apphysics

i live on the eastside of Milwaukee, right up the hill from Bradford

 

one thing that ive noticed lately is that my texts have gotten faster, before it would usually take like 5 minutes to send a text and the other person to receive it, but not its a few seconds.

 

however i have also noticed in my apartment building recently my signal strength has jumped to 4 out of 5 bars instead of nothing, and then when i leave my apartment it then drops down to nothing lol. i think someone in my building has an airwave.

 

the one thing that is still confusing to me is that i have a random friend on facebook who says that she constantly has LTE in Milwaukee. is one of the 3 bands running LTE active in the area, but not the other 2? 

 

now if what i read is true, the LG G2 should be tri-band. my plan is to go to the sprint store, have them give it to me for the new contract price with out having to sign the contract. there is just no way at the moment that i want to be locked into a contract with sprint that cant meet their own definition of 3G speeds. With the G2 will my speeds be greater than the speeds i am currently getting with the Evo 3D?

It's likely that she only goes to areas that do have LTE. Some towers have LTE working and others don't. I go through Milwaukee all the time and the majority of LTE I get is in the general vicinity of I-94 west of the Marquette Interchange. In this case, a new phone probably would not help until they get 800MHz turned on.

I'm not sure if the EVO 3d is capable of 800MHz or not. The only case that I would suggest a new phone is if your phone is not capable of 800MHz, otherwise there won't be any difference (2600MHz isn't going to come for probably another year because they'll start that after they finish the rest of NV) because you will still be using the 1900MHz band until they turn on the 800 MHz band. So if your phone can run on 800MHz, don't bother trying to get a new one because you won't notice any difference.

iPhones scan much more often than android phones. I was in a hotel room on the edge of LTE this past week, and when it dropped the LTE (when I went to the interior of the room) it would take 5 minutes of being by a window to reconnect to LTE. That is how I came to my figure of 5 minutes.

Can someone explain to me how this LTE coverage works i have a iphone 5s and I can find LTE signal where it is suppose to be according to sensorly but in some places its seems like its a line of sight down the road and not a blanket coverage unless i am right next to the tower that is broadcasting is this what LTE will be like until 800 LTE and 2600 are done?

The phones only scan for LTE once in a while. On my iPhone 5s I think it is about every 5 minutes, so there's a lot of times I'll e driving down the highway and completely skip LTE even from a site that is broadcasting it. And also, because sprint only has certain towers up it will be spotty until they get the majority of towers done. I would guess that this will probably be right around Christmas for the Milwaukee/Madison market.

I know this is Central Wisco market, but I have houses in both places. I was wondering if anyone could tell me if the tower by highway 10 and Stadt Rd just outside of Marshfield is transmitting 800, LTE, or both? I'm going home in about a week and my house is less than a mile away from there so I'm hoping that I will get LTE at my house (preferably 800 LTE, but that's a stretch).

Thanks mark for providing great network updates.

 

Updates are happening in the milwaukee market.

 

The site on hwy 60 in grafton is now broadcasting 1x800

I was just up there right by that tower and i didn't get any 800 at all...

if they snuck the equipment up there w/o me noticing, im going to be pissed cuz that would have been like one of the first ones done in madison back this spring since the permit was for may and no testing has been done.... like ive said previously, ive had a close eye on that tower

I know for the Brown Deer/43 tower, they started work on Monday and were done on Tuesday. And that's an actual tower. A rooftop would probably be even easier (an thus faster) to work on. So if you lapsed or were gone for even just a day or two, it's possible the work was done then.

if it is, that would be interesting because i have not seen testing of any sort being done over here....

Just because equipment is there doesn't mean they test. The Brown Deer/I-43 tower by me got all of it's NV stuff installed last week and there has been absolutely no testing. They installed the panels and cabinets and then lit out (presumably to another tower in the area?). So they might save testing until several towers in the area are about ready to go live so they can test and then transition right into full coverage of that area.

What's the situation by UW hospitals? Close to zero signal

If you step into a building!

I will say this however, even if they do fire up the 800mhz, you won't notice a difference as the iPhone 4s does not support sprint's 800 network. I know apple says it does, but what they actually mean is that it supports Verizon's 850 Mhz spectrum because until recently, Apple did not recognize 850 as its own spectrum and thus claimed it to be 800. The first phone that supports true 800, and thus Apple officially recognizes 850 as its own band is the iPhone 5. I just upgraded from my 4s to a 5s and I must say that even without the 800 I have seen better coverage (often ~15-20db) just because the 5s has more power to pull the signal.

these antennae are impossible to get a picture of based on how they are mounted...here is the best i could do with my terrible zoomed in camera on my phone...

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/photos/109122972571752715062/albums/5935359360757544529/5935359361123378482?pid=5935359361123378482&oid=109122972571752715062

I'm not positive, but IMO that does look like NV equipement...

I was just looking at sensorly, and there is now a bunch of purple up by Port Washington that wasn't there last week. the North Shore is coming!!!!!! I can't wait till the flip the switch on the Brown Deer/I-43 tower because that services my school (and possible my house but probably not)

The tower in Muskego (College/Tess Corners) is being upgraded and I had posted some pictures of the new antennae laying on the ground.  Since I'm kind of new to the antennae spotting world, would someone be able to tell me what the various antennae on the tower are and who might own them.  It appears that 1 of the new antennae is visible on the bottom rung of the tower. Please explain, so that I may learn what I'm looking at.

 

BTW: Does this site (or any other) have more information about not only where towers are, but who has antennae on them, and what types?

The tower in Muskego (College/Tess Corners) is being upgraded and I had posted some pictures of the new antennae laying on the ground.  Since I'm kind of new to the antennae spotting world, would someone be able to tell me what the various antennae on the tower are and who might own them.  It appears that 1 of the new antennae is visible on the bottom rung of the tower. Please explain, so that I may learn what I'm looking at.

 

BTW: Does this site (or any other) have more information about not only where towers are, but who has antennae on them, and what types?

I'm going to take a stab at it and say bottom is Sprint (almost positive), middle is AT&T, and top is Verizon judging by the equipment, but I may be wrong.

I was just out by Madison/wis dells and experienced lte. I was regularly running 10-15mbps down and 3-6 up. And my best result was 28.32 down and 8 flat up.

Just moved from Brewers Hill to just north of Good Hope Rd west of the river and didnt think data or voice could have gotten worse.  I was wrong.  I will be keeping an eye on that tower, praying.

So you're right in the River Hills area? A lot of my friends live in that area and service for me sucks back there (AT&T and Verizon are obviously on the tower as my friends have decent service), and that tower could also service my home so I am hoping that they will be adding it in as a site. 

In the meantime, go to the store and have them give you the retention number and they'll send you an airave free of charge (normally like 6 bucks a month). Thats what I ended up doing. On the bright side though, when the Sprint towers were down the other day (as the guys were working on the equipment) I was picking up 3-4 bars of 800Mhz roaming in my house. With Sprint's current 1.9Ghz I am lucky to have one bar, so hopefully once they flip the switch and make 800 live service will substantially improve for us.

EDIT: added airave and 800/1900 info

So a question for some people in the milwaukee area. Is Sprint on the tower right next to 43, between Good Hope Rd and Brown Deer Rd? I was looking at the map and sprint does not have that site down as one of their towers, so when I called tonight about my plan info i suggested adding that as a service location as service in the area (that could be covered by that tower) is pretty poor.

So I just drove by the Brown Deer/I-43 tower, and the contractor trailers are gone and all the equipment is up. All they have to do now for that one is flip the switch.

Just a question. When they say "the radios are at the top of the panel instead of at the base" what does that mean? Is it that the devices actually making the signal are normally at the base, but will not be up top? If so, what is the job of the panels themselves. I had always thought that the radios were the panels....

Can anyone help me understand this one?

The guys were back up on the tower by Brown Deer and 43 today. It appears that they have some of the NV stuff on already.

How long does it take for them fully upgrade/test/ready a tower to be deployed?

So I was on my way home today and saw this on the tower by 43 and Brown Deer (sorry about the quality I was driving):

Definitely network vision guys and they had some of the transmitters on the ground (I am on roaming off this tower and the others in the area), so the Sprint stuff obviously isn't transmitting. Can't wait!!!