4ringsnbr

Although we cannot see the LTE dBm there, we are seeing an illustration how LTE is much more affected by a reduction in signal than EVDO is. Although the 700MHz signal is certainly penetrating your home, there is significant loss of signal that is occurring. And subsequently your speeds drop significantly. This is something that is also happening to Sprint LTE in FIT testing.

 

I saw one map where they super imposed speed test results over a site map over a FIT area. It was done in a "heat map." Lighter colors were faster speeds and darker colors, slower speeds. You could easily pick out the towers because the area around them was an island of super fast LTE speeds. Around 20Mbps - 30Mbps. Then in between sites they changed to various shades of darker colors.

 

At urban spacing, in between towers it would drop to 6Mbps.

 

Robert

Yet more reasons why EVDO rev. B in a 3 carrier setup giving a solid 14.7 mbps connection would be a better fit in places than a 5x5 LTE carrier occupying the same bandwidth (including CDMA guard bands -- 4 carriers with 19.6 mbps downloads for a full 5x5 without guards). Not only does it have more handset support, but it also is less susceptible to degraded speeds with path loss. I figured as much since LTE, like WiMax, is an OFDM technology that does show that kind of signal quality degradtion-- even when using the same 16 QAM modulation. Now if you have a 10x10 or bigger space, LTE is certainly the way to go, despite the battery drain.

LTE signal at -107dBm and you are getting 4.03Mbps? You cannot complain about that. Sho 'nuff!!! I just cannot believe that Samsung has a -107dBm signal at 2 bars in the strength indicator. That is a little ridiculous.

 

Robert

They changed the bar mapping on GNex at 4.0.4 to always map the CDMA/eHRPD signal even when you're on 4G like all the other VZW LTE handsets. The only way to know your LTE signal is to go into the settings menu while you're on LTE. ICS defaults the bars to match the data connection but so many people complained about signal issues with the GNex versus other LTE phones (all pre-ICS with 3G bar mapping even on 4G) that Verizon decided to make the bars map like other phones with 4.0.4. And if it is like my MAXX, the 3G bar mappings are not based upon RSSI but rather Ec/Io ratio. I've never seen my CDMA/eHRPD signal drop below -89 dBm anywhere I've gone so far, but when you get into the -80s, the bar mapping fluctuates with the Ec/Io ratio only.

So I ran 2 separate speed/dBm tests. One from the couch and one from the deck (12 feet away from the couch) and here are the results.

 

Yeah, the second result was still LTE... as I said before, better building penetration my eye.

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

That tool won't tell you your LTE signal strength. On the GNex while you're on LTE, you have to go to SETTINGS/ABOUT PHONE/STATUS to see your actual LTE signal strength. LTE still confuses most of the 3rd party apps.

Yeah, EVDO stays relatively steady into the nineties, then halves between -100dBm and -104dBm. Then -106dBm and beyond is no mans land. Sometimes it works OK, sometimes its worthless.

Unless you're on Sprint in Baton Rouge or NOLA, then EVDO is worthless even at -63 dBm!!

I'm eager to see how everyone reacts at CTIA in May. Last time I was in the quarter, AT&T guys couldn't connect at all and my Sprint phone timed out trying anything on EV-- I loaded a VZW PRL, jumped on a EV channel in PCS B block and was running 1.5 mbps while everyone else was dead in the water.

You probably have better spacing. LTE speeds are much more dependent on signal strength. Based on FIT testing reports I've been reading LTE top speeds halve between -80dBm and -90dBm. And they halve again between -90dBm and -100dBm. And then they fall off a cliff above -100dBm.

 

And even though it sounds horrible, all this halving of speeds, the throughout is so greatly improved that the speeds are still really fantastic.

 

For instance, in Sprint 5x5 LTE testing, signals better than -80dBm are between 12Mbps to 30Mbps in testing. But between -80dBm and -90dBm, speeds are between 6Mbps and 12Mbps, and between -90dBm and -100dBm speeds are between 3Mbps and 6Mbps.

 

Once you get worse than -100dBm, results are highly variable to non existent. Depending on other factors, most specifically other users, the system may shed you completely to save performance for everyone else. You may get handed off to EVDO. But if the Mac Index is low, it may allow you to keep a paltry 1Mbps to 2Mbps speeds.

 

After saying all that, Scott may not have the signal that you do where he is at. Scott, what is your LTE dBm?

 

Robert

 

Robert, Roberto, Admin, Hey You! Its all good! But this was posted from my E4GT with ICS using Forum Runner

Could be so-- I always get in upper 20s to 40 down at my office with a -63dBm LTE signal. The LTE signal here is pretty steady, but the eHRPD/CDMA signal starts at -58 dBm early in the morning and drops to -75 dBm in rush hour afternoons, but the 3G speeds stay around 2 mbps. Right now, I have -68 CDMA / -63 LTE-- no worries.

Feel bad for you... while I hate city life, I like these speeds.

 

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

I'd call Verizon to check the tower ASAP. Lte is always 12-15 mbps upload from my experience-- I've never seen an upload that slow.

Verizon isn't always that fast. This is LTE at good signal.

 

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

You must have some serious load in your area. I've never seen the Lte speeds below about 15/12 mbps nor the pings above 70 ms. I know that Verizon plans 3 passes over areas to progressively thicken and enhance coverage after the initial market rollouts.

Yuck. You need an airrave

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk

No... he needs a new carrier. Who in their right mind would get an Airave hotspot or whatever from ANY carrier they know won't bother to cover their home and keep that carrier beyond a current contract? Clearly, they need to select another carrier (national or regional) who DOES actually support their environs. The Airave is an admission of poor coverage-- plain and simple.

You hit the nail on the head, Jeff. I was with Sprint from October 2002 until February 2012. I put up with 22 months of sub-20kbps daytime data speeds and no 4G. I filed trouble ticket after trouble ticket, emailed Dan's office (executive care group) and spoke with them numerous times... hell, I had the TRV escalations direct dial number in my phone. 1 or 2 small bandaids and now, almost 2 yrs later, the speeds are still below dial-up-- unusable data all over the city. I was paying $81 a month for what was basically useless. Now with Verizon, I have basically the same plan (including AMAT), pay $8 / mo more with taxes and my speeds are over 1000x faster and consistent.... the data is ALWAYS usable. When the EVOs start coming off contract in June, Sprint is in trouble in many areas.

Yeah, I assumed that if you were on Clearwire's network aggregating Sprint's network wouldn't add much.

 

Clearwire has talked about aggregating its own bandwith (20MHz + 20MHz for example) which makes sense. Speedwise, nothing on the market should be faster. Doesn't sound like aggregating Sprint spectrum with Clearwire spectrum would add much value (and it doesn't seem possible anyway).

 

I guess my question is more about the handoffs between Sprint's FD-LTE network and Clearwire's TD-LTE network. The whole point (from what I understand) of LTE-Advanced is the seemless handoff between various spectrums. Maybe I am still not getting it. I am really curious how the hand-off between Sprint and Clearwire will work using LTE-Advanced. eHRPD-Advanced? heh

eHRPD is just the EVDO carrier routed through the eNodeB's IP interface (the LTE gateway and the traditional EVDO HA Gateway are different). The handoff won't be totally "seamless", your handset would change IP addresses between Sprint's and Clearwire's networks in a similar way the WiFi to 3G/4G handoff works today. The gateways and IP networks are totally separate and would have to remain so. It's just to clarify the "aggregation" term everyone keeps using-- by its own definition, that isn't possible between two separate networks, though you could possibly switch between them. It's an "or" versus an "and" situation.

Well, this is my speed from the tower this morning. Maybe AT&T just removed the T1 lines from this site. This is truly pathetic.

 

That looks like typical performance for the past 2 years there-- sectors 348, 351, 345 are all horrible-- channel 100 is the worst, 75 the best, and 175 somewhere in the middle, but none ever see greater than dial-up speeds. I wonder how well SDC PTT works with that ping? Late at night and early (before 6 am), the pings get down around 500 ms or so on EVDO.

I'm at my office on Coursey and just ran this test at 11:00 am to kick off the lunch hour...

Lte is sweet... though this is the slowest speed I've seen in this part of town to date.

I have nevear heard this. I've used clearwire's wimax service and Sprint's wimax service off the same tower and they appeared to be running totally different traceroutes/networks (I saw a comcast one as well, and it used comcast's network).

 

Why wouldn't they be able to do the same thing? It's all IP based, no?

 

I think there are many more advantages to LTE-Advanced than just aggregation also.

 

For example, if a customer is outside, in a high-tonnage urban market, they would be on 2.5GHz. As they walk inside, they dynamically shift to 1900MHz. As they walk further indoors, they dynamically shift to 800MHz.

 

Depending on a bunch of factors (availablity, capacity, cost, etc), Sprint should be able to aggregate and shift customers to various spectrum bands all on the fly with LTE-Advanced, seemlessly.

 

Am I just not understanding how LTE-Advanced works?

If you had a device that would work with Clear's 2.5 GHz LTE and Sprint's LTE, you could still switch back and forth between them -- essentially roaming on Clear's network, but you could never use both networks to provide a greater bandwidth. LTE-Advanced aggregation works like EVDO Rev. B or MC-- it combines numerous carriers using them all simultaneously for greater bandwidth-- but this will not work if the data is coming through two different subnets since your phone can't have a split personality. You'd still be able to use one OR the other but NOT both at the same time-- so aggregation can't work, but their network could augment Sprint's so you could use either one; however, I doubt you'll ever see a tri-band LTE device until it no longer has to support CDMA at all-- the radio electronics and antenna requirements would be too much.

This is pretty interesting stuff. However, the map in Phoenix is still showing all kinds of upgrades scheduled.

Yes-- carrier / capacity upgrades, but all the FUTURE data SPEED upgrades have been removed.

I am fully aware of Verizon buying the AWS spectrum from the CableCos. Nothing is final until it is approved by the FCC. Until then we can't assume that they have the AWS spectrum just yet. We know that Tmobile doens't even have the iPhone and even if they did, they won't have LTE until late 2013. Why support LTE in the iPhone 5 on a spectrum band where there is no LTE deployment when clearly that LTE is being deployed on PCS for a while now. Do you honestly think that Apple would alienate its good buddy in Sprint who threw 15.5 billion to purchase all those iPhones from them?

 

I am not saying don't support AWS band ever but until a carrier steps up and swears on their life that they will have LTE service on AWS spectrum in 2012, why waste precious antenna space on knowing that LTE at PCS is a reality? Knowing Verizon and ATT's track record, they are probably planning to hoard the AWS spectrum anyways and have no use for it until 2013/2014. I think the majority of folks are giving both these companies too much credit in believing them. Verizon and ATT both have a ton of spectrum that they currently own which are still not deployed and you think they will deploy LTE at AWS that quickly? HA! If you ask AJ, he can tell you of evidence that ATT and Verizon do not fully deploy all their spare spectrum.

 

I doubt even the 10x10 LTE carrier at 700 Mhz is even half full. Verizon and ATT have to say all these statements about OMG there is spectrum crisis to convince the FCC that there is a spectrum crunch to sell them the spectrum when in reality they haven't hit the brink point yet.

Obviously we're all guessing what the future will be and only time will tell, but I do know that Verizon is planning VoLTE only feature phones (flip phones) for next year. When they do this, it would make a lot of sense to have them on LTE in AWS. The higher frequency means much smaller antennas and much less space required between the receive diversity array since 700 MHz LTE has a wavelength of 42.5 cm and the receive (2100 MHz) AWS is 14.2 cm.

As far as their current LTE loading, I've heard that speeds in NYC and other crowded areas are occasionally dropping below 15 mbps on LTE, so they'll probably be looking to do something sooner rather than later.

I hope that is just a mapping error. Downtown has been grinding to a halt lately. I have been having issues texting as well. I can see the tower out my window and there have been no changes to it. I see it many times a day when I am walking down the hall as it is directly through the window and almost level with my floor.

Well last week, there were still future data speed upgrades shown in various places. Now, there are NO future data speed upgrades shown anywhere I see in the country (haven't checked EVERYWHERE yet). There are still SOME future data capacity upgrades shown (though they did eliminate the Coursey/Sherwood one and the Downtown one), but NONE of the data speed upgrades are shown anymore. Obviously I can no longer follow and report on the current speeds at Sherwood, but I'll bet they're still under 50k all day long.

There are still a few more here in Santa Fe, NM. But two of our sites that were supposed to get improvements have mysteriously disappeared. They were on there just a few weeks ago when I last checked as getting speed upgrades in the next 6 months. And they have not been upgraded. Hmmmm...

 

Robert

They also cancelled the March 31 proposed 4th Ev carrier for the Coursey / Sherwood tower that digiblur posted the wonderful 66kbps test on this weekend (at night). That could be very bad or very good news I suppose...

Max, give them time. I was pretty upset the last few months with Sprint and then last month when visiting home for a few days Sprint finally surprised me. They had finally competed T1 upgrades in my area as well as Barstow, CA, and the improved data speeds make me much happier. They will get to Phoenix.

If you go on the network,sprint.com, all the planned "data speed upgrades" (band-aid T1s) are gone-- everywhere.

However, Sprint has prohibited NV OEM's and Contractors from testing outside of G-Block. If a OEM feels they must perform outside of G Block for some reason,

 

Because their standard PRL has scans for almost all the channels in the block-- if they tested in any block other than G, customers' phones could see those carriers and sync-- hence my testing PRL...

Does Sprint have any under-utilized A block or B block spectrum? It could be possible that they are testing in the unused portions of their existing PCS spectrum. I wish the references mentioned band too.

Yeah-- Sprint sold 10 MHz of the A block they had here in Baton Rouge since they weren't ever going to use it anyway...

Understood. However, I have seen on those mentioned devices the lab reports where they say they can support 3MHz LTE channels. Also, I just came across LTE FIT performance reports from Ericsson, A/L and Samsung in the field where they acknowledge they are prepared to support 3MHz LTE channels. I sure wish one of these references mentioned band!!!

 

Robert

Since LTE is not approved by the FCC for use in ESMR, it CANNOT be used in a FIT test. Its use would only be allowed in an RF shielded laboratory environment. In the FIT tests, they're actually broadcasting on public airwaves, so LTE use in PCS would be allowed as would CDMA/EVDO in ESMR, but they wouldn't allow any LTE broadcasts in ESMR until that approval happens.

Which is why I asked to begin with as it didn't make sense...

 

Even with LTE-Advanced on both 1900 and 800 am I right in that they still would need separate antennae hardware to pull from both?...

 

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk

Yes-- all LTE-Advanced does is combine the various bands and channels your phone can use into one data pipe, which is why it WON'T work with Clearwire's 2.5 GHz LTE since that network will have a different subnet, IP & gateway. But on Sprint, if they run say a 5x5 carrier in G block PCS and a 10x10 in A block PCS, the phone could use its single PCS antenna array to combine the two carriers and offer a peak speed of up to 108 mbps. If they ever approve LTE in ESMR and the phone had separate electronics and antenna arrays to work in that band and a baseband that supports inter-band aggregation, then you could combine an ESMR and a PCS LTE carrier in the same way-- as long as your signal held on the PCS channel of course. But the phone would have to be capable of both bands on its own first with hardware (and FCC testing of course).

If they need to use 3x3 carriers in PCS, they should retest the Viper and GNex. If you noticed the bottom and top frequencies tested were center channels of a 5x5 at the bottom of PCS A and top of PCS G. In order to consider a 3x3, the bottom tested frequency would need to be 1 MHz lower (for a 3x3 in A block) and the top one would have to be 1 MHz higher (for a 3x3 in G block). Since a couple of Ev carriers will carry more data in a 2.5 MHz swath than a 3x3 will (in 3 MHz), this wouldn't be a smart move.

 

The 3 devices reported on were Galaxy Nexus, LG Viper, HTC Jet.... which none have gone through FCC approved at 800MHz LTE use.... So I assume its about 3 other devices in testing OR they plan on being able to resend these devices through FCC for re-cert approval for 800MHz LTE once they get the approval to convert that spectrum over?

It isn't a matter of retesting. The LG Viper and GNex do NOT have the preamps & LNAs (or the independent antenna) to do LTE in any other band besides PCS. In order to do any other band, they would have to have a preamp/LNA, diplexer & filter transmitter IC added to the circuit board then either new antennas added or possibly share the CDMA/EVDO antennas if the Rx diversity spacing is correct for that band. These two phones tested do not have the physical hardware to ever support any other LTE bands.

Sprint currently in some markets maybe has enough 800 Mhz spectrum available to deploy a single 1xA carrier. Even now only the 817-820 Mhz is available in some markets since most if not all of the 821-824 Mhz is still be rebanded. I think by the time Sprint will be done with rebanding the entire ESMR 800 Mhz band and moving all the customers off of iDEN, they could just deploy LTE. I know it hasn't been approved yet but I would imagine that it wouldn't take that long to get FCC approval. I fully expect to hear a FCC approval before mid 2013. I don't see the point of putting EVDO at 800 Mhz when it will only be used for a very short time.

 

Hesse has clearly said in conferences that they plan to use 10 Mhz out of the 14 Mhz at 800 Mhz for LTE so we know that it will be a 5x5 configuration.

You're forgetting that with the SDRs (post-NV), changing from EVDO to LTE (or vice versa) on a radio is a remote flash operation (supposedly). It will take them no effort at all to turn on and off EVDO carriers to maximize their use of their own spectrum when time / conditions demand-- for example, when iDEN is still running, but you can corner it down to use half of the band and afford to run 1xA and EVDO in ESMR for a year or so-- this would be easily done with the new gear and wouldn't require a truck roll or hardware change to go back-and-forth between EV and LTE as needed (in theory).

Also, you're giving Dan Hesse too much credit for even being aware of what's going on-- he's a CEO. Remember the CTO that works for him (Stephen Bye) famously said in an interview that Sprint's network was ready for and could handle the iPhone with no issue and that their partnership with Ericsson made them able to respond instantly to carrier / backhaul needs. I literally ROFLMAO when I read that-- their network can't handle the phones they have now (pre-iPhone), and it took them over a year after initiating an upgrade "project" to even touch our towers that were running under 10 kilobits! These execs aren't always in touch with all the details-- they're big picture guys.

I fully expect that Apple will have LTE support in the PCS band this October. Lets not kid ourselves here. Every single one of the major carriers including the regional carriers have PCS spectrum since it is such a large spectrum band. This is not like Apple would be bending over just to accommodate Sprint only. I don't see why they wouldn't support 700, AWS and PCS bands in this upcoming iPhone. There has been no official plans as of yet for actual deployment of LTE at AWS spectrum this year. There is just a lot of discussion and speculation on Verizon and ATT's part that they plan to use the AWS spectrum band as their next target for LTE deployment. Obviously Verizon and ATT's plan for LTE at AWS spectrum right now is contingent on obtaining more AWS spectrum. AT&T and Verizon both can't currently deploy AWS spectrum nationwide since Verizon's AWS spectrum licenses are only on the east coast and ATT's are only on the west coast and not to mention that ATT gave up a huge chunk to Tmobile as part of the break up fee. As AJ eluded before, ATT might have to resort to even deploying LTE at PCS band next if they can't obtain more AWS spectrum.

 

From the Verizon Q4 CC, only 5% of Verizon customers are on 4G LTE so that tells me that they still have plenty of room in the 700 Mhz 10x10 carrier that needs to be filled up first. For Apple it would only be prudent to support Band Class 25 since that covers PCS blocks A-G which is a huge block of spectrum and not to mention a major customer in Sprint depends on it for its LTE needs.

Verizon is trying to buy 20MHz or so of AWS on the west coast from the cablecos right now... But, VZW could also use PCS for LTE. In my area, they aren't using any PCS (they have 30 MHz of PCS here), since they run 9 carriers in their Cellular 850 spectrum here, so they could do either (or both).

The problem is the difficulty of making an LTE device that supports more than one (or maybe two) bands due to the physical limits for antenna & RF hardware. Apple will have to make two different models for AT&T and Verizon already as it's not presently possible to make a single device work for both bands without interference exceeding FCC limits. I assume they'd use AWS as the "other" LTE frequency since that seems to be headed toward the universal band for that here in the U.S., but time will tell.

3GPP band class 26 will take care of that. Band class 26 is a superset of band class 5 (Cellular 850 MHz) and band class 18 (SMR 800 MHz). Since both Cellular and SMR are adjacent and use the same 45 MHz FDD offset, it makes perfect sense to consolidate them into one band class.

 

AJ

Except that transmissions in the ESMR band are governed by FCC rule 90S versus cellular band rules of Part 22H. I believe the EIRP limits are different and that's why they're still treated seperately (and tested seperately) to this day. As long as the FCC governs these two bands separately, there will have to be additional precautions made in the devices.