Yuhfhrh

6 hours ago, greenbastard said:

I'm not sure Verizon wants to do this just yet. It all depends on what percentage of their mobile phones can support B66.

Verizon would be getting the PCS E block in this scenario, which I'm sure they'd much prefer over their line 5x5 AWS-3. That actually moves Verizon from 5x5 AWS-3 & 15x15 in PCS, to 20x20 PCS. T-Mobile from 5x5 PCS & 5x5 AWS-3, to 10x10 AWS-3.

Though the covered area of the PCS and AWS licenses are slightly different, I don't see any other swaps possible in the Houston area, except like you said if other markets are brought into the equation.

The dream would be for the FCC to take up a forced spectrum defragmentation project across the country, and just force swaps to make everyone contiguous. I'm not sure if all the carriers would actually like that to happen or not.

11 hours ago, greenbastard said:

If the only upgrade was swapping the B12 panel for the B12/B71 panel, then it's likely they didn't add AWS-3 (or at least that's what has been happening in Houston and South Texas). The only site around me that I know has AWS-3 is a site that had to be downsized due to space and weight limitations (it shares the tower with AT&T, which already has 4x4 lowband equipment). I haven't found it anywhere else, but then again I'm not actively looking for it.

I haven't checked to see if the new FDD massive mimo equipment is being set up to broadcast AWS-3 spectrum. They've going up around Houston since the Fall of 2019. 

In Houston, T-Mobile could probably get Verizon to swap their AWS-3 I block for T-Mobile's PCS E block, giving them both 10x10 contiguous. It sucks ATT has PCS F&C, which basically forces the G block to remain 5x5 for T-Mobile as I doubt ATT would ever want to move.

22 minutes ago, greenbastard said:

I don't have a Sprint phone to check, but does this mean Sprint Small Cells are no longer operational? IIRC, 160 Mhz was all the EBS/BRS spectrum Sprint owned in Houston. (I remember reading they owned or had leases for the entire EBS/BRS Band, but I don't feel like searching the FCC site to verify this.)

Not turning off the small cells using LTE UE Relay for backhaul (which is all of them AFAIK) could create issues if all Sprint owned in Houston was 160 Mhz.

This is in fort bend county, they have the entire 196MHz there.

From that site on Monday. That brings the total of 2.5GHz currently deployed to 160MHz here (60MHz Sprint LTE, 40MHz T-Mobile LTE, 60MHz T-Mobile NR.)

The N41 carrier was bringing in 300-350mbps download in great signal conditions, which is short of the 900 or so it's capable of. However, this could simply be a lack of backhaul at the site. The site kept my phone on a lone 5x5 B66 carrier for the LTE anchor (there is also a 20x20MHz LTE carrier deployed).

On 7/4/2020 at 6:13 PM, iansltx said:

since the X55 modem can't do VoNR

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/tmobile-achieves-significant-5g-firsts

The X55 modem can do VoNR (Done on T-Mobile with a OnePlus 8). I would expect T-Mobile to add VoNR via software update to all X55 phones once they have SA and VoNR ready on the network side.

2.5GHz install on a T-Mobile site in the Houston area: 29.7018566, -95.7397737

Site is only broadcasting two B41 LTE carriers, no N41 as of right now. Talked with the crew for a bit and the four of them are tackling four sites per day right now.

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/hkm90h/chicago_nw_burbs_n41_bandwidth/

40MHz of N41 live on a T-Mobile site in Chicago.

14 hours ago, ingenium said:

It doesn't affect your plan or any of your other lines in any way. The existing lines keep their plan, and the new line has its own plan of sorts that can't be changed.

Honestly I'm a little confused why they did this. I guess it would be good to get as a line for a son or daughter (or grandparent?) who doesn't have one yet, but I got one just to have for logging/mapping or in case I find a use in the future. I don't think you can port in to it, so it would really just be an extra line? Most people I'm guessing probably won't use it too much and won't consume that much data, especially with the throttling, such that it doesn't really cost them anything to provide. So it's a freebie that doesn't cost Sprint/T-Mobile much, if anything.

On the other hand, if it allows port ins (or someone doesn't care about losing their number), then that's a different story. And it would potentially get new customers who may upgrade to a paying plan in the future if they want HD streaming or hotspot.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 

I think T-Mobile is just wanting to reduce Sprint churn, an extra free line increases value and makes it harder to leave.

12 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

Why is pcmag showing a map of possible 5G on 700 when AT&T? As at least we know, AT&T is deploying 5G on 850 where they too lack nationwide license coverage.

I think they're just showing possible long term spectrum that could be used for 5G.

AT&T DSS just went live in North Texas: https://www.pcmag.com/news/atts-5g-network-gets-more-dynamic

57 minutes ago, iansltx said:

I figure it's time to pull some discussions out of the megathread and report by region, and starting at a state/region level seems like a reasonable way to do that. I'll start.

In north-central Austin, n71 is available, with B66 as the anchor. 15 MHz of n71 + 10 MHz of B66. I saw 50/20 on it last night, but generally speeds seem to be a good bit slower.

Guessing the n71 site covers more ground than it should, and T-Mobile won't fix that because doing so could reduce coverage, and they'll be bringing n41 online soon enough, which will take a ton of load off since Sprint's B41 coverage is pretty solid at this point. Speaking of B41, for downloads locking my phone to B41 is definitely the best option, though latency is maybe 15ms higher than B66.

They're definitely using DSS on band 71 too; just got a bandwidth reading of 15 MHz from *#0011# in LTE-only mode.

I need to do some more testing, but seems like B66 can be faster without n71 than with it.

They are not using DSS, they have 15x15 running on LTE, and 15x15 running on NR. They have access to nearly the entire 600MHz block due to Covid right now. The same is in Houston, 15x15 LTE and 15x15 NR.

New forum section... Are we going to do a separate thread for just NR deployment/tracking?

1 hour ago, dkyeager said:

Link? I want to poke around some more. Thanks

Correction, it looks like 25 and 30 are there for N66 now.

https://www.sqimway.com/nr_band.php

1 hour ago, red_dog007 said:

For markets that TMobile is already using n41, are they refarming spectrum from Sprint's side, spectrum sharing or just using unused spectrum?

Unused in Philadelphia, and for NYC the same frequency Sprint was previously using for N41.

17 hours ago, dkyeager said:

The merger gives T-Mobile so much room for 5g conversion of bands. Unfortunately there is not as much flexibility in bandwidth per channel as there should be below 6Ghz. n25 will still be limited to 20x20 iirc. This could just be another way the duo are hammering down the nail that sticks up.

The latest 3GPP release shows 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, and 40 MHz bandwidth support for N25, N2 still only 5, 10, 15, 20 so I would assume T-Mobile has been dipping their hand in this.

N66 also shows support for 5, 10, 15, 20, 25, 30, and 40 MHz.

1 minute ago, Tengen31 said:

If they are only using 40 MHz right now hard hope the key some for LTE for atleast 4-5 years or so

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk
 

I'm doubting they will. I'm not sure they want to run the antennas in split mode. More and more 5G devices over the next few years, LTE is going to be an afterthought to them. NR is more spectrally efficent, so they're probably going to keep pushing hard on getting 5G devices in people's hands.

It's been many years... but we're going to finally see the true power of 2.5GHz. Proper backhaul does wonders.

25 minutes ago, swintec said:

If the merger failed, where would that have put TMO going forward?  Absolutely no viable way forward for 5G and beyond? Hope to the spectrum gods that further spectrum would be opened up for sale?

They would be forced to probably implement DSS, and focus more on mmw. Battle VZW and ATT in the few remaining sub 6 spectrum auctions.

https://business.sprint.com/solutions/sim-swap/

Anyone seen this before?

Just now, ingenium said:

Which phones?

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 

All of T-Mobile's 5G phones have got the update to do this at this point. The 5G Mclaren got the capability back in February. Here are some screenshots from back then I have when it was first enabled. Ignore the missing information up top on NSG, this was a beta build.

11 minutes ago, ingenium said:

B71 can be aggregated only with B2 and/or B66. It cannot be aggregated with B12 or N71. B12 and N71 are the same, and can only be aggregated with B2 and/or B66. Current RF front ends on phones only support one low band carrier at a time, except the latest Sony phone I believe. So you'll never see B12+B71, B12+N71, B71+N71, or any other combination of those.

 

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

 

 

 

While B71 cannot be the anchor band for N71, it can be aggregated with N71 by sharing the same antenna path in current T-Mobile 5G phones.

I'd kill for a source on individual T-Mobile N71/N41 sites going live. Was so spoiled with all the Sprint information during network vision.

3 minutes ago, swintec said:

thanks.  i was looking at the band priorities in the data menus and B71 and B66 are not even in the list (there are a total of 18 though).  B2 is there though, does B2 take care of those two other bands?  I was going to try and move B71 to the top but could not since it was missing.

Ignore any kind of band priorty menus, those are only for the inital scan of coverage. The network will determine what band to put you on after the initial connection.

5 minutes ago, swintec said:

I thought the S20s already have 5G?  I literally just took mine out of the box and am playing with it trying to decide if I should keep it or wait a few more months. 

I successfully connected to TMO Band 71...that is not 5G?

T-Mobile runs LTE and NR on 600MHz spectrum, so B71 LTE and N71 NR.

There are no ENDC B71+N71 combos, so if you're on LTE band 71 then you are not connected to NR N71. N71 requires a B2/B66 anchor atm. You can check engineering screens to confirm what you're connected to.