saywhatman

How is Sprint Chicago network today? Does it beat out Verizon in speed and coverage?

I'm sure in a few places, but certainly not overall. Head and shoulders above where it used to be though.

 

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Get a chance to hit Honored Premier Sponsor and get a Moto X? Sounds awesome 

 

 

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In what way is it optimized?

After Band 26 is enabled, it's usually left on full downtilt and low power to prevent interference with other nearby B26 sites which have the potential to reach much further than B25). Network techs then need to go through and market and manually tune clusters of B26 sites to increase the transmit power and tilt up the antennae, so that B26 does its job and penetrates more without interfering with other sites.

 

Until optimization, B26 can be as bad if not worse than B25 at range and building penetration. Which can be...frustrating.

 

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I was mistaken if this is the case. Do you know of a reason for it? Seems like a step backwards.

SvLTE requires separate CDMA and LTE radios. That was necessary back when there weren't any modems that supported both LTE and CDMA. You had two radios running all the time, with twice the battery consumption.

 

Since then, we have combined CDMA/LTE radios, which only operate on one or the other at a time. This increases battery life, but at the expense of SVLTE

 

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Sent a bit your way a few days ago, definitely some more coming from my first summer paycheck. 

That doesn't make sense. They tested last in September. Since then, sprint has gone ape sh*t with band 41. So AT&T notched up because they widened B4 to 10x10?

 

 

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There are still plenty of areas of Chicago that have horrendously configured downtilt and site spacing (*cough* chinatown, hyde park, near south side *cough*) where it's very easy to lose LTE or simply be on unusable B26 or B25 with not a hint of B41 in sight, especially inside. I can totally understand these results based on my own personal experience.  

SignalCheck mostly works flawlessly in M preview! I have been having some problems with the latest version identifying Sprint B41 as Clearwire, but those were true in lollipop as well

Hi gusherb,

 

What optimization does Sprint need to do?

 

While the signal strength indoors is quite a bit better with Sprint indoors, and the speeds outdoors are fine, they could be a bit faster, as I've had buffering during songs streaming from Tidal, something that didn't happen on MetroPCS. There also are some areas nearby where there isn't 4g LTE, but 3g. Although I'm still more satisfied with the Sprint data service than I was on MetroPCS, as I need the signal indoors. I'm in the Chicago suburbs.

 

There are quite a few places in the city of Chicago (Chinatown, Hyde Park, Near South Side, Bronzeville, just to name a few off the top of my head) where they either severely need infill (Chinatown) or at least need to better optimize the sites they have (Hyde Park). Plenty of areas near UChicago where LTE is unusable outdoors and only have 1x inside apartments. 

How can i become or join to track what sites are 8t8r?

 

That information is located here! Basically, any level of contribution to the site will get you access to Sponsor information, which includes site locations and their 3G/4G upgrade status. This expires after a year if you don't make any more donations. Donate $100 or more to the site (not necessarily all at once, all donations count towards your Premier status), and you'll earn Premier Sponsor status, which grants you access to NV Schedule maps, 8T8R deployment information and a bunch of other goodies! As a Premier Sponsor, I can guarantee you it's worth the money. 

which bands?

B25 only. I don't think they're replacing antennae, so were probably limited to B25 even after the upgrade is complete.

Oh wow. Almost looking forward to riding BART. Is the DAS shared in Muni subway under Market?

So far the upgrade appears to only have been done south of Daly City. I was riding BART all over the bay area and didn't get LTE anywhere else but there. Signal was incredible though.

Very excited to see LTE underground on BART! I think they upgraded the DAS between Colma and SFO. I didn't get LTE underground anywhere else and the SINR was way too high to be coming from an aboveground site.

Does anyone know which tower(s) provides service on the BART between Embarcadero and 16th St Mission? Is it a DAS? Or is there a tower installed in one of the stations pointing down the tunnels? 

 

The whole BART system is covered underground with a DAS. The base station that they're all hooked up to got upgraded over the summer to NV 3G. No word on LTE down there. 

Mike,

I was waiting on a traffic light a couple days ago and noticed SCP was cursing me

 

I'm assuming you have a -40 cap on the signal because I was watching the signal go from -40 to seeing what is in the notification bar.

 

I was about 30 yards from the tower with a sector facing right at me. Right as I took the screen shot, the light turned green so I didn't have a chance to check what the main app would have said. I assume though it would've been the same.

 

Sent from my Note 4.

 

That's one of my favorite hidden features of SCP. My mom's house is about 50 feet from a site, so whenever I visit home SCP curses me out

Unless there is TMO tower ontop of the mall there how can that be, the Sprint B25 and TMO B4 have similar propagation characteristics because they lie in almost the same spot in the electromagnetic spectrum.

 

There are a lot of instances in areas that Sprint doesn't cater to very well (Hyde Park, Chinatown) where T-Mobile performs better with the same spacing, or maybe a little denser. It's usually because T-Mobile B4 is better optimized than B25 from Sprint's towers, at least that's how I've heard it explained to me on this forum. 

Sprint's B41 with the new 8T8R antennas (not CLWR) broadcasts on PLMN 310-120 just like B25

" RootScore® performance scores and information are based on testing conducted during 9/5/2014 - 9/11/2014, and are derived using methods that rely on random sampling. Phones used during testing: AT&T - Galaxy S5 , Sprint - Galaxy S5 , T-Mobile - Galaxy S5 , Verizon - Galaxy S5 . Wireless network performance is subject to a number of factors that may vary over time. Individual experience may vary."

 

If they used an N5 they couldn't use it on Verizon, they try to use the same device on all networks

 

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http://www.rootmetrics.com/us/methodology

 

I'm on mobile but they list which phones at the bottom of each Rootscore report in the fine print. Usually a Galaxy S5 on the latest firmware.

 

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Doesn't rootmetrics use crowd sourced data? If that is indeed the case, these numbers are including the high percentage of single band devices still in circulation. Which in turn are dragging the average score down by quite a bit. That would also explain why Sprint has more wins in less urban environments where 5x5 B25 is sufficient.

 

I do not think Sprint needs to necessarily have 3 Carriers to trump the other wireless companies, what they need to do is get tri band devices in more hands, and keep moving forward on 8t8r installs as quickly as possible, even if the backhaul wont allow full throughput (5mbs vs .5mbs user experience is night and day)

They do their own testing with all triband devices, not crowd sourced. Chicagoland is big, and especially where I live it's very easy to hit big areas of very slow 3G.

 

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I only had one specific Clearwire site giving me problems yesterday evening, but other than that was pretty smooth sailing. 

When I first got Lollipop installed I could not get data working for the life of me for hours. Showed up as "Unregistered" in Signalcheck. Eventually some combination of radio info switching and profile updating fixed it, though I could always connect in 1x mode (CDMA Only). Occasionally SCP will show "Unregistered" when I'm connected to Wifi and camping on LTE, especially in fringe coverage areas. 

Got your report.. I don't think I've ever had any WiFi bugs, so there isn't any WiFi diagnostic information, oops! Does it stay at -127 RSSI? That is probably the issue; until now, Android reported -140 dBm when WiFi was disconnected. In fact, -140 was a magic number for most networking technologies, but it looks like that is out the window with Lollipop.

 

-Mike

It seems to stick on -127 RSSI. Here is the WiFi status page.

This is the only weirdness I've seen so far in the lollipop preview. It happens when I have the WiFi on but not connected to a network. I'll send a diagnostic.

Unfortunately, I can't recommend Sprint to anyone going to the University of Chicago, or that lives in the Hyde Park area. Service is fine a couple blocks from the sites on the outskirts where my apartment is, but go on campus or to any apartment in Hyde Park and you can forget about having coverage. B26 has made things better, but a lot of the time in people's apartments I'm on fringe 3G and even outdoors at times I lose my 4G connection. Sprint needs to build another site in the area ASAP. 

I flew into midway yesterday and didn't drop LTE in the airport or the entire way to my apartment in Hyde Park. Feels good man. It's a welcome respite from LTE in San Francisco...I even connected to an 8T8R site outside of Washington Park!