Dkoellerwx

Continuing the conversation from earlier in the thread about filling out the coverage map here in Nebraska... we are tracking signs of the buildout in the Nebraska Market thread where @Rickie546 has been able to identify sites with potential T-Mobile activity. Quite a few brand new builds across Nebraska and Kansas, some in Missouri and Illinois too.

Also found a Sprint protection site that has evidently been converted, though it's not yet on the coverage map.

Speaking of Nebraska... latest coverage map shows 6 brand new expansion sites in central and southwest Nebraska, plus 3 more conversions. They seem to be rushing the rural coverage for some reason rather than finishing up the conversions where capacity is already starting to get strained, or helping roaming hits by covering I-80.

6 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Srint core is  gone, vast majority of Sprint keep sites now converted.

Roughly half, maybe as much as 2/3rds, of the permitted retain sites have actually been converted in the Omaha/Lincoln market area. Those that haven't are still broadcasting 10Mhz of Sprint B2/25.

4 hours ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Got my answer, n25 is now 15 MHz as of today.

Wow. Wonder when they will start to use n25 elsewhere.

1 hour ago, though said:

Meaning let the other guys build out and T-Mo will just continue to roam on them?

No, build over their coverage. Meaning expanding T-Mobile.

On this latest coverage map update, we have 5 new expansion sites in Nebraska! (6 if you count the one I missed last time). This expands T-Mobiles coverage across central and northeastern Nebraska beyond the old Sprint footprint. We also have 4 new Sprint conversion now on the map. (There are actually at least 3 more conversion we know about that are not yet on the map).

Just got it as well, N25 showing up in the menu!

A bunch of new conversions hit the map in Nebraska today. 9 in total, really filling in the Norfolk Loop that Sprint covered but T-Mobile didn't, and filling in along I-80. Plus 2 entirely new sites in Plainview, NE and O'Neill, NE were Sprint nor T-Mobile offered service previously. Slowly but surely filling in the Nebraska shaped hole in the coverage map.

2 hours ago, chamb said:

They never got it to work here. We had Lucent equipment in the Shentel area.  We could get 3 band 41 channels aggregated but the upload was a disaster especially if you were in a weak area.

The B25+41 here wasn't all that great either as B25 was only ever 5x5. T-Mobile just widened the Sprint secondary B25 channel to 10x10 in the last month or two (where it's still on air).

3 hours ago, chamb said:

Sprint was not really successful aggregating b25 with b41 either.

In this Samsung market we had B25+B41+B41 for a couple of years until T-Mobile shut it down. LG G8, S20 FE and S21 Ultra.

22 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Likely makes more spectrum contiguous for future 5g. Affected areas include Cedar Rapids, IA, Traverse City/Appleton, Rapid City, Anniston, AL, Pittsfield, MA, Hobbes, MN, Casper, WY, Fresno CA, Reading CA, Omaha, Portsmouth, OH, Lake County, CA

So they just gave up 10Mhz of AWS from parts of Nebraska and Iowa? They didn't have that much to begin with. I'm not sure I understand why they would do that.

First confirmed conversion of a Sprint site that was co-located with an existing T-Mobile site in Omaha, NE! We had permits for it, but had yet to see one happen. Sprint had the top tier on this monopole, while T-Mobile was at the bottom. You can see the Nokia Air antenna and Commscope antenna still on the bottom tier with the new install including the Nokia AEHC on top. The original T-Mobile equipment was still broadcasting today on top of the new signal, making it a little hard to confirm but it was live across all bands! (B2/66/71/41)

2 hours ago, iansltx said:

Saw a bit more Sprint B2 both in Austin (at the airport) and in MO/IA/IL north/west of St. Louis.

T-Mobile widened Sprint's second B25 (technically B2) channel to 10Mhz here in Omaha recently. It used to be only 5Mhz due to CDMA I think. However, the original B25 G-Block carrier wasn't showing for me on the remaining keep sites.

Appears there was a coverage map update this afternoon. A few people noted that rural sites had disappeared from the map. As of this update, the rural sites that were missing from Nebraska and Iowa are back.

Also, coverage continues to expand in Nebraska! Three new conversions in areas with no previous T-Mobile coverage online now. So far nothing outside of the old Sprint footprint, but still progress. 

I don't typically run a ton of speed tests but I noticed that n41 CA was on air in the Kansas City area on my current trip. I haven't seen it live before. Gave me my first ever Gigabit test. Specifically the tower at 87th and Lackman in Lenexa, KS for anyone interested. 100+40 n41 + 20 B2 + 15 B66. (Ignore the NR 71 from SCP, it had gotten stuck on that).

3 hours ago, mikejeep said:

Please do! That's why it's there.. should help me keep track of things better than the mix of threads/PMs/emails/web forms/group chats I was using. Too many things fall through the cracks and it's hard to keep up.

I was actually able to send a bug report via Google a few days back. It usually would crash out before it let me do that. I don't know if it was able to send any helpful data or not. I'm not sure what I've done to my install to make it dislike me so much haha.

22 hours ago, mdob07 said:

Works fine for me.

How does that menu work? I still haven't moved from my TNA SIM over to a T-Mobile SIM so the code doesn't do anything for me.

4 minutes ago, falconhand said:

Western Washington, mostly up Highway 101 between Aberdeen and Port Angeles, and Highway 3 between Shelton and Belfair. 

 

Very strange. Hoping it's just a bug with the map. 

They removed a rural Sprint conversion here in Nebraska on this update. Definitely hope it's a bug. Very odd thing to happen.

5 hours ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Confirmed, 505970/506079 is now 887558/887561. I have no idea why they changed the eNBs or what the difference in meaning is between them.

Some of the early keep conversions here changed GCI's randomly in the last couple months. The first several conversions were 07Bxxx until they changed to using 01C/D/E which better fit the numbering system for the rest of their sites in the area. Not clear why they made that change or why they are going back and changing the first round of conversions.

3 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, Northern Marianas, Hawaii, Alaska:

Are licenses in Nebraska or Kansas actually affected or is that just the region? I went through the links but at a quick glance didn't see anything related to those two states.

Keep sites still kicking on all bands in Omaha, NE. Not sure about non-keep sites. Without band selector, hard to force my phone over to those anymore. Still getting automatically pushed to the keep sites when in range.

2 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

Is T-Mobile still trying to swap band 2/25 allocations to create larger adjacent blocks to band 25? 

I believe they have made a few attempts, but I don't think there has been a large scale effort so far.

4 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I wonder if we'll get 5MHz Band 25 + 5MHz n25 carrier or if we'll just get 2 5MHz n25 carriers.

I don't believe T-Mobile has any plans to deploy B25 LTE. The G-Block will most likely go straight to n25, while any other PCS spectrum may be added to B2 LTE channels if it's not used for n25.

Sprint B25 and B26 still alive and kicking in Omaha, NE.

6 hours ago, BucketHead25 said:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/1/23191183/sprint-network-shutdown-t-mobile-sunset-lte-3g-cdma

Not the greatest article... yeah Sprint was a little late to LTE but they're unnecessarily rough. In most cities it was at least competitive with the other carriers, if not better in some cases by the time the B41 rollout reached its peak.