JossMan

Arctic Vortex 

I saw this topic and wanted to provide some information about our community and current lack of service.

 

Relevant to the information that's already stated in this forum thread, Troutdale is located approximately 8 miles from Sugar Grove on the other side of a mountain. The tower that was recently turned on at Volney reaches almost to the Grayson/Smyth County line at the top of the mountain. Only US Cellular customers can get service from this tower. After several months of research, it seems that a need to expand communications along the route from River North Prison to the Marion Correctional facility was the initial reason for the placement of this tower. On the other end of things in Smyth County however, there seems to have been some sort of lack of communication on this front. It seems that back in 2007 both Smyth and Grayson counties were working together to establish cellular service. Somewhere along 2011 or 2012 the two counties ceased to work together. Grayson County established a cellular tower that covers their rural area while the Sugar Grove community continues to be unserved.

 

Our community has been working closely with Delegate Jeff Campbell's office on these efforts. This has brought some promising resources to the table but we still aren't there yet. We need the cooperation of the Smyth County Board of Supervisors as well as providers in these efforts in order to make it happen. We have also been researching funding for towers, anything to interest providers to come to the area.

 

At this time, Smyth County School Board has entered into an agreement with Milestone Communications to market all county owned properties to providers. Sugar Grove Combined School is the only property in our community listed on this agreement but it is worth mentioning here just in case someone at Sprint is reading this and may be interested. At this point, I do not feel that our BoS is doing everything they can to help our community. Their energy and focuses have never been on the Sugar Grove community.

 

Sprint did contact me with a form for private property owners who were interested in submitting information about properties they have available for leasing.

 

I believe that we should have cellular service provided to our community for safety reasons if nothing else. We are situated between two mountains. This is a bad situation if you happen to have a break down or an accident. There is no access to phones along the way. Sugar Grove doesn't even have a pay phone anymore!

 

As far as service available in either direction, we are within 5 miles either way of limited services. We can cross the top of Nick's Creek and get service or drive 5-8 miles to Troutdale and get US Cellular only.

 

Our community website and Facebook page have additional information about our efforts and can be viewed at www.sugargroveva.com and www.facebook.com/SugarGroveVA

SugarGroveVA, applaud your community's effort to have cellular service brought to your area.  The biggest way to have cellular service brought to your area is to have a emphasis on public safety.  Wireline communications (POTS) is the only service which could be interrupted by severe weather, accident, etc that will cause interrupted communications.  Have you been in contract with Morgan Griffith to see what could be done to have a tower constructed?  Wireless cellular companies wouldn't be the only one to benefit from a tower being built, public safety agencies could also benefit from a communications tower built in Sugar Grove.    

Small Box

LTE rollout can take weeks or even months depending on how many of Sprint's sites have the high-speed backhaul installed.  

Looking at the logs you sent me, I can see what happened -- LG added a new security permission that prevents that screen from being launched any third-party app.

 

-Mike

Is this the same security permission that Samsung has that keeps SignalCheck from accessing the Galaxy S3's DEBUG screen as well?  

Conan... he has the talent, plus get him off cable.  

Hard Landing

Heard of 80+Mph Gust, funnel cloud, and CD size Hail. We are supposed to get hit hard In East Texas, I don't think My corolla will handle Large hail very well. I love being able to track it, If the storm get closer before dark I will go to our lake and watch them roll in. Maybe get some good Video!

I have a 2001 Chevy S-10 4X4 ZR2 I use to storm chase, its seen better days especially after the 2011 super outbreak where I had close to softball sized hail hitting my truck...   Had to get the windshield replaced twice...what a day that was. 

The SPC (Storm Prediction Center) is forecasting for a moderate risk of severe weather for the following areas below.  As a avid storm enthusiast and storm chaser when I have time I'd be on this system if I wasn't so busy yesterday and today.     

Here is a snap shot of a tornado warned cell off of the Dallas/Fort Worth VCP80 radar (TDWR).  Also for you weather extremest here at S4GRU I highly recommend PYKL3 Radar for you storm chasers, its a paid app and works wonders.

I've been working on it for awhile, I want it too! It's done well in my own testing over the past 2 days. The problem with using the PCI is that it not unique across the network.. the range is only 0-503. I promise, with ~39,000 Sprint LTE sites (and many thousand sites for AT&T, Verizon, Tmo, and other providers), they reused a few of them.

 

PLMN+GCI is the only way the app can uniquely identify a site. It's just a matter of choosing whether or not to have one note for all sectors on site 111222xx, or have separate notes for each sector (11122201, 11122202, 11122203, etc).

 

-Mike

Understandable, if I had to choose, I'd have to go with the one note for all the site's sectors instead of a note for each sector. 

I am finally wrapping up the last part of the next update with a new feature I've been trying to get working.. I call them "site notes". Basically you can enter whatever you want (site location, S4GRU map ID, etc) and it will appear whenever you are connected to that site. It will be based on SID+NID+BID for 1X, PLMN+GCI for LTE, and PLMN+LAC+CID for GSM.

 

 

Any and all opinions appreciated!

 

Thanks,

-Mike

Heck yeah Mike, you rock, I was waiting for something like this to be implemented in your app!  As far as the LTE goes either way would be great for me, tired of wondering what site I am connected too when I get LTE.  

But...if I had to choose I would go the PCI i.e. 100, 269, 438 especially in Ericsson markets where the value is based of 169 after the first initial value.  

Miller Time

Just got this message today.  

So that would directly effect my m8's ability to place and receive calls, text message timeouts, and 3g data drops? I'm worried I got a faulty unit.

Have you read the following article here, I doubt you have defective device.  

CDMA 3G integration is more than likely still ongoing in and around the Knoxville area.

Space Exploration 

OV-103 "Discovery" (Retired 1984-2012)

I don't know if I'm missing anything or can't find any info but is there a fairly clear and straight forward guide to the steps that towers undergo to be upgraded to 3G and then to LTE? 

 

Is there a way to create such a list or thread for this? If not maybe someone could answer some of my questions that I'm still curious about. 

 

I haven't been able to find out what backhaul means and also when towers are waiting to be upgraded could there be an issue with the equipment vendor or the property owner where the tower resides or government permits to get it upgraded? I'm guessing it could be any of these but are there issues more prevalent in some areas or with Sprint overall?

 

What is the difference between acceptance and backhaul? Is acceptance when the equipment has been installed and both the vendor approves it and then Sprint approves it?

 

Thanks in advance for answering these questions and I apologize if they've all ben answered. 

Back-haul is either fiber or some other type of high-speed link for the use of LTE.  LTE can't be brought online for tesing or commercial use without the high-speed back-haul in place, you can't use bundled T1 lines for LTE operation.  Sprint's legacy CDMA 3G EV-DO uses bundled T1 connections which was perfectly fine 8 years ago.   

And yes there can be issues where its difficult to get in contact with the lease/landowner to upgrade a site.  If its not that then its a back-haul related issue where ISPs fail to have the new back-haul installed before crews get there to upgrade the site.  Crews will still install all the new Network Vision gear and just use the legacy back-haul (T1s) until the high-speed access is brought to the site.  Pretty much every Sprint market has ran into constraints where high speed back-haul hasn't been brought to sites, eventually they will get the back-haul its just a matter of when and patience.  

Acceptance is where an inspector has signed off on the work that has been done and what can be brought online depends on whether the new back-haul is in place.  

I have to say that the down tilt is still not adjusted as I lost LTE about 1 mile away.

 

This will be fixed eventually when crews come to finalize the tilt and aiming of the panels if there is a problem.  

S

Happy Birthday Robert!

Wow I thought I was the only one. That is true... I hope sprint adds a few towers here because the new site is shorter and it served many many people and it covered a good portion of silverlake. Not to mention the high data traffic during the weekends.

 

Sprint's only adding a handfull of new sites to there network, so don't get your hopes up.  

There shouldn't be much of a signal difference on 1900 1x and 3G EV-DO as far a the service goes on that shorter site.  Once CDMA 800 is live at that site you will see better coverage.  

Long Island

The old tower could be slated for decommission once everything is operational on the new site, this happened in my home town of Bristol.  A tower that was home to Sprint CDMA, Nextel iDEN, Verizon, and AT&T had to removed due a commercial development that was to be constructed where the old site once stood.  Crown Castle built a new site across the road to accommodate all the wireless providers, plus the city added a public safety 800 antenna for enhanced coverage.  Sprint installed legacy equipment on this site that was on the old site, crews were not around to add the new equipment at the time.  

Old Tower

Old tower 

New cell site being constructed (Cell site completed and operational August 2013)

I haven't seen anything regarding this, and Google wasn't too useful. So I did try before asking.

Can more people become beta testers at anytime, or are you planning on letting more people become beta testers ever. If so how does one go about this? I think it'd be really neat to be one.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Cool kids = Mike's beta crew lol,  , you will have to ask Mike on this one.