bmoses

well i must be a dumbass then cause i've searched and have not been able to find an simple answer that i can understand. all i'm looking for is either 1) yes 800 can handoff to 1900 (or vice versa) without dropping a call 2) no you will drop a call every time 800 hands off to 1900 (or vice versa) 3) 800 should be able to handoff to 1900 (or vice versa) without dropping a call, but sometimes it will still drop the call when handing off.

just bumping this as it seems to have gotten lost in the SVDO/SVLTE talk from last night.

can someone more knowledgeable answer this question for me. if you are on a call, and are on 800 from one tower, and move out of range of that tower and its 800, and the next closest tower only has 1900 will the call hand off to that tower and switch to 1900? or will the call drop? i ask because there is a spot on the interstate around here that everyone i know on sprint drops a call there. the problem is that, once NV is here and done, as you are coming from the south going north you would pick up a full build site that will have 800, but the further north you go the only 2 possible towers that you can switch to are both GMO sites so they won't have 800 for awhile.

the sales people told my mother in law that when she was in looking at phone upgrades last week, that 4G would be here by the fair. not that sales people are purposefully dishonest or trying to mislead but they are usually the last ones to know anything. I'm sure there will be some 4G live by then but i doubt they will be done. especially since i have seen zero tower work yet, and i've checked a lot of towers, and the fair is 2 months away.....

stopped by this tower again, no one there today, so i drove up to it and peaked in the fence, no signs of any new equipment or work, so not sure what these guys did while there or if it was even for sprint.

here are some pics i took of ground mount RRUs from a GMO site, feel free to add them if you want. http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g442/bradmoses/Sprint%20Towers/IMG_5229CR2.jpg http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g442/bradmoses/Sprint%20Towers/IMG_5228CR2.jpg http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g442/bradmoses/Sprint%20Towers/IMG_5227CR2.jpg http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g442/bradmoses/Sprint%20Towers/IMG_5225CR2.jpg http://i1102.photobucket.com/albums/g442/bradmoses/Sprint%20Towers/IMG_5224CR2.jpg

i can't imagine there is much room in the building at that site, plus all the nextel equipment should still be in there. unless he was arriving with an empty trailer and was removing nextel equipment from the building and they are planning on putting the sprint NV equipment in the building? the legacy equipment at that location is sitting outside on the cement pad right now, usually they put the new equipment outside right next to it, but with nextel going away and this being a nextel/sprint site i guess its possible they could be utilizing the building instead. either way he had to have been doing something for sprint since its a sprint/nextel site, so its good news regardless

you can find permit activity for des moines here. also if you become a sponsor you can get access to the iowa/nebraska thread that has a map of all the sprint towers, i've also been posting permits and other activity i've been finding in that thread. the only way to post what tower is closest to that location in this thread is if someone goes out and finds the tower and confirms its sprints and posts it. otherwise we would be posting about sponsor only information and that wouldn't be allowed.

stopped by the tower, there wasn't anyone there anymore. Not sure what they did there either as there was no equipment and nothing looked like it had changed, lock was undone from the gate though. also stopped by the tower at 86th and aurora and there were workers there!!! so close!!!!

woot!!!!! guess i know what i'm doing over lunch!!!

found this morning that this tower had a permit issued on 05/03, along with 6 other towers in des moines hopefully that means work will start soon!!!!

I probably shouldn't even repeat this because it is most likely highly inaccurate but in case someone else hears the same thing it can be considered already addressed my mother in law was in a sprint store the other day looking at phones to upgrade to (old people and phones makes me want to /suicide, but thats another story) and the sales reps told her that the network upgrades would be done by the state fair...... (mid august-ish for those not from iowa reading this) again, as most of us know the sales reps are the last to know what is going on so take this as a huge grain of salt. if anything we will have some LTE coverage by mid august, but being completely done, probably not going to happen. and in other news, found some more towers with fiber work being done but still no equipment deliveries or tower work being done yet. good thing i guess is that when they do start waiting on backhaul shouldn't happen

From what I've read from other market threads that are being deployed this is an unfortunate side affect of upgrading the network. you are going to have dropped calls, no data connection, and delayed texts until they get closer to being done with your area.

i went back and checked the sponsors map and every tower along the route i took is a GMO site and has been 3G accepted already. so obviously even though its been accepted they haven't switched over to the new equipment yet for some reason. I was also looking at this thread and it lists the east iowa market at being 50% complete on 3G accepted sites! i wonder what the hold up is on getting them turned on/switched over to the new NV equipment.....

bars on your phone only show you your voice signal. also your phone can be connected to 1 tower for voice and another tower for data, but the bars will only show you the voice tower. 3G can also have good data speeds with a low signal strength as long as its a "clean" signal. so in your case either your voice and data were on different towers, or they were on the same tower and just happen to get a good speed test too. it could be that the closer tower is still being worked on and only accepting data connections which would give you the good speed, but your signal seemed low cause it was on a further away tower for voice. really there are so many factors that can affect everything on a normal basis that it will drive you crazy trying to figure out what is going on, plus throw in that they are actively deploying and things will change from day to day based on that, it will just compound things even further.

no joke, i just posted in another thread that i went to st louis this week and almost the whole route through south east iowa was 1X instead of 3G. same thing going to MN, get past ames and you lose 3G again until MN.

they either took the 3G accepted tower thats closest to you offline to work on it, forcing your phone to connect to a tower further away with no upgrades, or you phone connected to a tower further away that has no upgrades and is just holding onto that connection instead of switching to the closer tower. best way to test would be to turn on airplane mode for 30 seconds then turn it off. that will force your phone to scan towers again. if the one closest to you is live it will pick it back up, if its not you will go back to the further away tower.

yep its coming, we don't know when for sure but we should start seeing 4G go live over the summer here. i've found several towers myself that have had new backhaul run to them, still waiting on new equipment to be delivered and installed though.

don't believe any dates a rep says, they unfortunately don't have any concrete info. you will get more accurate info from this site then you will sprint reps. 4G/LTE will go live on towers as they get installed and accepted by sprint, there won't be any date that they all get "turned on". there are a ton of GMO sites that are 3G accepted in the east iowa market now and i've found at least a handful of full build sites that have been 3G accepted. So work is happening all over the east iowa market, its just a matter of time and patience right now for when those first 4G towers go live, could be tomorrow could be 6-8 weeks from now. no one knows for sure but it is happening. speaking of the east iowa market. went from des moines area to st Louis yesterday via 163/34/27 highways and i was on 1x data more than i was on 3G this was even passing some areas that have been accepted 3G complete, so they must not have brought them online yet. didn't pick up any 4G anywhere and was on the west side of the st Louis area and nothing there either. so that area will have a huge shock when they go from 1x to 4G after they get done upgrading the network

very nice! you are even closer to having that new NV equipment fired up and getting some LTE goodness! i'm still waiting for the couple of GMO sites i've seen around here get backhaul installed. All the equipment is there, just need backhaul and then have it hooked up and switched over.

until NV gets done its going to be inconsistent and all over the place. at my work some days i pull 700k-1meg down and other days i can barely get 100k-200k. so if you can handle data speeds being all over the place until NV gets done then go for it. but if those times/days data sucks and you can't do anything are going to piss you off then you will probably want to wait until NV gets done.

nothing new yet, still just backhaul getting installed at sites. I haven't seen any equipment show up at the sites i've visited yet, other than GMO sites. i'm thinking we are still a good 4 weeks or so away from tower work starting. I'm guessing they want to get as much backhaul in place first so when they start tower work they don't have to wait around on backhaul to get done.

interesting, maybe sprint isn't using centurylink for their fiber? i don't know how all those things work but i have witnessed that orange tubing they use to bury fiber in being run to a few sites over the past few weeks. all NV towers are being upgraded to either fiber, microwave, or some form of AAV for backhaul. I don't know the requirements but from other things i've read it sounds like it needs to be at least 40meg down (a site robert ran into was using bonded DSL) and be easily expandable if more bandwidth is required.

no concrete news. basically backhaul is getting installed at the sites right now and at some point in the next few months they will start installing the equipment on the towers. Once that starts happening and the new equipment goes live you will start the notice improvements on a site by site basis. I'm guessing 2-3 months for the first accepted sites to show up and then a good 6-8 months before the whole area is complete.

i'm an excellent multi tasker