trojanman05

Looks like a new 8T8R site is now live in downtown LA. For the first time this morning I've been connecting to a weak B41 signal from a Sprint site (around -118 dbm) in my office. I normally connect, and stay connected, to a Clearwire site.

Unfortunately, it's creating a poor data connection, as I'm now bouncing between this new 8T8R signal, the Clearwire B41 signal, B25 and 3G. And the 8T8R site is not too fast, only about 1.5 mbps DL. Hopefully this will change shortly as they optimize it and have it play nicely with the Clearwire sites. Up until today, downtown LA (primarily from Bunker Hill, down through the financial district, and towards LA Live/Staples) B41 has been served by all Clearwire sites.

Was downtown again today and brought my T-Mobile test drive iPhone. Nothing different from last week, was pretty much on Edge in my office, and speeds were on average slower than Clearwire B41 at street level. I'll be sticking with Sprint even though T-Mobile does better at my gym in Irvine.

Sprint is definitely already deploying the 800 RRUs in LA county, I've seen at least one on a tower next to the train tracks along my Metrolink commute. I took a pic today and will post in the sponsors forum with site ID. However, on a tower further south along the train tracks near the Fullerton station, no 800 RRUs yet.

Longtime Sprint user since I got my first cell phone in high school (I think it was in 2001). I've really had no reason to switch carriers as Sprint has always performed well enough for me most of the time. However, I signed up for the T-Mobile test drive the other day and received it (iPhone 5S) yesterday. I've heard a lot that the T-Mobile LTE network is a lot more improved (as well as a faster network fallback to HSPA+ instead of 3G), and the plans have peaked my interest, especially the addition of VoLTE, WiFi calling and texting that can handoff to cellular, and free unlimited data (albeit not 4G) and texting in 122 countries. So, with that said, here's how my experience has been while working in downtown today...

I live in OC and work downtown a few days out of the week, so I commute on Metrolink. On Sprint, my phone is pretty much on LTE the entire trip from the Tustin station to Union station, switching between B25, B41 and Clearwire B41. There are a few stretches where it can drop to 3G, but this is more the exception than the rule, and doesn't happen every trip. I was monitoring the T-Mobile iPhone 5s on the ride up this morning, and it was connected to LTE the entire way except for when it dropped to HSPA+ between Anaheim and Fullerton. I did plenty of speed tests throughout, but ultimately was unimpressed with the speeds. LTE DL was clocking in between 1-3 mbps, with UL being slightly higher. There were a few times when DL speeds went into the 10-20 mbps range, but only a couple times. On the way back I did speed tests alongside my Sprint phone at most stations (Buena Park, Fullerton, Anaheim, Orange and Santa Ana), and Sprint outdid T-Mobile every time. If I remember correctly, B41 was at each of these stations. I'm commuting to LA again on Monday, and will see how it is then.

I work on the 37th floor on Bunker Hill in downtown LA. Once the Clearwire B41 towers were turned on about a year ago, my phone stays on LTE at a signal of around -115dbm, and I'm able to pull down around 5-7 mbps, which is plenty good. Today, the T-Mobile iPhone was jumping between LTE, HSPA+ and Edge, spending most of it's time on HSPA+ and Edge. Speed tests on LTE and HSPA+ were producing DL and UL of .1 mbps, Edge even slower. Disappointing to say the least, but I will point out that the iPhone 5S doesn't support B12 (700 mhz), which is currently in the active stages of being deployed in LA. One can be hopeful that B12 would reach into the building. Even so, even my speed tests outside on the T-Mobile phone was underwhelming (~3 mbps, if that) in the vicinity of my building. However, I did walk down south towards the financial district at lunchtime and did pull down around 13mbps. Still, my Sprint phone (which stays on Clearwire B41 downtown), consistently brings down 10-20 mbps.

Now, with all that said, I know that the highest speeds don't dictate how great a network is. But it seems like the T-Mobile network was overcapacity (even with their 15x15 "wideband" LTE) during the workday downtown, and while I was still able to load webpages at a mostly acceptable speed, Sprint's B41 seemed to be handling the capacity a lot better - which should be expected, but it was nice to see in real world experiences.

As for OC, T-Mobile is definitely doing better than Sprint, at least the areas I frequent. I've got a solid LTE signal at my house and pulling around 20mbps (and pulling the same speeds on HSPA+). Same thing at my gym near the Spectrum. Sprint switches between LTE and 3G in both these places, and Sprint 3G is still awfully slow at the gym, but LTE and HSPA+ is plenty fast on T-Mobile. Note that I turn off LTE on the iPhone to connect to HSPA+ to test the speed, so I'm not losing an LTE connection, just forcing HSPA+. I'll continue to monitor over the weekend how T-Mobile performs against Sprint, but so far it's looking a lot better than downtown LA.

Sorry this is so long, but wanted to share my real life experience with how T-Mobile is performing against Sprint. Still undecided if I'll switch, we'll see how it goes over the next few days.

Was in the Palm Springs/Indian Wells area this past weekend. Went to the day session of the BNP Paribas Open tennis tournament at the Indian Wells Tennis Garden on Sunday and LTE worked well (B25). Not sure what the attendance was, but last year during the same day session (men's second round and women's third round), there were 30,500. And last year when I was there, it was 3G.

I was on B25 pretty much the entire time, except when I connected to B41 at the top of Stadium 1. There is a cell tower on the site, but apparently doesn't have B41 yet, so the B41 signal was coming from a site further away. Speed tests weren't extraordinary, but considering the amount of people, it was good enough for me and I had no issues. Attached are the speed tests I randomly ran at different points during the day.

Just confirming Clear B41 is back online in downtown LA 

I don't recall having LTE inside the airport. Would say 90% of the time it showed 3G. I did get LTE for a sometime when I was on the airport shuttle going from the terminal 1 to the International building. Then back to 3G. I remember sitting in the food court before flying to Australia and it could barely hold onto the 3G connection as the signal was so weak. I had to give up and hop on the WiFi.

I was in the international terminal last September and was on LTE to my recollection. It is served by Clearwire B41 sites, and there was a known outage of Clear sites in downtown LA and Orange County, so this may have been the reason why. If those were down, and 8T8R isn't deployed yet, then B25 was likely over capacity. This is exactly what was occurring downtown the past few days, mostly dropping my phone to 3G, which was also over capacity and unstable.

Just goes to show how much B41 means to the overall quality of Sprint's network, and how much the additional Clear towers complement what's existing. I spent 30 minutes today with a representative explaining what was happening the best I could before she could confirm there was a problem, in the end she was very helpful.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

Agree 100% with how helpful B41 is and the additional Clear towers. I've been doing this commute on the train to downtown for a couple years now, and once they turned on the Clear towers, it really helped. The spacing of Sprint towers isn't too great along the tracks, but once the Clear towers were turned on (with many along the tracks), it was like night and day. Now, it's very rare for me to drop to 3G the entire ride...and the entire ride consists of B25 and both 8T8R B41 and Clear B41.

I will say that 8T8R is becoming very prevalent along the route the past couple of months, so that's exciting. It also shows how great B41 unloads B25, because when I'm on B25, it's still very usable. When the Clear towers were down the past few days, B25 was so slow it was to the point where it was pretty much unusable...especially downtown LA. With the OC Clear towers fixed, hopefully that means the downtown LA ones were, because they definitely weren't when I left my office at 4 this afternoon.

I can confirm Clear B41 is back up at my home site in Fullerton. The speed test was taken connected to my Zing hotspot.

Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

Ya, appears Clear B41 is working again. Picked it up at union station downtown around 430, and currently picking it up during my commute on the train thru OC. Currently on it right now just past the Fullerton station.

I think Robert said Southern CA, not Southern OC. As far as I know, Tustin and Irvine are ok.

For the most part, Tustin and Irvine are ok since B41 is 8T8R. But, there is one Clearwire site near the Marketplace that I live near, and it wasn't broadcasting B41 last night.

Data service, and service in general, has been awful downtown today. B25 connects, but not usable, and on 3G I'm switching between EHRPD, 1x and no signal. At least 3G is somewhat usable for low data needs such as Twitter...when I can connect. Right now, I'm on 1x. Also didn't see any Clearwire B41 on my train ride up this morning and I'm not expecting it on the way back.

At least according to the Sprint Community troubleshoot forums, they're aware of the outage, they just don't have a timeframe of when it'll be fixed.

I would consider myself to be in Northern OC. After I posted here service started to be going up and down outside the scope of my original post. Maybe the issues are affecting a larger range.

Looks like it is. I didn't connect to any Clearwire B41 in downtown LA today when I usually do. And on my commute home on the Metrolink back to OC to the Tustin station, I didn't connect to any Clearwire B41 towers where I normally do. At times I dropped down to 3G on the train, and that hasn't happened in months. Also, the Clearwire B41 tower near my place appears to be down too...about to submit another report on the Sprint Zone app.

Goes to show you how important B41 is...even on the train going upwards of 40-50mph.

Seems to be a widespread issue. I'm in north OC and all Clear towers in my immediate area are down.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6 using Tapatalk

Ya, I just checked my SignalCheck logs from this morning and I didn't connect to any Clearwire sites while on the way up to LA, just Sprint B25 and 8T8R B41 (which there are plenty now).

File as many support tickets as possible AND get the ticket # or they did not open a ticket.

 

It sounds like the clear network is out.. probably some Ericsson worker ticking the wrong drop down menu item.. 'shrug'

Sent a report via the Sprint Zone app...hopefully gets fixed soon.

It appears B41 (Clearwire) in downtown LA is down. I'm only connecting to B25 or 3G where I would normally be on B41..B25 is excruciatingly slow, pretty much unusable.  With no B26, talk about over capacity with all of us workers here. I was connected to Sprint B41 near Union Station when I was pulling in this morning on the train (as well as throughout the whole ride up from OC), but they have yet to deploy 8T8R in the middle of downtown where all the skyscrapers are. I wonder what's going on with the Clearwire sites.

While outside for lunch I was connected to B25 and pulled down .04mbps and upload .01mbps, with a 49 ping. Had a -91dbm. Just now on 3G I pulled down .39mbps, uploaded .54mbps, with a 84 ping and -81dbm. 

Anyone else downtown today?

Further agree that B41 (8T8R and Clearwire) is pretty widespread throughout the LA area. I commute downtown a few days a week via Metrolink between Tustin and Union Station. These days, I rarely drop to 3G, if at all, while on the train. And downtown, 98% of the time I'm on B41, even in my office on the 37th floor. I don't do speed tests regularly, but they've been in the 20-30 mbps range.

There used to be areas on the train (namely along the route between Union Station, Commerce, Norwalk and Buena Park) where I would drop to 3G. Now, I'm on B41 (either on 8T8R or Clearwire, but more Clearwire) pretty much the entire way.

I do connect to 1x800 in the restroom of my highrise, curious if LTE B26 will reach in there once it's turned on.

The only way around it that I can find is to go into the General settings > Sound & Notification > scroll all the way down and under "When Device is Locked" set that to "Don't show notifications at all".

 

Granted you won't see text messages or anything else on the lock screen, but you also no longer have the SignalCheck bar. Another downside to that option is that you can't see your signal strength at all on when you turn your display on and you HAVE to unlock your device before you can see signal check in the notification bar. It's either that or not have signal check pro run in the status bar at all. 

Thanks...ya, I figured that "Don't show notifications at all" would turn everything off. I also run GSam Battery Pro and this notification stays out of sight (along with Google Now) unless you swipe down on the lock screen...and when you do, it shows below a thin line separating them from the other types of notifications (ie messages, emails, SignalCheck, etc.) Wonder why?

Updated to Lollipop. Does anybody who's using SignalCheck know if there's a way to eliminate the notification bar on the lock screen? It's kind of annoying, I wish it would just stay in the notification bar like in KitKat. Turning off notifications for SignalCheck removes it, but then SignalCheck doesn't run in the background.

And yes, it's 90 degrees today, February 11th, in Southern California 

Has anyone else seen a return of the issue where the radios stop working? The status bar indicates it's either connected to LTE or 3G, but nothing updates. Toggling airplane mode on/off or disabling data on/off doesn't work. The only thing that resolves it is to restart the phone.

It happened to my phone numerous times back in November, but for the past 3 or 4 weeks everything was good. Now it seems to be happening every 3 days or so.

Yeah, I kinda figured that. I just hope it's usable enough for basic social media stuff since that's what she usually uses it for.

I live about .9 miles away from the Rose Bowl. Above I mentioned how bad service is across from the Sprint store in Old Town, which is the parade route. You should be fine, but its going to be slow all over Pasadena. Tri-band makes a huge difference. It really depends on where you are staying and hanging out at.

Was in Old Town last night, pretty much just north of Colorado and Raymond. Inside both places I went to my phone was always connected to B25, and data was plenty usable. Walking outside on the street, I saw B41 a few times. I imagine with all the people for the parade though, it's going to be pretty slow.

A -105 dBm RSRP is not a low signal.  It still has about a 15-20 dB margin before the service will drop.

 

AJ

I know, just going based on what my phone bars were telling me. That's what caught my attention, since I was at full bars for the first half of the game. And I only turned on Signal Check when I took a screenshot to double check it's readings, so it wasn't on when I first noticed the 1 bar to see what the actual dBm was.

I've held onto a B41 signal many times around -120 dBm...with my phone still showing 1 bar.

Was at Staples Center for the Clippers game last night on the suite level and connected to B41 with excellent speeds. I first started out on B25 with a strong signal, but was pretty much unusable (.1 mbps DL and .1 mbps UL) so I connected to Verizon's free WiFi for data. But, in the second half I noticed my signal strength was down to 1 bar, so I checked and saw I was connected to B41. Since I was in a suite, I'm not sure if this B41 signal goes throughout Staples and down to the floor.

Interesting observation, Verizon is a sponsor of Staples, but Sprint is a sponsor of the NBA. The scoreboard above the court has the Verizon logo all around it, but at times, the video screen on the scoreboard showed the Sprint logo   ...shoulda got a picture of it!

Was in Vegas this past weekend and speeds were good for my type of use. Spent most of the time at the Venetian sportsbook and LTE does reach in there...though ping is somewhat high and speeds are marginal. I was able to load sites such as ESPN, rotoworld.com, and check twitter, my fantasy football app, FB and IG while watching football all day. Deeper inside the Venetian and Palazzo, it drops to 3G, but even then the 3G speeds were sufficient and signal was strong. It may have been even faster than LTE at times. I was with friends who have Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile, and they were all on LTE throughout Venetian/Palazzo. Hopefully B26 solves this for Sprint (or maybe the other 3 carriers have a DAS and/or repeater in this hotel?), but like I said, 3G was more than good enough for me.

Also did a quick walkthru to the sportsbook in Ceasars and 3G speeds were also plenty sufficient. At South Point (off the strip), B41 reached into the sportsbook there and speeds were plenty fast.

Overall, LTE and 3G speeds were good enough for me to do the typical check of sports stats and social apps. Texting (both SMS and MMS group texting) and voice were very reliable. 3G speeds along the 15 between Vegas and LA were good too...and there's good LTE in Victorville, Barstow and Primm along the freeway (this has been around for awhile, but thought I'd point it out).

I will say that my last trip in October I spent most of my time at the Planet Hollywood sportsbook, and speeds there for Sprint are atrocious. 3G is slow if you can even connect to it, but you're pretty much on 1x there. Signal here has been horrible for as long as I can remember, and I've been to this sportsbook many times over the past few years. At least AT&T has LTE here which my friend is on.

unfortunately you will be roaming most of the time.  The RRPP program hasn't kicked in yet and sprints coverage is pretty much all roaming in southern/eastern Utah.  You will get spotty 3G but i doubt you can do much on the web with it.  You will get LTE at the entrance of Zions like you mentioned and around Hurricane.  Moab you should get 3G but i'd be surprised if your speeds were even around 0.4 mbps.  Everywhere else you will be roaming and data will be pretty much useless.  Enjoy your trip though!!  

Thanks, that's what I had thought. Most important is voice coverage, and sounds like that should be ok, and at least between the 4 of us, we'll have Sprint, Verizon and AT&T. Other than that, we'll enjoy our trip more than anything...hope the weather isn't too cold or bad!

Heading to Utah for a camping road trip over Thanksgiving and was curious about Sprint and roaming coverage in the Southern and Eastern parts of the state. I was actually there towards the end of October to visit Zion and there's LTE in St George and also along Highway 9 in Rockville/Springdale at the entrance to Zion. But how is the coverage in the rest of Southern and Eastern Utah? Areas I'll be visiting include Zion again, Capital Reef, Bryce Canyon, Canyonlands and Arches. Main towns include Kanab and Moab.

I know in early September Sprint announced more roaming agreements to add it its RRPP program, including the following that cover parts of Utah: Strata Networks, All West Wireless, South Central Communications and Breakaway Wireless. Sprint doesn't have very many towers in this region and where there are towers, they're mostly GMOs, so not expecting too much from Sprint. With that said, are these roaming agreements now in place with these carriers so I'll have at least some sort of cell service (at least voice, and hopefully some (slow) 3G)?

A Clearwire B41 site was turned on last Friday near The Marketplace in Irvine. I was able to hold onto the signal inside the Best Buy, where I could previously not hold onto the B25 LTE signal. 

I posted more info in the Premier Section.

Was in Vegas this past weekend and LTE (band 25) is pretty prevalent outdoors along the strip. I was there in early April and it's still very usable, so no complaints.

There's actually a very strong LTE connection at Wet Republic (MGM's pool party/day club). Although, I wasn't really on my phone as there were "other" things that needed my attention.

Inside the hotels I went (MGM, Planet Hollywood and Bellagio), the 3G connection was quite fast and very usable for internet, facebook, twitter and IG. Didn't do a speed test, but had no issues whatsoever. Would be nice to see LTE inside, but really, there was never a single time I wish I had a faster connection.

I work 20 feet from a tower in Irvine and it is a Sprint only tower with 1900 and they are doing the 2.5 upgrade right now. Talked to them yesterday and saw them again today. They had to replace the panels for some reason.

Sent you a private message for the specific tower info. Could this be 8T8R band 41 panels going up in Irvine?