bmoses

21 hours ago, Sprke said:

There's huge holes in iWireless's coverage and also a lot of it's edge yet.

Sometime in the last couple days USC LTE roaming showed up on T-Mobiles coverage map as partner 4G LTE coverage in a bunch of Iowa but I'm still unable to connect to it.

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it didn't hit me until now that you are the same user on reddit i've been replying to about LTE roaming on US cellular  i contacted t-force on facebook when my wife's iphone connected to us cellular but mine didn't. i have no idea if they did anything or not but after talking to them it started working for me. now every time i go back up to the huxley area all i have to do is search for networks and pick us cellular and it connects right away. i don't know how it happened but i did notice that at some point while i was messing with things my data roaming option got turned off. not sure how that happened :/ only other thing i can think of is to go somewhere where its confirmed working and see if you can get connected?

woot! good news for me using t-mobile in iowa!

http://www.tmonews.com/2017/09/t-mobile-acquire-remaining-interest-iowa-wireless/

Hello ironman, I have 2 questions if you would have time...........1. what do you think of the LG flex 2?  I'm getting my daughter changed over here to Sprint and she uses a LG Flex (and loves it) on T-Mobile and I am suggesting a Flex 2.  I am on a LG V20 so I can't tell her about it....... 2. Has the tower in the racetrack parking lot in Knoxville, IA  have the LTE turned on yet?  at times there are thousands of people there and there is virtually no data (3g at less than 1 meg if at all).  we get our lap times and lineup through the phones now and last season was terrible for data.  maybe you might know who to talk to.  thanks for your time......Dennis

i would not get the Flex 2, it was a terrible phone. a V10 or V20 would be a much better option. sorry i can't help you on the tower question, i don't ever get to knoxville and i've also switched to t-mobile last fall so i don't have any way of tracking sprint stuff anymore.

I just noticed 2nd carrier B25 does not display correctly in iowa city. It may be wrong in all samsung markets. 00/01/02 is first carrier 03/04/05 is second just like B41. Which makes 03 difficult due to it being both 1st and 2nd carrier depending where you are.

only the 03 B25 sector doesn't identify as the 2nd B25 carrier. This is because in Ericsson markets they use 01/02/03 for their first set of carriers where the other markets use 00/01/02. signal check can't determine what market you are in so it just defaults as showing 03 sectors as regular B25. the 04 and 05 sectors should show as B25^2. 

How has the QC area been since the spectrum switch? Are there still patches of areas that are unusable?

i can't answer to that area but assuming its similar to des moines they probably haven't finished switching the rest of the towers over to 10x10. so some areas will be better and others will be the same. we are still sitting here with about half of the towers switched.

Yeah same here. I just happened to check my engineering screen, that was my first sighting. I found that in uptown Moline, downtown still is a 5x5 by the iWireless center. But that's still an improvement because it was 3g only up until a month or so ago.

have you seen any towers that didn't have it wednesday get it since then? So far it seems that whatever towers got it wednesday have been it, all other towers that didn't get it that day are still sitting on the 2 5x5s. it appears to be causing a few issues too, it seems like if i'm on a 5x5 it won't hand off to a 10x10 and either has to drop to B26 first or i'll drop to 3G.

for those still around they started switching towers from 2 5x5 B25 carriers to a single 10x10 B25 carrier today! not all of them are done but they should hopefully be over the next few days.

Lol I had the same thing pop up on my way home tonight. It seems that not all towers are done though because I'm getting it from some but not others.

Just picked this up today in Rock Island, IL.... Did a speed test and pulled about 11.5 down and 4 up. Usually I average about 2-3 down and 1-2 up around this time.

very nice! the 1x and EVDO channels for central iowa changed this morning so we should be right behind you with the 10x10 B25 carrier.

No work here either. I know it's worse for areas with a ton of them, but they really disqualify Sprint as a competitor for a lot of people that live around me and are affected by a couple specific ones.

 

I'm not gonna argue that Sprint should halt everything to fix all the GMOs because they have to move forward on everything to survive. And I know straggler sites are inevitable. But really, GMOs are in some ways worse than a coverage gap because they can really screw up all surrounding sectors and obviously the 3G fallback to the GMO itself is usually worse than Verizon 1x roaming. So I would think that they'd be a bigger priority. Or at least enough to warrant a semi-permanent COW in areas where the network is otherwise OK. Or a project to get LTE live on all of them. (Yeah I know GMO LTE is painfully awful; I live next to one and have been dealing with it for about two and a half years now. But it's still a huge network capacity boost vs the one or two EVDO carriers the 3G GMO sites currently have and I would think limited range LTE for offloading is better than nothing, even when it's SISO. That's still over 15mbps of extra capacity compared to the 3 or 6 mbps you got from EVDO. Especially since the "we're not gonna bother with GMO LTE because we're gonna come back and make it a full build" stuff never happened and it looks like GMOs are stuck with whatever antennas are up there for the rest of time. But hey, I'm not an engineer.)

they attempted to turn LTE on some of the GMO towers in my area about 4 months ago. It ended up making things worse when traveling to/from the areas covered by the GMO so they ended up turning LTE off on them. I had heard they were going to come do something to them in June but nothing every happened

*snip*

what channels should we be watching for on 1x and EVDO to know that this has happened? right now i'm on channel 425 for 1x and 650 for EVDO. I'll be leaving for vacation tomorrow and won't be back to the des moines area till july 10th, hopefully when i get back some of these changes will have already taken place.

and related to this, will 1x/EVDO channels change first and then later the B25 LTE changes will happen? Or will all of them happen at the same time once they do?

has anyone heard any updates on timelines to when the PCS spectrum swaps will be complete and areas will go live with the 10x10 B25 carriers?

Anyone else in the Des Moines area have issues connecting and staying on B41? I am in town for several days and I seem to be stuck on B25 &B26. The few seconds I've been on B41, I did see the 3rd carrier.

 

(FYI, I'm mostly downtown)

i only hit 1 B41 tower on a daily basis, i rarely ever get to where any other B41 towers are, so my experience is very limited. but the 1 tower i do frequent always has random issue of kicking me off B41 down to B25 or B26. its been doing it for months. it also has random performance issues, sometimes i'll only get ~10 meg and other times i'll hit 80 meg. its not a busy area either so i doubt its usage. anyway, sounds like with what you are seeing there are some issues in the area. 

has there been anymore news on all the spectrum swaps? like as far as timing goes as to when they will be implemented? looking forward to see what kind of improvements a 10x10 B25 will have over the 2 5x5 B25 carriers we currently have.

I see this is reported to have 2x CA, but haven't seen screenshots or confirmation of CA in this thread. Can one of y'all owners confirm CA is working well? Thinking about picking up a used model. Thanks.

 

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i have this phone and CA works with it. however unless you get a really great deal on it i would stay away from this phone. its just "all right" not amazing by any means and still has lag that gets worse as time goes on. basically you have to factory reset every 4 to 6 months to keep acceptable performance.

Completely agree. I don't have iWireless, but I know people that have it and love that it has great coverage & decent(not spectacular) but reliable speeds. Also, a Sprint/USCC merger would be a "yuuge" boost to Sprint's midwestern network. Not likely, but it'd be awesome.

i've been testing them out and mapping their towers in the des moines metro area. their tower density is just insane compared to sprints. fastest i've seen for speeds is in the upper 60's, most of the time its 20 to 30's, sometimes down to the teens, but you are right, they aren't always the fastest but they are more consistent in their speeds from what i've seen. plus the unlimited tethering option is awesome

mike, just wanted to pass along a GCI pattern to you. i've been checking out iWireless in Iowa (which is T-Mobile) and so far everything has worked great for identifying the sectors for AWS which is what they are deploying. the only issue i've found is that they have deployed quite a few 4 sector sites. on these sites the 4th sector has its own GCI that is different than the GCI of the other 3 sectors of the tower, but it ends in 04 and so its not being identified as AWS, it just lists LTE when connected to those sectors. any questions let me know, thanks!

new beta looks good so far! all the LTE data is showing when a 1x connection is also showing. also a side affect of the changes you made, my verizon galaxy S5 is now showing me the GCI and PCI where before it wasn't able to show them!

i did send you a diagnostic report, the only "issue" i see now is when i have the 1x and LTE connections going on it was showing a 1x800 connection from a tower that is a GMO so it doesn't have 1x800 at all. 

yeah i can see the tower. what i was trying to say was there is a section of roaming along i-35 on sprints coverage map. I guess what your saying is sprints coverage map just isn't accurate. im just used to it overstating coverage not understating it. 

lol yeah they seem to have gone the opposite direction this time, wouldn't surprise me either if they forgot they had a tower there i just drove up to huxley last weekend along I-35 and between the ankeny towers and the new GMO LTE i had LTE the entire time.

The gap doesn't even show 3G coverage. So unless the map is inaccurate with the range of coverage this is a prime location for a new tower on a Nextel site. Or rebuild the surrounding GMO sites so they have B26 for farther range.

must just be a map issue then. being a premier sponsor you can check our maps in the IA/NE threads to see where the towers are. trust me there is one there and it has 1x/EVDO and now LTE. and yeah it could use a full build conversion to get 1x800/B26 to help with coverage but its a low priority tower that just finally got LTE 3 years after all the full builds did around here, so its not going full build anytime soon.

based on the Sprint coverage map there is a decent size gab of coverage along I-35 between Ankeny and Ames. Just curious is that accurate or do the towers north and south of the gap reach out far enough?

their coverage map hasn't updated yet, but there is a GMO tower just north of huxley, IA that just got accepted with LTE as a GMO last week. it fills in most of that gap, not all of it, but enough to make it better than it was.

Post a map of where you're talking about & is it native coverage or roaming LTE ?

 

 

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I-35 between Ankeny and Ames now has LTE, its native, they turned LTE on a GMO tower that didn't have LTE until now.

heads up to those still in the central iowa market they have started firing up LTE on GMO towers outside of the metro area. so that nice giant LTE hole along I-35 between the des moines metro and ames is now mostly covered with LTE

Hey everyone, just wanted to give you guys an update for Erie, PA - LTE went live as of yesterday!!  For the most part speeds are still about the same right now...but we're hoping that will increase soon?  All phones that were set to "Automatic time & date" were set back an hour so we're dealing with some upset customers but we'll take it if that means faster speeds!  Just wanted to let everyone know so they can prepare if that happens in your area, and ask if speeds should be increasing?  I know it's all GMO out here but we thought the speeds would go up at least a little bit...we're hoping they have some more tweaking to do!

 

Thanks again everyone!

nice! i'm seeing the same thing on our rural GMO sites in central iowa, we have picked up LTE from 5 GMO sites so far.

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.

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+