to wait until December 2023. They won't get 160...they have 40 MHz each of 3.7/3.8/3.45.

Given timing, mmW will still be useful for AT&T, particularly given that iPhones can't use 3.45, and there are a handful of phones that can do mmW but not C-Band.

AT&T does have 10x10 of WCS deployed in some areas; I've seen it even on some sites in the Austin area. It's just hit or miss. They use it for FWA too I believe, at 256QAM down 64QAM up. Haven't seen them deploy NR on it...yet. they don't seem to want to throw NR on anything less than 15x15 once they have the icon.

One more high score. Turns out, using a USB 3 cable rather than the one that came with my PH-1 unlocks full wired tethering speeds well in excess of a gigabit.

Now, T-Mobile could totally do this on n41+n41+n71 3CA if they actually tried, and you wouldn't have to pick one specific street corner downtown to get it, but that's neither here nor there for this post.

AT&T also has n66 DSS on downtown, so there's technically 30x30 of sub-6 live where I'm sitting on top of 800 MHz of 38 GHz.

As a final note, and I do note this in the Twitter thread, Boost Mobile pretty obviously does *not* speed-cap its AT&T provisioned SIMs, tethered or on-phone. So they're excellent network test SIMs if you're judicious about how many mmW speed tests you do...and I'm not entirely sure why you'd get AT&T postpaid when this is an option unless your data usage is >35GB.

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

18 hours ago, schmidtj said:

Sprint Legacy Video Throttling Fixed

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

On 5/13/2022 at 8:38 PM, dkyeager said:

Still have B26 in Columbus, OH, but only seeing one neighbor.  Might be down to just a handful in this metro.

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.

16 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Not certain about that. Would love to know the model varient/ fccid of what they will be handing out.  press does such a horrible job reporting on bands supported.

 

Agree on the s22. The modem can be more easily reprogrammed.

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.

1 hour ago, red_dog007 said:

The equipment that Dish is deploying now, does it even support n48 or n77?  Seems like a good deal, this will allow Dish to continue a one climb per tower strategy. 

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.

2 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Although US Mobile now reportedly has higher priority than Visible thus may give better speedtest results and better access to priority restricted bands such as n77 in some areas.  US Mobile has been discussing multi tenancy like Visible recently thus may become more cost effective for hunters.

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.

2 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Will be good to see your AT&T 3.45GHz +n77 results.

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 😠

On 3/12/2022 at 4:53 PM, dkyeager said:

What specific aspects of Release 16 does it require?  Surprised they just didn't go the n77 super band, n78.

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.