AcctDeleted_Merlin

That ping + that speed = Fiber 3G while picking up LTE. Sometimes the phones don't report the correct data type. I have played with that tower personally, it is fine. What you see happening here is the site switching you over to the 3G signal because of signal noise/clarity. These sites will switch over to 3G when they deem a steady clear 3G will suffice, if you started pulling more bandwidth it would probably bump back up to the 4G, but it may not be as stable as the CDMA-3G.

Indeed. These antennas are extremely directional and do not deviate from their path. A 1-2 degree misalignment can easily end up missing an entire neighborhood. Once a cluster goes live we send out several trucks to the area to map out the signal strength so it won't be Swiss cheese, but it certainly wont be optimized.

The latter. The holes will not be terribly frequent, but we wont know they exist until the legacy network is completely shut down.

ATT/Verizon/Tmo have all maxed out their switch/network capacity by retrofitting their networks. They will not be able to sustain any more increase in bandwidth. This is the joy of the Network Vision project. That fancy new backbone they put in is specifically designed to maintain the unlimited plans for the foreseeable future, it does not matter to sprint how much you use, you wont be able to ever stress it for 10-15 years.

Coverage is going to be a slightly more interesting question. As all these new antenna's have gone up the crews have not really been held accountable for their lackluster work. Some antennas are pointed incorrectly and this will cause gaps. As we begin to do the permanent maintenance hand-off from Samsung to Ericsson the Ericsson techs are going to be ripping them apart and making sure everything is correct. This takes about 2-3 hours per site, per tech. Look for roughly 6-10 sites to be walked through per day once they get rolling (in about 4-5 months). This puts full stable completion of the phase 1 NV at the end-ish of 2014.

Not that I know of.

Yes. No. Confirmed. GMO sites for now. The eventual plan is to convert them as well. Indeed.

Yes, you are fired for being clumsy, but more importantly because you failed to tie off or lash/spot the ladder properly.

Correct, they cannot block signals. It also looks like NexTech shares towers with verizon in some areas.

Unconfirmed, but I have heard that there are several long range verizon sites along I-70 and that for a long time Verizon has paid extra to the tower owners to maintain exclusive rights. Seeing as those towers need to be other forms of radio communication for them to be viable financially, it could be true. It could also be that there are about 47 people total that live out there and all the other carriers are okay with Verizon dominating the rural market.

wut?

Big oops, it's really fun trying to bring up a site and the MMBS cant talk to the RRUs. Even more fun when you switch to the backup fiber line to the RRU and that one is trashed as well. Most of the tower crews are out of state low-end crews, but I have run in to several crews that thoroughly know their shit and get it done right the first/only time.

The first two seem to be the harder instructions for them to follow. That and don't kink the damn hybrid cable, it has fiber in it.

I might say that, I might not. But it wouldn't be wrong. No, climbing towers is not in my job description, nor any ericsson, sprint, or samsung tech. We leave the climbing to the plebs. Their training is basically "don't die, don't hurt yourself, bolt goes here, cable goes here"

no these do not happen on weekends.