bmoses

no problem basically its the connection to the internet for data, aka 3G and 4G. thats one of sprints faults is they only had T1 lines run to their towers, which is extremely slow by todays standards. one of the things they are doing with the upgrades is running new backhaul to the towers, the majority of the towers will get fiber run to them which will give them anywhere from 10 to 100x more speed at the tower than what they currently have.

looks like all the towers in that area are 3G accepted which means all the equipment is installed and they are just waiting on backhaul.

signal check just displays whatever the phone is connected to. there is an option in that app to toggle airplane mode which makes the whole thing easier but its only available in the pro version.

ah sorry, if i'm in a known 4G footprint and my phone doesn't auto connect to it after like 30 seconds or so, i do a combination of airplane mode and/or restarting the phone to force it to rescan for LTE. i don't know the specifics on all of the timers but if you left it along and stayed in a 4G footprint long enough it would eventually connect on its own, but if you want it to connect faster you can do those things to try and force it to. once 4G is more wide spread you shouldn't have to do those things as often as it will hand off from 4G tower to 4G tower.

since i have an EVO LTE, like i assume you do based on your profile, i take deliberate steps to connect to LTE. Of course i only do that when i'm next to or near a 4G accepted tower, that info is found in the sponsor section. If i'm out and about and not anywhere near a 4G accepted tower i don't do anything to try and connect since i know there isn't any 4G around me.

so here i thought they still had 1x800 turned off around here since i lost connection to it several days ago when the new PRL had come out. I had updated to the PRL that prioritizes 1x800 but wasn't connecting to anything so i figured it was still turned off from them adding the new channel. well this morning i decided to reapply the PRL just in case, turns out sprint pushed their PRL to my phone at one point and thats why i wasn't connected to 1x800, put the PRL that prioritizes it back on and BOOM 1x800 again still on channel 476 though.

do you remember what your signal strength was? since you have an iphone the bars would have indicated LTE signal strength. 0-1 bars you were probably connected to the one on the south side, anything higher it could have been a new tower testing.

ah, sorry, thats what i get for multi tasking and not fully paying attention i have no idea how to access those screens on WP8, i know there are sections on this site devoted to the different phones, you might be able to find something in there, but like i said, voice on 800 is the only thing that will broadcast exact coordinates to the tower's location. voice on 1900 broadcasts offset coordinates for each sector and 3G and 4G don't broadcast any kind of coordinates.

well its "switched on" in the sense that the towers that they have currently completed and accepted and turned on are on for use. they are however still deploying in the area so not all of the towers are live with LTE yet, they will continue to work on them and accept them and turn them on for use as they do over the next weeks and months until they are done with every tower in the area

signalcheck will give you information about your different signals. voice on 800 is the only thing that will tell you what tower you are connected to (and it would only be for voice on 800). for LTE the only way to know would be to become a sponsor and get access to the maps and spreadsheets we are updating in the sponsor section

So I'm not getting any 1x800 anywhere this morning. I had it all day yesterday and today nothing. Not sure what that means but its down :-(

only difference is the "flagpole" ones are considered stealth sites so they are supposed to blend in better so you don't notice them. as far as the RRUs, if they can't be mounted up with the panel, or within about 6' of the panel, they will mount them down with the base cabinets. that can apply to any site where the RRU won't fit with the panel, not just the flagpole ones. also since you are a sponsor make sure you check out this thread here (if you haven't already) we are keeping track of the updates in our own spreadsheet and map. so if you see any work being done on the other ankeny towers be sure to let us know there so we can update them! so far the only ankeny tower to have work done is the one behind the sprint store

sensorly showing purple on hwy 30 in boone! so we should see that showing up accepted soon along with at least 1 tower in ames

was on the east side of ankeny and found another 1x800 signal! this one from the 4G accepted tower in Mitchellville. also stopped by one by clark st and there was a crew there eating lunch. nothing had been installed yet that i could see, i'm guessing this is the first day they have been at this site.

speaking of sensorly, i'm seeing purple up in ames there aren't any towers accepted up there yet, so could be testing or one ready to go live!

new 1x800 signal this morning! this one is east of mitchelleville. added to our spreadsheet and maps in the sponsor section

thanks for the update! that is interesting info as this is a GMO site and since the legacy cabinets have been removed that means service is obviously running through the NV cabinets. do you know if LTE is live at this site? how about the 3G speeds how are those? with fiber being run to the site if LTE isn't live that means either the legacy panels can't support it, or no one has been back to the site to hook up the fiber and turn on LTE yet. if the fiber is hooked up though 3G speeds should be great.

if you get connected again follow the steps in this link to get the cell ID, that will tell us if you are connected to a known LTE tower or a new one

mostly correct, sprint is deploying a 5x5 LTE carrier in 1900 and another one in 800. the max each of those can achieve is ~37Mbps. someday if they choose to use LTE-advance, they could aggregate those 2 together so it appears as a single 10x10 carrier which would have a max bandwidth of ~74Mbps. they are not adding 3G to 800 at all, just a voice carrier and the 5x5 LTE carrier.

800 just means that the service is using 800Mhz frequency. currently sprint uses frequencies in the 1900Mhz range. with regards to legacy service this includes voice and 3G data. with the network vision upgrades they are doing they are adding LTE (4G) to 1900Mhz and also adding voice and LTE to 800Mhz and then eventually LTE to 2600Mhz. 800 is a big deal because of the characteristics of the lower frequencies the signal will travel further and penetrate buildings better so you will have better voice coverage and then LTE when they turn that on (and you have a phone that supports it). for example, i've picked up a 1x800 (which is what we use to refer to voice on 800) signal from a tower about 60 miles away from where i was.

you should consider becoming a sponsor so you can help us out with updating our spreadsheet and maps and then you would have access to them so you could see where every sprint tower is. the two towers you've listed that you are getting 1x800 from are the only towers that cover pleastant hill, so there isn't another tower in pleasant hill that hasn't gotten converted yet. depending on your exact location, based on the screenshot you posted, i would say 1x800 was (obviously) connected to the 64th st one and EVDO was connected to the dean ave one.

short of driving out to the towers and seeing if there are people there working and asking them if they are doing updates there is no way to know if issues like that are just issues or because of upgrades going on. looking at our map in the sponsor section i can tell you that about half of the towers that would cover that area already have the new equipment installed, and the other half hadn't been touched as of the last time someone had driven by them and noted no work going on, which was about two weeks ago or more on most of them.

thanks for the report! thats 3 1x800 towers on that side of town that have come live in the past 2 days. we are keeping track of them all, as well as another little tidbit you would be interested in, in the sponsor section in our spreadsheet and map.

i got stuck in a hotel room in dallas last year on a business trip, LTE had just started rolling out but i had LTE in my room. i blew through 37gig in one day streaming TV and movies from my media collection at home. didn't hear a peep.

sweet! you should consider becoming a sponsor, we have a spreadsheet and map in the sponsor section that we are maintaining that has the status of just about every tower in the central iowa market