dkyeager

How is battery life?

18 hours ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Interesting, the tower by the Shell station located just south of 405/522 interchange just got the full upgrade. This dramatically improves capacity in the north Kingsgate area.

Strangely though, the Sprint conversion across the 405 (just south of Cedar Park Christian School) is STILL not live. This site was fully converted months ago, way before the site by the Shell station, but isn't live. My guess is Tmo might have changed their mind about this site since it offers almost no benefit now that the other two nearby sites are live.

My home site is similar. After 8 months, more fiber just arrived at the site.

20 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

Anyone in Vegas?  Just 30 minutes ago I got an email for the first round of invites into Project Genesis. It's happening!

How did you apply?  Was it launch.5gmobilegenesis.com?

I will curious to see if esim support improves with the s22 models. In many cases in the US esim is iPhone only. Also hoping it does not lock to your phone put rather can be moved amount your devices like a physical sim.

Just sent in two diag reports. SCP was showing n41 when Samsung diagnosed and cellmapper where showing n71. Exited scp and returned then it appeared normal.

Band selection was not active.

They remind me of Sprint's first failed effort with "small" cells that were 130ft tall on public rights of way.  I think there are 5 left in Ohio. Same design at the top. Much more reasonable in size. Public wi-fi and kiosk should help with acceptance. Hopefully they also use wi-fi 6e to send a chance of providing usable signal. Wonder how the kiosks will stand up to vandalism or just regular use.

2 hours ago, gr8nuguy said:

My delivery date changed from next week to April 8th

1 hour ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Someone posted this over at Reddit, n41 small cell site plans for LA. Looks like they will be using the AIR 4435 for the B41/n41 portion.

 

https://epicla.lacounty.gov/energov_prod/SelfService/#/plan/2a27f8d0-790f-49b2-807d-dc7bfb935370?tab=attachments

Air makes other products that look quite nice. Such a boring model.

9 hours ago, BlueAngel said:

Forced mandate is likely to blame.

Studies I have seen of large firms indicate about 1% actual loss, so that would leave roughly 80% unaccounted for. 

Remote jobs are popular likely for the opposite reason, which may indicate a reluctance to take/leave these positions for many reasons (lack of child care, fear of bringing covid home, avoiding combative customers of any stripe, etc). Some of these factors vary month to month.

Another way to look at this is how many people has T-Mobile actually laid off (not counting new positions) versus their projections. It was always known they would lay off corporate types and managers -- simple redundancy.

A different way to look at it would be T-Mobile store count from before merger (not including Sprint) to now.  They consolidated quickly, thus more small town stores should now be appearing.

8 hours ago, mikejeep said:

I completely agree on both points. The article says T-Mobile/Sprint is down 5,500 jobs -- yet AT&T and Verizon are down 114,500. How is T-Mobile the problem here? And covid is not mentioned at all.. and that is undoubtedly a massive factor.

It would be interesting to know how many unfilled openings they have given our labor shortage or delays in opening small town stores caused by construction delays. I do agree that changing CEOs is one way to get rid of promises, but having more staff in small towns appears to be a strategic shift. Customers have also gotten used to doing more things remotely during this pandemic thus there may simply be less demand.

12 hours ago, Trip said:

That implies you're connected via the 311490 PLMN which treats T-Mobile and Sprint as equivalent.  (In theory, anyway.  In practice, I almost never see Sprint, except in the Shentel region.)

- Trip

 

Varies by place. Except CDMA, Sprint largely pushed to the edge of Columbus while Pittsburgh reports lots of Sprint sites still active.

22 minutes ago, Trip said:

A handful of conversion permits for Shentel sites but not a landslide as of yet.  A handful of upgrades to existing T-Mobile sites but not widespread yet.  Way, way behind the rest of the network.

Had Shentel been left in charge, I'm sure half the network would be upgraded by now.

- Trip

Leftovers versus strategic focus.  Would be interesting if rural places were put into their own "market". However, like highways,  AM radio,  etc the money comes from the urban areas.

23 hours ago, PythonFanPA said:

Even though I'm exploring the option (basically, I was already contemplating balance payoff after we moved and using net proceeds from selling our prior home, which then trade in gets me under half the monthly payments I'm doling out now...less if I went straight Samsung for 36 vs 24 mo plan), I couldn't agree more. 

 

Even with a totally different model with totally different chipset/hardware...my wife has the A32 5G and in day to day use other than the size differential I can't tell any difference in actual usage/performance really.  Oddly there's one thing I actually even like better about hers; since we both keep our phones in vibrate mode 95% of the time, I much prefer the vibration sound/pattern on her phone than my S21.  The S21 isn't as 'pronounced' we'll say as I'd prefer when vibrating off text messages.

21 hours ago, IrwinshereAgain said:

Interesting.  Was using my wife's A32 5G today and thinking the same thing as opposed to my S20 FE 5G. 

Heck, ours even have the same screen size.  Lol.

There is a whole school of thought that getting the 5g budget phones is the way to go. I have one s21 ultra for mmWave and Wi-Fi 6e. Then my new phone herd is all Samsung using the band selector app. I have an unlocked a32 5g and the T-Mobile variant. Not the same max speeds, but will do great for most people.

The press just seems to care about cameras.

The FCC came out with a revised auction plan for EBS yesterday, which will favor T-Mobile and WISPs over speculators by design. 

As noted a year ago, it will divide the spectrum into three parts as follows: C1: 49.5Mhz contiguous from 2502 to 2551.5, C2 50.5 Mhz contiguous from 2551.5 to 2602, and C3 16.5Mhz contiguous from 2673.5 to 2690 and 1Mhz from 2615 to 2616.

This will all be overlay, meaning it will cover radius and J and K  channel gaps in many urban areas but will be mostly rural and small cities.

That 1Mhz in C3 will make it more valuable since it keeps BRS fragmented.  Those who are very observant will note it does not cover 7MHz at the start of band 41, a 1Mhz guard band and 6Mhz for BRS1.  There may be BRS licenses that should also be auctioned in the future, but auction 108 is just for EBS.

References for above: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-22-120A1.pdf

http:// https://www.fcc.gov/sites/default/files/wireless/auctions/data/bandplans/BRS_band.pdf    

A bunch of high-end Samsung phones just got another year of software upgrades: https://www.androidpolice.com/samsung-leapfrogs-google-by-announcing-4-year-android-os-upgrade-commitment/

I have not found any good cellular specs on the s22 bands and CAs.  The later is where I expect the action is especially for AT&T.  Obviously will need to pull apart the s22 FCC certification tests along with s21 for comparison.  The x65 modem indicated 3 new bands more or less, but s22 could be slightly different.

The band selector app still works on the Verizon network after this latest update.

The Verizon coverage maps remind me of Sprint's: more asperational than reality. Using US Mobile which officially supports n77 and is supposed to be at full priority and Red Pocket which does not officially support 5g yet but I certainly get it, thus I can not rule out that it is a priority issue, but the possible sites are thinly spaced.

Getting n77 consistently is an issue, even when restricting my bands to 2, 66, and n77. Trying it with s21 ultra and A32 5g both factory unlocked.

11 hours ago, mikejeep said:

 

How is the latest beta (4.691b) from over the weekend handling these scenarios.. are they resolved?

I will have to keep you know. Getting n77 consistently is an issue, even when restricting my bands to 2, 66, and n77. Trying it with s21 ultra and A32 5g both factory unlocked.

The Verizon coverage maps remind me of Sprint's: more asperational than reality. So far I am the only one with n77 trails in Columbus on cellmapper.net. Using US Mobile which officially supports n77 and is supposed to be at full priority and Red Pocket which does not officially support 5g yet but I certainly get it, thus I can not rule out that it is a priority issue, but the possible sites are thinly spaced.

11 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Signals Research Group did some testing of n77 in the Twin Cities area and had some interesting findings: 

Reading the actual report, they say that while n41 covers a larger area, at the edge of cell they're seeing better spectral efficiency and faster speeds on Verizon than on T-Mobile's n41. In my opinion, a number of factors play into that such as the fact that T-Mobile's n41 deployment is a lot more mature and a lot more saturated than Verizon's n77. In the U.S. n77 is still only able to be used by a few devices right now and is plan limited on Verizon whereas n41 is available to all T-Mobile users on virtually any 5G device released in the past two years.

I am incredibly surprised though to see Verizon using uplink 256QAM. That's definitely something I would've thought we'd see on T-Mobile first given their history of rolling out the latest network technologies pretty early.

It's too bad the C-band still isn't active throughout most of NYC even though a lot of sites have the equipment deployed already. I'd love to test it out here.

I can attest to it being rarely used. I am the only person who has put n77 trails on cellmapper in Columbus as of earlier today.

In terms of it not being used, both US Mobile  (official) and Red Pocket (says it does not have 5g) have it, but not consistently.  Even at off hours ghe site does not appear to be fully tuned. Checking other nearby sites and so far no better. Primitive testing, but that is NSA.

On 2/7/2022 at 9:19 AM, RedSpark said:

Hopefully T-Mobile is able to deal with this well in the coming years. Sounds like a real potential mess.

Hopefully the FCC will enforce buildout requirements for the speculators.

The real mess not mentioned is the fragmented frequencies.  it would be so nice if one license could stand alone and have 10 or 20Mhz or more, plus a single 4mhz slot at the end (adding one channel to 2.5 wi-fi would require 5Mhz, thus not enough).  Currently a carrier must own several to truly use them.  However a speculator can disrupt several licenses with just one license.

Perhaps this is why the FCC has not finalized auction 108 plans yet. Or short one commissioner.  Not in the February 18th open commission meeting schedule.

T-Mobile has always been cash flow conscious. They start with urban areas first and do rural last. Many rural areas don't require or track permits publically so we will have to wait or do more leg work

I sense a certain hubris concerning CDMA's distance advantage, especially 1x800. April 1st will come up fast and we will know at that time.  It would not suprise me if they give the Shentel area more time with CDMA.

Small towns will be the lynchpin for VoLTE come July 1. I will be watching ones with a Sprint site on one side and T-Mobile on the other.

If they follow historical trends and keep the same number of tower hands working to finish rural areas they could surprise us, but time is growing quite short.

My Neville focused notes from quarterly call (skipped over financial):

- CEO - T-Mobile the fastest growing internet service provider in 4th quarter (better than cable).

- n41 will increase area coverage 5 fold by end of 2023.

- two years ahead of duo in 5g

- 40% of WISP customer are new to T-Mobile

- 64% of Sprint customers are now on T-Mobile network

- Our WISP customers 3 times happier than cable customers

- significant step down in capex next year

- WISP especially attractive for small businesses.

Neville:

- T-Mobile plans on a single radio for c-band and 3.45Ghz rather than AT&T's 2 radios kind of integrated together as we move into 2023 for deployment in capacity use (41 minutes).

- 260 million pops by end of 2022 300 million by end of 2023.

- Roaming partners will be few and far between.

- This is T-Mobiles time.  Really wants to push the envelope and gap the competition (50 minutes). 

- Increase coverage and in-building.

- Want to upgrade a high volume of Sprint sites adding coverage and capacity in 2022. 

CEO etc:

- Going after small towns and rural markets for consumers and businesses.

- We think wireless industry is right on C-band versus GPS altimeters and will be validated.

- Fixed wireless: doing well in small town America.  Majority is coming from suburban and urban areas, especially cable and fiber. 

- $60 Billion in share buy backs in 23, 24 and 25.

- Big opportunity in small markets and rural areas.  Currently 15% market share.

source:

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/at-ts-latest-5g-network-upgrade-may-only-work-with-2022s-best-phones/

Hopefully the completion will fix this.  I would think it would just fall under n78, which is already present, at least on the factory unlocked.

The new bands in the x65 modem (to be used in the s22) and their frequencies are:

Basically forced to do the update within two days.  Samsung band selector app still works on the Verizon network MVNOs. One noticeable change so far: 4G in large letters in top right icon with LTE going down the side.  5G icon looks the same if on the LTE bands that switch over and the site at least has DSS.