apphysics

They are still working on the tower between Good Hope and Brown Deer (next to 43) today. It looks like they're in the cleanup stages, but I might be wrong. That's the last tower I know of that needed upgrades in the area, so it's possible they will start testing soon after they finish that tower (which means testing could come as early as Monday).

Ok so good news for Milwaukee folks. All the equipment is in place on the tower between Brown Deer and Good Hope (right next to I-43). All that is left is making the remaining connections (some cables are hooked up, some are not).

Ok so good news here folks! A couple days ago I was talking about how the tower on I-43 between Brown Deer and Good Hope was the only tower left in the area that I was aware of that did not have upgrades. Well guess what?!?!? I was driving to school today and there are people up on the tower and wires hanging off of it. THE LAST TOWER (that I know did not have the upgrades) IS BEING UPGRADED!!!!!

Ok I'll have to watch that one then because it is the only tower I am aware of in the area that does not have the NV upgrades. And that's my home tower (I pull 1 bar at best and my Airave doesn't like LTE devices), so having 800 would be amazing. Thank you for the help. Are you able to find the site IDs from maps like that? If so I can drop a pin for all the towers that are complete in the area and put them up here for you.

I wish I could be a sponsor, but my mom has shot that down. So I'm just doing what I can to help out here with what I do have available to me. The Purple pin is the tower I was asking about. The red pin is the I-43/Brown Deer tower for some perspective. I don't know if that would help with finding the location, but I thought I would put it up. Thank you!!

Ok thank you for that. And I can tell you that the I-43/Brown Deer tower, and the next two north along I-43 (one just north and one just south of Mequon Road), and the one by Mequon Road and Cedarburg Road are completely installed and are just waiting for acceptance. Also, can you tell me if Sprint is on the tower right next to I-43 about halfway between Brown Deer Rd and Good Hope Rd? I've been watching that one, but no NV is on it, and I'm not even sure if Sprint is on that one. I drive by it every day, so if you can tell me if Sprint is on that site, I can provide updates for that tower.

Thanks for that. I must be confused. What technology did Nextel use? And will Clear ever be shut down like Nextel (a ways off however), or are they like a third party contractor? I thought Sprint bought them out...

I thought all the WiMax sites went down when the Nextel Network was shut down. Or are these Clearwire sites that are waiting for that shutdown to come?

I have to second that. I consistently lock onto LTE and hold it until I leave the coverage area of that tower. I don't know if my iPhone 5s has superior hardware to your HTC, but everywhere sensorly shows LTE I get it. I even get LTE in some areas that sensorly does not show.

If you're talking capacity wise... I would stay away from the 16GB. Apps are just too big these days. I have a 64 and all but 10GBs are used. If you have a lot of music and/or videos I would go with the 64GB or 128GB. If you do mainly documents, mail, and web browsing I would say go with the 32GB. Like I said before, the 16GB is just too small. You're sure to download at least one or two games and most of them are 500MB+ with a lot being larger than 1GB. And I was in BB yesterday and I cannot believe how light the iPad Air is. It's just astounding.

If it weren't for Samsung stopping testing, I believe we would have been announced. However, with Samsung stopping testing (easy in winter) to push installs (tough to do in the winter), I imagine we will be closer to late november or early december now.

So here in the North Shore of Milwaukee I have been on roaming all night (since about 6pm). Big changes coming??? *gets hopeful*

With Sprint buying out the Chicago market from USCC it honestly makes me wonder whether or not other negotiations aren't going on and the public just doesn't know about them.

In all honesty, I would like to see Sprint/Softbank buy USCC and Cellcom and use their towers and spectrum for a bigger buildout. Something similar across the whole nation (as far as the regional ones like cellcom go as I realize USCC in nationwide). But I honestly think a good strategic move for Sprint would be to buy out USCC as a whole.

I know that one, but what i'm saying is that sprint should buy all of USCC nationwide.

So in other words, to prevent interference in other markets, US Cellular will cease to exist in a few years.

We can always hope. Being the Milwaukee test teams are on standby this week, perhaps almost all the testing in the area is (nearly) complete and the sites are just awaiting acceptance?

That's probably what happened on the Brown Deer/I-43 tower. They had everything installed, and left for several weeks. Then, at the start of this week, they were back and moved all 3 NV panels and some of the old legacy panels. Perhaps they installed them wrong and Sprint refused to accept the site as completed?

Smaller areas have a lot fewer sites. For example, Marshfield (running LTE) where I am from has a total of 2 (maybe 3 but thats a stretch), and 1 more a couple miles from the town. It's a lot faster to upgrade 3-4 towers than it is to upgrade 50-100+ towers like Milwaukee has. So basically it comes down to the basic principle of building a house that the bigger it is, the more work there is to do, and the longer it will take to complete it.

I went by the I-43/Brown Deer tower again today on my way home and the workers are gone, however i did figure out what they had done. The NV panels previously were square in the middle between the legacy panels, but now they have been redirected, and the legacy panels were moved out of the way of the NV panels. So they didn't install anything new, they just changed the positioning of the NV and legacy panels.

Also, I don't know if anybody has noticed, but Sensorly has little blips of purple on and just of Mequon Rd on the east side of Mequon. I used to live over there, so I know that whole area is covered by the tower at the police station. That's encouraging to know that at the very least they were testing a site in Mequon. LTE is coming, and fast!

I was going home yesterday and I saw people on the I-43/Brown Deer tower working again. I thought they had finished it? Anyway, they were up there again today. I would stop to talk to them, but I haven't been able to find time. Maybe if they are out tomorrow on my way home? Work is being done though, thats the good news.

Ok thanks! I couldn't quite tell if the one ALU is 2 RRUs back to back, or 1 large one. Thanks for your help!

Thanks! And as for the # of RRUs, Samsung has 2 while both Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson have 3, right?

Ok, so let me get this straight... Both Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent use 3 RRUs, and the Samsung setups only use two RRUs, correct? Also, what does RRU stand for? For some reason I feel like radio responder unit is the correct answer there.