radem

7 minutes ago, iansltx said:

They're asking for permission to deploy another shell closer to the earth's surface, so short answer is yes, this will get better over time, but you're not going to have cell sizes smaller than a terrestrial rural site, and you're not going to have capacity more than that 5x5 block, so in emergency areas the better option will be to get power to an existing site or COW and backhaul that site via Starlink, at like 30x the capacity.

The 5x5 will be more than enough for text messaging and hundreds or thousands of simultaneous phone calls per satellite cell.  As long as they prioritize phone calls with text messaging without media including data apps such as iMessage, RCS, WhatApp, etc. second, they can put all the other types of media including MMS and app-based photo attachments, etc. and all other data types in lowest priority.  People will get terrible data performance but general data might work or might not.  That is more than enough for many people in an emergency.

It appears that T-Mobile is quickly enabling the new cellular bandwidth but for some sites they may have to wait an unknown amount of time for the backhaul to be increased so that users actually see the faster speeds.

7 minutes ago, clbowens said:

So, now T-Mobile has to sell it to someone else, right?

I wish they could get the FCC to agree to allow them to keep it if they run old technologies such as analog, GSM, 2G, and 3G with open access for a small fee from all providers on it for compatibility with old IOT devices.  Although if those old devices are not configured to use 800mhz, it won't help.

17 hours ago, PythonFanPA said:

To be clear, my comment wasn't so much a statement on the technical aspect of what T-Mobile has deployed or not.  Its more just the flippant use of 'staggering' as a descriptor IMO, particularly juxtaposed against the average customer's expectation or likely perspective in the face of such usage against the volume referenced.   I feel like the average Joe on the street might see that speed and go 'Hm, that's pretty good!' maybe....but jaw dropping on the ground in awe?  Nah...doesn't really follow to me.   Just my own thoughts anyway.

In a venue such as that, a huge number of people will be taking pictures and videos and uploading them.  Upload speed becomes very important and 200mbps may struggle when a large number of customers are uploading at the same time.

33 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Here's how T-Mobile is supporting the Big Game with its permanent upgrades inside Allegiant Stadium:

• Wynn Parking Garage for enhanced coverage supporting activities around the Sphere.

A bucket list item for me would be to watch the "big game" inside the Sphere.  That thing looks amazing.

Fall Down

https://9to5mac.com/2023/11/16/apple-rcs-coming-to-iphone/  - RCS support coming in IOS 18. This will be in addition to iMessage and SMS.

21 hours ago, RedSpark said:

Probably a lot of legacy units/process/equipment which has been deprecated and the cost savings are realized over time?

I imagine this number will eventually drop to zero.

I would think tower leases that they are still paying for but no longer using.  As those useless leases expire they get to realize additional savings from the merger.

Code Review

I would like to see a technical explanation as to how 5G network slicing is supposed to work with Net Neutrality.  My read on this which may be incorrect is that network slicing would only be allowed under net neutrality so long as the slice of the network is a private network but that seems to contradict the ability for the general public to use a public facing app from the app store that will run over the network slice.

19 hours ago, dkyeager said:

https://www.talkandroid.com/382030-t-mobile-uncarrier-data-breach-glitch/

Reportedly a temporary issue during a system update.

We do not care if they were hacked or just incompetent which they claim they were in this case.  Either way they are very careless and have no comprehension of basic data security with our personal information and are putting us as risk.  

https://www.crowncastle.com/communities/small-cell-information has a good write up on small cells, how they work and what they look like.  They will not show up on apps like cellmapper until they are turned on so that users can connect to them.  After that it requires someone running the app to connect to them before they get mapped.  That can be from a few days to months after they are installed.

16 hours ago, dkyeager said:

https://www.lightreading.com/open-ran/dish-eyes-major-energy-savings-thanks-to-ric/d/d-id/784901?

So how would powering down some of the equipment affect service? I assume more burden would be placed on n71. but maybe powering down just refers capacity and not coverage.  Maybe someone like @ingenium knows?  AT&T had previously talked about this several years ago, but never hear of any details or actual implementation.

From what I have seen on this subject, it involves both tower and data center server shutdowns during times of low usage.  The data center work is common by many companies where they find areas that have multiple servers providing capacity and have some of them go to sleep when they are not needed and wake up when they are needed.  The sleep and wake cycles can be time based or based on actual usage or some combination of the two.

Tower coverage is not supposed to be impacted by these shutdowns but capacity definitely is.  This means that a computer program running in their data center will be analyzing each tower's usage and will attempt to detect the speed that all the users are getting from that tower and will track if some part of the higher frequency bandwidth is not being used.  If those frequencies have not been used for some period of time it will be shutdown and if the lower bandwidths get to some level of higher usage, they will started back up.  The sleep and wake cycles can be time based or based on actual usage or some combination of the two.

Toilet Plunger

1 minute ago, dkyeager said:

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20230307/5g/dish-testing-the-800-mhz-waters

Moving the band 26 option to likely.

I would expect Dish to purchase the 800mhz and use that spectrum as the collateral for much of the purchase.  It may be that T-Mobile would even hold the loan on this deal with the requirement that if Dish defaults on the loan, T-Mobile would get the spectrum back.

10 hours ago, aspiller98 said:

So... does this mean the petition/license grant will be cleared up soon?

Is speculation that the FCC will deny AT&T's petition and grant these licenses? Or will the FCC side with AT&T?

AT&T never had a real case on this.  AT&T simply filed because they are taking advantage of bureaucracy where the FCC has to review the petition and follow some predetermined processes that take a significant amount of time before they can officially award the licenses.  There is no penalty for this type of delaying technique so they are just trying to delay T-Mobile the use of this bandwidth so that it gives AT&T a little more time to deploy C-Band and catch up somewhat to the significant lead that T-Mobile has in 5G.

8 hours ago, clbowens said:

I did mine all in the sprint app.

This is the way.  Put in an online order from the T-Mobile website to get your new phone sent to you and set it up at home without involving the store at all.  The stores really add no additional value in setting up a new phone as all modern phones can migrate their own backed up content over from one phone to another so long as you are going Android to Android or iPhone to iPhone.  With eSIM this has become even easier as you do not even have move a SIM card.  All you need is a reasonably fast internet connection.

I was in London the last week of January and had no issues on my business iPhone.  Free unlimited international roaming data speeds (256Kbps) and free texts were perfectly acceptable for everything I used it for and I did not have to do anything to enable it.  It just worked after I landed, turned on my phone, and got the text from T-Mobile stating it was enabled.  Calls are $0.20 per minute whether you make them or receive them.  I did not make or receive any calls so I did not use that.

10 hours ago, mikejeep said:

Every year the impact of hosting a Super Bowl seems to come with better and better long-term network impacts. Those look like some huge investments that people in the area will get to enjoy for a long time.

VZ video was cool until Eli showed up in it.. 🤣

These types of mass gatherings of people are exactly what MMWave with the other layers of the spectrum cake above it is good for.  There is nothing worse from a customer point of view than being at one of these events but getting no or very slow data due to the system being overloaded.  MMWave when deployed properly fixes this problem for densely packed crowds who are heavy mobile data users.

1 hour ago, RedSpark said:

Good points.

I remember John Saw's takes on mmWave:

https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/5g/sprint-says-no-to-mmwave-yes-to-mobile-5g/d/d-id/739592

https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/sprint-millimeter-wave-spectrum-important-part-our-strategy-going-forward

I agree with John Saw's take on mmWave.  There are significant costs to purchasing and installing the mmWave antenna and associated equipment. 

It is only cost effective to spend the money deploying mmWave if there is going to be more than a certain number of customers very close to the antenna with no blockers between the customers and the antenna and the mid-band i.e. 2500mhz that is already available to that location cannot handle the load.  That is a very limited set of locations.

23 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

One of AT&T's new strategies to reduce its network energy consumption is to power down parts of its wireless network at night, when it's mostly unused.

Specifically, he said the operator is turning off its 5G radios working in midband spectrum. He said the operator's 5G radios in lowband spectrum remain powered on to handle whatever traffic the operator's customers generate during the night.

This is a brilliant solution to the problem of the cost of powering all that equipment when it is not needed.  This is ideal for small cells that overlay a macro cell coverage area to provide additional capacity.  I would hope that the powering down and powering up of the equipment is based on the actual usage of the currently running antennas and not just based on time of day.  Then it can be set to automatic and just run without a lot of oversight while still properly catering to unexpected situations.

Many cloud based computer companies (Netflix, eBay, Google, Amazon, Facebook, etc.) do this type of powering up and down of server capacity in cloud data centers based on usage of the equipment and it saves them a tremendous amount of money.

10 hours ago, iansltx said:

There's no way they'll be able to do terrestrial-orbital handoff. They also mentioned 2 kbps for voice calls, which is a fraction of standard codecs. This'll be messaging plus the odd voice call only. Still better than nothing, particularly as T-Mobile pulls the rug out from under an increasing number of roaming agreements.

Was surprised backhaul basically wasn't part of this equation, but maybe that'll come later. That, or Starlink feels like they'll be capacity constrained for the foreseeable future.

Guessing this'll be 1.4x1.4 at the top of PCS-G, as B25 LTE, but we shall see.

I see this as extremely useful for very remote areas such as Alaska, the middle of the desert, the middle of the ocean etc. where you can count the number of people in a cell on one hand.   A Starlink v1 satellite data cell is a hexagon of 15 miles across so it really isn't that large. 

This will also be a hugely important messaging backup for natural disasters.  They said it can use that entire bandwidth simultaneously for messaging even in heavily populated areas when the ground networks are down.

It was what I posted: space mobile . A small amount of T-Mobile PCS spectrum and a satellite cell antenna built into Starlink gen2 satellites supported on existing mobile devices.  Starlink will also support other carriers.  T-mobile beta will start towards the end of 2022 with messaging services available in outside no service areas in the US for free on magenta plans.

I would guess this: https://ast-science.com/spacemobile/

21 hours ago, davidtm said:

Called Sprint this am. Those 3 calls were on WiFi calling (coded on bill as VW/IR), and I was charged $3/min(!). It sounded like they thought she was calling from the USA to Ireland, rather than internal to Ireland. They have "escalated" this and will call me back in 5 days, hopefully with good news.

WiFi calling from an international location should function exactly the same as if the phone was in the US as it routes your voice call over the internet to T-Mobile in the US and then places the call.  That would be charged as an international call from the US to Ireland if you were calling an Ireland number.  If you call a US number from Ireland over WiFi calling, you will not be charged for the call as US to US calling is included in your plan.  

https://www.t-mobile.com/support/coverage/wi-fi-calling-from-t-mobile covers how it works and how you are charged.  It sounds like you were charged the correct rate.