sgarringer

Not that it matters much but I am seeing the 2nd carrier on more sites in CR the last few weeks, at first it was just a few now I'm seeing it quite a bit.  5x5 

Is this a glitch? Cedar Rapids isn't supposed to have the second carrier.

IDOT would disagree with you considering they're the ones that said it you can take it up with them.

Don't try to lecture me on Sprint's prioritization. And you need to get a grip, man. I can probably give you 5,000 good reasons why your site in question is a lower priority. You already know that Sprint has this as a lower priority site because it hasn't been done. And you can try to convince them otherwise. Know that where you find the most GMO's in the country are in markets that have the lowest share of Sprint customers. Places like East Iowa, Alabama, New Mexico, etc.

 

And if you want to do absolutely nothing to try to help your situation, then that's your loss. But if you really won't take any advice to try to help your situation, why are you here? Seems to me you're here just to complain then. And we don't host Sprint complaints. Direct them to their customer service outlets, please.

 

Thank you.

 

Using Tapatalk on Note 8.0

I wasn't lecturing you, dude.   I've done everything I can do to report it to Sprint.  I've emailed the CEO even, they tell me it's not scheduled to be upgraded.

I'm not here to complain but I am pointing out basic information here.  I have a Nexus device, that means no Sprint Zone app.  If you're fine installing 3rd party APKs then that's your decision but I don't install APKs outside of the Play store.  And no one even knows if reports from Sprint Zone sideloaded even go anywhere.  So calm down dude.

I've done plenty to help my situation.  I've mentioned it here -- a site which you yourself claim Sprint engineers visit (one even private messaged me about this after I posted it here)  and I've emailed the CEO.  I haven't used the Sprint Zone app, but no one can even say if that would help, since no one knows what happens to reports when the app is sideloaded. 

I'm done discussing this.

As important as we all like to think Iowa is (born and raised here myself, still live here) with all due respect, I-380 isn't on anyone's radar in terms of a heavily traveled interstate. I understand why it is where it is on Sprint's priority list.

I-380 is one of the heaviest traveled interstates in the United States.  It's a spur off I80 which is the heaviest traveled interstate highway in the entire USA.  The corridor between the quad cities and I35 in Des Moines is the heaviest traveled stretch of the heaviest traveled interstate in the US

Traffic volumes vary from 47,000 to 83,500 vehicles per day

thats good to know, thanks! i haven't had this phone for a day yet but in the few areas i've gone so far the signal strength and speeds have impressed me. i was concerned with them only having AWS/PCS spectrum and what that would do to in building coverage but if they did their entire network as dense as what i've seen, and you have seen, then it shouldn't be that big of an issue. thats not to say that there won't be holes/problem spots, but it doesn't look like it will be as much as i feared.

 

plus i've confirmed that not only have they added a ton of their own/new towers, they did in fact go around to the original t-mobile towers that were here and have added LTE to them to (presumably as some kind of GMO add since panels didn't change up top on the ones i've kept track of).

 

from what i can tell they have deployed a 10x10 LTE and 5x5 HSPA+ in AWS and have GSM/HSPA+ on PCS, i just don't know what size the PCS ones are. its nice that when i do drop off LTE i still get 5 to 10 meg down from HSPA+

Cedar Rapids LTE is 10x10 on PCS

i feel your pain  same story with the huxley GMO tower, giant LTE hole along interstate 35, and not only that but in between 2 major metro areas. all other towers along I-35 have LTE but this one. just doesn't make sense. and i've contacted them multiple times about the tower and its always the same story "no plans to upgrade at this time" I even sent an email to Kevin Crull who is the president over the central region and all he did was forward my email on to Marci's team.....

 

i bought a $46 android phone from best buy with a t-mobile SIM yesterday and have been using it to check out iwireless signal and speeds (you can run speed tests on t-mobile without having any kind of a data plan  ). so far i've been impressed with what i've seen and their tower density is insane so far in the few places i've checked out. i'll use the phone to see when LTE is on in huxley from them and also check out how the signal is up there and if its good enough my 7 lines on our own Framily plan will most likely be switching as well

iWireless is managing the LTE build out for T-Mobile in Des Moines.  If they do anything near as good of a job as they did in Eastern Iowa (they had Nokia come in and completely rebuild every single site) then you're in for a treat.  I watched as iWireless rebuilt their network from the ground up and like you said their density is insane.  Their LTE in Eastern Iowa is on par with Verizon I have found, now granted I usually only travel between Cedar Rapids, Iowa City, and Muscatine.  But in those markets, and regardless of what back roads I take between them, solid LTE the entire way.  They managed to build that in less than a year.

It's not that they don't know. It's just that they cannot work on all sites at once. Reporting allows them to prioritize. If no one ever complains about a certain area, it will stay a low priority. Persistent reporting of a problem area has achieved results with many members. You may be the straw that breaks the camel's back.

 

 

Using Tapatalk on Note 8.0

If Sprint's engineering department doesn't know to prioritize a site that is on the heaviest traveled interstate highway in Eastern Iowa and one of the top traveled interstate highways in the United States they have bigger problems than I can help them with.

That said, I've had my iWireless SIM in the whole last week, haven't used Sprint once.  Been nice to constantly see LTE everywhere I go for the last week as opposed to sitting on EVDO 80+% of the time.  I may bite the bullet and drop Sprint and go from $25/mo Framily to $35/mo megatalk LTE.

You can install the Sprint Zone app and it'll still let you submit reports. You can't view any account info or other things in the app, but report submission works. Here's the current version: https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B0VwIsKe5ermNXpqZ3FRcE52Vmc

 

It'll say "updating" and "content is updating. Try again later" the first few times you open the app (at least it did for me on my Nexus 6P). But eventually it'll start working and let you submit them.

 

Now, as to whether the reports are "valid" (since I'm guessing some fields like PRL, device ID, etc are missing) is another story... I would hope Sprint would investigate them anyway, but no way to know for sure.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6P

While I appreciate the sentiment and effort, as a security conscious consumer I don't install unknown APKs on my device.  Although this one is signed with something called "Sprint Android Production Key" since I can't validate that certificate and I assume Sprint won't publish their known signing cert public key somewhere for validation, I'll just have to go without.

how were you able to confirm?

For me there is a guy on reddit.com/r/sprint who works in engineering who looked it up for me.  He said the only way to get the site upgraded to LTE was to submit a report through Sprint zone app, except I don't have that on my N5 so can't do it.  Anyway there's no way they don't know that a site along the 380 corridor isn't running LTE, tens of thousands of commuters drive that route every day and hand off to this site.  During rush hour the EVDO is so overloaded that I can't even get a speed test to complete and I get the bang "!" next to 3G... off times I can get tolerable service from the site.

Even more frustrating is that there's even an extra unused basket at the top of the site from the old Nextel equipment, it makes no sense why it hasn't been upgraded.  Site photo: http://imgur.com/cijthLK

I sent you a PM with the BID of the site that is killing the 380 corridor for Sprint.

thanks for the iWireless info/opinions my 3 main concerns with iWireless were 1) they only have AWS for LTE, which means poor in building coverage - UNLESS they densify their network properly and 2) i've not experienced it myself but i've heard GSM voice quality is not very good - coming from sprint who really does have awesome voice quality this could be a negative too. 3) back to only having AWS for LTE, it sounds like they are stuck with a 10x10 (maybe a 15x15 down the road) so it could become strained and lead to poor speeds - counters to this would be since they are a local carrier their user base should be lower so not as many users and if they have enough tower density they could overcome this.

Iwireless is running LTE on 1900 in eastern Iowa

i've been tempted to try out iWireless as they just launched LTE in des moines in december. but i really need their future LTE coverage between des moines and ames to be done in order for my whole family to switch. now with this news of the spectrum swap i'm torn on what to do....... this will help sprint out a lot in the metros but their stupid GMO towers still affect the rest of my family, plus i'm on my own 7 line framily plan and i would lose that if we switched and decided iWireless wasn't very good

Yeah I am on framily too (line 8 and 9) which makes it hard to switch. 14 days of iwireless for free though to test made it noce. For me coverage on 380 is near critical since I am often stuck on long Google hangouts while driving home. iwireless is solid the whole way where as Sprint switches to EVDO for half the drive

^^^^^^^ apply that last statement to most of iowa too.... i've confirmed on several GMOs around me that they are on ethernet and its being used yet no full build upgrades/LTE from them.

No kidding very frustrating to spend most my day on EVDO when all the sites have upgraded to Ethernet backhaul. I am testing iwireless lte and can say they have eclipsed Sprints LTE buildout in eastern Iowa, I rarely drop LTE now.

Which is what we've been saying for awhile. It is the worse spectrum market I know, but the fact it is usable is great. There are places right now see El Paso that are worse off from a network perspective.

 

Verizon having a sliver of the PCS B block prevents a complete B for C swap like the Quad Cities or Des Moines. They still may be able to work out a C4/C5 swap for their 20 MHz of PCS B.

It's usable, except for the south end of Cedar Rapids by the airport... where they still haven't added LTE on the Swisher exit site. My friend who works for Sprint confirmed for me that site is ethernet fed so no one really knows why they haven't done any sort of GMO LTE upgrade at the least for that site.  

The article is up on the wall.

Will they be acquiring C band spectrum in Cedar Rapids?

Thanks. I should've been more specific in the initial request. What I'm after is the EARFCN of the 2nd carrier.

It was bouncing between carriers so I took a ss of both.  http://imgur.com/a/Q5H4p

##DEBUG# >> LTE is the screen we are looking for. 

That screen is available with a $5 donation to the sgarringer pizza fund :-) 

Just kidding... I guess I'll try that next time I am in IC

If you connect to it again, an engineering screen would be great.

I had a few minutes free sitting around downtown waiting for a pizza so here you go. http://imgur.com/a/x3HoO

Actually I find Sprint's service to be very solid here in cedar rapids. Considering their lack of resources for this city it probably means their market share is really low. I don't speed test anymore, but I've never had reason to complain.

While this is true for parts of the town, other parts of the town is very frustrating as a Sprint customer.  Downtown, for instance, is a black hole for LTE and you get stuck on 3G pretty much anywhere unless you're on the top floor of a building.  South of town by the airport is a GMO site which is frustrating as it means you lose LTE between IC and CR.  But parts of town with well built out LTE work well.

The PCS B block is split with Verizon there so they shouldn't. That said bretton88 has posted a 2nd carrier shot he said was from Iowa City. There was also a similar sighting in Western Iowa of what appeared to be a second carrier from somewhere that theoretically shouldn't have it. It is hard to say if it is a signal check error or if some spectrum was refarmed without seeing engineering screens.

 

Also lets not go overboard with things like "abysmal." Site spacing in Iowa City is fairly standard.

No and other than being a college town Iowa City would be pretty low on the list.

Just to confirm there 100% certainly is a 2nd B25 LTE carrier in Iowa City / Coralville.  

http://imgur.com/lcujRth

This site is broadcasting 1x800 now

I wrote instructions on how to start with nothing and end up with a fully function SDR based LTE scanner at my blog here: http://www.shawngarringer.org/2014/01/14/set-up-your-own-kali-linux-usb-dongle-with-support-for-lte-cel-scanner/

Total cost about $50, $30 for the RTL-SDR and about $20 for the USB thumb drive for persistence.  Steps you through configuring the USB drive, installing Kali, building the LTE-Scanner toolchain, and scanning frequencies. I use this all the time to map new LTE sites coming online for carriers in my area.