bmoses

drove by today and they are up on the tower installing the sprint equipment.

i'm not from omaha but am helping with the spreadsheet and map we are doing to track progress in IA and NE. So others can chime in but here is my 2 cents. i would say at this moment in time, no i would not make the jump. They are hauling a$$ with installing the new equipment on the towers but everything is just sitting there not being used until samsung decides to send acceptances crews through the area and turn on all the new equipment. We don't know when that will happen, but our best guess would be sometime in the next 3 months. so your options are to switch now and deal with a roller coaster network, meaning data speeds going from unusable to very usable depending on where you are and watch it get better over the next few months. Or wait until they get further along with the upgrades and switch when its better overall. i've never had a problem with voice/calls on sprint, its just the data speeds that suck. if you want to become a sponsor of this site you will get access to the sponsor section which is where we are tracking all of the updates, that will give you a lot more info and a much better idea of where things are and where they are heading

thanks for the report, i almost went and checked that one out over lunch today but i didn't. i'll check it on monday and see if they got anything installed.

ah ok legacy sites are sites that haven't had any new network vision equipment installed yet. the 10 i mentioned are not in the quad cities, they are in the east iowa market. all of the towers in the quad cities have been at least 3G accepted with some even having been 4G accepted, meaning LTE turned on. as to when the rest of the 3G only towers will get 4G, the answer is, no one knows, not even sprint. they are waiting on backhaul (fiber) to get run to them and thats in the hands of whoever sprint hired to do backhaul in the quad cities. so whenever they do get backhaul run to them sprint will send someone out to turn on 4G, and it will happen on a site by site basis as backhaul gets completed.

i'm not sure what you mean?

just to give you a sneak peak, there are 132 towers in the central iowa market, 21.1% of them are either still legacy or haven't been checked by anyone so we don't know if equipment has been installed. 34.1% have the equipment installed and are waiting to be accepted. and the rest of them are some combination of 3G/4G accepted already, which is 44.8%

if you want to be ever more optimistic become a sponsor and check out the maps we are doing. we have one with the status of almost ever tower in the central iowa market, and there was some news posted in there this morning that might really make you hopeful

i was in Atlanta, GA from Sunday to Wednesday this week at a conference for work. Just wanted to share my 4G experience from there to give people an idea of what we have to look forward too. The only two places i was at during my trip was the airport and the Marriott Marquis in downtown Atlanta. 4G at the airport was a complete failure and of course it was the first 4G i encountered on my trip so it didn't give me very high hopes. I didn't look at the completed maps for the airport so i'm not sure if all the towers surrounding it are 4G accepted or not. even so there are so many people in that airport that i did kind of expect it to be crappy, i was lucky to get .5 meg down on 4G at the airport. this was not giving me high hopes for downtown since downtown usually has a ton of people too, so i was guessing i would run into the same thing there, especially during the work day. downtown however surprised me! speeds during the evening hours were great! i would get anywhere from 8 meg to 13 meg down! i was still cautiously optimistic since it was evening time and downtown wasn't full of people working. so during the day i had a break and ran some tests from my room. speeds obviously dropped during the day, however they stayed very much usable. i was getting anywhere from 1 to 3 meg down on speed tests! i did check the maps for downtown and there were 4 towers that covered the hotel i was at, only 3 of the 4 were 4G accepted, so once that last tower gets 4G it would get even better! so anyway, just wanted to share my experience in a big city that is mostly deployed. The kind of speeds i was getting gives me high hopes for des moines, with less people around here i'm guessing we will see even higher average speeds then what i was getting in Atlanta, then throw in tri-band in a few years and it will only get better

this is mostly correct, except doing airplane mode won't force your phone to scan for 1x800. there are 2 ways to get your phone on 1x800; 1) lose 1xRTT (1900) signal so your phone switches over to 1x800 2) do a PRL update, doing a PRL update will force the phone to rescan the PRL list and it will start with 1x800 first.

i would be very doubtful, all of the dubuque sites are 3G accepted, meaning the equipment is installed and has been signed off on. since 4G wasn't turned on that means backhaul wasn't in place yet. however all of the dubuque towers were also GMO sites, so even if they do have backhaul now they are very low priority to getting LTE turned on.

other than 10 sites that are still legacy east iowa is basically done as far as initial acceptances go. they are just waiting on backhaul to get to all the 3G only accepted sites so they can turn LTE on.

ah, thanks for the clarification. i have a wilson sleek that i use at work that does great for boosting voice and 3G but it doesn't support sprints' 4G. and the 4G version is $130! plus it doesn't support 2500/2600 frequencies we will have down the road. there are about 8 of us that work here on sprint and all the systems for boosting/amplifying signal for buildings are freaking expensive! i don't want to hi-jack your thread, but since its along the same lines, does anyone know if you can have 2 antennas, one on each end of a cable, and have them passively bring the outside signal inside without having to boost/amplify it?

so if i understand this correct, you have an antenna mounted "outside" and another antenna mounted inside and are wanting to connect the 2 with a cable, without an amplifier in between, to in essence bring the signal that you get outside, inside. am i correct in that understanding? will doing something like that work? my building i work in eats signal for breakfast, outside you get a perfectly acceptable/usable signal. walk inside and the signal drops about 20 dbm. if i could setup an antenna outside or at least near a window and run a cable to another antenna inside closer to where i work, to essentially make my signal be like i was outside, without having to actually amplify the signal, that would be awesome!

check out this thread if you haven't already, it has links to a map with all the 4G accepted towers in our area so far. i would guess you were picking up a faint signal from either bondurant or the fair grounds. Also the address that signal check lists is for the tower your voice signal is coming from (for 1xRTT the location is offset from the actual tower location, for 1x800 signals the location will be exact to where the tower is). 3G and 4G don't broadcast any location information for the tower you are connected to. that's why we are tacking the serving cell and HEX ID's for 4G in the spreadsheet in the thread i linked you to. that's the only way to find out what tower for sure your LTE signal was coming from.

another in progress site to add to the list this is the coop one in waukee, panels and RRUs are up, i assume BTS is installed, they are in a building at this location and there was a red/white GPS antenna sticking out of it right next to an old GPS antenna that looked like the sprint legacy one.

was up in ames yesterday and was able to hit all the towers, found some good progress! Borne Ave & E Lincoln Way - this one was already marked in progress, but i went to check on it anyway since sensorly was showing purple near it. couldn't get any LTE but i did find out that it is a high capacity site! looking back at my old pictures it was always that way, just never noticed before Ross Hall Iowa State University - this one also had everything installed and is also a high capacity site! Homewood Golf Course - still nothing here even snuck up to where the base cabinets are and nothing was installed yet. did confirm that T-Mobile is the top rack and Sprint is the bottom rack. Reliable St & Florida Ave - didn't check on this one since it was already confirmed in progress Wilson Complex Iowa St. - nothing installed yet here that i could see, does look like its a sprint only site though. Ames Water Tower Highway 30 - Panels/RRUs are up, didn't see any base cabinet equipment anywhere around it so assuming its inside the water tower. Bloomington Rd BRET Water Tower - Base cabinets where installed, panels/RRUs where on the ground ready to get installed. so that leaves 2 towers left in ames to get anything installed, and ames also has 2 high capacity sites! hopefully they make the on on the wilson complex high capacity too

sweet! serving cell 102 is from the new 4G accepted tower thats near the fairgrounds

can you get a screenshot from your engineering screen? you should be able to get to it from the system shortcuts in signal check pro. it looks like your phone is connected to 3G, not 4G. there is a bug where old LTE data will show in signalcheck on some phones, i wonder if thats what you are seeing.....

nice! thats the same cell ID i picked up. everyone thats picking it up is getting a really weak signal, just need to figure out where its coming from!

nice! also hello and welcome! any chance you could get us the serving cell ID if you get connected again? -118 is a pretty weak signal so it could be coming from anywhere. the serving cell would tell us if its a site thats already been live, or a new one somewhere. you can find info on how to get the serving cell ID here at work my coworkers were also picking up a weak -117 to -118 4G signal coming from serving cell 102, which is a new site we don't know where it is yet. i drove around the north and west sides of the metro tonight and never got anything, so i don't think its out this way.

FYI for all the central iowa people out there, had a couple of people at my work pick up a brief, weak LTE signal today coming from cell ID 102, which is not one we have tracked, meaning its something new that's being worked on today! no idea where the tower its coming from is yet though

since you are a sponsor, check out this thread here there is a spreadsheet and map of the towers for central iowa, thats about all we know for right now. if you see any work on other towers than what has already been posted as in progress take pics and post it in that thread so we can update it! there was a couple of sensorly blips that showed up in ames and boone a couple weeks back but thats been it, so not sure if they were testing or what but the towers haven't been accepted yet.

just throwing a little price comparison out there...... i currently have 9 lines on my account, 4 on the 1500 minute everything data plan and 5 on the 3000 minute everything data plan. taking taxes, fees, and discounts out of the equation that costs us $489.93/mo or $54.45/line/mo. these new USCC plans, with 10 gig of shared data for those 9 lines would be $460/mo or $51.11/line/mo. (verizon would be the same price) For comparison the new sprint plans would be $510/mo or $56.67/line/mo. so if you have a lot of smart phones but don't need a lot of data i guess they aren't too bad. me personally, for ~$5 more per month i would rather have the unlimited option

Ankeny finally getting some more love! DsmIowaGuy tipped me off that the ankeny water tower had some work done, so i went out to get some pics, looks like all the equipment is there, just waiting to get installed. also there is a freshly dug trench that looks like its coming from a fiber box going to the base cabinets. this is the site by 1st and Delaware, just base cabinets so far.

no news and if MN is any indication winter shouldn't stop them, slow down maybe if there are a lot of storms, but shouldn't stop. of course we are down to less than 30 towers that need equipment installed in the metro, so as long as they get that done before winter the weather shouldn't affect acceptance and integration.