apphysics

And you Madison people were so jealous of Milwaukee's progress before.... Look at yall now! Now WE are the ones sitting and watching you guys have all the excitement!

 

I haven't seen anything going on in the Milwaukee/Waukesha area :/ Anyone else have any new blips of LTE or 1x800 around Milwaukee?

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!!!!!

That's unfortunate. Sorry to hear that.

 

Yes, the location you marked does correspond to a known Sprint location.

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.

Sorry, should have been more specific. We'd need a Sponsor, or someone with access to Site IDs to do that. Since none of the staff is from that area, it's rather difficult to look them up without the Sprint site ID.

 

 

 

There is a tower in that area, but the description is a bit vague. Sorry.

 

We do have maps that show the location of every Sprint tower across the country in the Sponsor section if you felt so inclined.

 

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.

WiMax and Nextel are unrelated. Not sure where that idea came from?

 

WiMax is most certainly still in operation. Sprint committed to WiMax through at least 2015. All sites, even protection sites, which are the kind Milwaukee has, are still on. There are far to many OG EVOs, Galaxy S2s, EVO 3G, etc. out there to shut down the network. 

 

Clear is installing dual mode RRUs on all Clear sites to support the simultaneous broadcast of LTE and WiMax from Clear sites until WiMax is shut down in the future. 

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...

There are two WiMax sites in Milwaukee. WiMax is a much harder signal to catch and maintain. Unless you are in the right spot you won't see it. But it is there. 

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.

I'm sorry if this sounds stupid, but I'm going to buy a new ipad, and I'm trying to figure out which carrier to buy it on. I live in Middleton. If I check out Sensorly, it shows LTE coverage where I live, but I don't have a 4G phone to verify it. Is there actually 4G service active in some places. I know Madison is not an official market, but I can't tell from these posts if there is functioning LTE anywhere in the area.

 

On another note. Which ipad should I get. Sprint has the best data price at 2GB for 15 bucks, but....

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.

Do you still believe the October date?

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.

It also seems to be a problem unique to Chicago. Unfortunately for them. Hopefully someone figures out what is going on and they're able to fix it.

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.

 Actually, Sprint bought out USCC network in Chicago.  They are combining them for more spectrum.

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

FYI if you head south to Sprint's "mature" 4G market in Chicago.. It is having major issues right now. Look at the Chicago market topic. Users are getting low 3G-like speeds even at off peak times in the suburbs. Could be a problem of he USCC network interference because of the really low SNR values. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

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

That could be... That's actually very encouraging if that is the reason... That would mean that the people who do the inspections and acceptances are in the area and checking out sites around here.

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?

Yea, just to add a little tid bit... The contractors can have a cell site all done and ready to go, but then someone else (from Sprint) needs to stop by to inspect the site and sign off on it. At that point, it is "accepted". Or the inspector could find some little code violation or something, so it would appear that the site has all the panels and everything in place, but the crew might have to come back and adjust something or re-do some part. So "sites accepted" is really the key term that says it's 100% ready to go and if it's not already broadcasting LTE, then Sprint is waiting for some reason or another to "flip the switch".

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?

just out of curiosity, how many sites in Milwaukee are left for the upgrade, compared to total number of sites, in addition what is it for Madison? Also are they waiting for both Madison and Milwaukee to finish before turning it on?

 

also what makes watertown, beaver dam, fon du lac, sheboygan, and whitewater so special that they recieved the upgrade first, are they not in the same market?

 

and please give me an answer with out trying to insult me.

 

not complaining, just curious.

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.

ALU has 2 RRUs with their new PCS model. Ericsson has 3 or 4 depending on if it's a high capacity site or not. 

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!

Remote Radio Heads / Remote Radio Units

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.