dkyeager

Chicago - fail. Will check Atlanta, Dallas and Kansas City.

What is ASDA?

I see the 5G icon, but zooming into Chicago loop or Washington DC on the mall only shows 4G, even with the v50 selected.

You are the yellow dot.

You're at the edge of the empire, like a Roman soldier on Hadrian's Wall.

Fiercewireless boost the credibility a lot.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-sprint-consider-concessions-report rules out spectrum sales.

It could just be limited to locked in rates and service levels.

The first question is how reliable is the source? Most of these rumors will have some basis in truth. Does it include spectrum sales? At this stage I am inclined to believe most of the time is being spent on network and customer facing issues. How many sites an where must the be retained? Which counties will require spectrum sales? How are CDMA only customers and areas handled, including building interiors? How are phone upgrades handled? What about billing plans and cutovers? etc.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-05-13/t-mobile-sprint-are-said-to-consider-concessions-to-save-merger?srnd=premium Separate out some of the prepaid.

It is very particular. My guess is T-Mobile would have to say no to conditions of approval put forth by DOJ and FCC and Sprint would need to meet credit, and possible financial and customer requirements. It is for $600 Million.

I have had the same debate with various network engineers from various carriers about Sprint in my area. T-Mobile ranks better yet has about the same number of macro sites. Much fewer if you count b41 only macro sites (former Clear). They also have almost no small cells. Sprint has far more small cells than AT&T, yet maybe half the number of Verizon. The primary conclusion is lack of proper backhaul. CapEX pays for some fancy site equipment, but backhaul comes out of the operating budget. Lack of low band capacity is another especially for interior use, which would be solved by more tribanding of former Clear sites, yet that is moving quite slowly. If there was more consistency in site deployments, I figure the network would be easier to manage / optimize. There is a tremendous mix of network technologies in play in the traditional metro area: B25 - a few 5x5, then mostly 10x10, 5x5+10x10, 15x15 then various mixtures of 256 QAM and 4x4 MIMO, and 4 or more sectors at some sites, B26 - 5x5, 3x3, some with 4 port RRUs plus a few multiple sector sites, B41 - low 1 carrier and 2 carrier small cells , B41 2 CA 2x2 MIMO Mini Macro sites (mostly former Clear), 8T8R sites with 3 CA and up to 4x4 MIMO, a few of these with 5 carriers, a few Massive MIMO sites. Blessed to have all these, but plenty of places for problems to hide. Likely boils down to limited resources. When you go to rural sites, the opposite is often true: Sprint sites are very consistent while the other carriers have plenty of ground mounted radios and museum sites. VoLTE at least did force more LTE consistency for the other carriers. I figure this is enough for now.

5G will help in rural areas at the edge for cells for it should double existing bandwidth, ie 4Mbps comes 8Mbps. But does it just give 18 months of breathing room, since data usage appears to be doubling every 18 months? 5G is currently be touted for dramatically reduced latency, which should help with virtual reality, self-driving cars, etc. How far does it get to this goal? We will have to see. While there is unused 2.5 spectrum that is in the hands of spectrum hoarders and WISPs, there are vast rural areas where all 2.5 is in use and there is only enough for 20+20+15. The FCC is trying to establish new rules to get this remaining spectrum in use. This is likely waiting until after a merger decision.

Both of these quotes should be removed from the comments. We should all be civil towards each other. No one is 100% right. My comments will be deleted if this is done.

The GCI matches Sprint for that area. -99 RSRP on B26 could be many miles away. Your almost in Montana, but it's market GCI is 094. US 2 is the major east-west highway in those parts. See any others? The Cellular One Montana site did not go that far east. You were likely north of the site. 3x3 B26 can still be respectable speed wise, Max 21.4 Mbps.

There is an area outside of Pittsburgh that Ingenium reported which only has 5x5 yet has this earfcn. Remember that we don't have much data at this point so better to be cautious and reduce support issues.

I recommend covering SCP in the definition for wideband stating it is likely 15x15 but could also be 10x10 or even 5x5. Samsung phones and some rooted applications can tell, otherwise speedtests close to the site at off hours.

1) Make certain you walk completely around the site. You may have high capacity sites that have two GCIs per band. 2) Which band is your PCI using? If it is Band 41, then it may be from small cells, Magic Boxes, or Airaves. These are often easiest to detect while indoors. 15 minutes wait is sometimes required. Best to disable CA to find them. Small cells come in many shapes and sizes. Small cells do have other bands butthey are quite rare. Outdoor DAS, which often looks like small cells, would give you signal, but be hard to pin down. Samll cells often have the nasty habit of changing PCIs each time another small cell is added to your market or area. 3) You need to cover another layer of sites further out. Cell site signals are like a three bladed propeller, thus it takes many sites to give you good coverage.

Past behavior is the best predictor of Sprint future CAPex - they will get to about 90% of their goal and then take a breather for a few years IMO. The real perfomance issue is backhaul, which comes out of operating funds. Not sure management really does get it. Sprint deployments start rural then move into metro areas. T-Mobile does the opposite because it is more noticed, thus helping to attract more customers, hence better cash flow. To further reinforce this point, the former Clear site Tribanding project had 8T8Rs in the permits. Many of these appear to have been downgraded last quarter to the existing Mini Macros (I need more data to be certain), which affects the performance of surrounding 8T8R sites in the metro areas. At least in my market they have been going quite slow on this Tribanding project compared to past upgrade projects. Historically they would already be done by now compared to the last round of upgrades for these sites.

I would wait at least another month as there are still some reports of issues. Still a huge backlog on replacement phones. Once the 5G versions get rolling I would expect some price drops.

iirc, there now some parts of Shentel that support Magic Boxes

Historical the FCC would ask Verizon or AT&T to take over the Spectrum, Customers, and assets. LOL

Not certain that Verizon users suffer from this issue, also commonly seen when people pull their phones out of their pants pockets. Nottain as to why Sprint does not change the timer to check for LTE more often, at least in areas where they know LTE exists. CDMA only sites are rare, so I would expected increased battery use would be minimal, even when considering indoor sites with no LTE signal. Edit: fixed two typos

So far we have only confirmed a small number of Massive MIMO sites in diverse locations in Ohio. I would expect greater concentrations for good 5g. Current ones may be designed more for capacity/ RF shadows.

Apple has go to be looking at all of Samsung's self-inflicted wounds in their quest to be first: folding phones that rip in half and Russian roulette for the s10 early adopters, both bring back images of exploding Note 7s. The current finicky nature of 5G mmWave risks bringing back memories of Apple's antenna problems. All for the current possible gain of a few counties worth of 5g territory in the US (Sprint and T-Mobile could dramatically change this, but the duo may go mid-range at the same time as T-Mobile.) Apple will also need to get used taking advantage of more of Qualcomm features after dumbing-down their phones to help Intel. Hopefully for Sprint's sake, LG gets the V50 right.