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pyroscott

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Posts posted by pyroscott

  1. I live in the north end of Hagerstown and have had lte for a month or 2 now.I have noticed speeds arent as fast a

     

    Verizons lte service which is also available in Hagerstown.My question is will these speeds improve ?Are we

     

    just in the early stages of Shentels upgrade process? I know that verizon is using 700 mhz spectrum where

     

    Sprint is using 1700 mhz I believe,is shentel using the higher frequences as well? If so is this the reason for the

     

    slower speeds?Worse, is this as good as Sprints lte service will get for our area? Im not complaining because the

     

    current speeds I get are easily 10 to 20 times faster then Sprints 3g service ,am just hoping to see the 20 mbps

     

    down and 14 mbps up that a Verizon mifi device consistently yeilds in my home while my Sprint Galaxy S 3 sees

     

    only about 4 mbps up / 2 mbps down :(

     

    The frequency has very, very little to do with LTE speeds. As was stated earlier, LTE is very signal strength dependent. If you are seeing a low, or noisy signal, you will not have good speeds. See this post to determine your LTE signal http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/2040-bars-lie-for-lte-signal-strength-how-to-determine-your-actual-lte-signal-strength/

     

    Thanks bud ! I wasnt positive that it was 1700mhz.... hence the "I believe" lol ;) Ive been reading so much about

     

    this wasnt sure if I remembered what I had read,thanks for correcting me there.The tower location according to the

     

    maps provided in a previous post in this thread show that im less then a half mile from the tower,so Im sure my

     

    signal isnt low.Now back to my question will these speeds improve or is this as good as it gets?

     

    If your signal is actually high, then yes, I would imagine speeds will improve. Some members in markets that are farther along in the deployment have said that the downtilt was adjusted as more LTE sites came online, improving the ground level signal strength and speeds greatly. If you are having good signal and slow speeds, I would assume that the site is not fully optimized. Unless the site has a ton of traffic, you should be seeing at least 25 Mbps at the base of the tower. It is possible that the tower you went to is not active, or is 3G only. Sometimes our info is incorrect, that should be expected since we are not affiliated with Sprint.

     

    Maybe you misunderstood me bud ? I do have access to said maps and can clearly see I am about 8 small city

     

    blocks from the tower location.Even directly under this tower location im not seeing speeds greater then 8 mbps

     

    down and 4 up.Thanks again for your concern,but Im just hoping to see comprable speeds to the Verizon lte

     

    service in my area .I dont think tower local is as much a factor as your making it to be, rather the type of lte

     

    connection and spectrum being used ........thus my question is this as good as it gets?

     

    gets?

     

    I doubt that is as good as it gets.

     

    Thanks for that info and answering my question ....just wonder if my town will see that 800mhz spectrrum ever lol

     

    I'm not sure if Shentel will deploy 800mhz LTE or Voice. I would sure think they would, but it all depends on their agreement with Sprint. If Shentel is deploying, I would give it a 95% chance that it will be on the cell site you are connecting to.

     

    Wasnt my intention to challenge anyone here bud just gather some information :tu: Now that said :http://s4gru.com/ind...n-black-friday follow that link and plug in 600 North potomac ave.Hagerstown Md. 21742 and you will see im less then a half mile from the tower location and as I stated I can drive to the tower in about 3 minutes stand outside my vehicle and still not see speeds greater then 8 to 10 mbps

     

    You ask why I desire to see greater speeds? Idk say one was to tether his laptop to his device or what if Im interested in dumping my 65 dollar a month home internet service(which is a good bit slower then verizons lte in my area) to get a Sprint hotspot device .....just a few reasons Id like to see Sprints lte improve as I said im not complaining just tryin get some good info bud.....

     

    I don't believe that Sprint will be selling unlimited data on MiFi devices. Something like that might be in the works with the Clearwire spectrum, but I really don't have any idea. I can't see it ever happening using the PCS or ESMR spectrum.

    • Like 1
  2. If anyone comes here and wonders where their pointless, whiny posts went, I deleted them. Rants and unhelpful negative comments are prohibited, and should be directed to official Sprint channels. S4GRU.com does not host Sprint's complaints. If you are unable to abide by this rule, you can notify the staff that you would like your account deleted and we will even give you suggestions on where to find another forum for your posts.

    • Like 4
  3. Yes, i have looked at the dBm values. At times, the difference between my value and other sprint phones values ranged from a 4 to 10 dBm difference. When one sprint phone would have a -93dBm signal strength, mine would be around -105 to -109dBm signal strength.. I can not figure out why this happens

     

    It is possible that the nexus has a slightly weaker radio... I have noticed slightly improved signal strength numbers and bars since going from the gnex to the gs3, but I have not noticed additional coverage area due to the "better" signal strength. There are a couple places that I occasionally visit that I would drop calls and/or have no signal with the gnex, and the GS3 behaves the same in those areas.

  4. Well, as i have gotten a galaxy nexus at long last, ive noticed that other sprint phones have been constantly getting better signal than my phone has. For example, when i went to the sprint store, my phone varies from 1-2 bars in the store. When i would go over to any other sprint phones, they would have at least 3-5 bars. And this was more than just one different sprint phone that did it, it was every phone in the store that had a better signal than mine, except for the galaxy nexus at the store. It had the same signal strength as mine did.. Radio issue possibly??

     

    Did you look at the actual signal numbers? Or just the bars? There is nothing scientific about the bars.

    • Like 1
  5.  

    Hahahaha of course not hahaha. Ok. Don't take literally, they are not avoiding anything. The true story is than for more than a year, since Wimax, we are paying the $10.00 charge for a speedy service and get nothing. Can you imagine a class action of all Puerto Rico Sprint customers to claim the the $10.00 charge money back. Its possible. If I'am a lawyer I want that case, is not frivolous. They can charge you for the reason they want, but not for offering a service that is unavailable, is against the consumer protection rules. But I respect your opinion on this.

     

    Sorry for been out of the topic. Im able to get LTE again for a while in my wife iPhone 5 and she get 1.7 mb down. Now she is on EXTENDED AREA hahaha. A question for you my friend pyroscott. Extended area is equal to roaming?

     

    The $10 fee is for having a smartphone, not for 4G. Smartphones use at least 10x the data of a feature phone. A lawsuit would have absolutely no bearing.

     

    I would think extended area is roaming...

  6.  

    I dont wan't to bother you my friend. Everybody here and in the US are enjoying the LTE improvement.

     

    why you said is bs?

     

    The part where you said that Sprint is trying to avoid a lawsuit because of the $10 smartphone fee. There is not a shred of fact to that statement. Even if someone tried to push a lawsuit of that sort, it would be thrown out of court faster than you can say "frivolous lawsuit."

  7. So another step back.... When we say when a tower gets over capacity and sprint will then roll a truck to add a carrier to said tower.... This can not happen unless sprint has extra in used spectrum in that area they didn't deploy initially...correct? Or did I just take 2 steps back in this learning session? Lol

     

    Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

     

    That is correct, if by "in used", you mean "unused"

     

    Not trying to be a grammar Nazi, but it can make a big difference in the meaning of the sentence.

  8. Felt like it was running a bit buggy... But removed the go launcher and everything.... Except the foxfi app is working A-Ok

     

    posted using J.A.R.V.I.S.

    Any clue anyone???

     

    posted using J.A.R.V.I.S.

    Loving JB untill i tried to use "fox fi"!!!! Its giving me the error msg like when u try to use the hot spot but its blocked.... With ICS worked like a charm!!!!!

     

    posted using J.A.R.V.I.S.

     

    Discussing apps that circumvent Sprint's control of tethering is prohibited in the site rules. I expect all conversation regarding this matter to cease or there will be disciplinary action.

     

    Illegal, Unethical or Violative Content. It is not permissible to post content that helps to encourage or facilitate the breaking of, or circumvention of, laws, statutes, Terms & Conditions of U.S. domestic governments, companies or organizations. Some examples would include instruction how to break the law, evade law enforcement or how to bypass wireless companies network management controls.

     

    Edit: I see tt0h beat me to it... now that is good peer moderation :)

    • Like 2
  9. Okay now were talking... So what makes it considered spectrum constrained if they have a 5x5 and it seems additional carriers do not help?....so there is a limit on the number of carriers one can add to a tower for a fixed piece of spectrum? Is this more so a physical technical limit in terms of what they can put on a tower carrier/sector wise?...

     

    You can only have one carrier deployed on a piece of spectrum. So if you are deploying a 5x5 carrier on the PCS G Block, that is it, no other carriers on the G Block. The amount of carriers Sprint, or any other cell carrier can deploy is limited to the amount of spectrum they have leased from the government. In markets that Sprint is considered spectrum constrained, they own approximately 20Mhz of PCS plus the G Block. The LTE devices currently offered by Sprint can only use LTE in the PCS spectrum, so they are limited to deploying carriers in PCS blocks A-G. Sprint needs to keep 1x voice and EV-DO on air, so they have few options to add more carriers for 1x, EV-DO or LTE unless they buy more spectrum from another carrier. It has to be PCS though. For instance, let's pretend that Sprint purchased Dish's AWS-4 20x20 block of spectrum, they would have to release new devices before they would be able to deploy any carriers on AWS and have them see any use or provide relief for their current 1x 3G and 4G carriers.

     

    Why not in Chicago go the Pico cell route if that's a possibility over adding spectrum? Guess spectrum cheaper than adding a ton of hardware everywhere?

     

    Bingo! Pico-cells would be the socially responsible thing for all the carriers to do, but buying more spectrum and deploying more carriers is the path all the US carriers have decided to follow. Now they complain that we are in a spectrum crunch, even though the problem can be reduced with small cells.

  10. Ok so in theory if they had a constant issue with a tower over capacity that is getting backhaul of 35Mbps, then the solution is to add carriers/sectors to the tower....and in turn they could theoretically add 15 carriers/sectors so everyone got 35Mbps DL all the time?.... Or is there a limit on number carriers/sectors you can add to one chunk of spectrum?

     

    Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

     

    The nationwide PCS G-Block will be deployed on 1 carrier per sector. The ESMR spectrum, once reclaimed from Nextel, will be deployed with one carrier for 1xA and one carrier for LTE per sector because it is 14 Mhz, 7 up 7 down. 5x5 of that will be LTE and the other 2x2 Mhz will be 1xA, guard bands, and possibly a very small slice of unused spectrum. 1xA uses 1.25x1.25, so I'm not sure what is happening with the other .75x.75 Mhz...

     

    Once a G block carrier starts seeing heavy loading and hits a certain threshold that Sprint has most likely set, they will add another carrier with other available PCS spectrum. In some areas, Sprint is spectrum constrained, like Chicago (pre US Cellular transaction) and might have difficulty adding carriers without dipping into spectrum previously allocated to EV-DO and/or 1x voice. LTE carriers can be 1.5x1.5 3x3 5x5 10x10 or 20x20, so they could possibly reduce the size of another carrier and add a small LTE carrier.

  11. Ok so if they have 5x5Mhz on a tower then the total backhaul needed would be 35Mbps, and any more than that would be a waste as it would provide no benefit at all, correct?...

    Pretty much... as long as it will always give you that speed

    Now that's just for 1 carrier sector on the tower which typically have 3 per tower right?

    correct
    Could they add as many carriers or sectors as they want/need or is there a limit in that too? OR that 5x5 35Mbps is for that spectrum chunk total and all the carrier/sectors must share that bandwidth thus 3 panels and 3 ppl connected 1 to each panel, would be the same as all 3 connected to one panel?...

     

    Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

    They can add carriers just the same as they do with EV-DO. Once more customers are on LTE phones, I would expect Sprint will start dropping ED-DO carriers for LTE carriers. Sprint can reuse the same spectrum for 3 sectors per cell site (which most are set up to have 3 sectors) as well as neighboring cell sites. They do need to manage interference though, because if the sectors/cell sites overlap too much, the noise will cause the QAM to drop and speeds will drop.

     

    Also, this is why there is a lot of talk about small cells, or pico cells. The smaller the cell, the more available bandwidth for users because there are fewer users than a macro cell that may be broadcasting miles in every direction.

  12. See I was talking 5x5 versus 10x10 not 2 5x5s vs a 10...

     

    Still trying to figure out the limits of the spectrum user wise for each to be able to get X speed and what amount of backhaul bandwidth would be the theoritical max a site would need for unlimited users and any higher bandwidth of backhaul and no increase would be seen. ...

     

    I know speed will drop with signal and typically be faster at a tower vs away. I'm simply talking about the # users on the tower and limits of spectrum and also backhaul for that number since they both factor into the speed a user will see...

     

    Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

     

    Well the LTE carrier airlink can be broken down very far into time slots, packets etc.

     

    The amount of users a single 5x5 carrier on one sector of a cell site can support depends on what the users are doing with their connection. If it is large file downloads, streaming video, constant speed tests or even streaming audio, the carrier will be able to connect far fewer concurrent connections without any noticeable speed dip than a carrier that has less data intensive connections from tapatalk, casual web browsing etc.

     

    Basically, at 64 QAM (or at very good signal levels) all the users of the carrier are sharing approximately 35Mbps. If there are 5 users downloading large files and using the maximum amount of bandwidth, they would each have approximately 7Mbps speeds. If there are 10 users in that example, they would see approximately 3.5Mbps and so on. Now if there was noise or lower signal strength, the connection would drop to a lower QAM and speeds would drop. In the 5 user example, if 2 of the users dropped to 32 QAM, their speeds would drop to 3.5Mbps while the rest would be 7Mbps still. At cell edge, you would get even slower speeds while still taking up the same percentage of the total capacity.

     

    The line gets much blurrier when you add in the users who are using less data intensive applications and can share time slots or finish their use quickly and allow others to connect.

     

    A 10x10 carrier has approximately 70Mbps to distribute over the users connected to it at 64 QAM, so you could generalize and say that it has double the capacity.

     

    2-5x5 carriers brings you back up to that 70Mbps number, but on an unloaded carrier, or light-use carrier, your max speeds, or speeds at cell edge will be slower. (unless you are using carrier aggregation)

    • Like 1
  13. Mine wasn't geared much at 10 PCS as much as it was just 10 in general... Which then got the brain running through the rest of my post trying to figure out the calculation and such for when speeds are effected as backhaul or spectrum can affect speeds when more ppl pull on the tower and just started to try and figure out where each meet its respective limit... I think its easier to figure out/understand when backhaul causes it, but spectrum can do the same it seems...

     

    You have a calculation or can explain the relationship of them both for unlimited ppl what levels of backhaul for X spectrum will be more than said spectrum can handle/need?

    Like if you go to a tower and are the only one on it you'll see 25Mbps DL and that drops with each person that joins that tower ontop of you...I'm assuming increasing backhaul in these cases is not going to increase speeds as it shouldn't be the bottleneck...if it was then sprint would be increasing it and increasing advertised speeds expected when done....

     

     

     

    Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

     

    Speeds near the cell site will be blazing fast thanks to the 2500Mhz "fat pipe" hotspots. Then, in the outlying areas/indoor coverage, speeds will be more modest with 1900Mhz and 800Mhz 5x5 carriers providing the LTE in those areas. It might be nice to have a 10x10 carrier on 1900, but with the (current) devices not supporting the band class required or 10x10 LTE carriers, the whole discussion is much ado about nothing.

     

    As far as the number of connections that can be serviced by a 10x10 vs 2-5x5... There will be little to no difference in the number of connections. Also, as long as the network has the appropriate management tools to load up both 5x5 carriers equally, there will be very little difference in speeds as long as we aren't talking about an unloaded cell site that could throw the additional Mhz to allow higher max speeds.

  14. The Thunderbolt may not be the most meaningful basis for comparison. The biggest power management problem with the Thunderbolt is that it is a dual baseband modem design. In other words, it has one baseband for CDMA1X and another for EV-DO/LTE, and both chipsets are always active. That dual baseband design is now a vestige of the past. The only two handsets on Sprint affected are the Galaxy Nexus and Viper, neither of which are befitting of the first LTE handsets on Sprint.

     

    The relevant baseline going forward is probably the EVO LTE or Galaxy S3, both of which are single baseband modem designs. Moreover, they use a single SoC that incorporates processor and baseband in a single chipset. One chipset is as low as it goes, so that aspect cannot be improved. If anything, recent designs have already taken a few steps backward in power consumption. The Optimus G is a good example. Not only does it use separate processor and baseband chipsets but also the processor is unnecessarily quad core. And battery life suffers as a result.

     

    So, I would not be surprised if we have seen a local maximum in effective power management, and it will be a few years again before high end handsets meet or exceed the standard set by the EVO LTE and Galaxy S3.

     

    AJ

     

    I am talking about the advances that occur within the early generations of technology. Carrier aggregation is still within its early stages, and could see advances in reducing power consumption similar to what LTE devices saw between their first and second generations of devices.

  15. Would CA for two adjacent 5 MHz carriers have power consumption drawbacks compared to a single 10 MHz carrier?

     

    Today, yes, but look how far phones have come along at dealing with LTE power drain since the first devices that came out. The Thunderbolt pales in comparison to the EVO LTE or GS3. That is in a matter of just over a year between the TB and the EVO LTE (17 March 2011 to 2 June 2012)

     

    When/if the H-block can be deployed, there is a good possibility that carrier aggregation could be much less of a power drain, or there could be large advances in battery technology. It has been a long time since we had any large advances in battery tech...

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