Morningside78

spent most of Sunday on the Great Lawn in Central Park.  LTE was pretty spotty, occasionally dropping out if I walked across the lawn to a bathroom and would switch over to 1X or 3G and require an airplane mode toggle.  when connected to LTE, speeds hovered between 2 to 3.5 down and 2.2-2.3 up.  service worked well enough for instagram, facebook and media streaming so overall alright for a Sunday afternoon in a very crowded Central Park. unfortunately, I encountered the usual problem of having zero reliability when moving more than a few hundred yards from an area where I was getting good service - walking 100 yards north meant that service slowed down so dramatically that iMessage no longer worked. 

Looking at the Clear maps does indicate that its the ONLY area that lacks B41 towers near by. 

let's be fair: the area is the entire Upper West Side of Manhattan. 

I'm sorry tri-band did not work out for you, I guess you are hard to please.

saying I was on something other than band 25 for a stretch of approximately 5 blocks and 2 avenues makes me hard to please?  come on, man.

What I don't understand is why would you try out the GS5 having a bad experience with galaxy phones in the past.

I had no intention of buying the Galaxy S5, I simply needed the use of a tri-band device to test for myself the accessibility of bands 26 and 41 in the areas where I most use my device.  sadly, I only found band 41 in one small pocket of my normal use area and was connected only to band 25 the rest of the time.  I also consider myself largely at fault for even trying out a tri-band device now because I misunderstood what some people here had said about the deployment of the upgraded network.  until the upgrade is active, it doesn't seem as if the neighborhoods I'm normally in are going to be any better no matter what device I'm using.

I'll take your word for it!

Wow. Biggest piece of junk ever? Hyperbole much?

in the roughly 18 years I've owned a cell phone, the Galaxy S5 is hands down the least impressed I've been with any device I've used

Too bad it was with a somewhat crappy android phone..LOL

I don't like the OS. I'm no longer part of a lifestyle that allows hours upon hours for flashing roms and customizing a clunky OS.  iPhones work beautifully and require practically zero maintenance.

and no offense, but you have no idea which Android devices I've used. 

Galaxy phones okish phones, but not indicative of android as a whole by a long shot! Pick up a Nexus 5 or an M8 and you will have a better understanding of a proper android phone.

I first used Android devices years and years before I ever touched an iPhone.  my experience with the platform is sufficient.

Should kept that s5.

 

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

oh dear god no.  biggest piece of junk ever.  I'll wait until the iPhone 6 comes out.  never going back to Android.

I get 20mb+ on B41 at herald Sq, almost everyday, if you speak of indoor performance, its a completely different animal.

I have an iPhone 5S so only on band 25.  and my speed tests from earlier today were outdoors.  I don't even bother checking LTE indoors most of the time.

During the weekend the network load is completely different than during the week. I was on 45th and 8th ave, and my speeds were between 40-50mb on B41, and 1.5mb+ on 3G. That is perfectly possible, considering its over the weekend. Also, B41 and 26 is present in that area offloading a bit.

was in Herald Square (at Macy's) earlier today and couldn't crack 2mbps

given the amount of congestion in the city, 45th and 8th might as well be on another planet.

I'm getting 16-20mbs down at herald square right now. Iphone 5 so b25. I'm surprised it's that fast with so many people.

sorry but not buying that one even a little bit

And for us New Yorkers, Optimum is the second fastest ISP on average after Verizon FiOS in the U.S. I guess that doesn't count things like Google Fiber and such.

for New Yorkers who aren't in the vice grip of Time Warner Cable

for those of us who live in areas where are our high speed options are Time Warner and Verizon DSL (lol) we can only dream about other ISPs.

http://m.sprint.com/shop/mobile/shop/phone_wall.jsp?filterString=HDVoice

 

Galaxy s3 is listed on there. However I know sprint discontinued the original s3 for a recent Spark version.

 

The original s3 should be capable though

it definitely is as I've been able to have HD calls a few times with my mother (she's on am original S3, I'm on an iPhone 5S).  it doesn't seem to happen every time we speak and I would attribute this to the spotty Sprint coverage in her area but when it does work, damn, it sounds like we're in the same room.

the larger screen size is actually a bit of a deal breaker for me as I preferred iPhones for their smaller screen size - I have zero desire to carry anything as large as what Samsung and co. are currently pushing.  that being said, 4.7" isn't that bad of a boost, but I'm going to have to wait a while to see some other people with it before I decide to upgrade from my 5S.

should also note that having been an Android user for about 5 years before switching to an iPhone 5 in 2012, there is zero comparison between the two platforms.  Android devices are buggy and awkward. iPhones, by comparison, work perfectly.  this was reinforced about a week or so ago when I had the use of a Galaxy S5 for several days and I'd liken the experience to playing with a toy for a small child. 

Currently they are in test mode around the country. Typically they turn them on for a very short period of time during the testing phase.

 

The second question im not 100% sure what you mean, but if your asking what tech is being used on the ground before transmitting it over wireless, its all scalable fiber. So if sprint needs 1gb\s or 10gb\s its already capable of that thanks to NV 1.0 requirement, which scalable fiber being one of them.

 

Of course since every site currently transmitting LTE already has Fiber, theyre wont be any waiting around for it to be installed, which caused a huge percentage of the delays.

thank you for the response.  so in essence, if I am understanding you, the problem before was that the connection to the towers was was garbage.  Sprint supplied T1 connections to its towers in New York City, and given the enormous bandwidth demand of the NYC market, the tech on the ground simply couldn't handle all of the simultaneous connections.  in recent months, based on what you and others are saying, Sprint now has adequate connections to its towers in the form of fiber, but the wireless infrastructure isn't adequate to handle the demand.  to remedy this, Sprint is intalling 8T8R units that it hopes will be able to solve the current wireless shortcomings of the towers and adequately deliver high speed connections to a much larger customer base here in NYC.  am I right about this?

Or the end of the year.

just curious, assuming that equipment that will be fully deployed by the end of the year should be on for testing soon, no?  surely they would have to begin staggering these antennae on pretty quickly to meet the dates discussed here

also, is there any data on the ground infrastructure, i.e. the strength of the connections to the (NYC) towers themselves rather than the wireless connections emanating from the towers?  that seems to me a much bigger issue in a place like New York where crappy connections to the towers themselves will severely compromise any wireless connections.

by the way, thank you, lilotimz for providing basically nothing but useful information.  very much appreciated. 

Oh it will handle it beautifully. 

 

The equipment being deployed are the same type used by China Mobile who's deploying it over in China to a hell of a lot more subscribers with a hell of a higher pop density than the US.

 

Furthermore they will be running these antennas in 4x2 MIMO which helps in improving signal quality and speeds at low reception levels. Where people on B25 get 1-3 mbps at -110 dBm RSRP a user on Band 41 can get 20-40 mbps!

 

In addition because they're running 4x2 MIMO it means they're running 2 chains of it for 2 sectors per antenna making it 6 sectors per cell site. Each sector running 1 20 mhz carrier has theoretical speeds of about 100 mbps. So each antenna will be broadcasting out about 180-200 mbps of capacity which is far more than what is possible with 1 PCS LTE Carrier (~37 mbps) + 1 SMR LTE carrier (~37 mbps). 

 

This is one of the reasons why I say it's so much better than the Clear setup and am excited for it to be activated but I do not fault you for being skeptical again at a future thing especially when the past leadership could not deliver literally anything they said they would. 

oh what I meant more was how will it work so that our devices opt for band 41 rather than 25 once the new equipment is activated?  assuming that this new equipment will overlap the oversaturated equipment currently in place in neighborhoods like mine, what's to insure that we no longer have to deal with band 25?

also, is 20-40 Mbps about what the expected max download speed is expected to be for the new equipment?

thank you, by the way, for acknowledging that Sprint's abysmal track record has done them no favors when it comes to expecting anything resembling reliability from the company in the future.  I do realize that the merger with SB is potentially a big game changer for the company so that does temper some of my pessimism.  still, with Sprint it has to be a case of "seeing is believing," and from what you've said we won't really be seeing anything for a number of months yet. 

Here's the clarification.

 

People in your area are connecting to Samsung Wimax / TDD-LTE equipment aka this which is deployed over the Clear network. They're 2x2 MIMO equipment running Band 41 TDD-LTE on Clear setups. Because Clear was money strapped for nearly the entirety of its existence they cheaped out on backhaul (high speed internet connections) by utilizing multiple hops on microwave and ordering backhaul which do not push the equipment to its true capabilities but because of the wider carriers (20 mhz) it still has a whole lot more capacity than the 5 mhz carriers in use on PCS and thus faster speeds.

 

The Clear equipment are not bad by any means but 8T8R equipment as deployed are just on a whole other level in terms of capabilities. Right now the new 8T8R equipment are being actively deployed and undergoing FIT testing. They will broadcast the same 20 mhz TDD-LTE carriers but will be provisioned by Sprint ordered backhaul which was stipulated from the beginning to be scalable to 1 gbps + which are very much needed.

ah ok well that certainly changes things quite a bit, and it explains why the band 41 speeds I was getting just look a whole lot like the band 25 speeds back during the testing phase a few years ago (when hardly anybody even knew LTE was available in my neighborhood).  I hope you can forgive me for thinking the "next wave" was already working in areas when people here are singing the praises of the currently deployed clear band 41 as if it's something entirely new.  I guess it's simply a case of having to wait for the new equipment to be activated and see how well it handles the demand of the NYC market.

incidentally, once the new equipment is deployed, how will people avoid connecting to the terrible band 25 available in most of the city now?

The new deployment over Sprints sites utilize the newest and latest technology with 8T8R antennas (8 antennas transmit 8 receive) and are a huge improvement over the equipment that Clear is using.

thanks for the clarification.  perhaps I was misunderstanding the posts here, but I believed the people here raving about how fast band 41 is were connecting to the new sites you mentioned, rather than converted WiMax.  what you're saying is that the better service is still a ways off and none of that stuff is currently available in NYC.  am I right about that?

The current Band 41 sites are previous Clearwire Wimax sites that were converted to LTE Band 41. But sprint is currently overlaying all of there own sites with new Band 41, as Tim mentioned,  that equipment is still offline until they do a mass activation. 

 

That should fill in the areas we are currently missing B41...

ah ok so basically you're confirming that this whole part of Manhattan won't have any band 41 until Sprint does that activation in a year or whatever

Its the one patch that doesn't have much Clear B41.

 

But Sprint B41 should be part of that patch...

sorry, I don't follow.

Go anywhere other than Manhattan and you'll see pretty much B41 everywhere. 

will be in New Jersey this evening and traveling from Paramus up through Ramsey.  is that an area where band 41 is available?

But of course there are area's that do not have any B41, but they are few and far between. 

in my three days with the S5, I've found no band 41 from CPS up north to at least 116th street, basically most of the west side of Manhattan.