Joski1624

On 1/30/2020 at 2:45 PM, imex99 said:

Can anyone help this guy?

 

 

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The Toledo S4GRU crowd went away a long time ago .  B41 is pretty widespread at least in the Northeast section of the market.  I haven't traveled south of US-20 in a long time, so someone else may know.  They converted a lot of iDEN sites which helped fill in a lot of their rural coverage holes from around Findlay to the IN border.  Probably gangbuster coverage now that TMO is opened up, finally.

On 4/18/2019 at 9:41 AM, clbowens said:

Anybody able to identify those antennas?

Hey, I know where those are. 😜

https://goo.gl/maps/WRs7iXeJrxnXoMKEA

Likely stuck in traffic too. 😏

I think those might be AT&T.  I saw those exact ones when I was traversing I-480 yesterday.  I haven't whipped out my FreedomPop at&t Sim in a while.  It doesn't look like anything VZW is deploying around here.

Started a similar thread years ago, but it since died.  I'm not sure how many of these guys are active on here anymore.  There's probably more than the half dozen or so who have popped their heads in here.

There's several of us hams in the ranks 🐖

We've entered into an exciting new era here in the Cleveland market, former Clearwire sites are becoming full build macro sites.  This means all of these sites will have CDMA 800/1900, EVDO and Triband LTE.  So far 10 sites are known to have been converted, but likely more currently exist.  They're initially Band 41 only and the other capabilities are activated at a later date.  Two of the known sites, one in the Puritas neighborhood in Cleveland and one in North Royalton have all capabilities active.

I'm willing to sponsor anyone who isn't already a sponsor who is willing to submit to me SCP logs containing field data for Cleveland market sites.  This means that data must contain LTE GCIs starting with 082 or 083.  CDMA data must contain a SID of 4396, 4126 or 22441; NIDs must be either 214, 204 or 202; BIDs in Hex form must either start in 6, 9, A, B or C.

Most former clear sites are within Cuyahoga and Lake counties, so data from these areas is what's needed the most.   I don't want to be the only one trying to find them.  I live and travel mostly within Geauga county, so I don't travel to most of Cuyahoga or Lake counties very often.  One final note concerns exporting SCP logs.  Please make sure the GCI format is set to [GCI].  This prevents editing programs like Google sheets from turning GCIs into exponents which renders the field data useless.

Happy Hunting!

I think the scratch issue is mainly related specifically to the Z² Force.  There's some thin protective layer on top which I've not seen on other phones.  That's what gets marked up easily.  Their Moto E line is their budget jobs.  I have an E² which also has excellent RF performance on all 3 LTE bands  That's what attracted me to the Motorola phones.  The Force has slightly worse performance on B26 than the E² and Nexus 5X.  B25 and 41 reception is just as good as the E² and noticeably better than the 5X on B41.

On 11/9/2018 at 4:25 PM, Shade00 said:

I believe the Moto Z2 Force has excellent RF performance. It's also pretty cheap (well under $300 new or like new), has a Snapdragon 835 (like the Essential), near-stock Android (will be updated to Pie), and excellent battery life. I believe it also supports HPUE and Massive MIMO, and will also support wifi calling. Hopefully at some point it will support VoLTE.

The one downside to the Z2 Force is the shatterproof screen. It's got a plastic top layer that is prone to scratches. Motorola will replace it for you, but I'd suggest getting a tempered-glass screen protector as soon as you get it. The tempered glass feels much better than the plastic and will protect the plastic from scratching, while maintaining the shatterproof glass. 

This👆

     I had an Essential and am much happier with my Z² force.  Can attest to the screen issue.  I had problems getting a protector at first and ended up with a few minor scratches despite hardly using it.  My only other complaint is that it's too big, but it was in my price range after Sprint dropped the price significantly.

45 minutes ago, belusnecropolis said:

Doesn't the Pixel 2 have a debug screen that can give detailed info like this?

One can only hope.  My last two phones have had a busted LTE engineering debug menu.

I'll also mention that it sometimes can be extremely difficult to connect to a small cell.  At one site in Ravenna, OH, only one of three of my phones successfully found the signal.  And that was after several airplane mode cycles.

Closing in on 50 B41 small cells found for Cleveland.  On average it's been about a month between when the site is built and when it finally gets fired up.  Posting of cascade IDs at sites seems to be very market dependent.  Cleveland has a lot of theirs physically posted, but there are some markets that hardly have any physically posted.  I can't tell if the picture has a Sprint cascade, or some other identifier.  All small cells I've found have 90XS within the ID.  The same seems to hold true in other markets from what I'm told.

Unfortunately B26 isn't possible for the foreseeable future for certain areas of the Canadian IBEZ, areas in and around Erie, PA and Buffalo.  There's not enough spectrum for more than a 1x800 channel (CDMA Channel 626).

I don't know what you're all talking about.  AT&T roaming doesn't exist here,  and VZW roaming only allows phone calls.  It's why I got the el-cheapo FP AT&T sim.  It's my defacto LTE roaming in every sense (only 250MB allotment too) except for maybe speeds.  I just burn through it even faster.

Good riddance!  Ditching "LTE Plus" coverage should  have been done a long time ago

59 minutes ago, quirkyturtle said:

I believe so. I live in Barberton Ohio and there are quite a few of these things around town, some of them have the tops off without a power box yet. Again, I don't think they're active yet. I saw these in a post on here about spotting Sprint Alpha wireless concealed antennas and a few weeks later they popped up. I work in Canton Ohio and I'm originally from New Philadelphia Ohio. I went to visit my parents the other day and I'm pretty a network vision site was just put up from their original tower about a mile or so away. I'd have to get a better look at it to double check but it looked like NV equipment at the bottom, no MassiveMIMO on it though.

Your observation of finding several in your area describes how these small cells have been deployed so far, in clusters.  The original first found small cell cluster was in Portage Lakes.  Other clusters has been found in Ravenna, Painesville, Fremont, Youngstown and University Heights. Small cells found within Cleveland City limits have been scattered about, not really in clusters.     I sometimes have a difficult time connecting to small cells.  Airplane mode cycling sometimes helps, but I've found that I sometimes just need to sit under the thing for a while.

The expected GCI should be 082Cxx01, and I usually get a solid roughly -60dB signal when underneath the thing.  These ones with condoms are more frustrating to figure out the site ID, but they're more visually appealing to the "average Joe".  Non concealed small cells usually have the site ID right on the electrical box.

Great job on the find.  Please keep us posted on when you find them live

Sprint's coverage maps are a lost cause in Cleveland market.  Our problem is that more B41 keeps disappearing with each update.  My estimation is that about 75% of our macro sites now have B41, but one would never know that by looking at the Sprint coverage maps.  At least with this latest update, most of the former clearwire sites show up again, but basically any additional B41 since the Huawei equipment swap that occurred in 2016 isn't being shown.

Gotta have some great speeds for all the cattle and farms.?  Looks strangely familiar to the Ashtabula county B41 sites that were amongst the first to get the upgrade it in my market back in October 2014.

I'm disappointed that the G6+ isn't slated to be released in the US. It was the only G series model that was to be capable of 3x20MHz CA. The other two G6 models do 2xCA. I guess I might as well stick with my aging Nexus 5X. I'm disappointed because I really love the RF performance of my old X2.

The extent of small cell deployments is not really known because there simply needs to be someone who knows of its existence, and my driving around only accomplishes so much.  If you could get lat/long coordinates, it would be helpful.  The easiest way is to just to go to the site and take an SCP screenshot that contains your current coordinates, pics would be a plus.

Many of the non conceal small cells have had the site Cascade visibly posted.  These concealed ones that are popping up more often now don't seem to have that advantage.  I also recently had one installed near my work, but it's still too far away to receive. It does at least partly cover what is a B25/41 dead spot right in the center of Middlefield.  If Sprint installs another small cell just north of that area (the current one is just south), it probably would be covered well

Just a quick update:

An additional 5x5 B25 carrier at 10x10 carrier sites in Cuyahoga, Lake, Lorain, Portage and summit counties has been discovered within the last month.  In SCP, look for GCI endings in 06, 07, 08 on B25, or earfcn 8265 if you happen to stumble across the new 5x5 LTE carrier.  This now gives us the  same 15x15 MHz (5x5 + 10x10) total of B25 LTE that the Columbus market has enjoyed for some time, though the carrier frequencies used there differ from our market.

B41 is also being deployed at quite a rapid rate.  There's a growing backlog of B41 finds from folks traveling from Pittsburgh and Columbus and have submitted their SCP logs ( @dkyeager has been gracious enough to process them for us).  There isn't much in-market participation anymore outside of myself and occasionally from another guy who lives on the west side.

My observation is that a 10x10  B25 carrier performs nearly identically to a 3x3 B26 carrier at the cell coverage edge when measured outdoors.  Once the signal strength drops below -115 on a 3MHz carrier, data throughput starts to really suffer.  An additional -10dB  can be tacked onto a B25 10x10 carrier before it suffers the same fate.  Maybe the only advantage is slightly better indoor coverage for B26.

I do think it is over conservative for a lot of the Cleveland Market, actually.  Basically any site that has received B41 since the beginning of 2017 is not showing on the map.

Another couple map updates, and we'll be right back to the Cleveland area having hardly any B41. GRR!

@ingenium helped me diagnose why my box never connects to B41 at my local site.  Apparently the box looks for PLMN 310830 from the macro.  By way of network signal guru, I was able to see what the macro was sending.  Sure enough, it was only spitting out the standard plmn of 310120 on B41, but was sending both 310120 and 310830 on both B25 and 26.  So if anyone has the same problem as me, that may be the culprit

Whatever, I give up.

I'm confused, that's already indicated as a magic box GCI according to your screenshot.

7 hours ago, cyclone said:

I know the public request for these on the website is closed and I haven't checked the business area lately, but can people still order these? I know in the past I've checked both my work and home address for service, but I could desperately use this at work way more than I need at home. My apt is nicely blanketed in 3-4 towers with speeds above 100, but my work network pretty much shuts down to 0.1-0.75mbps thanks to the metal frame of our office and sitting between two large schools sharing only a couple nearby towers. Would I be able to order it for personal use, but mainly use at the office?

I got a magic box for my workplace because of similar obstruction issues.  It worked well until the macro became more congested and Sprint peeps at work found out the LTE signal at work improved. Sometimes there's issues during breaks, but it otherwise does the job okay for things like audio streaming.  Battery life improved a lot which was a huge plus.