Joeynach

Just a term that has been thrown around on this board when talking about the rip and replace process on Sprint's towers to get the LTE equipment in place.

I remember expressing a similar sentiment about a month ago. I left Chicago during rush hour pulling down sub dial up LTE speeds and below 3 SNRs in the Loop. 45 min later out in the south suburbs BOOM, pulling down 5-10Mbps and SNRs 15+. The difference, population density. If your a suburbanite you prolly have a completely different experience with Sprint and NV. Whatever NV Phase 1 is, its not made to handle the traffic of urban centers when all users demand access to one 5x5 carrier of LTE, and I see similar complaints on Sprint's board in relation to NYC, San Fran, etc. Its just disappointing.

Im afraid for Sprint, they are basically done with NV (phase 1) in Chicago, touted the hell out of the network over the summer, and now things are worse than ever downtown. I'm afraid they are going to churn like crazy until real tri band is in place at every tower and at least 50% of users have tri band phones. Like you, I have no idea what an additional 5x5 carrier on B25 will do. I also have no idea if its 100% set in stone Chicago is getting an additional 5x5 LTE carrier from the USCC shutdown, or when. Either way though, its pretty obvious Sprint was victimized by its own NV program here in Chicago. They ripped down the old network, built a new one, migrated everyone from WiMax, migrated all USCC customers, migrated everyone with 3G only devices, and now have nothing but a slow and overcrowded LTE network. I'm really excited for what this network will be once true Tri-Band is in place all over the country and all three spectrum blocks are full deployed, but I am pretty disappointed in NV thus far. I guess in hindsight, to be completely honest, if I fully understood the differences between LTE deployments (Freq & spectrum width) on various carriers when I re-upped in 2012, I probably would have gone in a different direction.

Also, question for my city folks. Anyone have troubles at Ogilvy station? I now work here at 500 W Madison and my Sprint service is awful. There are fully 4G enabled towers in each direction just a thousand or two feet away and I can't get an LTE signal at all. Im stuck on 3G only and its unuseably slow. Im seeing 3G SNR of 1-2 DB. Just doesn't seem right. Anyone else had issues at or around Ogilvy?

Well thats not good b/c it implies even worse crowding on band 25 than what I had noticed previous to my trip. Same with the 3G, the overcrowding during the day in the Loop is ridicolous. The throughput speeds continue to bottom out on both technolgies. Chicago is in trouble. At my new hire orientation the other day, the HR leader (a 55 yr old women) was discussing how employees get Sprint discounts and even said outloud something like 'But with how bad things on Sprint have gotten in Chicago recently you might not want to go down that road'. Thats really bad, when someone my Mom's age notices how much the data connections have degraded in the city over the last several months. Makes me sad.

Im not sure how we have such different experiences, but I just returned from a several week vacation in Europe and things are worse than ever on the LTE band 25 in the Loop. I don't have access to band 41, but I am def experiencing the slowest speeds I have ever seen on band 25, both on 3G and LTE. I have been moving around the Loop a bit this week and noticed extremely poor speeds and signal strengths. My 3G speed tests midday were resulting in less than 5K DL, while my LTE tests resulting in a stout 20K DL. I have no explanation, just odd that we have such contrasting experiences, even on the same band.

I agree with you on the 800Mhz LTE, that can't come soon enough, b/c as you point out, unlike Tri-Band, there are plenty of Sprint users out there right now with 800Mhz ready LTE devices. Getting that bad boy up and running could do wonders for alleviating the congestion on the 1900 PCS LTE band, getting those iPhone 5 users over and parked on 800LTE could be huge!

Thank you thank you thank you. This is exactly what I have been arguing on this board about Spark and Tri-Band forever now. That aside from a few Spark groupies and S4GRU power users it makes no sense to assume the general Sprint population is going dump their current LTE devices in favor of the Tri-Band for $400+ (or $500+) out of pocket in order to take advantage of LTE on the 800 and 2500Mhz carriers.....thus offloading LTE demand across spectrum's and easing the crunch on the 1900LTE we all have. It's going to take years of natural attrition of user devices by contract renewal for this to occur. This is why I can't buy the argument, that Sprint Spark is coming and as soon as its here its going to save Chicago LTE......it will make months if not years for the "saving" process to occur.

I couldn't agree with this more!

I agree I am more interested to see what Sprint can do with the USCC spectrum than Sprint Spark. I have been very loud about my doubts there will be both enough deployment of and enough users with tri band LTE to make a significant (demand offloading) difference. To me, that USCC spectrum is more important if it is to be used to provide more airwave spectrum to the current LTE on 1900 PCS.

No doubt about it, Im sure there are other trouble spots where we have the same issue, too much demand for LTE, not a wide enough spectrum block for all to access. Still the Loop has to be the worst, there are plenty of LTE towers, plenty of signal availability at this point in the NV process, sure a few stuck on 3G, but most are LTE active at this point. The capacity just isn't there. I don't even bother trying to use my LTE connection for data on my device when in my office in the Loop anymore. The SNR and speeds have degraded so much over the past 6 months it just not useable. Thank goodness for office WIFI. During a typical weekday during normal work hours were in sub dialup range, my device has trouble opening Google, let alone any Apps or streaming content. I get frequent speed tests below 10K and SNR's below 1 when connected to a strong LTE signal. The whole mess reminds me of our first cable modem in 1999, everyone know they were susceptible to crowding and peak/offpeak demand swings. I remember during peak hours in the evening that bad boy would slow back down to dialup, but if I went downloading and surfing at 2AM it was blazing fast (for the time). Now, if I happen to be working late till 8 or 9pm or in the Loop for any reason on the weekends when it's a ghost town...BOOM, my SNR shoots up to 10+ and my speeds recover to at least respectable marks between 500K-1Meg. Any time normal time where the Loop is crowded and full of work people, it's not useable. It's gotta be spectrum constraint, it just has to. That 5x5 PCS carrier that Sprint has deployed their LTE on just has to be too narrow for the demand they have created, especially in extremely dense areas like the Loop or stadiums. Sprint seems to a victim of its own success in Chicago, I'm sure they thought "if we build it they will come", but I doubt they were worried "if we build it and too many people come it won't correctly for anyone". Let's face it, at this point almost every Sprint user has an LTE device by now, the majority of which are just 1900LTE based. Demand has to be outweighing supply here.

If you spend most of your time in the suburbs like Fox River Grove you won't notice much of the sub LTE like LTE performance and poor SNR. The issues seem to be resigned to the more dense parts of the city and crowded venues like concerts, stadiums, airports, malls, etc. It's obviously a capacity issue on what I would call a rather narrow 5x5 deployment on LTE for the 3rd largest market in the country. Not that I have any official declaration, but for all intensive purposes I am calling Chicago (the city proper) a spectrum constrained market. So in the NW burbs you won't notice much unless you spend some time downtown or frolicking in Lincoln Park or Wicker Park or whatever. Most folks in the burbs see SNR's in the 15-25 range, most folks in the city see SNR's in the 0-10 range. If you actually make it to the Loop proper (where I work), its not uncommon for SNR values below 1 during a normal workday and throughput LTE speeds below 20K. Stay in the burbs and your fine, plenty of capacity out there, less demand, less people, less devices per tower (panel).

I think you kind of misinterpreted my point. My point wasn't so much about what the actual cost of these devices are, its about the propensity of hundreds of thousands of Sprint users to understand why they should upgrade to Tri Band devices and why they should pay whatever it winds up being, $350, $400, $500 out of pocket. That's a lot of money, and to most people sure when your contract is up and you have gotten the life you wanted out of your current device you can justify spending $100-$200 for a shiny new top shelf device on a contract renewal. My point is to get to this point, where the general Sprint population is upgrading to and purchasing the top shelf Tri Band LTE devices over all other devices, will take years. The point you are trying to make, that you can get a N5 from Google for $350 or sell a GS3 on ebay or something to me is irrelevant. Sure to the likes of Sprint groupies and S4GRU users that is like Gold, and we are willing to do enough research and bargain hunt to find what we need, but in order for the LTE demand to be spread out amongst the various bands in the Tri-Band spectrum we need the masses to have Tri Band devices, not the junkies and Sprint homers that troll this board like us. We are simply too few. How many Sprint users even know you can get an N5 from Google for $350, how many care? Most Sprint users buy phones from Sprint stores, and don't even think about buying a new device until their 2 year contract is up (b/c they know without the contract renewal price phones are crazy expensive). If you want the N5 without being a new user or having a contract upgrade Sprint says its costs $449, the G2 $549, the GS4 $599, HTC One Max $599, Moto X $549. How many Sprint users (not associated with S4GRU) are going to recognize they must acquire one of the previous mentioned devices, get to Tri Band LTE, both for their own ability to access the shiny new faster 800LTE and 2600LTE bands, but also to help the network offload LTE demands across multiple bands as to free up demand on the core 1900LTE band for themselves and all Sprint users.......and shell out $400, $500, or possibly $600 to do so (out of contract). My guess for December 2013, zero percent. And that is my point, give it a year, two, maybe three, and sure by attrition of user devices, new users with new phones, and perhaps additional marketing and messaging from Sprint that number could be significantly higher, high enough to physically spread the demand for LTE out across the three bands of Spark. It will just take time.

You are kind of late to the party here, this very exact topic has been discussed ad nasuem here over the past several months. Many Sprint users, most of them city dwellers or city workers have noticed significant degradation of LTE speeds over the last few months. The problem is this correlates with the almost complete NV build out and activation of LTE at every Sprint site in Chicago. True there are still a few annoying holes out there that are 3G only, unfortunately for us in some pretty densely populated or traveled places like the Loop, McCormick Place, Mag Mile, etc. When it comes to non LTE sites that remain all any of us can say is eventually they will be upgraded. We have discussed issues surrounding site upgrade delays for a year now, mostly related to delays in backhaul and permitting issues to access towers located on the tops of buildings and structures. It's annoying, but is what it is. So when Sprint Care reps talk about how complete the market is, they are right, in the sense that 950 of the 1000 towers in this DMA are LTE active. The problem is that isn't enough and thats about all a Sprint customer service rep can tell you and look at. One of the major issues hasn't been the coverage of LTE, its been the reliability and speed of the network. You can get LTE in most of this market, although as other users pointed out, for now its only available on the 1900 PCS Band, which has its own signal strength limitations and indoor coverage issues. Unfortunately, LTE speeds are very signal strength dependent, so as another user pointed out deploying LTE800 will really improve LTE connectivity and speeds. Again, for now Sprint's LTE in Chicago is like Jr. LTE in my opinion since its stuck on 1900 Band only. The other issues is the spectrum it's deployed on, its quite a narrow band, being limited by 5x5 deployment in the PCS 1900 G Block. Most of the conversation on this board starting back in Sept/Oct was investigating if this 5x5 block had simply become over saturated already, even though its still a relatively new network. The issue at hand is most people in the city proper were noticed degraded LTE speeds which correlated to weak SNR values (Signal to Noise Ratio). Poor SNR values imply a lot of "noise" in the LTE signal, as a result, even with strong signal strength the data speeds plummet to what you have noted, and a lot of users myself included start noticing LTE speeds in the sub dial up domain during peak times and in dense downtown locations. Needless to say that sucks. After months of discussion on what could be causing such widespread poor SNR; interference from US Cellular, interference from TMobile on the adjacent 1900 PCS Block, interference from a rogue network, interferences from rumored Samsung GS3 poor antenna replacement, we came up with one generally agreed upon truth......that the one 5Mhz block of PCS G LTE is probably at capacity, especially in more dense areas of the city. The truth is in the poor SNR values and the timing of Sprint's deployment. When the market neared completion Sprint marketed the hell out of Chicago during the summer and fall months. More and more users get LTE enabled devices and start taking advantage. The new Iphones come out in September, meaning anyone with an Iphone 4 probably upgraded to an LTE device (they were 3G only). Anyone with a WiMax device probably upgraded to an LTE device under the new #builtforChicago marketing campaign. And when did we start noticing the poor SNR and poor LTE....September/October. Coincidence, probably not. So at the end of the day, that 5Mhz block of PCS isn't enough for this market and its showing. When there are too many devices in the area competing for services from the towers this is called spectrum shortage. Its very similar to too many cars on the highway during rush hour for the number of lanes/capacity....therefore all the cars slow down. Same thing here, and as a result, the LTE signal degrades, slows down, and shows us a low SNR value (which you can check using the Signal Check Lite App). This is also why we see better SNR and speeds when the city empties or during off peak hours. Its the same reason speeds and SNR are generally much better in the suburbs, there are just less people and less devices competing for the same airlink from the tower. So other people were correct in saying it's not really going to get any better on its own. There are some upgrades around the corner that in due time, I'm guessing another year at least, will make a significant impact on LTE speed in this market. Some people have discussed the USCC spectrum that Sprint will get for this market post 1/31/14. That will help add capacity to that original 1900 LTE Band. The other big kicker is the deployment of Sprint Spark or simply tri band LTE. This includes the 800Mhz LTE band from Nextel and the 2500Mhz band of LTE from clearwire. As many people have noted 800 LTE has much better building penetration and ability to hold an LTE signal, but the problem is here is timing. Were talking about a whole nother site by site deployment for both 800 and 2500 Mhz LTE. Its going to take some time, remember there are still many sites in Chicago and nationwide that are 3G only, so who knows how long it will be for LTE v2.0. And furthermore, to access these additional bands of LTE the user has to have a tri-band enabled LTE device. And not only that, many users will have to have tri-band devices to offload LTE demand from the 1900 block to the other bands and relax the spectrum crunch on the 1900 band. For that to happen that requires millions of people to spend money, either something like $400-$500 out of pocket for a phone upgrade, or waiting for their contract with Sprint to expire so they can upgrade at an affordable price. So to me, actually getting to a Sr. LTE network, as I believe its a Jr. LTE network now, will really take some time, in my opinion at least another year if not two. So while the network in Chicago is quite LTE "built out" it still has a long way to go in really getting to the consistent high speed wide coverage net that other carriers offer as I believe ATT/VZW have deployed their core LTE in the 700/800 Mhz blocks with 10Mhz wide spectrum. You can view RootMetrics reports to see how the carriers stack up on your own. Don't get me wrong those carriers are also continuing to deploy LTE on additional bands to add capacity, everyone has spectrum and capacity issues. At the end of the day that makes the other carriers more reliable right now in my opinion, but many people still prefer sprint for a variety of reasons; greater technology stack coming soon, lower prices, unlimited data, not being a customer of a giant telecom who supports PIPA and eliminating competition, etc. It up to you to decide what's important to you, how patient you will be with your carrier, what you can afford, etc etc.

Makes the 0 to 5 SNR I see in the Loop, River North, and Lincoln Park on a daily basis seem even more pathetic.

Are you using a Tri Band to Dual Band LTE Device?

I think this question has probably been answered in this forum sometime in the past, but I need a refresher. If a site is showing it has had NV activity, but is still 3G only (or 3G/800), does that always mean it's non LTE b/c waiting for backhaul? Or can there be other reasons, like can it be waiting for LTE panels or other equipment, would that always be in place if its showing NV activity, even if its 3G.

I will do this, how about one better, Portillo's and Hot Doug's in the same trip! U in AJ?

Well I guess that answers that, the answer being no.

Is that shown in the NV Sites complete map for regular sponsors?

Who are the immediate benefactors of the 800LTE; iPhone 5, GS4, etc?

Band 25 is 1900 PCS Block G and Band 41 is 2600Mhz or 800Mhz spectrum block?

Is there any technical way to physically see and confirm over saturated airlinks. We know the poor SNR is likely the cause of too many LTE devices trying to access to few LTE airwaves to the towers on 1900 PCS G Block, but is there a technical indicator for this. Some sort of tool or device that can be used to say ahhh yep, I see the airwave frequencies are jammed up with data requests........

Well there have been no indications from Sprint or any rumors from people on this board that anything substantial will happen in the immediate time period following the USCC shutdown on January 31. Just one guy said he thought Q1, pretty vague, but that's all we have to go on for now.

Really wow, the NV sites complete map has half of NYC still covered in 3G only. I also read the Verizon forum on NYC, tons of low LTE speed complaints. Seems like Verizon has extreme spectrum shortages in NYC.