boomerbubba

boomerbubba, just being real here but this isn't the first post I have seen from you where you are smacking down someone on the site who is trying to make a contribution without being a sponsor. I would love everyone to be a sponsor but it will never happen so let those people contribute in any way they can. I understand you are likely trying to be helpful but it really comes off as arrogant and bullying. If that was the response to one of my first posts I would be out and miss out on conversing with some really intelligent people that are way smarter than us. I would also quibble with your assertion that Sensorly may not be useful. Granted, it may not be the end all be all but it will certainly put you in the area, and if you can get to the site its easy to prove or disprove if it is a Sprint site with very little work other than driving. Not trying to start a war, but understand that you really sound nasty when replying to posts

I did not "smack down" anyone.

Sorry, but straightforward technical facts are what I am most interested in here, not stroking noobies. Perhaps the new user didn't even realize that he could get access to the Sponsor maps, or how to go about actually determining LTE coverage for specific towers. In any case, I challenged his unsubstantiated claim that he had isolated a certain tower, and I still challenge it based on facts, not feelings. I see no evidence that TonyLibations isolated that LTE tower at all. If he has such evidence, he can just explain it.

And please don't misstate my comment. I did not make an "assertion that Sensorly may not be useful." In fact, I said, "Sensorly hotspots provide a very useful clue, but they do not resolve the analysis with certainty." That is factually correct.

Not trying to start a war either, but I stand by my comments. Sorry you took offense, but then I wasn't even addressing you in the first place. Have a nice day.

How do you know this tower is providing the LTE signal? There is no app or utility that directly provides this information. It takes some legwork in the field. For that matter, how do you know this tower is a Sprint site at all?

It's fairly easy to tell which one is Sprint (I posted some pictures of the Baymeadows Sprint tower being upgraded earlier, dated Oct 18th) and the Sensorly map displays coverage for Sprint, the strong signal areas will be closer to the site, whereas the weaker signals will be farther away from the site.

I wasn't asking a general question. (I know very well how to determine which towers are live.) I was asking a very specific question about a specific comment by user TonyLibations, who had asserted without evidence that he knew the tower providing his LTE signal. This was only his second post here, and he is not even an S4GRU sponsor so he lacks access to the authoritative maps of Sprint towers. In addition, although he provided no signal strength reading, his Speedtest results were just middling. So he likely was not very near the LTE tower in question. In my experience, such comments are wrong more often than they are right, often based on the wrong assumptions.

BTW, I also quibble with your generalizations. Sensorly hotspots provide a very useful clue, but they do not resolve the analysis with certainty. The only way to do that, for a hypothesis that Tower X is live, is to get up close to that tower and survey all sectors with strong RSRP readings all around using the device's LTE Engineering screen. Sometimes that effort disproves the hypothesis instead of proving it! Also, physical evidence of NV upgrades do not prove that a site is live. I live in an active LTE development area, where we at S4GRU have documented all the live towers to date, right down to their individual sector IDs. But we still have several examples of towers that have had obvious upgrades for weeks, with no LTE signal yet. So while physical evidence is useful corroboration, it is not sufficient to prove any such hypothesis.

I'm currently receiving 4G signal from the tower off of Baymeadows behind the Suntrust building. Speedtest: https://www.dropbox....03_09-24-41.png

How do you know this tower is providing the LTE signal? There is no app or utility that directly provides this information. It takes some legwork in the field. For that matter, how do you know this tower is a Sprint site at all?

If I am not mistaken. Doesn't Sensorly tell your LTE strength as your Rssi?

I don't know. I always just use the GS3's system LTE Engineering screen to get the RSRP signal strength. I typically am using that screen to get LTE sector IDs anyway when I am surveying for LTE towers. I noticed that my Sensorly app just updated with a new feature that is supposed to enhance its LTE signal strength display. I'll check it out.

Now that I have had a chance to try the latest Sensorly version with a live LTE signal, I see that it does report the RSRP and RSRQ values for LTE (not RSSI). I still prefer to use the system LTE Engineering screen because -- in addition to this signal strength information -- it also shows LTE-specific IDs for surveying which tower the LTE signal is coming from. I can just keep Sensorly running in the background for its primary purpose, which is harvesting crowdsourced data for the Sensorly server.

If I am not mistaken. Doesn't Sensorly tell your LTE strength as your Rssi?

I don't know. I always just use the GS3's system LTE Engineering screen to get the RSRP signal strength. I typically am using that screen to get LTE sector IDs anyway when I am surveying for LTE towers. I noticed that my Sensorly app just updated with a new feature that is supposed to enhance its LTE signal strength display. I'll check it out.

 

Yes' date=' I have been there, problem is, there is no way any of the towers listed on that map can reach me. there is a missing tower on that map that is feeding me my sweet sweet LTE. The closest tower to me on that map is over 10 miles away

 

The tower i listed above 5009, is only about 3.5 miles away from me. I was pretty sure that was the one but now not so much[/quote']

 

You might be getting LTE from a new live tower that hasn't shown up yet on the NV Sites Complete map. That is why I suggested looking at the master interactive map for your market, which shows all Sprint towers.

 

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It does not seem like the Wilkinson Tower is the one that is feeding LTE in my area, I drove by and was about 100yard away and still had some pretty poor signal. I still had LTE but barely. there must be another tower nearby that I dont know about and that is not listed on network.sprint.com. Anyone have any info so I can go scout out this phantom Tower?

 

Netmontior info

Operator 310 04135 (Sprint)

Carrier Sprint PCS

Type LTE

NID : 31 BID: 5009

Signal -92 (dBm)

As a sponsor, you have access to the exclusive master maps at S4GRU that essentially show all Sprint towers, because they all will be upgraded sooner or later. Look at the interactive Indianapolis map to see what Sprint towers are nearby that might be live. You also have access to the NV Sites Complete maps that show which Network Vision sites have been accepted by Sprint's project management. (These might or might not be live with LTE, but likely are.)

None of the IDs from Netmonitor have anything to do with LTE. These are 1x CDMA IDs. Correlating these CDMA IDs to physical towers is possible, but it takes some trial-and-error field work. But that still won't show you where the LTE signal is coming from, because the LTE signal might originate at a different site than the CDMA signal does. Also, the signal strength shown in Netmonitor is the CDMA 1x signal, not the LTE signal strength. This thread shows how to find your LTE signal strength. Then you have to do the field work at a tower you suspect have the LTE, by getting close to it and logging -- or failing to log -- a strong LTE signal. If you really are ambitious, you can survey around the tower to log the strength of each sector radio.

Another resource is the Sensorly site, that shows hospots where others have found strong LTE signals. You can run the Sensorly app yourself to contribute to that crowdsourced data.

It's odd that NetMonitor would give you the wrong coordinates, it pulls coordinates directly from the base station. Sprint's network usually provides extremely accurate coordinates for their towers. I've tested on Verizon in my area and they don't even broadcast coordinates. I guess it all depends on what market you're in.

Netmonitor (and several other utilities including CDMA Field Test using the Andoid telephony API) do report the coordinates broadcast by the base stations. But those are not always the actual coordinates of the base stations themselves. See this comment in the FAQ thread, and this thread in the Sponsor Forum: CDMA towers that squawk the wrong coordinates

link me on google maps the next closest ive been soopin round there and cant find it

 

 

and the one your talking bout feech is the newest tower with across the street by the houses?

 

 

https://maps.google....77.39,,1,-31.22

 

^ this one is the only other one closer to the sprint map

i didt even think it was on there

ive been to this one and it has a place that says this is tower number 85107 on a sign on the chain link fence or somethig to that degree are we talking about the same one?

 

its address is 2310 RAILROAD AVE

Unfortunately, the signs posted at tower sites often do not even identify the carrier(s). The most authoritative source for Sprint tower maps is the set of Sponsor maps at S4GRU. So long as you avoid Sponsor status, you are crippling your abiltiy to survey Sprint sites.

What I don't understand, since you already visited the tower on Railroad, is why you assumed that was not a Sprint tower, but you assumed that the tower you saw on Ulmerton was. Or why you asserted above that no such tower existed north of Ulmerton if you had been there.

link me on google maps the next closest ive been soopin round there and cant find it

If you explore the cross streets on the north side of Ulmerton, in the vicinity of Sprint's pointer about midway between 119th Street and Ridge Road, you will find a cell tower on Google Street View. I am not going to confirm for you, here in this non-Sponsor thread, whether or not this is Sprint's tower. (If you go to that physical location, maybe you can determine that for yourself.)

well cdma field test confirms what the google map says..exact location and its the only tower In the area visually and only location in geographically that would support it there seeing as the other side is now built out. with houses.

You need to understand that utilities such as CDMA Field Test do not always show the exact location of sites. Sometimes the locations are offset because the towers themselves are squawking these offset coordinates. For starters, read my comment on the FAQ thread. Then you will understand that while using such utilities is not so simple as you think, they can reliably identify CDMA sites -- when used in conjunction with the S4GRU master maps of the actual tower locations, and a bit of field work.

And your factual assertion that the tower you found is the only cell tower in the area is just wrong. Even without employing the S4GRU maps, just using Google Street View, I can find another tower closer to where the map marker actually is plotted on Sprint's own map.

uh the sprint website....

I think you are misreading the Sprint map. That is easy for either of us to do, because Sprint does not allow the user of this interactive map to zoom in with precision. But the way I read the Sprint map, their tower is plotted a bit north of Ulmerton Road. But the tower you show in your own Google map is south of Ulmerton. Also, the tower in your Google map is clearly west of the center of Sprint's map marker.

Once again, I suggest that you just become an S4GRU sponsor to gain access to precise maps of the Sprint towers. (I have the advantage over you in this factual discussion, because I can see the S4GRU Sponsor maps and you can't.)

it is definitely a sprint tower its one of 2 the other isent even actually a tower its just he top of a wells fargo with panels o it which they did work 2

Uh, how do you know this, or think you know this?

https://maps.google.com/?ll=27.894586,-82.802629&spn=0.000986,0.001206&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=27.89456,-82.802847&panoid=RW1cpe-FvzmTydq--5CRow&cbp=12,177.39,,1,-31.2

anyone know this tower id? il go grab a picture tomorrow i saw trucks there today!

Just become a sponsor and you can look up every Sprint site yourself precisely. Hint: The first task at hand would be to see if this is even a Sprint tower at all.

Note that CDMA towers give off the wrong coordinates in OpenSignalMaps. It's known that it's very difficult to discover which tower you're actually connected to.

The bogus sites mapped in OpenSignal maps have nothing to do with the coordinates squawked by the CDMA towers, which is a different issue entirely, evident in different apps altogether. OpenSignal purports to compute the tower sites itself from crowdsourced signal-strength data, and the results are pretty useless.

Ive never tried mapping coordinates with the service menu yet, how did you do that by chance?

Depending on the OEM screen for CDMA properties, there might be a latitude and longitude shown. But often the value is a raw integer for each one. (And on my GS3, for example, the Longitude value on the 1X Engineering screen is wrong -- simply a bug on the part of Samsung. Other utilities show the raw Longitude correctly as a signed integer.)

Assuming the integers are correctly shown for Latitutude and Longitude, to convert them to decimal degrees convert the values to float and divide each one by 14400 . This is an artifact of the obscure definition of the raw integer values within the CDMA standard. It is the raw-integer format that is squawked by the towers. (Each integer increment represents 1/4 of an arc second.)

Once these values are properly converted to decimal degrees, you have just done the math that most utility apps do for you. Then you still have to deal with the problems described in this FAQ comment to map the actual towers.

I've never found much in these menus to be very helpful...

 

The CDMA tool won't map eHRPD properly if you try to map the base station...I don't know if eHRPD doesn't give out it's coordinates, or if it just doesn't pick it up properly...but the other day it was showing me base stations in the middle of the highway...in the middle of the river...etc..and places where I KNEW there was no tower.

It is certainly possible to isolate towers from the CDMA coordinates shown on devices (either on field test screens or via specialized apps.) But it is not simple, and you might have to do some field work with the S4GRU maps as an additional resource. See my comment in the FAQ thread.

There seems to be a fairly good blanket of coverage over Austin especially if you look at the sensorly maps do Y'all think they are getting pretty close to officially launching?

I'm going with a late-December launch for Austin. Yes, there's more and more coverage each week, and the coverage is creeping south from the north, but there are still large swaths of Austin proper that are out of range of LTE, for example nearly everything between 360 and MoPac, Hyde Park and SW Austin.

 

That said, if Sprint got a half-dozen towers in each of those areas upgraded to NV (maybe they'd only need three in Hyde Park), they could probably launch the city. Coverage wouldn't be comprehensive, but between LTE and 3G with a reasonable amount of capacity behind it, the network would be workable while waiting for the market to pass, say, 50% completion by tower count.

I also don't think Sprint can "launch" until they get decent coverage around downtown, the Capitol complex and the greater UT campus. And while it is tricky to compute percentages until we define the boundaries of the metropolitan area in question -- a smaller area than the large "Austin Market" including Waco, etc., that is tracked in the Running List thread -- my commonsense estimate is that the tower completions in and around Austin are at about 10 percent today.

Also readers should bear in mind that the existing Sensorly tracks are pretty faint in many areas, and are partly a function of activist testing that often involves manual toggling to get an LTE signal. Also, Sensorly tracks are almost always captured outdoors. So Sensorly may overstate the coverage that normal users would experience routinely.

BTW, folks following this Austin thread in the public Markets forum are advised also to follow the Sponsor thread in the Interactive S4GRU Maps forum, where we have been pretty good at tracking, mapping and logging local progress tower-by-tower.

Here.

 

Here.

 

And here.

Those were not maps of sites completed. They were maps of scheduled activity during the coming month (and Sponsors got more detailed interactive maps.) The NV Sites Complete map, available only to Sponsors, tracks actual progress weekly.

If you don't mind me asking, what ever happened to those maps pinned to the top of the forums that showed which sites had been completed? It's been a couple weeks since I've seen them.

Where do recall seeing such maps. The NV Sites Complete map is restricted to Sponsors, and I notice that you don't have that status yet.

Anyone want to chime in here? based on Wildman, Sloppy,and someone unknown who should be part of this site this may be one tower lighting up this area likely where the darker shade is located. I do wonder about the blip at the port though. There is a site in that area but I'm assuming the port blip would be a darker shade even if just one sector was working. If Sprint were being strategic I would have that one on full blast so people from other parts of the country that were leaving for cruises would have a taste of whats coming soon. That's why I'M surprised Disney or Orlando isnt lit up

Looking at all the available evidence -- Sensorly tracks, the screenshots upthread and the all-important Sponsor maps that show the actual tower locations -- I think it is more than clear that there is only one live LTE site discovered anywhere in the vicinity so far. Wildman located it easily, apparently with the aid of the Sponsor maps, but properly did not identify the Sprint tower ID in this public thread . All the other tracks in the area just confirm that coverage pattern around the site, and confirm that no LTE registers at any other nearby Sprint tower. (Almost certainly, that could be verified empirically with the aid of the LTE Engineering screens to compare the IDs of the sector radios at various observation points.)

I just went out for a quick drive around the area and did find LTE. It's mapped on Sensorly. I will drive around some more tomorrow to see where the signal ends in all directions.

Was that you on Rockledge Blvd?

Yes. I plan on looking south of where Wildman was, tomorrow.

Just looking at the current Sensorly map and your Speedtest screenshots earlier, I suspect that the source of your LTE signal might be found around the Sensorly hotspot about 2-3 miles to the northwest of your track on Rockledge Blvd. It is pretty clear from both Sensorly and your own screenshots that you did not have a very strong LTE signal where you were, even though your CDMA 1x signal -- as shown on your status screen and notification bar -- was quite decent from a different, nearby tower. (And once again, I gently suggest that it would help if you gain access to the Sponsor maps so you will know where to look for the Sprint tower sites. That really saves a lot of time and guesswork.)

 

Honestly' date=' I don't care where the tower is he picked up at. Just map it on sensorly so we can get a look at where the area is. Other than that welcome new members until they can get thier feet wet, then we can attack them [/quote']

 

I didn't "attack" anyone. I just tried to educate a new member. And whether you care about where the tower is or not, he obviously does.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Forum Runner

Hmmm...you are welcome to do what you would like with the information that I shared.

I'm just trying to help. A common error among new users around here is to assume mistakenly that they know where their connections -- especially 4G connections -- are coming from. If you don't want help, go your own way in peace.

I was just driving in Rockledge and noticed that I was on 4G. Oddly, the tower is about 4 blocks west of my house, but I cannot get 4G (I can see the tower from my backyard). I actually lost the signal after driving one block east of the tower. However, I drove about 1 mile south and did have 4G the entire time. I lost it when my phone grabbed the signal from the next tower to the south.

 

The map shows the route that I was driving.

What makes you sure there is a Sprint tower where you think it is? Even if you knew that, how do you know which tower was providing a 4G signal?

The first thing you should do is become an S4GRU sponsor to gain access to the actual Sprint tower maps. Then go looking for the actual site hosting the LTE signal. It may be further away than you think.