iansltx

In Fredericksburg, T-Mobile is now CA'ing B71 (10x10), B2 (10x10), and B66 (10x10), with additional AWS-3 at 5x5 also available, and sometimes serving as an anchor for n41 (still 40 MHz because Auction 108 hasn't happened yet). Sprint B41 at 2626 MHz is still humming along, with 2-and-change mile range indoors. I don't think I saw my phone on n71 once while in town over the weekend; if I could get NR, it was always n41. Should be fun when they turn on n71+n41 CA there. In Austin, n41 is now a non-event; you have to be deep in a building away from a cell site to drop connectivity. AAHFs have been switched to NR-only at 80 MHz from what I can tell. I expect AT&T to push hard this summer with 3.45+3.7, as this *should* be their market to lose. But T-Mobile has another four months where they're easily at the top of the heap if VZW's lackluster C-Band deployment continues.

Typing this from tethered Boost/AT&T. Hit nearly 300 Mbps yesterday coming into Austin thanks to AFAIK 5CA + n5. My bet is that the traffic on the n5 channel was light enough that I had it to myself, rather than taking the DSS penalty (since there's another B5 channel), and AT&T has 15x15 in both PCS and AWS, plus B12, B14, B30, and another B66 carrier. So, lotta potential bands to aggregate. Also saw AT&T include a 5x5 B2 sliver in their LTE mix further west. So at this point AT&T is using every bit of spectrum they can.

My phone will do 4CA on VZW even at (near) idle, and based on Ookla's stats in town C-Band just isn't here; AT&T speeds bumped up since 1/19 but VZW's were flat. Right now I have two VZW lines: Visible and US Mobile Pooled. ServiceMode is locked out on the latter but speeds are uncapped and latency is better (VZW/Visible deprioritization here, like many places, is pretty brutal). But obviously for network sniffing the Visible SIM is better, so when I'm site hunting that's the one that's in my phone.

To be clear here, finding T-Mobile n41 when there were two towers live in the entire Austin metro back in October 2020 or so was easier than finding VZW C-Band with "95 million pops". Not comparing the current n41 build of course because that's taking a gun to a knife fight at this point. Also tried finding n77 southwest of Austin. Couldn't. n2 for days.

Did some more exploring tonight. Saw n77 on both my USM and Visible SIMs, but never for long enough to take a screenshot, let alone do a speedtest. VZW's coverage maps are *massively* overstated for n77, at least here. Had to go pretty far north to even get those glimpses. Finding T-Mobile n41 was miles easier.

Did some exploring yesterday/last night and didn't find a shred of C-Band, including with my brand new US Mobile SIM. Did find 4CA CBRS but the site seemed backhaul constrained; both that plus 15x15 B2 and band-locked 2/66 got me 190 Mbps or so.

Did some more exploring yesterday/last night and I think I spotted some LAA downtown but didn't get a chance to confirm before it went away in favor of mmW, which also went away pretty quickly. Also saw another n66 site, as well as an n2 site, making AT&T the second carrier to run n2 DSS within a few miles of me. I think at this point they won't be able to advertise anything flashy, but due to the sheer amount of CA they're throwing at customers here they can keep their network at 50+ Mbps until they can deploy both 3.45 and 3.7, and that's probably enough.

They are using DSS on B5 here, on one carrier. LTE-only on the other AFAIK. I kinda hope AT&T doesn't turn DSS on in markets where dropping H+ bumps them from 5x5 for everything else to 10x10. They have 10x10 of B14 and 5x5-10x10 of B12 to throw users on, and with the delays to their C-Band deployment due to waiting for gear their network is effectively LTE-only in many areas despite an increasing proportion of 5G phones. The network was doing just fine without the extra B5 bandwidth, so not a whole lot of reason to basically go backwards when they said they're dropping 3G to expand 5G.

Did see n66 DSS earlier tonight though.

In other news, so far I haven't seen any C Band from AT&T. Just got a new Boost SIM so now I can actually check. It picks up n5 but no C Band.

Aaaaand C-Band is delayed for another couple of weeks. Welp.

Heh, as of this morning you could do that here (okay, no blizzard, but below freezing). The fun part is that the site with VZW mmW doesn't have T-Mobile n41 on it, so by the time you're in range for VZW mmW the T-Mobile n41 signal is a bit weaker, though still plenty enough to hit 300+ mbps.

Folks are starting to see VZW C-Band here and there. I'll start rotating my Visible SIM in more often to see if I catch it here. The site just to the north of me is a pretty new (April?) CBRS build, so hopefully the equipment they added can do C-Band NR as well. If so, I should be able to get it at home, as CBRS (barely) reaches indoors.

Apologies for the slow reply on this one. I didn't have contiguous coverage despite the sites being every block. Outdoors, either line of sight or with my back turned to the site. Given that most buildings near there have thick limestone blocks for walls, basically zero chance the signal would've made it inside (though I didn't check). VZW's n260 on the macro near my place in Austin is significantly more durable, though I keep forgetting to test it indoors quite nearby (betting it wouldn't work though). LAA was less fragile than n260 for these SCs. So, in answer to your question, no. Not for AT&T at least. This is a "throw whatever capacity we can at outdoor users and see what sticks" play.

Very little; I'm still in a TNA SIM so the stuff I'm seeing isn't on my phone.

In Fredericksburg now T-Mobile has enough n41+B66 (5+15) sites live (with n71+B71 as well I'm sure, at 10x10 and 20x20, respectively) that the few B2-only areas are now pretty usable. It helps that basically every Sprint site behaves as a keep site, and they all have enough backhaul to hit 70 Mbps on B41 (no CA). B25 is still at least two 5x5 carriers here, which adds to the 312-250 mix. On the flip side, there's only enough spectrum for 40 MHz n41 here. Will be interesting to see what happens to 2.5 once Sprint goes offline, as the B41 carrier basically overlaps n41 in nominal terms, which probably works because the LTE is being served off of Sprint sites, while NR is off of T-Mobile. So I'm not sure that they could get 60 MHz n41 here, and that would make LTE quality dicey again unless they got 2+25+66+71 on every site (and 26 if they can somehow make that work on T-Mobile gear). But, for now at least, T-Mobile is now good enough here that I wouldn't mind recommending them, just like Sprint was good enough to recommend pre-merger. Though VZW still has a site or two where no one else is available.

https://twitter.com/iansltx/status/1464042108021583882 Got to play with some AT&T mmW last night.

It's extra impressive considering that the merger was like a year and a half ago, at which point T-Mobile didn't own the spectrum. Looks like the next milestone is YE23, by the end of which they hit another 100 million with mid-band. Will be interesting to see what network enhancements happen in the mean time. Guessing the next one is an official announcement of NR CA, with a coverage bump from that for mid-band (might be enough to get them to 225MM with the existing network). Then n25 this summer, which will free up some NR CA capacity from n71. Oh, and VoNR.

Surprised Dallas and Houston are that expensive. Denver makes sense as it's late-clearing on C-Band.

Unlimited Plus Subsidy (business)

Per Reddit, 1.5 throttle will get fixed in a few weeks. I'm actually 100% okay with an 8 Mbps throttle for video, despite the network being able to consistently deliver 50x that here. But 1.5 is a bridge too far.

Anyone know if they fixed stream bandwidth restrictions on TNX? I want NR CA now that the site nearest me has n41, but I don't want a 1.5 Mbps video throttle when I have 8 Mbps right now

Yesterday Boost released the Celero 5G, made by WIngtech. Has a MTK Dimensity 700, a 6.5" screen, a big battery, and is $280 + tax including a year of unlimited Boost service. The current revision of the phone supports T-Mobile NR bands, precisely zero of which AT&T uses at the moment (unless AT&T is using n66 now and I missed it), and two of which (n66, n71) DishNet will use. There will be AT&T and DishNet specific versions of the Celero later. I took this opportunity to grab my dad a new phone...and this will move him back from US Mobile on VZW on a Moto e4+. If the phone works well, I'll get one for my brother before the intro deal expires, upgrading his Moto G fast. I'll grab the DishNet variant when it's available, assuming that'll be the first phone that can do n70 (I assume it'll be able to do n26 and n29 as well, but we shall see).

I expect 10x10 n25 to show up here once Sprint LTE goes offline. Maybe we'll see n66 as well but I'm actually seeing the 5x5 AWS-3 used more often now, so it might stay on LTE after all for a bit longer. Thinking we won't see more than 10x10 on NR in 1900/2100 here for quite awhile; 20x20 B2 is too valuable to drop down, and the 25x25 PCS T-Mobile has here isn't contiguous with the bit of B25.