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chamb

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Everything posted by chamb

  1. chamb
    I have two Galaxy S-5's on my account. Both of them just love to hang onto band 26 LTE & Voice. They do this even though I am in an area with GREAT band 25. No band 41 yet. I have no idea if the S-5 is unique with this hanging onto band 26 or what but they will hold onto band 26 even when it is worse than a band 25 signal. They even hold onto band 26 when no data is being transferred. They will occasionally jump onto band 25, but there does not seem to be any pattern that I can determine. One thing for sure, if band 25 starts to weaken, the phones move to band 26 easily.
  2. chamb
    This is EXACTLY how it should be working.
  3. chamb
    I have not been in BWI for almost two months, so it is possible that the service is even better than I last experienced. But, if it is better, then why is your experience so bad? The last time I was there, I did not see my phone on "roaming" or any "extended network". Of course, I may not have caught it in that state. Yes, the service was weak, but not quite as bad as you experienced. Maybe somebody else can speak up if they have recently been through BWI.
  4. chamb
    Yep, BWI airport has been an issue for many many years. Baggage claim and even standing outside waiting for a pick-up can be an issue. To be fair, it is a place that is shielded from the outside and it is very hard to penetrate. It is slightly better than it was a year ago, but it sure does need some type of attention. I personally have had slightly better success at BWI than what you describe. It would be interesting to walk beside you with my Galaxy S-5 and compare it to your I-phone 6 in BWI..
  5. chamb
    The equipment in the eastern market is probably very obsolete and worth next to nothing.
  6. chamb
    I have not yet seen one that has been upgraded. Some may have been, but I have not seen it. If they ever want to transmit 800 or 2500 from those sites, they must replace the antennas. I have seen new base stations at the bottom of the high voltage towers and they are active with 1900 LTE. I would question if they would ever put the RRU's up above the high voltage lines in a spot so hard to get to. RRU's do go bad and I could see a long term outage if the RRU was not easily accessed. I have some hope that they are going to add the new 1900-800 antennas and the new 2500 antennas at the same time. But that is just my hope and nothing more.
  7. chamb
    This is common in other areas too. I do think it takes a special crew to get above high voltage lines. Might be the power company itself that has to do it for Sprint. I see many that still are only 3G accepted and still have the legacy antennas with RRU's on the ground. In many cases, they can push 1900 LTE out through the legacy antennas and are doing that.
  8. chamb
    I would not think that you will see any expansion of nTelos into Ohio or anyplace else. They are not into an expansion mode at all. If I were the CEO, I would be looking at dropping the nTelos brand, selling off the spectrum, moving the current customers to Sprint, converting the nTelos stores to Sprint Stores. Follow the Shentel model. It sure has worked for Shentel.
  9. chamb
    Yep, this would work. The average public sees what I see. A one bar signal half the time. They think the service is terrible half the time. Actually I have very good service on both band 25 & 26 but the average person would say they have poor Sprint service. Keep in mind, the amount of bars they normally see is the strength of the LTE signal. They do not even realize it is the LTE signal. They think the voice signal is crappie too, but it ain't. They probably do not check the bars when on a call and do not see that the bars are much better on voice. This needs some red lights & siren type attention and right now. Stop the bad display of signal strength. Think how bad this looks when somebody compares a Sprint phone to a competitors phone. Sprint might have the better signal but it may look the worst in a comparison. Good way to lose the business.
  10. chamb
    Yep, My Galaxy S5 shows only one little tiny blip on the smallest bar when the LTE signal gets to -100. This is on both band 25 & 26. One little tiny blip on the signal bars and the LTE runs fine and will continue to run fine at much lower levels. Yes, I think it is using the wrong scale as a -100 on a voice connection should only show one bar. To the average user that is not smart enough to know what is happening, it looks like the service is horrible. This needs to be fixed very very quickly. It is probably a big contributor to the negative perceptions of the Sprint Network. If the bars are going to report an incorrect level at all, it needs to error in the opposite direction and look like the signal is better than it actually is. Also, to get maximum bars, you have to be sitting very close to the cell site. As soon as you drive away from the site, the bars start to peel off very quickly. It is rare to see and significant amount of bars for very long. The bars are under reporting the signal strength at any level. This should not ever be allowed to continue. It needs to be fixed right now.
  11. chamb
    Yep, I would surely think that the system should always camp on the strongest signal. That probably will mostly be Band 26 when all sites are finally active with band 26. I am sure there will be some exceptions. When any significant traffic starts moving, then the traffic should be moved to what ever band will work best. Software someplace needs to look at the loads on each carrier and be smart enough to make an intelligent decision on what band should carry the traffic for this session. It may be extremely difficult to make this work, as it may be very hard to know the signal strength of all 3 bands at the phone. If almost all phones camped on Band 26 because it is the strongest, would that be too much traffic on that band? just the back and forth messaging all packed on one band might be quite a bit. Getting this all to work very well could be a nightmare.
  12. chamb
    You normally want the antenna to be as high as possible. it will grab a better signal. But you may have a unique situation. Just slightly more than 15 feet separation will help. Directional antennas help. Try to NOT go so many feet away that the loss in the Coax kills the weak signal. Try going 20 or 25 feet away if possible. Vertical separation is normally better than horizontal separation. Place the directional antenna so it is closer to the cell site than your repeater. You want the transmitted signal to go towards the cell site but not over the repeater in the living area. In normal conditions, when you have a 1900 signal that is marginal, any 800 signal from the same tower will be satisfactory. But the calls do drop when the 1900 signal fails as you walk inside. Those old zBoost repeaters are not the total answer. They can help a little, but do not expect to see all issues disappear. You never get the advertised range in your living area. When you walk into the house, if it stays connected, get near the repeater so you stay connected.
  13. chamb
    Mike, Your advice is good. I was aware of how a continuous data stream would cause the phone to stick with what ever it was using. As far as I could tell, nothing was using the 3G, but the phone just sits there happy on the 3G while there is LTE everywhere. This morning, my phone was on 3G data laying on my desk while my wifes phone was on LTE band 25 with a -100 level. Sometime overnight, it dropped to 3G for some reason. It never went over to 4g until I had to leave the house & toggled Airplane mode. Then it showed band 25 at a -99 and it has worked fine for 4 hours with multiple transfers between band 25 & 26. I have disabled much of the bloat on this Galaxy S5. Maybe there is some bloat-ware still running somewhere. I still do not know if this is a Samsung Phone issue or a network issue. All I can prove is that any drop to a 3G data connection is likely to stay that way and not shift back to 4G. Dropping off LTE to take a 1X voice call does not cause this issue, Hanging up the call causes LTE to appear.
  14. chamb
    Yes, Yes. I have this situation. If I happen to drop off LTE and get on 3G in some coverage hole, it does not go back on LTE even when driving by a site with both 1900 and 800 LTE active and strong. Sometimes it NEVER goes back to LTE even after several hours. I am not sure if it is a Galaxy S5 problem or a network issue. An airplane toggle puts me back on LTE and it will work fine until I somehow get back in a nasty coverage situation.
  15. chamb
    Yes, they mentioned in the past that it was in the budget for 2015. York & Harrisburg are two places that are likely to get attention for sure as they had WIMAX service via Clearwire. The demand will be there. Higher population areas have the need for Band 41.
  16. chamb
    AJ, You are one of the most knowledgeable people on this site, so i try to never argue with you in any way. BUT, I still say this is a software programming issue and can be fixed. The Sprint software should be able to see the very strong signal from the phone on 3G and then assume that the 4G signal is adequate for the phone. The system should be smart enough to somehow get the phone over on 4G or at least make a good attempt.. One thing for sure, If I was in change of making sure the system worked properly, I would be on my employees every day to solve this issue and if they could not solve it or get the vendors to solve it, some employees would be replaced. It just is not acceptable to me. I am not the brightest bulb in the bunch, but I see an issue that needs to be fixed.
  17. chamb
    AJ, I am not your normal user. I watch the phone almost all the time just for the fun of it. However, we all paid a premium for LTE service and when the signal is there at an -84 level, I expect the phone to see it and use it. All the carriers are lucky the the general population is not smart enough to know anything about the various bands and signals. They just want the phone to work. No matter what the exact issue is that causes this problem, it needs to be fixed. A phone should not sit on a 3G signal for 20 minutes while there is a blazing hot LTE signal hitting its antenna. Somebody has a programming issue. Either Samsung, or android, or Sprint. This somebody needs to get off their butt and fix the issue.
  18. chamb
    I am seeing about the same thing in Shentel territory with a Galaxy S-5. The LTE is very good here and I rarely lose the connection, but if I do, it goes to 3G and it is almost impossible to get LTE back without an Airplane toggle. Something is not right. I have seen other people complain about it. After coming out of the mountain where I lost LTE, I was sitting within 1000 feet of a cell site in an area with no obstructions and the phone sits on 3G for twenty minutes. I could actually see the antennas on the cell site. I get tired of this so I do the toggle and have LTE at a -84 level. Something is broke. I was not streaming or otherwise using data except for the normal mail checks, etc. Everything works fine if I do not lose the LTE somehow. Hand-off between sites, even between Band 25 & 26 work well.
  19. chamb
    The Shentel site in Grottoes is 15-20 miles away probably. It is not totally unreasonable to assume you connected to the Shentel Grottoes site. You were up high in a probable low noise area. What little signal you had did not have any competition from any other signals. At 15-20 miles, the signal is going to be extremely weak, hence you dropped to nTelos1X occasionally. I suspect that you probably could not actually use the Band 26 connection and if you tried, it probably would have crashed.
  20. chamb
    Well written. I agree 100%.
  21. chamb
    Shentel does not use equipment that is not approved by Sprint. If Sprint has not approved something, there probably is a good reason.
  22. chamb
    Band 41 does not need to be a priority in most of the Shentel area right now. They have added the second 1900 carrier at many congested sites and also the new 800 LTE. I never find any slow data in Shentel territory, but of course, somebody will say they do and maybe there is someplace slow. With great spacing on the sites and low population in most of the area, there is not a pressing demand for more speed or capacity. I know Shentel spent mucho money on their network over the last few years. I would personally not rush band 41 in the low population areas where it really is not needed. They need to be thinking about Harrisburg, York, Hagerstown and maybe a few others. Those cities have some WiMax, so the demand is there. But the balance of the territory can be equipped next year on a as needed basis and not on a rushed basis.
  23. chamb
    Welcome to the site Matt, I had a great experience on your network today. I needed to travel from Waynesboro to Gettysburg Via Fairfield. Then back to Chambersburg, Your network was good on this route in the past, but today my Galaxy S5 found a whole bunch of band 26 800 LTE. I actually took some very rural roads on this trip just for a change from the high traffic routes. Some of the roads were extremely rural in the mountains. I had a fairly strong LTE signal in places that was a total surprise. I seriously doubt if any other carrier has any signal at all on some of those roads. I could hold on going behind major obstructions and through major drops in elevation in the middle of extremely rural areas. The LTE is good enough that a deer hunter could watch Netflix while waiting for a deer to walk by. Downtown Gettysburg was very very good even in some of the old tough buildings. The cell site in Central Gettysburg was really working well. While the band 25 1900 signal there is more than adequate, I found myself on your band 26 more often than not and with a very very good signal. When going from Gettysburg toward Chambersburg, Your service was perfect. Band 25 LTE was good for a long time, but now I see transfers to band 26 anytime this would improve the signal in the weaker areas. Between Fayetteville and Chambersburg I was on Band 26 almost all of the time. Shentel has a great network but they are not done yet. I am positive that no other carrier can match the experience that I had today. Shentel done the job promptly and correctly. The network you built is really rocking.
  24. chamb
  25. chamb
    Yes, Yes. Why invest in the cesspool called Mexico???? Who needs that?
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