ingenium

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Secondly, it would appear around June 20 different Samsung 8x8 sites went from displaying 2.6GHz as a separate eNB from the legacy 1900/860 eNB, to combining all frequencies on the same number. 
Any ideas why? Just to make things less confusing? 

It's hypothesized to be a basestation upgrade/hardware replacement in Samsung markets. Started happening in April in the SF market and spread quickly to other markets. It's needed to enable 256 QAM and 4x4 I believe, and maybe VoLTE prep. It's definitely required for FDD-TDD CA, since CA requires all carriers to be on the same eNB (ie GCI).

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What’s the additional product? Is it an internal or external add-on module?

Seems to be an external module that connects to the Ethernet port. Unsure if the MB has 1 or 2 Ethernet ports; if it's just 1 then it would prevent you from using wired backhaul.

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Guessing ethernet or wifi takes precedence if they're set up and relay is used if those two are unavailable.  
Now it switching back and forth automatically will be an interesting thing to see since initial relay setup takes many minutes....
 
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Presumably it would keep the connection active but at a higher metric, so that it will fail over (like having wifi and LTE at the same time on a phone, or wifi and Ethernet on a laptop). It would just have to re-establish the ipsec tunnel when it changes backhaul. Or they could enable MOBIKE (since it uses IKEv2) to allow fast roaming without dropping any connections running over the tunnel. If setup properly it could fail over within seconds and no UEs will have their connections interrupted.

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256 qam on B26 would also be nice

I'm getting 64 QAM upload regularly on B25 and B26. I saw it briefly on B41 today. Did catch a very brief blip on 256 QAM in Pittsburgh. So it's coming... 

 

 

I roamed on T-Mobile for a bit in the outskirts of the Pittsburgh market (may have technically been Western PA market) for probably 20 minutes. Was a big dead spot for Sprint, but the T-Mobile coverage was solid.

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How many sites would you guess and how far is each node from another? Any more pictures? This is an Airspan Airstrand 1300 small cell. There should be close to 15k of these nodes around the US in addition to the pole mounted nodes from Mobilitie. Not sure who is contracted to install these on the strands.

Sorry, no more pictures. I detected most of them at night via SCP. I'd guess there are at least 100, about a block apart.

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Tmobiles network will not be able to handle a influx that with out 2.5ghz

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Completely agree. There are some sites near me that are already struggling daily with single digit download speeds on 3xCA B41. No way that T-Mobile can absorb that on their existing AWS without serious problems or high densificiation. In my opinion, they'll stop deploying new B41 carriers, make sure 4x4 and 256 QAM are enabled, and then use the remaining spectrum for 5G instead. And as load on B41 is reduced as 5G capable handsets become available, they'll shut down carriers and refarm to 5G.

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That definitely would explain the situation. I'm noticing in the whole Concord area B41 is acting strange. I imagine swapping out 1 tower only takes a day or 2. So maybe they are swapping out all the towers in the area and once all testing and optimization in the area is complete, B41 will return to normal behavior.

I mean in theory is should improve B41 performance if the site was using original triband antennas. The old tribands were 4t4r b41. However the 16 port tribands, while being 8t8r, have a narrower beamwidth compared to NV 1.0 and I believe standalone 8t8r, meaning coverage is weaker between sectors. I'm unsure how they compare to the original triband antennas. So if you're between sectors, that could explain the worse performance.

That being said, it should be a direct replacement at basically the same positioning. The b41 and b25 RRUs likely aren't touched. They usually add a second b26 rru or replace it with a 4t4r capable one. But since the antenna is different, there probably is some sort of of optimization that they'd do.

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Ah, maybe a network change of some kind. My home site in Kansas City has been Clear B41 since they started bringing that online. When I went home this past weekend, they had swapped it out to Ericsson B41. Maybe I should have asked not if it was a new signal, but a different one? If it's been an 8T8R site this whole time, I don't have any other ideas.

They could have maybe swapped out equipment. 25% of SF market's B41 is from triband sites. Even higher within the city. They may have swapped out the antennas for a 16 port triband?

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Found a ton of the strand mounts from the Altice partnership in your market. They're everywhere around Saddle River.

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lilotimz: Thank you for the help!

Just curious.  Is this something you run into from time to time (ethernet networks essentially co-located with Cell Tower equipment)?  Could I run into some issues, or does it just never happen in your experience?  The client will be doing VoIP for telephony, so even marginal dropouts are a potential issue.

Have you ever run STP (shielded twisted pair) to mitigate potential unwanted interference?  Did it work and did it help?

I've never heard of it interfering. Ethernet is pretty resilient, even AC power in my experience hasn't been a problem when I've done runs. As long as the wires aren't parallel and very close together, I would think that you'd be fine. As lilotimz said, the cellular frequencies are way above the frequency of Ethernet. Nothing will be below 600 MHz, with most over 1500 MHz. AC power can cause issues because the frequency overlaps with Ethernet.

 

As a real world example, my college dorm was wired with Ethernet, and Sprint equipment was literally mounted next to my window, on the other side of the wall. The back of the antenna was maybe 5 feet from my computer. No one in my dorm had Ethernet issues.

 

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Coming home from work yesterday I popped my work phone (VZ iPhone X) into field test mode only to see it connected to band 26. I was in a Verizon dead zone, but the phone didn’t say “extended” or anything. 
Is Sprint a roaming partner for Verizon? Think it would’ve authenticated and allowed a data stream had I gone further out of Verizon coverage? (It’s difficult finding a place that Verizon lacks service here)
 
 

It was just scanning for a signal that it can connect to. Field test would show what it's currently scanning.

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Does VoLTE even need Essential help to get working?  I was under the assumption it was simply a sprint network / provisioning thing.  I mean, it already supports Voice call continuity and has for awhile.  Shouldnt be that big of a hurdle for full on VoLTE.

Technically no. The Android VoLTE framework allows for the VoLTE config to be added to the firmware, or it can be included with any app that's signed by the same certificate used to sign the SIM card. In other words, Sprint can publish an app on the play store (or maybe add it to the My Sprint app) and deploy it on every device running Marshmallow and up, assuming that it's FCC certified for VoLTE (nothing technical is preventing it). But I have a strong feeling that they won't do this for whatever reason. Google made it very easy for carriers to add their VoLTE config to devices without needing an OS update.

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B41 is coming in intermittently today, however with the DL less than 1 Mbps. Strangely though the UL is around 6 Mbps. 

Could be congestion. Also on newer Samsung phones, there are some carrier aggregation combos that for some reason dramatically lower speeds at the moment. It will eventually get fixed, but that could be a reason. You can try disabling some CA combinations if you have a Samsung device, or do a profile update to reset them to the current default.

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So band 41 can only be aggregated on contiguous carriers? I always thought a large advantage of CA was that you could aggregate non-contiguous slices of spectrum.

Not for band 41. It has to be contiguous for most handsets. I think the current Samsung flagships can do non-contiguous B41 CA though (any device that can do 4xCA B41 can do non-contig, and I'm pretty sure those handsets support 4xCA), so it's coming.

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5 hours ago, tyroned3222 said:

Found something interesting that I wanted to see if anyone can identify.
Me and another buddy here locally in El paso have been going out tracking all the Sprint towers and upgrades and ran across a mystery
The building in the first pic has always been believe to have a Sprint tower on it , but after multiple occasions of testing the phone never registered at our being nearby on that building
So the blue and red circles show AT & T and Verizon towers and the black circle in the middle is an unknown Tower which we believed could possibly be Sprint, the tower may be turned off or decommission something happened keep in mind to Google image is from earlier this year
So recently there was an upgrade that happened to that unknown Tower and it was left with just one panel after the upgrade so I wanted to see if any of you guys recognize if this is Sprint indeed
 
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That looks like a hexdecaport antenna for sure. Here are some pictures that I took of one in Pittsburgh in January (along with lots of other pictures of the tower). https://photos.app.goo.gl/G4T06PyC5hZHU1dE3

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I wonder if they can broadcast different disconnect thresholds for different devices. I guess it comes down to whether LTE signaling is broadcast/multicast or unicast.

The Pixel 2 for example always maintains a 1x connection (SRLTE) with Sprint, so if LTE is too weak for a VoLTE call, then Sprint can just send it via 1x and pretend the phone isn't on LTE.

With a Verizon SIM, my phone often will maintain SRLTE as well, at least for a little while before going LTE only. So I expect Sprint would keep SRLTE active all the time until they're confident in their network density.

If they can't have different disconnect thresholds for different devices, then yeah we might start seeing drops to CDMA more frequently unfortunately.

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Then use their BRS licenses. They have 60Mhz of BRS nationwide.

Not contiguous. SF is one example. There's a spectrum squatter (owned by AT&T) right in the middle of their allocations in the city. They can do at most 2 contiguous carriers. Once you get further out you start to see 3 carriers.

 

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on the GS9 you can only do that if you change the network mode to GSM/UMTS mode which means no LTE roaming

Oh interesting. I last successfully used it in January 2017 in Peru, but none of the carriers had LTE deployed. When I tried in Indonesia a little over a year ago, it gave me this error (but I assumed it was just a temporary bug). So maybe it doesn't let you actually change it while connected to LTE.


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With the  Sierra Wireless tech docs, they say they offer ota firmware updates.
Are they transparent?
How are they initiated?
Looking at pfsense, it has the support for that module via USB.

The Cradlepoint solutions seem more expensive.
https://www.amazon.com/CBA850LP6-NA-Cradlepoint-Cellular-Broadband-integrated/dp/B01EO0Q6DQ

 

I think some models support OTA updates. I want to say they aren't completely automatic, and you have to trigger them by issuing a modem command (the same way you control the modem in general). The modems expose a serial interface that you use to issue commands and see the result.

For the modem I have, MC7455, the updates are not OTA. You have to flash them manually. It's still a pretty easy process, though the last update caused a BSOD on Windows when it completed. But everything was updated and fine after that.

The modems often have 2 modes they can operate in, MBIM and QMI. MBIM I think is more established and has broader support in software, but I think is mostly a legacy/compatibility mode on the modems. QMI I think has lower overhead and is the protocol that they're moving towards. I believe it's a Qualcomm protocol.

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You can force it to roam on any of the carriers that Sprint has an agreement with. Under wireless settings, you can select which network you want it to use.

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The aggressive roaming has stopped for me. Yesterday and today, I was driving through a Sprint dead zone for 10-15 minutes. -110 1x (basically useless, you can't make a call on this stretch of highway, it drops almost immediately) and no evdo. My car has AT&T and had full service, but my phone wouldn't roam despite having no usable data.

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7 hours ago, mikejeep said:

I hope nobody is afraid to bring anything to my attention..? I know there are Samsung changes that I need to get in there. Just the same old song from me, haven't been able to get enough time to update the app. It does weigh on me, I take a lot of pride in the app and hate when updates lag! Unfortunately real life (and real job) have to take priority.. stop if you've heard this before.. ?

-Mike

Here's a spreadsheet that I put together that shows the new GCI layout, along with some example setups (with earfcns). https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1Zhb37AO4gh2kWOz598FBrWKK478RvujRzN1G4TDLcF4/edit?usp=sharing 

I agree, build your own. Sierra Wireless modem with a USB enclosure for it will let you use any router that supports Openwrt basically. I'm using one with a Netgear R7800 and it works very well.

The Sierra Wireless MC7455 has a bug that causes it to disconnect 1-2 times a day that may be fixed in the newest driver (I'll know for sure within a couple days), but is the only one that supports B25. They have other modems that don't have this issue, but lack B25. If you don't need B25, get a model that does 3xCA B41.

Check out the ROOTer firmware (build of openwrt with mods for LTE modems) https://www.ofmodemsandmen.com the developer is almost done with a new build using the latest openwrt, and you can get the pre-release builds on their forum thread (might be required for some routers). He seems willing to add any routers not listed as long as they work with openwrt.

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The S9 has WiFi Calling and Calling Plus is in a hidden menu. Also the iPhone has Wi-Fi calling even when you do BYOD.

Both are phones that Sprint sells themselves, even if it's not that particular "model" (ie S9 running unlocked vs Sprint firmware). iPhones are all the same firmware and is a device that Sprint sells.

I see BYOD as typically meaning Android phones that Sprint doesn't sell directly, but that are "supported" in that it's whitelisted for the network and that they often have support documentation for (and it shows with the correct device name on your account). Which I guess is a fairly small subset of phones...

Really, it comes down to when Sprint will quit trying to implement it their own way and use the API that every other carrier uses, so that it will work on all phones with capable hardware and FCC certification. It would make it so much easier on Sprint too, since they wouldn't have to make custom software for every phone and get the manufacturer to add it in.

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