dkyeager

On 6/8/2020 at 5:57 AM, mikejeep said:

Trip, glad it started working (wish we knew why/how.. grr) and thank you for the suggestions about the accent color. I've gotten a lot of positive feedback and other similar suggestions.. honestly it caught me by surprise. I added the coloring on my personal version but didn't think it would be well-received so I kept it out of releases. I will expand it more and try to add as many options as I can get working!

Maybe use dashed lines for regional carriers or double underline, etc

2 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I'm poking around Cellmapper and looking at all of the sites I've connected to since I've switched to T-Mobile. I've counted a bunch more small cells in Brooklyn. Taking a look at Google Street View, many of them have been around since late 2012-early 2013.

I've run speed tests at 2 of them and they max out at around 50Mbps which is significantly lower than the Sprint small cells I've used in the past. They're also ENDC capable so the small cells can act as anchor bands/sites for the 5G network.

The fact that they've retained so many DAS sites and with many of them being 7 and 8 years old makes me hopeful that they will keep Sprint's small cells and use them for 5G.

The problem is many of tbe Sprint small cells might be in the wrong location depending on macros.

3 hours ago, jporter12 said:

One thing I have noticed about CA is that Sprint seems to connect it whenever possible, where T-Mo seems to only add CA as needed, actively data transferring.

Agree. T-Mobile CA can just be a few seconds.  Many T-Mobile macro sites just have two bands. A much less dense network in our urban areas but more current tech (QAM etc).

2 minutes ago, jporter12 said:

How has B41 been for you in Columbus?  I'm on a S20U, therefore T-Mobile service, and the only place I see B41 is at home, where I get a strong B41, until I get a mile or so down the road and I hit T-Mobile.  I live in a small "black hole" of T-mobile weak coverage.  I haven't taken my S10+ out that is still getting Sprint service to see how it compares to before. 

When I do latch on to B41 with my S20U, it's usually 3X 20Mhz CA.

 Band 41 remains the same currently in the traditional Columbus metro, but go to the new edges and we have seen new 15Mhz b41 for 20+20+15 by UPdownLoAD on Sprint and possibly b25 plus b41 and b41.

T-Mobile seems to be on a roll in pushing out band 71 from the City center and is now pushing past the beltway. N71 reported by imex99.

6 minutes ago, dro1984 said:

Band 41 is still up and running.  Really hard to connect to it anymore, but it shows up.   

Has the number of Band 41 carriers been reduced?

Any pictures of the Massive MIMO equipment on T-Mobile only sites?

Wider bandwidth has less interference issues and is stronger at the edge. The issue is getting everyone to go along with it.

B26's nationwide aspect is great, but it is slimmed down near some major Canadian cities. From NE Ohio to Rochester NY is 1x800 only.  A few other areas with 3x3 only, 3x3 plus 1x800, or 5x5 only.

I have been told that b26 was originally going to be 10x10, but was paired back after the 9/11 Commission report. Now that we have band 14 it might be time for another look at nearby spectrum use by the FCC. 

9 hours ago, JimBob said:

Why no OnePlus 8 on Sprint?  

However the same logic used to offer the LG V60 to replace a nonfunctioning LG 5G phone could be used to offer the OnePlus 8 5g phones since the OnePlus 7Pro 5G was previously sold by Sprint.

9 hours ago, JimBob said:

Why no OnePlus 8 on Sprint?  

It does not support all three 5g bands IMO.

Also gives them a phone to offer any old LG 5g phones that no longer can do 5g.

I sent several diagnostic reports from the LG G4 where the LTE 2500 was showing for T-Mobile. Is also worked as design just showing LTE. My guess is 50% there. Thanks

On 6/3/2020 at 1:50 AM, iansltx said:

By the time you get your S20, it'll probably be preloaded with the update that defaults you to T-Mobile bands. Interestingly enough, the IP network part of the connection is still Sprint...but you get VoLTE across the board.

With that said, you can install Samsung Band Selection and pick which combination of bands (LTE and NR, though n71 will only work if you also have B2/66 enabled as well, and n41 for the most part doesn't exist) you'll let your phone on. T-Mobile band priority still applies to whatever you let through, so if you accept B2/4/66 you'll get those (probably even 12/71) but if you lock your phone down to Sprint bands that's what you'll get.

As an example, I've tended to select B41-only on my S20 if I'm in an area I know to have solid B41 (AKA where I live and nearby). That gets me significantly higher speeds than the default, which tends to sit on B66+n71. I got one roaming warning from this but latency and speeds are as if I was on the native network. Then if I head out I'll either turn everything on or select 25/26/41 as the radio in this phone is strong enough to sustain a Zoom video call where previously (Essential Phone) the only thing reliable was 1x.

The system isn't perfect, and sometime the phone will fail to lock on a signal at all after enough band selection changes, but a reboot fixes that. I have the band selection app as one of my quick apps on the screen edge app selector, so swapping things around takes maybe 15 seconds and a few taps.

12 hours ago, floorguy said:

humm good to know.. how did i NOT know about this band selecter app??? hahaha

My concern is they will kill the hidden menus needed for the band selection. Alternatively, once August 1st hits you might not even have this choice.  The LG V60 could be a Sprint version or only T-Mobile. - 8 days.

By diving into code, you might be one of the most normal people around in these real world crazy times. Hopefully signal info gets more stable once SA rolls out later in this year.  Thank you much for your efforts and keep the changes coming.

Both prior accent issues now solved! Thanks

Nice feature.

Yes I did restart app. Also rebooted Moto and turned off other signal apps. No accent.

Restarting app also was needed on LG V20 if you want to turn accent off (turn off setting then restart app needed).

Thanks

Accent seems to work fine on my Sprint LG V20 using Android 8. I have not tested it yet switch to T-Mobile or AT&T or Verizon etc.  No accent on my Moto G7 Power Unlocked and rooted with Android 9 on T-Mobile network using Red Pocket sim. I assume accent is triggered by PLMN, but maybe by sim carrier? Diags and beer money sent for both so you can compare if needed.

The social contract of the Magic Box is broken: In exchange for backhaul, 1/2 of the signal goes outside to light up possible RF shadows. In my case it was also supplying a small shopping center with a small grocery and a bar/ restaurant that otherwise did not have signal.  Since I am supplying the backhaul, the Magic Box gets moved from the window to the building center, since the outside beneficiaries become parasites on my WiFi.

Many people don't have Wi-Fi. The added expense may make T-Mobile unaffordable unless 600MHz reaches them. T-Mobile is building 600MHz rapidly in my area with many sites coming on line just in the last few days. Still early. Remains to be seen if 600MHz will have good site density.

At least for now this does imply that 4g band 41 LTE does not go away. In many urban areas, 5g n41 will have the tremendous benefit of dramatically improved uploads when stand alone 5g goes live later in the year because the effective channel size will go from 20 to 100MHz along with greater spectrum efficiency. It could be 5 to 10 times faster.

Also note that T-Mobile has stated it will rollout 5g stand alone by the end of the year. This will eliminate the need for anchor bands and dramatically increase n41 upload speeds.

3 minutes ago, iansltx said:

The OP8 got an update recently allowing n2/n66, so betting we see DSS sooner rather than later. So B12 and PCS-G will be the two blocks that'll be LTE-only.

1 minute ago, Tengen31 said:

Yeah no phones support n25 for some reason

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk
 

Not certain this will be true. More bandwidth options with n25 than n2. But n25 could be longer term. Why throw away 5x5?  They have so much PCS spectrum I am not even certain about DSS except for n66/b66 and n12/b12.

1 hour ago, ingenium said:

Interesting. I'm somewhat surprised they don't just move the magic box to B25 or B2 (on T-Mobile). I'm assuming this means they went to refarm the magic box earfcn, and they can't move magic boxes to the macro earfcn while it's relaying B41.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 

Likely means older Magic Boxes are soon to be junk. I will have to check my MB screen menus.

I use NSG SCP and Cellmapper on a bootloader unlocked rooted moto g7 power unlocked. New for $179 on Amazon (many models but can give a link if needed). Used on T-Mobile and AT&T.

..

2 hours ago, jporter12 said:

So, I'm late to the party here.  Columbus, Ohio market.  I've had my S20 Ultra since a few days after launch (late pre-order) so I've been through the stuff mentioned through this thread.  My issue is 5G.  Before 5G was turned on, my speeds on T-Mobile were great!  Maybe a bit slower than Sprint in a speedtest, but latency was better, and it "felt" faster.  Then 5G was turned on, and I found out to check in the *#0011# service mode screen to see if n71 was working.  It was, I was happy.  Within a couple days, that totally changed.  It seemed that I rarely got n71, and data was SLOW, maybe 1/3 of the speed as before 5G was turned on.  When I do see n71, speeds are really good. For instance, 2 days ago, it was hitting n71 without active data transferring.  Then yesterday and today, not even a blip of n71 when actively transferring.  I found that switching the network mode to LTE/CDMA got my speeds back to good.  It seems that I must get a profile update push when not looking and it turns 5G back on, or if I have to restart and forget to reset it.  

Is anyone else seeing this behavior?  

Columbus 600MHz spectrum was just whacked 5x5 in a dispute with Dish.

2 hours ago, jporter12 said:

Long time lurker here, long time SCP user.  FYI...  I'm the guy in the bar that had SC on his phone!  LOL

First, I just wanted to thank you for this awesome tool.  
Second, I do have an occasional freezing of the app on my Galaxy S20 Ultra.  It's usually when switching back and forth between the engineering screen to check CA, SCP, and the Speedtest app, to make sure it's still running.  I have to go in and force close it to get it to run again.

Now for a question: how accurate is the distance from the tower in SCP?  I've had a few times that I can't figure out where it's picking up a tower, and now that I think about it, it could be a SC.  Since the S20 U is now on T-Mobile, there are no site notes for the towers, and I'm trying to figure out where they are!

In my market about 75% are co-sited with Sprint! Cellmapper helps to narrow down the others. The I load the address into SCP once I find those sites.  For just knowing what band and where you signal is coming from SignalCheck Pro can't be beat!

1 hour ago, jthawks said:

So just had a representative from sprint come to my house asking wear wireless service we have and then said t mobile and sprint are combining this summer. Kept saying that they are dumping a ton of money in the network and he could save us on our monthly bill.  I basically told him I know what's going on and there is no reason to switch. Plus he said he could lower our bill.  Which I really doubt it.  My question is why are they doing door to door sales and wouldn't it be beneficial to get at&t and Verizon users?  That was a first for me. 

Scary method in Covid-19 times.

1 minute ago, killerz298 said:

I'm trying to switch over to the Airave 4 now that the've enable VoLTE on them. That should fix this problem. The only reason I got the Pebble over the AR4 is because VoLTE wasn't enable on it yet.

Do it quickly.  My impression is T-Mobile really wants to move people to their network ASAP, even if it causes lots of pain. August 1 is rumored to be the end of Sprint retail.

2 hours ago, killerz298 said:

I just figured it couldn't hurt for it to have a fresh reboot every week at 4 am on Sunday while not in use. I don't know if it particularly NEEDS that but the point is that any type of power/internet failure knocks the damn VoLTE out for 2-3 weeks which is ridiculous. I'll disable it for now and see if the router becomes unstable.

2 hours ago, ingenium said:

Yeah, agreed, it's pretty ridiculous, but that's typical Sprint for you. I doubt T-mobile will put any work into fixing things like this, since they will want to get rid of B41 femtos to refarm the spectrum. Plus they're moving people to the T-Mobile network anyway. I imagine their CellSpot will work better with VoLTE, with the caveat that it doesn't have as good of range as Sprint femtos (at least the magic box). And/or they'll release a 5G version eventually.

But either way, we likely won't see any changes or improvements to Sprint femtos going forward. If you have a UPS, it's worth putting the Pebble, your router, and modem on it. It's certainly nice to have working internet for a while when the power goes out, and then you won't lose VoLTE either.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 

My router typically only gets rebooted for firmware updates or major functionality changes that I have implemented. Otherwise stays up for years.  Last time it was down is when Hurricane Ike remnants hit Ohio in 2008 and caused week long power outages, which killed local internet in a few days (I have two ISPs, UPSes, generator).  ISP's battery backups and generator use had improved considerably since that time.

Making changes appears to be the greatest reason for router instability. So put internet connections on a UPS,  reboot after major changes, and otherwise enjoy.

7 hours ago, dkyeager said:

LTE or LTE B? would be good.  I personally prefer to know that it is unknown.  Thanks!

The key difference between this and true Clearwire (Sprint)  is T-Mobile Clearwire is always flagged as roaming.