the_intern

On 3/12/2024 at 1:01 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Looks like T-Mobile learned their lesson and is starting to wipe out those mini-macro sites with the antennas on the facade of buildings. Two permits in late February alone. These sites have already been turned off, the antennas just haven't been removed yet. The areas they are in are better served by the full macros/Sprint conversions in the area so it's nothing lost.

The two sites are at:

1. 515 Madison Ave, New York, NY 10022
2. 222 Park Ave S, New York, NY 10003

Also recently mapped a new T-Mobile site (non-conversion) in Manhattan at 810 Broadway, New York, NY 10003. Looks like it was first mapped last November. This site replace one that used to be on 797 Broadway before that building got demolished.

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! 

10 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Orange County update:

I thought T-Mobile had 80MHz of n41 in Orange County, NY but they actually have 70MHz live split into one 40MHz carrier and one 30MHz carrier. It's my first time seeing that carrier size on T-Mobile's network.

 

1. T-Mobile 5G and LTE
   

 

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.

On 10/31/2023 at 10:48 AM, schmidtj said:

Can’t say I’ve ever heard of any of these cities.

T-Mobile - T-Mobile Expands 5G Network Coverage in Utah, Delivering Supercharged Speeds Across the State

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? 

On 4/28/2023 at 9:52 AM, RedSpark said:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/t-mobiles-merger-with-sprint-everything-thats-changed-3-years-later

Good read. There's a whole lot here...

Also: https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/t-mobile-continues-growth-streak-with-1-3-million-new-customers/

It gets increasingly difficult to reach the last slices of the American population given geography constraints, said Ulf Ewaldsson, T-Mobile's executive vice president of network. "I would say it's about three times harder for every 10 [thousand people] you add," he said.

Ewaldsson noted that T-Mobile has 150MHz of dedicated midband 5G spectrum, and as the carrier shifts more frequency from 4G LTE to 5G, it'll end the year with over 200MHz on midband. "We're very confident that we'll reach [our year-end goal] with the build plan we have today," he said. 

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

On 4/12/2023 at 10:37 PM, iansltx said:

Were further south, I think. Shark Valley, Anhinga Trail, and down to the Flamingo visitor center.

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. 

4 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Coverage map update brought a lot more news in terms of filling up the Nebraska gap. 20 new sites and 2 conversions!

That brings us to 90 expansion sites so far, and 122 conversions that are on air, with more we know of that are installed but not yet online.

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

8 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Wonder if they integrate it into T-Mobile prepaid or allow it to continue pretending it is not part of a big carrier?

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.

21 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Is that info from the former Shentel area (whose deal was closed late compared with other merger areas) or from other areas such as around Washington DC, etc? Could mean they have barely touched their planned 10,000 new rural sites)

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. 

On 2/1/2023 at 12:22 PM, dkyeager said:

I had predicted 88k back on September 23rd, based on their public statements.  My guess is they fell short on their 10k site rural expansion, but they could have cut more Sprint sites.

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.

7 hours ago, iansltx said:

Calling n25 "Ultra Capacity" is...annoying, to say the least. It's worse than calling 40 MHz n77 5G+.

Particularly given that AT&T and VZW don't do this for n25/n66 that they have, which is comparable.

Like, PCS NR as an extra layer is great, but... 😐

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. 

20 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

T-Mobile continues to fill out the map in Nebraska. 9 new sites added to the coverage map today from the last update a little over two weeks ago.

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.

1 hour ago, RedSpark said:

What does Ray mean by that? What's a "macro network overlay" with mmWave look like?

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. 

On 10/19/2022 at 11:15 PM, though said:

What are you seeing for Nebraska

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. 

On 10/18/2022 at 12:07 PM, jreuschl said:

T-Mobile is still very strict on roaming areas, correct?  There were a couple of times on a trip last week that I had to rely on my wife's phone on AT&T because I was not getting any data roaming (and it is set to on).

I know in the past T-Mobile blocked roaming in areas it "thinks" it has coverage.

Probably won't be adding her to my plan for the time being

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. 

3 hours ago, radem said:

I see this as extremely useful for very remote areas such as Alaska, the middle of the desert, the middle of the ocean etc. where you can count the number of people in a cell on one hand.   A Starlink v1 satellite data cell is a hexagon of 15 miles across so it really isn't that large. 

This will also be a hugely important messaging backup for natural disasters.  They said it can use that entire bandwidth simultaneously for messaging even in heavily populated areas when the ground networks are down.

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! 

On 7/12/2022 at 12:26 AM, mirskyc said:

Random update. Was all over Palm Beach County. New T-Mobile is way more solid then Sprint used to be. Here is a list of the network here. I only have a Galaxy S20 so I don't know if there are additional N41 carriers or N66 and N2 deployed 

T-Mobile

B2 HSPA

B2 20x20 + 10x10

B66 20x20 + 5x5

B41 20 + 20

B12 5x5

B71 5x5

N41 100

N71 15x15

 

Sprint 

B25 5x5

B26 5x5

 

 

 

 

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. 

On 7/19/2021 at 1:24 PM, floorguy said:

So when they do keep sites..... Are they keeping the sprint hardware?? or is everything getting swapped out??

I always thought 2500MHZ is 2500 MHZ with the tweaks being on the software side making it compatible for XXX spectrum bands

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. 

On 7/16/2021 at 6:41 PM, floorguy said:

Between the Hillfield road and Layton Parkway exits.  Just south of the kia dealership.

Has been an empty tower since the nextel merger.

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. 

On 7/12/2021 at 10:02 PM, floorguy said:

ok question.. are these new panels for tmo?  they are adding to a tower that has been empty since the Nextel merger (my guess it was a Nextel tower) the guys were way up and probably couldn't hear me anyway

What's the location of this site? 

On 6/8/2021 at 1:26 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Visited Los Angeles this past weekend and T-Mobile's network left a lot to be desired in most of the areas I visited, especially their 5G network. I spent the most time in West Hollywood, Santa Monica, Venice, Universal Studios. I visited other places but not long enough to give a good summary of network performance.

1. LAX: According to Cellmapper there are three T-Mobile macro sites that serve the airport specifically. That means that outdoor signal and speeds are great, but inside the terminal both signal strength and speeds dropped off significantly the further away from the site you were. Unfortunately, it looks like there is no T-Mobile DAS in the airport, or at least in Terminal 5 where I was. Luckily the terminal did have one of those Passpoint WiFi networks that your phone connects to automatically so I was still able to use my phone. This is in comparison to JFK which has one macro site that serves the airport but has a separate DAS in each terminal so signal strength and speeds are phenomenal both inside and outside the airport. It was definitely a shock going from 200Mbps indoors on LTE at JFK to barely being able to load directions to my car rental without WIFi at LAX.
    
2. West Hollywood/Hollywood: It appears that T-Mobile has done the bare minimum in terms of 5G deployment to provide contiguous coverage here. There was virtually no n41 to be found. All 5G was Band 71 and it was so sparsely deployed that the network was very overburdened resulting in poor speeds. Additionally, the low signal strength of the 5G network meant that my phone was constantly switching to standalone mode to attempt to stay connected to 5G at the expense of losing LTE completely. Because it was so overburdened it was worse than NSA 5G or even LTE alone. As a result, I found myself having to put my phone in LTE only mode if I wasn't near a 5G site or if my phone didn't switch over to NSA 5G fast enough.
    
3. Santa Monica: I can't speak for the entire city of Santa Monica, just the waterfront but this was the first place I went where T-Mobile's network performed decently everywhere I went. Speeds were great on 5G thanks to n41 on the site near Santa Monica Pier and they also had a bunch of oDAS sites littered throughout the area. I'd catch my phone dropping down to LTE frequently when I'd get near them but speeds remained high.
    
4. Venice: Great once again. I visited the beach and the canals. This was the first time that I actually spotted the physical n41 antenna. I believe Los Angeles is at 100MHz for n41 but they're limited by the same backhaul restrictions that I've seen in NYC. Near the site I was able to get about 600Mbps down but over 130Mbps up which was super impressive. I also encountered a few oDAS sites out there that would cause my phone to drop 5G in favor of LTE but they all performed well much like in Santa Monica.
    
5. Universal Studios: This area was LTE only because it's fed virtually entirely by a network of small cells littered throughout the entire studio/theme park. Having this dedicated small cell network meant having great speeds inside and out almost everywhere. Speeds of 100-200Mbps were common. Eventually T-Mobile will have to upgrade these to support 5G though.

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

On 4/17/2021 at 10:36 AM, floorguy said:

Well I am disappointed in both Tmo and Sprint. This location in southern utah that is a "resort" area of sorts. Is blocked by a few mountains. I tracked the tower down so I know where it's at in relation.  Point being, they should have\need to add another tower or something.

The part I am most disgusted by. The roaming agreement with att (which btw solved the problem with a tower in a better spot). But the data here .04 & .03. What type of agreement is that.  And to compound matters (not the providers fault) but the place we are staying, is having a wifi issue as well...  

 

This trip sucks.

 

 

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

22 hours ago, floorguy said:

hows it been out there??

The first 60 days mid may to end of june, I was fine... NOW, I am having all sorts of issues.. Calls going straight to VM.. Even had calls going to some random number (customer emailed asking if I had changed my number) for a few hours.. People cant hear me... Data locks up, says I am connected, but apps and speed test say otherwise..

Needless to say I am pissed... and getting more so, when I cant get to a tier 2 support person

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.