radem

8 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

 

One thing I can say about Sprint is that (here in NYC) despite all the claims about slow deployment, they were incredibly thorough and >90% of their sites had Band 25/26/41 deployed on them.

And that was also the problem with Sprint.  They spent loads of money upgrading everything in certain markets so they could get bragging rights even when some of the upgrades in those markets were not needed.  At the same time they all but ignored other markets since they did not have the money to perform the needed upgrades everywhere.  Sprint also could not properly manage where to direct their limited funds based on system load as T-Mobile claims they do.  I would much rather work with a company that uses data to determine where to do their upgrades rather than a company that is just throwing money at a few areas and ignoring other areas.  I just hope that T-Mobile's claims that they direct their upgrades to the places where they are needed based on data actually works.

18 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

You could end up with an empty 5G network and a overcrowded 4G network and then you will have to subsidize your customers moving to  5G handsets. You better be able to share your M-MIMO between LTE and NR either through EN-DC or through DSS or you will have a lot of unhappy Sprint customers. You also better integrate band 2/25 quickly.

Unloaded 5G and overloaded 4G is unlikely to be in place for long since most customers replace their mobile phones every couple years.  As new phones come out that support 5G and the phone makers stop making phones that do not support 5G, customers will naturally purchase new 5G enabled phones thus moving themselves to 5G.  I would expect greater than 2% of customers will move to 5G each month over the next couple years as new phones are purchased by customers.  This mass migration to 5G may not start until this fall when all the flagship models will support 5G but when it does, it will be unstoppable.

3 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

It is early. Some of this could also be contractual with tower hands.  Also note that T-Mobile has a far less monolithic approach to sites than Sprint. Many sites only have two bands. (I use NSG and sit near the sites and go though each band.)

I seem to remember that T-Mobile has a complex automated monitoring system that generates regular capacity reports for each of their sites.  The network people use those reports to decide how to boost capacity at or near sites that are already overloaded or getting close to being overloaded along with how to fill coverage gaps.  It then takes time to order the equipment and schedule the work that is required to fix the overload problem or fill the gap.  They do not just throw all their bandwidth up on every site as they properly manage their money.

On 4/11/2020 at 2:44 PM, anSarakhJackie said:

Which raises another question--  how do these idiots drop messages directly into my voicemail without ever calling me first?  Makes it harder to eliminate and block.  

They call you from 2 lines a fraction of a second apart in time.  The later call will immediately go to your voicemail since the first call is trying to connect to your phone to ring it.  Even with call waiting, 2 calls cannot ring your phone at the same time.  As soon as the voicemail answers one of the calls, they hang up the other call that is connecting to your phone.  This usually occurs before the call ever causes your phone to ring or shows up in your missed calls log. This also prevents most spam blockers from blocking the call since they usually operate when call is connected to your phone line.

13 hours ago, dro1984 said:

I agree!       Either it will or it won't.     It will be exciting to see it take place! 

Failure is not an option.  It would be best to limit change to only those areas where there is very little risk at this time.

If New T-Mobile messes up the network integration (looking at you Sprint Network Vision) in the middle of this virus crisis, there will be hell to pay.  Large numbers of people are dependent on their mobile phones, hot spots, and internet data connections right now for work, school, news, shopping, entertainment and just to keep contact with work, friends and family while they are stuck in their homes.  If connectivity breaks, they can no longer communicate with the outside world.  They also cannot run to a New T-Mobile store to get a bad software push to their mobile phone fixed right now so they better be careful with changes on the mobile device side of the network.

https://hackaday.com/2017/07/10/horns-across-america-the-att-long-lines-network/

I received a Sprint Business email over the weekend.  Closing could be as early as April 1, 2020. 

Quote

Dear Valued Sprint Business Customer:

You may have already heard the exciting news that Sprint and T-Mobile are now focused on finishing the few remaining necessary steps to close our merger transaction and bring the New T-Mobile to life. Judge Marrero's ruling validates our view that this merger is in the best interests of the U.S. economy and American consumers.

There is no specific time frame for how long this may take but we will work as quickly as we can. We are not ready to announce a closing date quite yet but with the court's ruling, we could close as early as April 1, 2020.

This is a historic time and for the promise that the New T-Mobile brings: lower costs, nationwide 5G and a high-performing network that will invigorate competition!

There are no immediate changes or actions for Sprint customers with this news, and all current Sprint contracts will be honored by New T-Mobile once the transaction closes - your Sprint team will work closely with you to keep you informed along the way.

When we close the merger, we will roll out the benefits of New T-Mobile to the combined base of business customers. Some will be felt immediately while others will occur over a longer period of time. Our first priority is to continue to provide the same experience and level of support you have come to expect from Sprint Business.

Until we close, it's business as usual for Sprint. We continue to compete in the marketplace and remain dedicated to serving your business.

We will provide additional information as it becomes available. Thank you for being a valued Sprint Business customer.

Cheer Beer

2 hours ago, RAvirani said:

I've went ahead and yesterday built a rough draft of the application I was talking about. It allows you to edit rows (single site records) with a GUI that then updates a map. You can also use SQL to edit records. The program additionally allows you to manage several maps in one place. Using it feels very similar to using fusiontables. I've PMed a link to @S4GRU and am awaiting feedback. 

Any chance you could add a bulk upload and bulk download feature?  The bulk upload should give the option to append data or to replace the data.  The bulk download should download the data in CSV format.

The easiest way to get data out of fusion tables is by downloading the fusion table to a comma separated value (CSV) text file.  CSV files can be opened and edited in any common spreadsheet applications to put the data in the format you request.  I would hate to make someone type in many 10's of thousands of sites one at a time.

13 minutes ago, Brad The Beast said:

Why'd she still have a 1x voice connection then?

A usable signal on 1x800 is available much further away than the distance any Sprint LTE band is usable.  It was likely from another site that is further away or was voice roaming on another CDMA carrier in the area.

9 hours ago, chamb said:

I suspect that when we use carrier aggregation on 2500, HPUE is disabled. I doubt if the cell phone can transmit at the high levels of HPUE on two channels.

Somebody please verify that I am right or wrong on using HPUE on 2 aggregated channels.

Upload signals from your mobile device almost always die out faster than download signals to your mobile device because your mobile device with its small antennas and limited battery power cannot possibly broadcast to the network antenna with the same power that a large high power network antenna can broadcast to you.

A device that supports both upload CA and HPUE uses upload CA to get faster upload speeds until the signal starts to get weak. At that point upload CA is disabled and HPUE is enabled so that rather than two quiet voices whispering quickly to the network antenna (Upload CA), you have one loud voice using a megaphone (HPUE) to talk at half the normal upload CA speed to the network antenna.  If your signal gets stronger, upload CA is re-enabled and HPUE is disabled.

The net effect is that you stay on usable B41 for a longer period of time.  Now if you get to the point where B41 is no longer usable even with HPUE, then refer to the others in this thread who know about noise levels and how that affects signal strength.

17 minutes ago, chamb said:

Why is Sprint going to -128 or even into the -130's for Qrxlevmin?????   This just does not work and is very aggravating. Trying to use data below about -120 is almost impossible, no matter what band. Why do they insist on holding me on 2500 at a -130 level and having everything time out??  Sometimes in a bad spot, they hold me on 1900 at -130 and things crash bad.  What happened that they will not allow a transfer to a lower band?  This new Qrcminlev is a disaster. They are causing people to experience really bad service.

Because of HPUE devices can use a -128 signal on B41.  It is the upload that is timing out not the download when you are not using a HPUE enabled device.

30 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Instead of waiting for another 4 months, can T-Mobile and Sprint come to a side agreement and start integrating their networks by Sprint leasing their spectrum to T-Mobile and having them free roam on T-Mobile? Basically do the same thing as agreed but without waiting for the trial.

As soon as they tried to do this, the states suing them would almost certainly ask the court for a temporary injunction preventing them from making this type of change until the court cases are settled.

4 minutes ago, danlodish345 said:

But then again as well you need coverage for it. Speed is useless without coverage. I don't really care too much about speed what I really care about is a coverage and consistency of the network. Density is also an issue with 5G.

This a thousand times.  99% of customers do not care about maximum speed.  They just want their mobile device to work properly for whatever they are trying to do wherever they are located.  It is much more important to get rid of no service areas and to improve capacity at sites where capacity is maxed out causing users to get no effective data throughput than it is to win the max speed measuring contests.

On 7/3/2019 at 10:23 PM, mirskyc said:

I'll be heading down to Disney in Orlando tomorrow morning. First time there in 17 years so I have no clue how the Sprint network is. What is the PCS situation there? And any idea what percentage of sites have B41 installed? Also is there a DAS in Disney and if so what bands does it distribute. Thanks in advance!

Most people at a Disney World resort hotel or in a Disney World park are on the free Disney WiFi.  WiFi blankets the insides of the hotels and insides of the parks and works well even when the parks are at capacity.  That leaves people in the parking lots, bus stops, commuting in cars, buses, etc. on the cellular networks.  Sprint coverage generally good on Disney property and stays that way until you get outside Disney property.  Then it sometimes get congested if you get away from the interstates.

5 hours ago, S4GRU said:

Yes.  You are $95 away, as of this moment.  

Robert

You are only this far away.  Establish or increase your monthly donation and you will be there before you know it.  Monthly donations really help with site hosting costs for sites with a lot of traffic and a huge number of users and posts such as this site.

5 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Pretty much, unless the backhaul is B25 which will be probably congested.

Magic Boxes can fall back to B25 if B41 is not available from the macro network.  Sprint B25 will be combined with T-Mobile B2 and will very likely use MFBI. Using MFBI, B2 can broadcast simultaneously as B2 and B25.  New T-Mobile should have a very large amount of bandwidth available for the combined 1900mhz B2/25. The big question is: will New T-Mobile reserve the 20mhz of B41 bandwidth necessary for Magic Boxes to broadcast their own B41?

8 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

CDMA will be sunsetted as quickly as possible. 1x800 will likely be Sprint's CDMAs last stand. Sprint does have many phones that have GSM, but they will need FCC testing first for use in the USA iirc, then firmware upgrades. Might be cheaper and/or better for T-Mobile just to offer discounts on new phones.

I expect that most of the switch-over activity from Sprint to T-Mobile will occur at device activation time with all new devices being activated on the T-Mobile network even if the previous device that is being deactivated was on the Sprint network.  The only devices they will allow to be activated are those that will work properly on the T-Mobile network.  This is why it is planned to take 3 years to move the users from Sprint to T-Mobile.

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

They just let anyone write anything on the internet and get paid for it. The least you can do is be knowledgeable about what you're writing about. This article on 9to5Mac just said Sprint isn't deploying real 5G because it's not mmWave.

The writer does not know the difference between a mobile data transmission standard (5G) and the frequency that standard is transmitted over and uses his own ignorance to bash Sprint.  This is the definition of "Fake News".  This article is wrong and should be taken down.

8 minutes ago, red_dog007 said:

Sprint is spending lots of money. TMobile has been doing just fine with $4~5 billion on CapEx for several years.  Sprint is back up at this level.  If they maintain it, it just depends where they'd want to put that money.   They have excellent extended roaming agreements, and have one with TMobile for three more years. Out of site upgrades, site density, market growth expansion and new native coverage, I can see new native coverage being at the bottom of the list due to these agreements. Especially if Sprint wants to be a city leader in 5G NR.

If T-Mobile would keep the Sprint roaming agreements after they merge with Sprint, the combined company would have incredible coverage.  The Sprint roaming agreements are extremely useful (and expensive) in keeping Sprint mobile devices usable in coverage holes.  The T-Mobile network is a little better than Sprint's in some areas but in other areas is far worse and just goes to no service since T-Mobile currently has many areas with no roaming agreements.

I hope the first thing they do after the merger completes is to make VoLTE calls and LTE data work seamlessly across both the Sprint and T-Mobile legacy networks.  That would require changes to the core data centers that power the Sprint network to make them operate like T-Mobile's network.  Once that work was completed, both networks would be able to operate as the new T-Mobile network with all Sprint customers and all T-Mobile customers able to use all the combined LTE bands their devices were able to use.  New T-Mobile would then be free to thin out the network by removing redundant sites, move antennas and spectrum around as needed, and most other work they need to do with minimal disruption to the end users.  Work could simultaneously start with deploying 5G on low band and high band spectrum on sites that are going to stay running.

One very important thing to remember is that the merger is not just for T-Mobile to get the Sprint spectrum and other assets.  A major part of the purpose of the merger is to get the 50+ million Sprint customer base thereby giving them a much larger customer base to earn money from.  I am sure they do not want to drive millions of those newly acquired Sprint customers away to their competitors by making them have a terrible network experience and they do not want to ruin their existing network by suddenly overloading it with new acquired Sprint customers which will drive both Sprint customers and T-Mobile customers away to better performing networks.

I got that email as well.  Now is a good time to remind everyone to download your fusion tables to .CSV files on your desktop/laptop so that you have a backup of your data.  You should do this at least monthly if any of your tables have changed since the last backup.  I am sure whatever they come up with will have the ability to upload data from .CSV files.

The way I think of 5G in layman's terms is by following the history of "cord cutting".  Cord cutting allows the user to stop using an expensive wired connection in exchange for performing the same or similar function over a different wire or over a wireless connection they are already paying for thereby saving money.

Many years ago, people started to realize that they could get rid of their wired home telephone and its associated charges and only use their mobile phone or Voice over IP (VOIP) for voice calls.  This "telephone cord cutting" movement was primarily caused by the mobile phone companies offering unlimited calling across the country at no extra charge included in their mobile plans.  Telephone cord cutting has since become a huge trend with most people using their mobile phones but many businesses going to VOIP which changes voice calls from using the voice lines to using a data connection over the internet.  Interesting enough mobile phone calls are also moving to VOIP over the mobile network which is commonly called VoLTE (Voice over LTE).

People more recently started "entertainment cord cutting", which most often means getting rid of their satellite and cable TV subscriptions.  This type of cord cutting for entertainment started a few years ago and that trend is also increasing.  Streaming entertainment is a fast growing trend as can be seen with huge numbers of people subscribing to Netflix, Hulu, Sling TV, DirecTV Now, etc.  Unfortunately the current 4G LTE networks cannot handle huge numbers of people streaming over the mobile network so they have a number of restrictions on data usage such as de-prioritization and bandwidth limits for heavy data users and forcing mobile delivered videos to a lower quality and bandwidth.  This causes most "entertainment cord cutters" to keep their wired internet connection or live with poor streaming quality for their entertainment.

5G "internet cord cutting" allows people to get rid of their wired internet connection and go solely with 5G wireless for their home and their mobile devices.  5G networks promise high enough bandwidth and low enough latency to use it as your primary internet connection for everything the average person would need including running their streaming entertainment at full speed.  Running wires to every house and business in an area is very costly and customers pay higher fees to wired providers partially due to that extra cost.  5G allows similar speeds to wired internet to be delivered to the same location or the same mobile device by a wireless signal.  Running wires to a local broadcast tower is less expensive than running those same wires to every building in the area.  5G opens the possibility of providing wireless high speed internet for less money, adding additional choice of internet providers, and adding wireless internet coverage to areas that have no wired internet available.  5G networks can handle many more simultaneous mobile and fixed location devices and can have much higher bandwidth than is available on today's 4G LTE networks.

13 minutes ago, danlodish345 said:

How much do you bet that Sprint will be acquired?

If the T-mobile merger does not go through, I would say there is a very high chance of Sprint being sold off to another company.  That seems to be the SoftBank strategy.