the_intern

Curious what your experience was with the mini-macros? Did they have bad performance because they had limited bands (maybe no NR?) or some other issue with them? Either way, full macros likely cover indoor spaces better anyways!

Seeing these speeds on such little spectrum makes me think that there is a lot more in the pipe for T-Mobile in areas where they own more spectrum where speeds are currently either limited by backhaul or some other limits.

Las Vegas used to for a long time, and probably(?) still does, have n66 up on quite a few macros. When I was in Vegas recently I just ran from conference room to conference room so didn't have a chance to test.

It says they added 192 new sites since 2021. I believe it. The network is really, really good in Utah these days. Some rural coverage still needs to be build, especially in Southeastern Utah. There's a lonely native coverage island in Blanding that finally went live last year. Hoping for more to come in that part of the state.

On the topic of backhaul, I was talking to a T-Mobile tech at a local site recently. He claimed that the site has 10Gbps transport, even though my speeds are generally always between 700-800 Mbps only. He mentioned that most(?) T-Mobile sites place a limit on individual UE throughput below what is theoretically possible. To test this, I took a family members phone and ran two speedtests at the same time. Sure enough, both of our devices got ~700 Mbps simultaneously. Could whatever they are doing be why we generally assume that T-Mobile still has 'limited' backhaul on most sites?

Interesting article! But I think Ulf meant three times harder for every 10 million POPs covered, not 10 thousand.

Can't speak to all of these but I know for a fact that Flamingo will have a new site build live later this year.

Wow, T-Mobile is serious about the Nebraska expansion! Viaero has got to feel the start of roaming revenues declining at this point.

I have a feeling they will keep both Mint and Ultra pretending they are not part of a big carrier since they attract different audiences when compared to T-Mobile prepaid or Metro. Ultra, for example, attracts a lot of folks with international ties given their inclusion of international calling.

Based on my personal observation, Utah got somewhere just shy of 100 new T-Mobile sites last year. I would say that ~60 -65% of those sites were Sprint conversions. Not scientific by any means, but I also believe that most of their net new rural build is still to come.

Has T-Mobile made any public statement about when they had planned to complete their 10k rural site expansion? I'm seeing a lot of rural sites still in planning/building phase in rural Utah so I don't think they are through with their 10k rural build yet. I believe I heard something at some point about their macro site target to be somewhere near 85k and had imagined that they would target that to be completed somewhere in the '23 - '24 timeframe.

Has anyone actually seen n25 being labeled as "Ultra Capacity" on their device? The times I caught my device on n25 it did not show the "UC" icon in my case.

That's a fantastic pace and looks like they are serious about building a native network even off the interstate. In Utah, the latest update shows n41 in rural places like Eureka (population ~650) where no one else even has a site, Gunnison (pop 3400), Lynn (not sure on pop, but very, very little), Hideout (pop 1200) recent Sprint conversion , Strawberry Reservoir, and Torrey (small town, but tourist destination). New site / roaming over- build activity also seems to finally be showing in Southeastern Utah. They are really pushing these upgrades into rural areas to meet their 300MM Ultra Capacity goal next year.

My understanding is that they would add mmWave to macro sites (like they have done in NYC for example) so that users near the site will be on mmWave and users further away from the site can have capacity freed up on n41. I assume they would only target this for high usage areas where the location of the macro with mmWave would then actually take some load off the n25/n41 channels.

Unfortunately I didn't see a map for Nebraska like I did for WI & IL, but I was told that the plan is to overbuild Viaero and USCC across the state.

They are quite strict, restricting usage on a LAC by LAC basis. I've seen the buildout plans for Wisconsin and Illinois so you may be able to add her in the future.

Some recent non-urban new builds in Utah, which are a mix of Sprint conversions and new site builds: Central Cedar City Enoch Parowan Beaver Wallsburg I'm also hearing of future new site builds in places that currently have weak / no signal on all carriers like Fountain Green, Oak City, Woodland, and along Hwy 191 in the canyon north of Helper by the Power Plant. There are also an unbelievable number of Sprint conversions happening in the urban Wasatch Front corridor as well.

I agree that bandwidth will be extremely constrained, even for SMS, when larger portions of the terrestrial network goes down after a natural disaster. But I do think that this will actually work fine in areas without native or roaming terrestrial coverage. Take places like Parashant National Monument in Arizona, Uinta or Ashley National Forest in Utah, or Lolo National Forest in Montana. These are places with very few people and it's not like every T-Mobile customer hiking or camping will be trying to make a phone call at the same time. If the terrestrial T-Mobile network in urban, suburban and most rural areas that are conducive to cell site build is designed and built right, it should provide a usable enough experience for those in edge cases outside any terrestrial coverage. I'm very excited for this!

I never used Sprint in West Palm, but T-Mobile has come a LONG way there in the last few years. There are definitely some sites still waiting on upgrades (and I'm patiently waiting on additional Sprint Keep site conversions). I would say that the network, overall, is better and more consistent than the competition.

As Dkoellerwx said, everything gets swapped out, including ground equipment. They are also adding generators to a bunch of Sprint Keep sites in Northern Utah. My understanding is that most Sprint keep sites will get three new T-Mobile panels per sector for the entire spectrum portfolio - 600, 700, 1900, 2100, 2500.

I pinged one of the RF managers I know for the Utah market. He's on vacation but said that there are several new site builds in the work in that area in addition to some Sprint Retain site conversions.

What's the location of this site?

LAX seems to be very difficult to work with because nobody has a DAS at LAX.

Are you by chance referring to the Apple Valley area or the area east of Kanab?

Have you tried disabling 5G and using 2G/3G/4G only mode? I spend at least a week a month in northern Utah and haven't experienced any of this on my LTE device, and I average 100GB/month and 8k minutes. I'm on a T-Mobile plan.