Amadeus

So Is Spark possibly active in Columbus?  I finally picked up my S5 yesterday (Online easy pay) and The Star Icon has been present most of the time with the LTE icon, Everything I've found says this is a notification of being on spark...  Speeds up a little bit over the S4 (10-15Mbps Dn avg), But that could simply be a tech boost...  Thoughts?

Coz, or Anyone who knows...

 

is there a shentel coverage map ?

Does Shentel even do wireless? 

Last I know they only did Cable/Broadband/Home Phone in the Shenandoah Valley area around Virginia....

EDIT:  I guess they do...  I just found this on their website:

Pursuant to a management agreement with Sprint Nextel Communications, Inc., and its related parties (which we refer to collectively as “Sprint Nextel”), the Company is the exclusive personal communications service (“PCS”) Affiliate of Sprint Nextel providing mobility communications network products and services in the 1900 megahertz spectrum range in the four-state area extending from Harrisonburg, Virginia to Harrisburg, York and Altoona, Pennsylvania. The Company operates its PCS network under the Sprint Nextel radio spectrum license and Sprint brand.

Also this LTE completion link: https://www.shentel.com/shentel/news/shentel-announces-completion-of-its-sprint-4g-lte-upgrade

Eastside 270 & main st (pretty sure that's the one since I'm only about 150 yards from the tower) just went lte... Getting -75db and 32 mbps down 6 up.

Posting screens in the spreadsheet forum...

The purple mapped on Sensorly on e. Livingston is real close to me but I'm not picking it up

as of right now basically all the purple in Reynoldsburg, Whitehall, Gahanna, Bexley is band 41, So your iPhone won't see it...  1900 band isn't on yet in this area...

X800 transmitting at e main st & 270 as of midnight. Screen shot and details in the spreadsheet thread.

Getting excellent download speeds on ehrpd too (2.5 down average, peak 2.9)

I was able to get an LTE Eng screen from signal at hamilton Rd, Doesn't seem to be that tower putting out the LTE, my guess is a pickerington new tower since it was so weak and it was quickly trumped by eHRPD from the actual Hamilton/270 Tower...  I picked it up on the bridge and lost it when I hit the freeway, I did pick it up again at Home Depot on Brice and was able to get a 1.5mb/s down on a -115 LTE signal there...

@ Home Depot Brice Rd

Hamilton Rd on the bridge

LTE Eng Screen while going down the ramp

I'm pretty sure Sprint is installing all bands at all locations if I'm not mistaken, you speak as if 1900 deployment is no longer going on or that they will not deploy co located sites with 2500 sites. Also, this disparity of users without other bands on the same technology does crop up on different carriers like its currently happening on Verizon with them deploying another band to offload users from a burdened frequency. But eventually I think it will be fine whether you have tri-band device or not, except for indoor situations.

They will be as far as I know, I did not mean to come across in a way that could be thought of as them stopping deployment. no I am saying deploying bands other than 1900 first is a bad move for sprint as their reps do claim LTE is available in certain areas but it is non 1900 band LTE but on the large majority of phones it is not accessible as it's not 1900 The columbus east side is a good example, there is LTE showing on sensorly along I-70/270 but it is Band 41 not 1900 so to a normal consumer who got a new phone 3-6 months ago that means their phone doesn't work and all they see is sprint sucks, not it's the wrong band...

Eventually everything will work without issues but until then they risk angering more customers who simply "know" that their LTE phones don't work in areas that they see should have LTE according to maps and/or Reps...

Saying because your phone doesn't have access to it means it doesn't exist doesn't make sense to me. If there are new devices out there is always going to be something a previous model doesn't have. That's like saying, that when WiMAX phones came out that "4G" didn't exist if you had a 3G only phone.

 

Today's post has been brought to you by Sprint, the letters GN and the number 2.

LTE is a different ballgame than wimax...  With Wimax, you bought a phone, and it worked when the service arrived in your area, no band issues, the 1st gen wimax device just worked as well as later Gen... LTE is at my home, and the home of many others with LTE devices that only use the 1900 band, sensorly shows it and sprint reps say it is available, but oops, not for a 1st or 2nd gen LTE device, only a 3rd Gen device.   Sprint made the choice to sell LTE 1900 only phones first, And a it is almost certain that a majority of it's users who have upgraded recently have those devices with the promise of LTE as soon as purple lights up in their area. so for them a band 41 LTE signal is a false positive...  Most of those  customers are not currently able to upgrade without paying full price for a new device.  So that is why I am ok with saying LTE essentially does not exist unless it is 1900 band LTE... 

Most consumers don't know about the difference between single and tri-band devices, they know they have an LTE phone that is top-tier from 2012 or 2013 that doesn't work where it is supposed to and all that does is make them dislike Sprint....  Not a recipe for a winning scenario...

To normal consumers an LTE phone means that it should work anywhere LTE shows it is available. 

3G and Wimax have nothing in common with this situation, all 3G phones or Wimax phones work where it says they do, not true with LTE ones.

Just my 2 Cents though....

On another note about the speed of the rollout....  There is honestly no speed fast enough to be truly acceptable....  This is because their network is so far degraded and antiquated that it needs repaired last year, not in the near future...  That being said so long as sprint is acting in good faith and being HONEST with customers about what is going on then things can be accepted despite the slow pace of the rollout...

There are tons of LTE sites on in Columbus if you have a G2. Check Sensorly.

 

Today's post has been brought to you by Sprint, the letters GN and the number 2.

And That's the problem right there....  There is plenty of LTE "IF" you have a Tri-Band Device manufactured in the last couple months....  But Most people upgraded to The 2012-13 series LTE devices since they killed off the Wimax ones....  All of those are 1900 LTE...  And that means that LTE really doesn't really "exist" for the majority of devices as they can't access it....  To the standard user LTE is not there unless they can access it.  The argument that it is there if you buy a new phone (when you own an LTE device) is not a valid argument for LTE progress....

In order to use the "it's there just not for your device" logic you might as well say LTE is everywhere in Columbus because verizon/att are providing it so just switch carriers and you'll get it....  Same logic...

Ironically I just heard that same statement about there being tons of LTE in Columbus if you buy a new phone from a Sprint Rep at the 256/I-70 store just yesterday when responding to a customer's question about why they don't have LTE on their 3 month old S4 like they were "promised" when they joined sprint at that store location....  It's statements like that which give sprint the reputation of being a company that tells lies all the time...

If you stand at my home I don't have any LTE...  Because I have an S4...  My daughters don't either...  They have S3's...  My Fiancee as of yesterday has LTE because she now has a G2...  All while standing in the same spot...  So just by that little example LTE really doesn't exist at my home as 3/4 of us don't have LTE access with all LTE capable devices... 

Are they leaving the Chambers Road as the NOC?

He didn't say, He only mentioned the hilliard/Westerville buildings by name...

You may have bad feeds into your area, I'm in former Insight off Pickerington Road. My area is fed from a pole mounted fiber node (the white cannister looking things hanging on the cable suspension). For the two months I was a real Insight customer, I paid for 20 mb and actually got 45 (on DOCSIS 2 no less). Then once the PITA TWC took over, spped to a nosedive along with modem lockups! Those fools couldn't engineer their way out of a cardboard box. Too many arguments with too many engineers. Too many times living in TWC only areas with signal at my tap of -8 on a good day which is pretty bad. Too many times of their techs not having the ability to troubleshoot problems with any method other than swapping parts.

 

TWC has hub buildings all over the metro area. When I put the alarms in them, there were 27 buildings all with redundant fibers from hub to hub, cris-crossed to each other so that if one backbone goes down, they have redundancy through the other hubs. The last one I worked on was Westerville. After I left that company TWC bought Adelphia Cable out Pataskala way and built hubs in Licking/Fairfield counties. I know TWC had fiber to the WSFJ transmitter sites, the old one at 13/70 and the new one at 161/310. 

 

I'm sure this mega-hub may come into play, but I think it's for something else. 

That's about my experience too, they were never great but the service was okay...  I was getting 30-50 on D2 before TWC purchased them...  Since then they have been out 3-4 times per month to "Fix" Problems and the CS is terrible... 

According to the Tech that building will be the main hub for the Columbus area taking main duties off of Westerville and Hilliard...  But who knows with TWC, They really can't engineer their network to save their lives....

 TWC bought Insight Communications.  What they are doing could be just part of integrating and upgrading because ( for instance )  some TWC cities are now offering 100 Mbps download.. Columbus curently has 50 Mbps as its premium option, but someone told me they were preparing to bring it here..

The cable network run by formerly insight (Now TWC) here in columbus is very poor, TWC has been upgrading the lines since they took over, but 90% of us customers who are stuck in the former insight area are maxed at the 20Mbps (Turbo) Tier...  This is because the old Roadrunner equipment is only Diocis 2... Even TWC Business class has the slower speed caps when compared to the rest of the TWC service area.  They are upgrading to Diocis 3 finally...  If you are in the former insight area you do not have the option for 30 or 50 yet and won't until this "superhub" comes online....

I came across some information today, (Thanks to a Master Cable Tech out to fix my internet)  I don't know if it is related to LTE turning on or not, but I do know Time Warner is handling some of the fiber to certain sites....In the former insight Cable area they are building a "superhub" at the old insight cable building on Livingston...  It won't be completed until the end of January at the earliest, This could be one of the reasons that we aren't seeing completed sites in the insight communications area being lit up since the area is still not upgraded to Diocis 3 and they are waiting until the hub is up before lighting up...  The back-haul terminus isn't ready yet....  On another note the old insight area will finally be able to get better internet speeds for residential once it goes live...  Finally....

May or may not be related but I figured I'd share....

If you look at the old insight communications service area it is very similar in shape to the sensorly LTE blackhole on the eastside...

Someone is getting a tower upgrade 70 and Hamilton Rd

It's about time that tower has been bad for a few months...  No data access even at -50 to -60db within 500-1000 feet of that tower....  It will probably end up like the 270/main st one though where they finish it but don't flip the switch so there is little to no improvement....  I cannot wait for a real east-side switch flip....  It's bad when you can't even check maps or waze to get around traffic...

Today I'm very interested in that tower at e main St & 270, there is a twc truck inside the gate! fingers crossed for backhaul hookup!

I guess that works.. Still sounds weird though. Whatever works though as it gives me a good laugh when I need it as I imagine a guy hanging a basestation cabinet up on the crows nest.

You got me!  I call them panels out of habit (Probably a bad one LOL!), he did refer to them as "antenna panels" and "Radio Units"

Not the best picture, but the east main st @270 tower is getting panel love, when I get home tonight I'll post more, but I talked today with the guys doing the install there, they have "a bunch" of towers to Panel in the next few weeks, but he wouldn't say how many or Where.. He wasn't sure about backhaul since his crew only puts panels/rru in and connects to the nv cabinets...

-97 EVDO is kinda typical for me in lots of places and works okay. Have -104 or so in some areas and it gets kinda flakey there.

Data is normally slow as, well, slower than most things, but stable at that level usually, but in that area the capacity is so poor normally not even speedtest, or even just maps or the lowest bandwidth app will recognize an active data connection...

wow, quite the testament to the distance of 800...

I was up on Broad St near McNaughten rd and picked up this signal...  Easily more than 10 miles away...  Actually had usable voice signal while connected too...  I'm on the stock PRL...

That area on broad has always been a hole for both voice and data for sprint...  The data was non-existent, but the voice was fine for once...

 

The Sprint variant is capable of 1x800 yes, not LTE.

I know, Sadly, The Qualcomm S600 Chipset is more than capable of the 800 LTE band,  But it's sad it's not been included/activated (Depending on the chipset modifications on the sprint model)

I've always been disappointed with the fact that even on phones that are multi-band/protocol capable are castrated by carriers....

Just making sure I follow the conversation here. Columbus is getting LTE 800. The current SGS4 doesn't support LTE 800. Why bother with the SGS4 in Cbus then?

That's a disappointment...  The S600 Chip is capable of 800...  Too bad, looks like I will be upgrading when LTE 800 comes out....

So I figured I'd chime in because something interesting happened tonight, on broad st @ McNaughton Rd (East side by Mount Carmel Hospital) I got a ping of 800...  It was there for only about 5 seconds after the signal check notification, then gone...

The most interesting part is I am on Stock PRL on my S4...  I've never had a ping of 800 before, this was a huge surprise....  Not sure it it was a glitch in signal check or if I really lost a PCS signal and picked up 800 from somewhere (That area has livable but not great signal strength but the data is horrendous... )

It was too quick for a screen shot sadly, but I figured I'd throw it out and maybe one of you hunters can confirm it?

It's been mentioned that at times eHRPD will go down due to system issues so there is no way to determine the difference between NV testing/work and eHRPD being "broken" unfortunately.

That's disappointing but not surprising...  It caught me by surprise that the entire area went off eHRPD...  I've seen a site or two switch around, but not everything at once around here (at least not since they all starting pushing our eHRPD...)

Fingers crossed

I don't know if this is of any significance at all, but on my travels the last 2 days (Around the east side) my eHRPD is gone and EV-DO is back...  I used to be on eHRPD most of the day when running round the east side (Very few hits of EV-DO)...  But the last 2 days it's all been nothing but EV-DO...

Locations Include:

Reynoldsburg: Brice @ 70, 256 @ 70, Livingston Ave, Main st (From end to end in Reys) and Broad St (again end to end)

Columbus:       Main st @ 270, Broad st at James rd, Hamilton rd from Livingston to refugee, Country Club area (43227)

Whitehall: From fairway to yearling both main/broad

Just thought I would throw that in...