Just got the Jan 1 security update.  Samsung band select app still works.

2 hours ago, thisischuck01 said:

Agreed, it'll be very interesting to see what their deployment strategy is with this. The fact that this will require separate radios from C-Band will definitely work to their detriment - I can still see T-Mobile shelling out for mMIMO gear on C-Band, but can't see it being worth the investment here. That means you'll be looking at a relatively small boost in capacity (374 Mb/s theoretical with standard 4x4 MIMO equipment) and limited range.

It is a relatively small amount of spectrum given the many auctions and mergers of recent years.  Let's not forget that small cells are supposed to be 5g midrange*. Perhaps this may help with that.

*T-Mobile CFO this month

2 hours ago, Thomas L. said:

I wonder if any of the small cells will use their mmwave spectrum? Or do we think T-Mobile is not going to pursue mmwave expansion?

The answer is about 10 posts above from the CFO: they will be used for midband.  C-band and n41 come to mind, else n25 and n66.  n2 if n25 lacks needed CA with other bands.  Verizon has been targeting large stadiums and passenger areas for its mmWave of late, which is T-Mobile's stated plan.

29 minutes ago, BucketHead25 said:

I swapped out all my Sprint SIMs with T-Mobile back in early November and the message on the Sprint site say they will notify me when they are ready to migrate my account.  Anyone know when T-Mobile will start migrating accounts over? 

They have been promising me for months, and meanwhile they started throttling my videos against my contract.

They might be converting by plan. Conversions are expected to be continuing after shutdown so it could be a year IMO. The problem for some of us is we are losing services and money every month compared to if we could convert billing now.

Watching Peter Osvaldik, EVP & CFO T-Mobile at Citi AppsEconomy Conference. 

Most of the 35,000 is primary upgrades to existing small cells to add more midband spectrum.   

No update on Dish.  Expect a faster roll-off of Dish with their AT&T deal. 

This would give them "a lot of capacity that we would have to go fill". 

They want to compress Sprint migration time to T-Mobile, both billing and network. 

They want a very seamless low touch friction-less billing integration. 

Decommission remaining Sprint sites rapidly at mid year to get synergy savings.

Pull Capex from 2023 into 2022 to accelerate network buildout (more in 22 than 21). 

They expect more diversity on router side to help with wireless internet. 

T-Mobile plans on up to $60 billion in share buyback in 2023. 

If they are overachieving on plan in 22 they may start buybacks earlier.

    Source:   https://kvgo.com/citi-apps-economy-conference/t-mobile-us-inc-jan-2022

5 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

FierceWireless's article provided a lot of details around this. 

It turns out T-Mobile signed on for 35,000 small cells which is Crown Castle's largest order yet. Before that, their largest order was 15,000 from Verizon last year.

They mentioned that they are expecting to see about 5,000 small cells shutdown in 2023 as a result of the Sprint merger but ultimately Crown Castle will be left with a net of 30,000 small cells. So like a lot of folks have been saying over on Reddit and what you're saying, it seems like T-Mobile is decommissioning small cells that are in areas where macros now adequately cover very well and adding 35k new small cells in areas that'll benefit more. 

The other though is they will be used for the c-band.  Don't remember who first stated this else I would credit them.

7 hours ago, RedSpark said:

12 years is quite the long term deal.

We’ll be on the iPhone 25 Pro by then!

 

My guess is this way T-Mobile can get rid of Sprint small cells placed in Sprint's weak coverage areas where T-Mobile now has good signal.

Noticed when NSA is activated, the status bar displays the nXX as planned for T-Mobile using TNX Sim and AT&T using Boost Mobile black 5g sim with latest SCP, contrary to earlier (now corrected) report.

Many thanks for the new status line icons.

 For comments above, when I take the global cell Id on the service mode screen *#0011# of this Samsung Galaxy A32 5g T-Mobile and convert it to hex I get the same as the NCI on SCP.

On 1/1/2022 at 2:27 AM, mdob07 said:

AT&T and Verizon asked to delay firing up their C-Band spectrum again. I would usually side with safety on something like this but at the same time it's not like this came out of the blue. The FCC didn't just sell this spectrum on a moments notice, its likely been in the works for several years. It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out in the coming months. This is already the 2nd delay in launching the early clearing spectrum. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/u-officials-ask-t-verizon-232514442.html

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/airlines-ask-fcc-to-again-delay-c-band-5g-rollout-near-airports-beyond-jan-5/

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/03/att-verizon-ceos-reject-us-request-for-5g-deployment-delay.html

Instead they propose using the same rules as France, where most of these carriers already fly.

Applied above update today. May have been cumulative with prior update

53 minutes ago, iansltx said:

 This is a "throw whatever capacity we can at outdoor users and see what sticks" play.

I have always thought T-Mobile should have a warm and cozy restaurant scene in Chicago with every doing something data intensive, then a Verizon customer would have to go outside into blizzard to do the same. (But then came Covid.)

5 hours ago, mdob07 said:

AT&T and Verizon asked to delay firing up their C-Band spectrum again. I would usually side with safety on something like this but at the same time it's not like this came out of the blue. The FCC didn't just sell this spectrum on a moments notice, its likely been in the works for several years. It'll be interesting to watch how this plays out in the coming months. This is already the 2nd delay in launching the early clearing spectrum. 

https://www.google.com/amp/s/finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/u-officials-ask-t-verizon-232514442.html

https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/airlines-ask-fcc-to-again-delay-c-band-5g-rollout-near-airports-beyond-jan-5/

The US is already a laggard in this spectrum. It is not as if airplanes are falling from the sky in these other countries.  If believable, maybe the FAA is allowing defective planes to fly in the US? How many defective planes are we actually talking about?

On 1/1/2021 at 8:25 PM, iansltx said:

Back in Austin, B41 from the n71/n41 site seems a bit more reliable now, pulling -102 RSRP and ~130 down, though lack of HPUE on my S20 means I was only able to push ~2 Mbps up (which is I'm sure why B41 isn't prioritized, to the point that last week my brother's g fast sat on B2 even right next to the tower).

n41 requires 100Mhz BW and SA to work well alone IMO, but no problems with other FD TD CA combos. How much n41 SA have you been seeing in your travels?

8 hours ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

FYI, if I lock my phone to n66, I can see AT&T n66-SA (same with n5-SA) but can't roam on it.

I figure Dish will also use an esim when they launch. The Boost Mobile network discoveries so far have been with the T-Mobile sims, which allows you to see the Boost 313340 plmn.  The AT&T Boost sim does not allow you to change the carrier plmn. I have not yet seen that plmn around me yet, but the Boost sites are lacking power meters.

Beer money sent for Christmas as well. Thanks Mike.

My factory unlocked A32 5g has been updated to Dec 1. My T-Mobile A32 5g remains on Nov 1. Unusual that factory unlocked was updated first.

59 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Perhaps the thinking is that they'll be better able to do better congestion management on these Unlimited users at fixed locations (and they'll be fewer of them as well vs the number of heavy/upgraded Hotspot users that there would otherwise be)? They must have run some models on that.

I think they hope to offset rural site costs.  The common assumption is the carriers make their money off the urban sites which then subsidize the less populated locations.  They should be able to have more rural sites given the former Sprint customers.  Their wireless internet could allow for the addition of even more sites.

2 hours ago, clbowens said:

Think we'll get the december update before new years?

My guess is January 20

1 hour ago, thisischuck01 said:

Nice shots! They're using similar-ish gear in NYC. Range seems to be super limited, I'm less than 1000 feet (as the crow flies) from this site and I can't sign up for service.

All the sites I have seen so far don't have power.

19 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Las Vegas leavings: Dish's first 5G network tests are in

https://www.lightreading.com/open-ran/las-vegas-leavings-dishs-first-5g-network-tests-are-in/d/d-id/774160

 

"...Dish is not employing much spectrum in its 5G network in the city. He said SRG's findings showed that Dish is employing 5MHz in band 66, 10MHz in band 71, and 25MHz in band 70. "Their bandwidths are relatively small," he explained. "..."SRG wasn't able to conduct actual speed tests on Dish's network because the firm wasn't able to obtain any actual phones that can access the network."

"the company couldn't determine Dish's 5G equipment suppliers, though he believes Japan's Fujitsu is supplying the radios atop Dish's 5G cell towers in Vegas."

"During Dish's earnings call in early November, the company said it is offering a 5G beta service in Las Vegas with an unspecified number of employees and other "friendly" users."

I think we at S4Gru are doing pretty well so far in terms of identifying their equipment.  I have heard rumors of live service nearby that I intend to check out soon.

Found a couple more Dish sites in my immediate area, none with power from what I can tell:  https://imgur.com/a/MYGLozL.  Some pictures also of WISP Starry.com included -- if anyone wants to comment on those, we can setup a separate thread and I will move those photos to it.

I talked to the crew again.  They did admit the antennas were installed once I gently pushed them on it.  Gave me a few sites they had worked on.  They are using galvanized floor instead of concrete for the cabinets at Crown Castle's request.  Only one of the sites above was on their list. 

I will likely make a run out to a rural area where another source said Boost Mobile has its own 5g signal within the next two weeks.

7 hours ago, JWMaloney said:

I am having a very strange issue ever since switching my Pixel 2 to a TNX SIM in October. I will have a perfectly fine LTE signal on the native T-Mobile network, and then suddenly, without warning, I will lose all signal for a few seconds. Any active call or data session will be lost.

******* I have seen this recently.  My mind immediately jumps to "is this a sim hijackiing? [My least favorite part of this merger is weak T-Mobile security for customers].

After a few seconds, my device will acquire a T-Mobile WCDMA or HSPA signal. Eventually it will jump back to LTE.

******** Many months ago my phone would do this, but now it goes back to LTE.  I have always put the to network configuration changes and testing, which they seem do do every few days here.  My main phone is not rooted and I make very few calls.

Monitoring with Network Signal Guru, one of two things happens:

1. T-Mobile native network will instruct my device to complete an intra-LTE handoff to the Sprint native network. My device will complete the handoff successfully, and it lands on PLMN 312-250. Attachment and SIM validation occur successfully. Then a hard drop occurs.
2. T-Mobile native network will send an rrcConnectionRelease without a destination. Hard drop occurs.

It happens regardless of me being stationary or moving. It happens in multiple cities hundreds of miles apart. It happens on all Sprint bands.

The only way I have been able to work around it is to completely lock out bands 25, 26, and 41 in Network Signal Guru.

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this? I have been going back and forth with the network team for weeks with absolutely zero luck. "There were an elevated number of calls on that tower that day." "You need to upgrade to a 5G phone." "Everything is working normally."

******** I do think the network is being tuned for 5g phones with access to all the bands.  But you also become a beta tester.  Definitely not as bad as Boost Mobile in this regard.  Even on the T-Mobile native accounts, getting a 5g phones gets you access to a lot more sites.  My hope would be T-Mobile sells Boost n26 in exchange for all or most of their n71 holdings.  More bandwidth and fewer bands should improve handling.

I've even tried just driving in circles between towers and letting dozens of calls drop just to try to get their attention. No such luck. They say everything is working fine.

Also, incidentally I've seen PLMN 312-250 on Sprint sites that are physically located on the same towers as existing T-Mobile sites. Very odd behavior all around.

I just don't get it. On the old Sprint SIM I was already spending 90% of my time connected to T-Mobile, and my device would move back and forth between the two without issues. But with the TNX SIM I get this mess.

I also tried putting a regular T-Mobile SIM (not tied to a Sprint account) into my device and I couldn't reproduce the issue. It's specific to the TNX setup.

Do I have any options other than just keeping the Sprint bands locked out until August 2022? I'd really like to have them, because I'm seeing a ton of areas where I get zero service on the TNX SIM without them.

********At least in my area, dealing with the T-Mobile network is like a senior trying to avoid Covid -- the guidelines change every week.  In my travels to Minnesota and Florida this year, different T-Mobile areas behave differently.  Sometimes I just whip out another carrier to do navigation etc.  I am getting a little miffed at this and other issues.  I will likely start asking for monthly discounts.  Squeaky wheels tend to get the grease.  Money also tends to bring clarity to thought.  Hopefully then they will pay attention to theses issues or at least I would feel better until August 22 or April 23.

(I actually find the network changes every few days interesting and entertaining.)

20 minutes ago, mdob07 said:

Whats the best way to report a network issue with T-Mobile? The tower covering my office has a bad B2 radio, it won't allow any data to pass when connected to it. If I force B66 on the same sector it works fine. Issue has been going on for a couple of weeks now. The is on a GMO power line site with older hardware. 

Another way would be through the site management firm, whose number is often posted at the site.  Crown Castle encourages this, at keast with down tilt, disconnected cables, etc.