reedacus25

Yes.

VoLTE uses LTE QCI (QoS Class Identifier) 1 which is the highest priority, save for QCI 5 which is the highest priority and is for IMS signaling. QCI 1-4 are guaranteed bitrate priority, where as QCI 5-9 are not guaranteed a minimum bitrate.

RCS services should be allocated at QCI 2, which is earmarked for "Conversational Video." It is lower priority than VoLTE, but higher priority than standard traffic.

I am unsure what QCI header is being used for standard traffic. Looks to be either QCI 6, 8, or 9.

In theory different APN's could have traffic delivered at different QCI priority. 

Interestingly enough, the tolerance for packet loss is the least for VoLTE (for obvious reasons), but IMS signaling is more tolerant. Just an interesting anecdote. 

Also looks like LTE Rel-12 introduced "Mission critical" prioritization.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QoS_Class_Identifier

So no fail-over on backhaul on their sites? nice 'uncarrier' move there.

 

Calls have been dropping on VoLTE for me in my area, maybe it's related to the pathetic 0.02Mbps Upload.. I give Pity to all T-Mobile customers in my area..

 

The T-Mobile store looks like its getting emptied and the Sprint store is getting fuller and fuller each day.

Is it economical to have redundant backhaul at every site? No. Especially when you stipulate three-9's or higher in your SLA agreement with your AAV vendor.

If you want to double OpEx by pulling redundant T1's to all of your sites, have at it, but I don't want to pay for that.

Any further details like location, device, etc related to your dropped VoLTE calls? Curious about that because aside from coverage issues, VoLTE has pretty much been rock solid for me for over a year.

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You didn't know? It's the next ReCarrier move.

 

GambleOn: Play Russian Roulette with your service in the name of saving power -- for the environment, or something. Random outages to help save power at the cost of reliability and quality of service. We'll even occasionally shut our home market off or a market near you.

 

Because who needs coverage. Just go back inside!

Not to give T-Mobile a free pass, but the issue was their transport provider. Not really something they have complete control over.

https://twitter.com/bbraunlich/status/673154523125288960

As for the roaming situation, I think it would be wise to flash open roaming in the affected LAC's, but if you have T-Mobile, you already know/expect there to be no in-market roaming (or out-of-market in most cases). It's a cost reduction they have always incurred for better or worse.

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I'm waiting for Monday, when my mother is going to call the T-Mobile ER executive she spoke with, and see if he is going to accept the offer we wanted to get a few years ago, seeing that this guy seems to really want us back on T-Mobile. My mother said she had spoken with him for over an hour the other day, and he offered her to be her main contact point with all issues, so he seems to really want us to stay on. After all, my mother has had T-Mobile prepaid for several years and has spent over $9,000 on the service. I want him to give us the Select Value Unlimited Talk, Text, and Unlimited 4G plan at $45 monthly, they were giving to loyalty customers a few years ago. Otherwise, we may be waiting for awhile without phone service, until AT&T gets the Kyocera Duraforce XD available. She's been going over to her sister's to make phone calls, which has been a bit inconvenient.

I'm a little curious as to what entitles you to a very limited targeted rate plan for loyal customers on legacy rate plans. You've spoken plenty about network abuse, and this is billing abuse.

I'm all for getting a deal, but wasting internal resources time trying to hem and haw because you want to be treated special because you don't want to pay the going rate for what you want is abuse of the system.

As a postpaid customer of 11 years paying simple choice rates, what makes you more eligible for a special rate than I?

But people are seeing more congestion now than without BingeOn, even with Speedtest prioritized and whitelisted. Legere has made the mistake of the decade.

While I don't disagree with the idea that this is a mistake, I think it would be terribly short sighted to not chalk some of this up to seasonal increases in load due to the holiday.

People are with their family, and are tired of being with their family, and are thus on their phones. The shoppers are using their phones in dense areas bogging the network down.

Not to say that binge on hasn't had an effect, but I think the timing on this was impeccable how it overlaps with the seasonally increasing usage period of the holidays.

Just my 2¢

What sort of backwards congestion is this!

 

 

 

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Just for reference I think it's worth noting you are using HSPA+ here and not LTE, which explains the 'poor' upload speeds, because we are used to seeing massive upload speeds thanks to the joys of wide LTE channels and the efficiencies of LTE's reverse link in comparison to HSPA.

HSPA+ tops out at around 5 Mbps up in perfect lab conditions, and is really rare to see anything above 4 in optimal (late at night, extremely high signal) conditions.

Essentially, it's not congestion, it's poor signal and the limitations of HSPA+.

I think the price hike on Unlimited was inevitable, though I figured it would be drawn out over time with +5$ here and +$10 there. $15 is a materially significant price hike. The price hike itself is almost the cost of my unlimited data feature in total ($20 vs $15).

Net Neutrality arguments aside, I do wish this was not unlimited. This would be a fantastic deal if it was just the video throttling. Offer more data, and stretch that data further with the 'optimization' of the video. I.e. you pay $50 for enough data to watch 4 episodes of Netflix; now for the same price you get enough data to watch 8 episodes, but with BingeOn optimization, that 8 episodes gets stretched out to 24 episodes!

I just see this congestion really taking a toll on the network. Incentivizing use is one thing when you have tons of excess capacity, but in many areas, thats not quite the case. This leads me to my other point that I feel like BingeOn data (since the packet core already flags that data as zero listed) as de-prioritized across the network, as the "paid" data should be more valuable than the "free" candy I mean data, thus gets higher network priority, especially when a sector is under significant load.

Just my 2 copper Lincoln's.

I'm not blown away with Sprint in Chicago. The service is the same as it is in my hometown. I didn't see those crazy speeds but service is good overall.

 

 

I don't see too much promo for sprint as I do T-Mobile in Chicago. Everywhere I turn its T-Mobile somewhere

 

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I was in Chicago a little over a week ago and didn't see too much T-Mobile advertising. Was expecting more actually. I saw an ad in the Red Line terminal for Sprint as well as this full bus ad.

I've seen some sprint prompt but they were all on electric billboards that didn't stay visible for no more than a few seconds. Honestly if I lived I Chicago and wasn't up on who's the best carrier I would have thought that T-Mobile was one of the best based on the amount of billboards and etc that is posted.

 

 

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I would have to give the network crown to Verizon in Chicago by far. Only had to use my Verizon hot spot a couple of times for work, but it was flying while T-Mobile and ATT were either weak signal or poor capacity. 

On my way to the airport me and my über driver was talking about phone carriers. He said he likes AT&T but it has it moments. I mentioned all the T-Mobile promo and he said that they have to be paying a shit load for the amount of campaigning they are doing. I told him I had Sprint and he had nothing bad to say. He said Sprint has come a long way in Chicago and was even considering switching cause he's heard good things about them plus it's cheaper.

 

So in essence, Sprint is I guess letting word of mouth in Chicago spread about the network quality where as T-Mobile is posting billboards wherever they can to get the attention of people in a " hey look at me, what about me" approach.

 

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T-Mobile only failed me in a handful of locations. ORD was completely overwhelmed. DAS worked decently with speeds ~3-5 in each direction. Step outside and the macro layers were swamped. ATT was also swamped, and had no data capacity for much longer than T-Mobile leaving ORD on I-190. 

Willis (Sears) Tower had no coverage in the below ground lobby for the Sky Deck. ATT was HSPA DAS. At 103 stories up, there were DAS antennas, ATT was a heavily loaded/noisy, but usable, LTE layer, T-Mobile was a heavily loaded/noisy HSPA layer with EDGE fallback. The DAS antennas were not arranged in a logical manner. Sky deck is a square with antennas in all 4 corners. The problem was that the antennas are aimed into two corridors, with 2 sides of the square uncovered, and 2 sides with antennas aimed at each other. I'll also toss the Hancock Tower in with this, again with a very directional/loaded HSPA/EDGE DAS node in the Sky Lounge Bar.

The other location I had issues with coverage was at the Adler Planetarium. Both ATT and T-Mobile had virtually no service in the lower levels. ATT was a bit stronger as would be expected. Overall I was pleased with T-Mobile service in general. It tended to be more reliable in data scenarios than ATT in the Loop. Those 3 instances were the only real time I had issues of consequence. Conversely, Wrigley Field had excellent service. 30+/30+ all around Wrigley on T-Mobile, had never seen 30+ Mbps up, let alone consistent. 

Just figured I'd throw some experience with the other carriers in there. Wish I had had time to make it to the Adams St entrance to Union Station. Heard thats pretty impressive.

Well, here is a tit for tat for some members in another thread once again bemoaning current Sprint handsets' lack of simultaneous voice and data -- except when on Wi-Fi for data.

 

Good luck, T-Mobile users, finding Wi-Fi for voice and data inside those buildings, in those wooded areas, behind those hills, and down in those valleys.

 

AJ

What do you think all those LTE equipped cars are being used for? [emoji3]

Because at T-Mobile our mantra is "We do not do in market roaming. We would rather leave you with 'WiFi Calling Only.'"

 

AJ

Fixed that for you [emoji6]

Yeah, well, that probably is not as true as you assert. Even today, T-Mobile still is not doing a full "3G" overlay. Many of the rural sites are remaining GSM with ground mount band 2 LTE.

 

AJ

If you want to see that, I point you to Jackson, MS where they didn't even get Brandon, Clinton, Byram, Raymond, or Canton 3G overlain. ATT cut them off at the knees on that market. I only speak specifically about this market because I have definitive info regarding it and experience with the market.

By 2012, LTE was the focus, and thus they punted on most 3G overlay in lieu of taking their modern core to modernized standards to better align with their future banding (L2100, U1900 instead of U2100), as well as quickly turn those markets around with FTTT already in place. After that was substantially complete, the quick and dirty L1900 overlay was begun.

This is not to say that I don't lament the lack of UMTS or RRH in the L1900 GMO territories, but for most scenarios it is "good enough". Slingbox from Brooksville, MS to New Orleans, LA with one dropout north of Lauderdale, MS is a testament of it being good enough.

T-Mobile has clearly made a two tier network the plan with their L1900 layer, that will be propped up for a while with L700 in lots of areas.

Again, I am not going to say that I don't know that it could be better, or even should be better, but it's firing on enough cylinders to achieve the majority of the intended goal.

Maybe Sprint would pursue a massive rural buildout if VZW attempted a merger with Sprint that was blocked, thus Sprint lucked into a $6 billion breakup fee.

 

If you catch my drift...

 

AJ

It's also worth noting that in the this scenario, Verizon would have halted any in progress network upgrades for Sprint for 9 months, while they were in the midst of a very large 3G overlay (obviously speaking about T-Mobile here, but we could apply NV to the scenario as an example), thus stunting growth significantly as a competitive advantage.

While that cash and later spectrum were then used to set the plan for LTE modernization in motion, you can blame a lot of the EDGE only areas from never getting 3G love on the ATT merger.

He made it so he brought his network's congestion issues upon himself because of his comments to his "fans". T-Mobile ended up being the first carrier to deploy deprioritization for the very reason of its own consequences.

 

Unfortunately, some of the victims of those consequences, people who bought into what John Legere falsely offered them, decided to migrate over to Sprint and now, Sprint has enacted this deprioritization policy too, when Sprint never had to do this before. While I understand the necessity of it now that the Sprint network has those people from T-Mobile over on its network, it now is placed upon longstanding Sprint customers once they upgrade their device. It is unfair to them and it all spans back to John Legere.

 

Yes, there are those who use way more data on their devices than they need. However, it was John Legere who made that all acceptable, which now is affecting Sprint, AT&T is just doing the deprioritization policy because they can, not that they really need to. Verizon could too, but they don't. Deprioritization is unfair, especially when there are better ways to manage network congestion.

 

What exactly did John Legere personally do that both caused congestion issues on both the T-Mobile network, and vicariously the Sprint network? The "consequence of his actions" was adding ~20M customers to a network in progress, almost a 2/3 increase in total subscribers.

People will abuse anything. Give them an inch, they will take a mile, and then raise a stink when you call them out on it. It sucks for the people who only took a foot or a yard, but one bad apple spoils the whole barrel.

To claim this all "spans back to John Legere" is a far fetching conspiracy theory. Sprint has network abusers, just like T-Mobile, ATT, and Verizon.

The network has finite resources, and each user pulls from a single resource pool. Just like a buffet restaurant, you can't get a garbage bag and dump tray after tray and the complain when other paying customers want their plate or two or three. Deprioritization is not some evil scheme concocted in a Bellevue office throwing darts at Marcello's face. It is an acceptable means of network management. I understand that you have your own ideas and opinions about how to manage a network, but trust me, there are people much more qualified and knowledgable about this than most everyone in this forum that have that as their job. Guess what non-deprioritized users see for network speeds in congested areas. Bad speeds. That's why it's called congestion. So if there is only 0.5 Mbps to share across a single congested sector, and they drop the deprioritized user to 0.1 Mbps is the difference all that great? Did you not get enough data up to that point already?

I understand this is a Sprint forum, I understand Legere isn't everyone's best friend here, but these claims go just a tad beyond reason in my book. This is not a personal attack at you, you have plenty of great posts, I just take issue with the "Legere is the root of all evils" thesis of your post.

I have been told that these site plan's may be maximum build, and may get built with much lower loads.

Essentially they can go before the city with the biggest possible eyesore and get that approved, then they can scale that back down, knowing they can get approval for more if the time comes down the road. That or they expect to get the license in the future, thus future-proofing.

I have also been told that AB License Co has been seen in permits in San Diego building out (co-location) protection sites. I can't confirm that, but it is something I have been told.

As someone who lives in AB License Co territory, I would love to be wrong in this case, and see T-Mobile scoop it up.

T-Mobile is the least dense network in New Orleans by a long shot, and with most of the spacing, this would almost perfectly fill in most, if not all, gaps in the greater New Orleans area.

tl;dr Legere wants B41, nationwide B26, and Sprint customers.

As far as nationwide B26, I think you mean sub-1 GHz greenfield spectrum. Which they have in quite a few, but far from all areas with L700A.

I think it's hard not to imagine that T-Mobile's hyper dense macro layer in major metros would perform well with a spectrum intensive high band deployment.

So I'm not disagreeing, these are all valid points. I think it's egregious how underdeployed the 2.5 GHz spectrum is personally, but that's a whole separate issue.

In my opinion, I think there ought to be a separation between auctions. Nationwide carriers have alot more resources, primarily financial, than regional carriers. I don't think it is fair for regional carriers having to compete against national carriers for spectrum.

 

Hence, I'd separate auctions. National carriers for nationwide spectrum, Regional carriers for regional spectrum, which there would be spectrum set aside for. That is what I'd like to see done.

I think what Robert is hitting on is the discrepancy of the cleared spectrum varying market to market.

Just as an off the top of my head example, New Orleans may be able to clear 50 MHz of spectrum, where Baton Rouge may only clear 40 MHz, and Jackson, MS clear only 30.

That example is just demonstrating that spectrum availability will vary market to market.

So in some markets the "reserve" for "smaller" carriers will be less in some markets than others which is variable based off of how much spectrum can be cleared by broadcasters in a given market.

Is there even a ratified band plan yet? This auction has just been one giant cluster mess from the get go.

Um, yes it does.

 

IMG_20150924_073707.jpg

I stand corrected. Going to grab coffee number 2.

All of these "promos" are riddled with fine print of dependence of trading in a working device, and depending on what device it is, how low your payments go.

$20 on T-Mobile with no trade in, $22 with sprint.

$15 for both if you trade in an older smartphone from both T-Mobile and Sprint.

It's really no different than doing an EIP structure where the balance is reduced by the value of the trade, reducing overall MRP towards the balance. This isn't some smoke and mirrors show on either part, just overly complicated charts that highlight an edge case that demonstrates some fantastic number that the company wants to toot its PR horn about.

The real winners here are consumers who don't care enough, or are incapable of figuring out the actual value of devices and they see a low number per month, and that works for them. Their iPhone was worth $200 new, so it's basically worthless now right?

I also think comparisons are totally unequal because we are comparing an 18-month lease term on T-Mobile to a 22-month lease term on Sprint. So let's keep that in mind as well.

 

So here is Legere's promo pricing absolute BULLSHIT chart. It doesn't disclose ANYTHING of importance, claims no taxes owed on a lease which only applies if you turn in the lease and not buy it which should merit a footnote at least and absolutely pisses me off by how disingenuous it is. If you cancel service it goes all the way up to $27/mo for the remainder of the payments.

https://twitter.com/JohnLegere/status/646677758878216192

 

 

It doesn't disclose that you need to trade in an IPHONE 6 for this. So you will have all these poor bastard current customers coming in with an iPhone 6 that still has lease payments on it and causing all kinds of confusion. Here is why this is bullshit. 

The $5 deal is pretty lousy but the $10 for a 5s isn't terrible since by my quick math it would make it $10x18 months + the $164 payment to keep the phone after 18 months which means you get a $344 iPhone 6s at the end of 18 months (before the deferred taxes which are also significant).

 

So lets compare this on a yearly basis trade in vs not trading in:

If you pay the $5/mo for 12 months (60+99 upfront for 64 GB model+410 iPhone 6 market value ..or is it $550?) you are paying at least $569

 

If you pay $20/mo for 12 months lease without a trade in at all (240+99 upfront for 64 GB model) you are paying $339

 

If you own a iPhone already this is not a great deal.

 

Since the comparison to Sprint is inevitable due to both carriers being the most aggressive: The problem here is that it is still more $ than what Sprint is offering. Right now the iPhone 6s (w/any smartphone trade-in )with unlimited data on Sprint is $75 (60 plan + 15 for a 16 GB iPhone 6s) vs $85 ($80+ $5 for a 16 GB iPhone 6s) plus the cost I outlined above of trading your phone in. The gap widens when you compare trading in an LG sunrise for $30 on Sprint or even a much older iPhone.

 

This is not a good deal for yearly upgraders and in my eyes even at 18 months it is a little wanting. I consider the $5 deal a good marketing ploy where T-Mobile can shout about having the cheapest iPhone plan while costing the people who take this plan quite a bit more money than they realize.

 

Even with matching the $15 for any smartphone the price gap is $75 vs $95 or enough to get an iPhone 6s Plus with 128GB and still have money left over every month. Further, @ $240 difference over 12 months this is still quite in favor of Sprint's current promotion and plans.

 

 

edit: to add to this already long post: T-Mobile is becoming way too complicated. They started out by getting rid of all discounts and promising one price to everyone but now there are people on a billion different plans that they have to constantly keep having to check in to see if there is something better. Even simple questions such as online vs in store pricing, how much tethering, 3 different jump programs. This feels more like shopping at Kohls where EVERYTHING IS ON SALE AND YOU CAN GET EVEN BETTER SAVINGS WITH KOHLS CASH OR A KOHLS CARD APPLY NOW style promotions. My sister has Tmobile and came to me today asking about her plan and I had such a hard time telling what the hell plan she was using and if she was eligible for the new promotions and all kinds of crap. What happened to a simple choice everyone has the same plan? It is an absolute mess now and the employees are given NO warning of these plans which was obvious when I tried calling in with her.  Oh and for the record if you wanted to trade an iPhone 6 64 GB in for an iPhone 6s 64 GB T-mobile insists that you pay the $99 down payment anyways.

 

Looks like T-Mobile's not the only one trying to confuse everyone with the iPhone launch. 

http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/not-so-fast-t-mobile-sprint-beats-your-price-with-worlds-best-offer-on-iphone-6s-1month.htm

Of note, I completely agree with the sentiment of T-Mobile not being "simple" anymore. With 3 different Jump! schemas, grandfathered promo rate plans, new rate plans with different int'l roaming rates, etc it is a confusing mess.

Not sure why the cost of the phone needs to be obfuscated any more than it already is. iPhones cost $650. If people don't want to pay it, then don't buy it. Tired of all the gimmicks and half-promos, not just from T-Mobile, but everyone in the one-up game of getting to the lowest cost. Now if they want to give me a free storage upgrade, gladly! If they want to knock off a few payments, sure! Car dealerships offer deals that pay the first X payments for you. But this race to a near-free iPhone lease is ridiculous.

Admittedly T-Mobile wants to get those iPhone 6's out of customer hands to get the 6S in their hands so they have Band 12 coverage and are less prone to having a reason to walk.

I initially largely lamented the fact that the L1900 overlay meant no UMTS services.

Largely because of site spacing, the lack of RRH, and especially, the inefficient use of spectrum holdings.

I still largely lament the fact that T-Mobile has 20-40+ MHz of AWS sitting fallow in some areas.

In a lot of highway cases (for me at least), T-Mobile is just barely too sparsely laid out. In many of these cases, RRH would almost always solve that with increased Tx and especially greatly increased Rx sensitivity.

Other cases result in a need for more macro builds in suburban and exurban areas.

I say all this, but T-Mobile has bust its tail in Mississippi and southeast Louisiana. T-Mobile has a vastly larger LTE footprint in state of MS than CSpire at this point, and has for close to a year at this point. By ~October/November of '14 they had substantial progress completed on US-45 and I-59, with substantial completion by January. And to be honest, it works well enough for me that I almost never worry that I don't have UMTS layers to fall back on. Streamed a Saints game from Starkville, MS to New Orleans last weekend on Slingbox and dropped the feed once in a known bad signal area on US-45. A year ago that was impossible.

So in all, it would be fantastic to have UMTS layers, and wider LTE channels, and more spectrum deployed total, but for where I am right now, it's working for me, and there is still room to grow which is good.

T-Mobile has ~20 sites awaiting back haul in MS, I know they must be back haul because these were GPRS sites that now have EDGE but no L1900 yet. And they've been waiting for over 6 months for it. So I would call 20/~500 sites in MS substantial completion.

Anyone can ask them (don't; rhetorical) the honest question, and it is not trolling, why T-Mobile refuses to complete it's 2G to 3G overlay, particularly in suburban and semirural areas where it is absolutely necessary.

 

When is that never-ending project going to be declared "substantially complete"? Let alone this new skip 2G to LTE thing.

 

They have essentially abandoned UMTS overlay projects.

The only new UMTS sites that have been coming online are new densification sites that are typically U1900/L2100 only.

Otherwise, they have basically come to the conclusion that it's more economical to skip UMTS in favor of LTE on the legacy GSM sites, except where they take those sites to full modernization.

The dream of an entire GSM/UMTS/LTE footprint is basically just that, a dream. Forget the dream of tower top radios and AWS gear in most of those areas, even with the 700 overlay.

And I for one was a huge proponent of UMTS overlay for better reach and voice quality/capacity compared to LTE and GSM respectively.

Tmobile nsn uses 4 sectors iirc.

 

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Well that's a pretty broad stroke of the paintbrush.

Yes, T-Mobile has many, many 4 sector sites in its macro infrastructure, typically to provide certain capacity and coverage requirements where they can't feasibly use 2 macro sites but need that extra coverage and capacity.

This 4-sector deal has also caused all the false Band 12 reports from LTE discovery due to the seemingly mindless GCI scheme T-Mobile has decided to employ for the Band 12 overlay.

I also feel pretty confident that 4-sector Ericsson builds exist too. But not every site is 4-sector. Heck, not every site is even 3-sector in some rural builds.

That minimum GSM allocation seems wonky, since 22 is not evenly divisible by many other integers -- just 1, 2, and 11. So, what is the N or K of the frequency reuse pattern with 22 GSM channels?

 

AJ

I would reckon reuse factor of 7, which leaves an extra channel for a random 4 sector site?

Would be my best guess.

So in NYC, where they only have 10fdd pcs, TMO could still have Hspa 42 and 12 gsm carriers (200khz per carrier)

 

 

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That is too small a frequency reuse factor for a dense network like that (k=4).

It's just not feasible unfortunately. In a less dense network they could get away with it. Not NYC.

It'll be a while before VoLTE capacity is completely used. VoLTE has much more capacity than 3G voice technologies. VoLTE isn't used by many right now from T-Mobile's numbers.

And the number of Band 12 devices are even fewer than the number of devices using VoLTE. While its only 5 MHz wide, VoLTE has very good techniques to ensure voice prioritization. Even in saturated areas. It's far from perfect, but its there. And 5 MHz will go a lot further than you think with an existing AWS or PCS LTE layer as the primary bearer.