brittonx

Having really bad connection problems for the last two weeks in the Winton / Brighton-Henrietta Town Line Road area.  Connection keeps dropping then three bars then dropping again.  Are there any known issues in the area?

I drive in along 441 from east near 21.

I saw B41 in Penfield and also near the 490/590 interchange.

I guess the question now, is the offer still available?

I was around Henrietta today and the best speeds I was seeing on LTE was around 2.5 mbps on the download and 3 or 4 on the upload. I am hoping there is still tweaking to be done to see something a little bit faster, but that is definitely more usable than Sprint 3G ever was so I'm not going to complain.

This morning, in Canal View, just off Brighton Henrietta TL road and Winton, I got 14Mbps down and 6.5Mbps up.

I get your point.  However, converting a site to a GMO is part of NV1.0.  Future GMO upgrades are not in the NV1.0 plan.  Currently, the only thing we are able to measure is NV1.0.

 

While it is true that GMO's make up over a third of the Rochester market, these are mostly outside the metro area ring and rural locations.  This is more reflective of how much rural coverage Sprint has in this area.  And rural NV 3G tends to run at 1.5-2.5Mbps.  Good for almost everything you do on a smartphone and way better than Tmo EDGE or GPRS, which is unusable for doing more than possibly reading an email without attachments.

 

The folks in the Rochester market have ever reason to be happy now with how things are progressing.  I'm happy for you guys.  You could be like Albuquerque or Hawaii.  Other late round markets that are languishing.

 

Robert

Okay, so "technically" the GMO sites are NV 1.0 complete.  That is a nice statistic and helps probably 95% of the people.  At my home, the signal is marginal and I have been hoping the newer antennas and a full NV build was going to improve things, even a little.  Because the tower near my home is a GMO site, I get no real benefit as the signal is too intermittent to be useful for anything.  I guess I have to wait for NV 2.0...

I AM grateful that the main part of the city metro area is coming live with LTE.  Coverage is better than what we had with WiMax.

I'm finally picking up decent LTE at my office in off Brighton-Henrietta TL road.

For all the complainers out there let me refer you to Robert's Deployment List post. Specifically the completed site part

Markets complete with Network Vision Deployment (8):

• Ft. Wayne/South Bend - Complete August 2013
• PR/VI - Complete August 2013
• Western Pennsylvania - Compete September 2013 (LTE in future)
• Shentel - Complete November 2013
• East Iowa - Complete November 2013
• Dakotas - Complete December 2013
• Rochester - Complete January 2014
• Inland Northwest - Complete January 2014

 

Yes Rochester is in an elite group of cities to have all of their towers NV complete. There are only 7 other cities in the WHOLE COUNTRY that can say the same.

That is only partially true.  There are some GMO sites in the Rochester market that may have the first part of NV but I wouldn't consider them NV complete until the GMO sites have the new antennas and are broadcasting LTE.  Still, good progress to be sure.

It seems like whoever the backhaul provider is in this market was able to actually able to get a lot of work done before sites were getting complete. A nice change.

 

Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Windstream bought Paetec a couple of years ago and they have a big presence here in Rochester.  I believe they are one of Sprint's backhaul providers.

12 LTE acceptances in the Rochester market posted today.  That's pretty spiffy!

 

Robert

Cool news.  Hopefully it means the tower nearest my work will get LTE accepted someday.  It seems like everything else except that one and the one near my home got updated. Ugh! LOL!

I remember this happening when I had the HTC ONE. What I believe happens is that the phone still gets the LTE signal, but it's too weak, so the phone opts to use 3G instead. Kind of like how you can tell the phone to ignore weak WiFi signals. The phone will still register the signal, but under a certain threshold, it will choose not to use it.

 

It could just be the design of the radio, and how HTC optimized the software to handle it.

 

 

-Luis

That would make sense except the signal that showed in Signal Check Pro was from a tower over 20 miles away from my house behind several hills.  There is no way that what was showing was valid.

I'll be interested to see if this helps with LTE.  Last night I was running Signal Check Pro and noticed that once you moved out of LTE range, the phone was still reporting LTE connectivity to Signal Check Pro but no 4G icon.  If you toggled airplane mode then it would stop reporting to SCP.  And, yes, I have completely shut down SCP and restarted it while way out of range of an LTE tower and the phone was still telling SCP it had the LTE connection.  My guess is this would explain, at least partially, why the HTC One has been having some LTE problems.

 

I'm loading the update now and will test it again tonight on my way home.

Well, this update did not fix the issue where the phone is reporting active LTE signal to Signal Check Pro for several minutes after having left an LTE area.  I am betting this is why the phone seems to have trouble reconnecting to LTE.

htc one is known to have issues connecting to weak lte signal. As more towers pop up you should connect more often. Do you know the weakest signal you can connect to? My gs4 will connect to -125 if the site is unburdened. My guess is htc picked -105 to connect. I don't think you can change the entry or exit signal strength. It could also be her phone just scans first for lte.

There is a new software update just released for the HTC One that is supposed to help with the connectivity issues.

I did a manual check for HTC Updates today and I picked up the new software.

I'll be interested to see if this helps with LTE.  Last night I was running Signal Check Pro and noticed that once you moved out of LTE range, the phone was still reporting LTE connectivity to Signal Check Pro but no 4G icon.  If you toggled airplane mode then it would stop reporting to SCP.  And, yes, I have completely shut down SCP and restarted it while way out of range of an LTE tower and the phone was still telling SCP it had the LTE connection.  My guess is this would explain, at least partially, why the HTC One has been having some LTE problems.

I'm loading the update now and will test it again tonight on my way home.

Has anybody seen LTE on the East side (Webster/Penfield/Fairport) yet? 

Only in Newark. Other than that, nothing.

I'm not sure 3G Accepted guarantees all the equipment is installed.  In GMO sites, I think they can be 3G accepted but they do not have the new antennas installed.  For example, the site nearest my house is showing 3G accepted but it is still using the old antenna panels. No new antenna panels have been installed.  I'm guessing any signal improvements will require the new panels.

... and we had a lot of GMO sites in the Rochester area.

Thank you so much for all the info Robert! It is good to know that the market is coming along in good shape, I hadn't previously been aware that the 3G accepted sites meant all the equipment was installed. I am curious as to whether or not a 3G acceptance means that all the equipment has been mounted on the towers or if perhaps GMO sites can also qualify as accepted 3G if the equipment is running but on the ground. The only reason I ask is because I am pretty sure I have seen a few 3G accepted sites that appear as if they haven't got anything different on the tower!

 

I am not a super experienced spotter though and while I know the information for that is on the site, I haven't been super close up to any sites to have a good look for myself.

 

Thanks again for all your hard work!

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

I'm not sure 3G Accepted guarantees all the equipment is installed.  In GMO sites, I think they can be 3G accepted but they do not have the new antennas installed.  For example, the site nearest my house is showing 3G accepted but it is still using the old antenna panels. No new antenna panels have been installed.  I'm guessing any signal improvements will require the new panels.

My data connection has been lousy for about three weeks here off of Brighton-Henrietta TL road, near Winton.  Today the connection reached a new low. It is so slow now that Hotspot is totally useless.

Here are some speed tests from today. (The first one listed is from about a month ago.  It wasn't great but at least somewhat usable. The second one was from last week. Even slower but at least slightly usable. The rest were from today. Total garbage. All readings taken from precisely the same spot with 3-4 bars of signal.  I had to move the phone to take the screenshot, it dropped to one bar for the screenshot.)

I've noticed the acceptance reports haven't quite matched up with what I am experiencing through customer interaction and field testing. 

 

There are sites that have indeed had new equipment installed but are not on the map. 

 

And just to get everyone's hopes up here's what I got today...

 

"It looks like all new remaining towers will start coming on tonight and be done by the 26th. 7 LTE towers... don't have the specifics.."

Does this mean they will actually be turning on the LTE?  I ask because there are "3G/4G" (Yellow) towers on the map that are not broadcasting LTE.

I work in Henrietta, near Winton & Brighton Henrietta Townline Road.  The last week or so, the data connection has been extremely unstable.  Hotspotting is almost useless because the cellular data connection just stops responding at random intervals.  I hope they finish the upgrades soon because this data connection instability is driving me nuts!

 

Just to make sure I wasn't just going crazy yesterday haha.

 

Update:

 

 

Managed to catch this this morning so now I know I'm definitely not crazy!

 

Sent from my Galaxy SIII using Tapatalk 4

What are you using to get the signal strengths showing in the notification bar?

EDIT:  Never mind... Found it...

Awfully quiet around here this last month...

Yes it is.  There appears to be a dearth of activity anywhere near Rochester NY city proper.  Basically the vast majority of Monroe County doesn't seem to have any activity.

Where do we find out which sites are being worked on and how far along they are?

You need to become a sponsor of the site.  

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/1195-information-about-s4gru-sponsorship-levels-and-how-to-become-a-sponsor/

I hope it is not a long wait for the dropped calls issue to be resolved.  Quite frankly, that could force a carrier change for me if it will be an ongoing issue. I would prefer not leave but I need the phone to be reliable.

Should I be reporting the new dropped calls issue to Sprint?

All of the sites in the Rochester market will be completely overhauled. Only the GMO sites in the bottom of the market by Alcatel Lucent are getting moderate upgrades. But this is not a problem, it's a good thing.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

One site near my home is shown as 3G complete. The site is in the middle of the north east quadrant of the Rochester market.  The site does not have the new antennas. Does that mean it is a GMO? If so, then "All of the sites in the Rochester market will be completely overhauled" does not sound like an accurate statement. 

(EDIT: I just read the GMO article.  Does being GMO and 3G complete mean that there will be a second round of work on the site at some point to install the new antennas?)

Sprint made it sound like we were to expect better coverage in weak signal areas. At least in reference to the tower in question, the coverage is no better and may, in fact, be slightly worse.  On this tower and on the one directly to the west, I have been getting dropped calls for the last few days when I had never ever had dropped calls on them before.

I was really hoping for more than what I'm seeing so far.

Or depending on where you are in the city, you could head west towards Batavia. We've been getting a bunch of acceptances lately too, except they're not in the immediate Buffalo metro area.

I was in Batavia on Saturday. I did a speed test and on 3G I was getting over 2M down and around 1.5M up.  Pretty impressive.