JossMan

Outage in the Midwest, well, there is an ongoing severe weather outbreak occurring.  

A friend of mine who works for Ericsson (Sprint's network maintenance) told me that LTE 800 can't be optimized until enough sites that neighbor each other are put into operation, almost every site needs to have 800 except two or three within a larger cluster. When they do optimize a cluster they will leave one on the edge of a cluster non-optimized as a "buffer" to the other sites that are still awaiting optimization to avoid interference.  

On another note I aggravate him once a week to get the last three sites in my town put into LTE operation. Good news is that he is suppose to call me before it happens so I can watch a site get integrated with LTE.

Not so fast. They have added lots of capacity sites over the years in urban/suburban areas creating many places with tighter than PCS spacing. In those instances B41 may overlap for continuous coverage.

I can confirm this, Sprint added three CDMA sites within the City of Bristol, TV/VA back in 2009/2010.  One is located about a 1 1/2 miles from Bristol Motor Speedway, the other in a subdivision, and the third that sits about a quarter mile from my house.  Their network has certainly tightened up here on the PCS side and even better with all of these sites broadcasting 800 SMR on the CDMA/LTE side not to mention the older sites that were built back in the 90s.  

For some reason, when I run speedtests, the needle jumps really fast to the 10 Mbps spot, then stays consistent at around the 1 Mbps spot. Does this mean anything?

 

The true is speed is 1Mbps, I've experienced speedtests (especially on the Speedtest.net app) where the speed will spike and then start to bottom out, or it will spike and bottom out then gradually increase.

Seeing speeds around 1Mbps on LTE means your have a degraded signal or the site your connected too is congested.  Band 41 will alleviate these problems on down the road once a market has been blessed with Band 41.    

I don't know if anyone can help me, but my phone has been bouncing between LTE and 3G for a few hours now, and has done a few nights in row, like this. Can anyone say what could be the cause? I live at 7 Mile and Inkster, in Livonia.

It could be site optimizations occurring around you or it could be from the recent solar storm that recently hit. 

Ha, it must be a secret! Does it always say 1, or does it change at all? There really isn't anything I can do about the missing PCI, it just reports an invalid value..

 

-Mike

No, the amount of neighbor cells will change depending on where I am and especially when I am on the edge of a site sector. 

So after the recent beta update (4.274b) my tri-band S3 decided to start showing neighbor cells, well sorta  , maybe this is a step in the right direction as far as getting the PCI to show up on Samsung devices pre-4.4.4?

Who does Sprint use as fiber back haul providers in suburban Detroit?  I couldn't see anyone where I live besides Comcast and WOW as being a possibility.

Besides your local ISPs in your area Sprint could be using Windstream as well, they have several fiber rings in the Detroit metro area.  

Towers in Minneapolis that have B26 do have better signals from what I have seen. 

Band 26 (800MHz) post-optimization will trump Band 25 (1900MHz).  

I meant to give a update a couple of weeks ago, I am able to lay down purple once again.  I have been mapping two new LTE sites in my area, seems to be working fine. 

EDIT: Read AJ's comment no need for mine  .

Nice! I love the new B25 LTE indicator, everything is working so far Mike.

It would be a GMO (Ground Mount Option) for LTE. 

Well this didn't take long, the BVU OptiNet neighboring municipal ISP provider Bristol Tennessee Essential Services (BTES) is looking to piggyback FCC decision and expand its services outside of its electrical footprint.  

I am sorry.  But that thing is a fat, fugly, low res piece of plastic.  I guess that is what $99 buys.

 

AJ

Its not ugly, hogly, its fugly!  I agree 100% there are better options out there for a little bit more cabbage.  

It is now available on Boost and Sprint Prepaid. Virgin coming soon. I'm really interested in picking one up, however, is it Band 41 compatible? I can't find a good answer anywhere on the official materials.

Yep the Moto E is tri-band, Bands 25, 26, and 41 Spark capable.  

http://shop.sprint.com/mysprint/shop/phone_details.jsp?deviceSKUId=89000409

It's not on the screen. When I trap the lte area, it says invalid or missing. I am on the latest update. I just sent the diagnostic to you. Thanks.

 

 

Are you on Lollipop?  I don't think SCP is at full compatibility with 5.0 Lollipop, Mike?

Please forgive stupid question...

 

(and I'm sure that it is answered somewhere earlier in this thread)

 

But, why does Sprint, and others, use 'Off-Set' addresses?

Is it so that the towers are more hidden from common folks?

Each sector ID broadcasts a coordinate and sector IDs are part of the CDMA standard.  From what I have observed in my area is that the off-set locations represent the coverage size of each sector.  

When it comes to the common folks they don't care what sector of a site they are hitting nor do they care about coordinates.  What is most important to the common folk is LTE, coverage, and speed, unless your a S4GRU member then you care about the technology and everything far, few, and in between.   

Either I see a NSN crew hanging B41 equipment here in the Tri-Cities or a crew that is doing RRUS11 swaps for the newer RRUS31.  

Incorrect. Many use custom prls to prioritize 800 over 1900. Personally, I use one to prioritize my airave over the macro network. On some devices you can even force the radio to use smr only, but I don't recommend doing it unless you are 100% sure you know how to reverse it.

I didn't mention anything about custom PRLs due to the OP stating that he wasn't sure about flashing a custom PRL.  I am stating that stock PRLs prioritize 1900 over 800. 

No you can not disable 1x 1900 like you can with Sprint's LTE bands, your device will always prioritize the 1900 band over because its the primary band for voice. 

Short Stop

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I just installed SignalCheck Pro. A great App! I'm trying to locate the cell site that I'm connected to. SIgnalCheck Pro shows a BSL location address that is a house address located further down my street. Any idea why this is happening? I do see the BSID/SID/NID but I haven't found any information to correlate that information to the physical location of the Sprint tower/antenna. The FCC website has database licensing information that is downloadable but not readily useable. Another app I tried displays tower location information of BSLAT = 536294 and a BASLON = -1753340, which are not valid coordinates as far as I know. Any idea on how to de-cipher these location values? Many thanks in advance.

Some sites broadcast coordinates that match their physical location very closely within a few hundred feet.  Each sector of a Sprint cell site (3 sectors) broadcast coordinates for each sector.  If you have a strong signal typically -85dB or better and you feel like your near a Sprint site drive 360 degrees around the site and see if the sector ID changes.

Locations are offset at various distances depending on the geographic size and shape of the cell and how far a site is setup to broadcast, so you could see distances vary from just hundreds of feet to several miles away.  These offsets will also vary by market and are not uniform across all of Sprint's markets.   

Feature request incoming.  Is there anyway SCP can have alerts upon connecting to new LTE sites whether 800/1900 sites Mike, possibly by the GCI?  Just to take it a step further how about when connected too Band 41? 

I know its in your feature request list, how about bumping it to the top of the list. 

I know that but if it takes less $/acre using small cels …

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Acres?!  We are going for miles!