Joski1624

WiMAX was still blazin' away at protection site that I visited tonight. I also found another carrier frequency. That now makes 6 7 found here in the Cleveland market; a lot of spectrum still in use for WiMAX.

Outside of a few cities and tech blogs this isn't really getting coverage anywhere.

I wonder why? It would make for a really juicy headline.

It'll take more than a WiMAX shutdown delay to ruin my day. I took a trip to Cleveland's WiMAX footprint early this morning and found that it is still alive and well as of 12:08AM. I also found 5 WiMAX carriers too which gobbles up 50MHz of spectrum, so WiMAX is a bigger spectrum hog than I thought. No wonder Sprint wants to dump the network.

Meanwhile in the Everything 800MHz thread...

(sigh)

So I have a question that might stir up a little chatter here. 800 is known to obtain usially better distances than the 1+GHz. I'm curious about approximate maximum distances and locations of connections that others have attained made either with LTE or 1x800.

My personal best happened a couple days ago in the morning via 1x800. I connected to an 800 site just north of Pittsburgh, PA metro from approximately 30 miles east of Cleveland, OH. I crunched some numbers with the coordinates I had of the site (likely an offset, but probably not an enormous difference) and of my device and it came out to a little over 70 miles away. I was cheating a little. I learned years ago that morning propogation enhancement on VHF/UHF frequencies via tropospheric ducting often occurrs in my area. And it is often times even more enhanced in the spring and fall months.

Oh, I forgot to mention that for Samsung markets (Cleveland's anyway), the last two digits in the GCI denote the sector: 00, 01, 02 normally or 03, 04, 05 if connected to a 2nd carrier, if available.  Most of the HEX BIDs are 3 digits with the last digit denoting the sector: 1, 2, 3.

As Flompholph pointed out, results do vary based on the vendor.  Samsung markets seem to have it the easiest from what I have heard.  GCI and BID patterns can eventually be established once enough known sites are documented.  Unfortunately, it appears that most sites in most markets are now using offsets for BSLs which basically requires that one triangulate the site based on coordinates from all 3 sectors.  The sponsor maps do help in these instances.  If you live in a market that tracks and documents sites, a lot of the information for sites in your market may already be available.

    SignalCheck Pro also logs strongest RSRP (or RSSI if CDMA) for a device which also is really helpful in tracking down site locations.  We had an instance last week in my market where I saw some really unusual site information that didn't come close to matching anything else we had already.  BSL offsets as well as device coordinates for strongest signal was the only way I was able to locate them.  Fortunately the person who submitted the logs had all 3 sectors for each site.  The downside to all of this is that it is impractical to try to obtain this information on the fly.  The best way is to download the .csv file to a laptop or desktop computer and open it using a spreadsheet program of some kind, or Google Sheets also can import .csv files, though large .csv file sizes on Google Sheets makes browsers unstable in my experience.

how do you know you're connected to 10x10 using lte engineering screen?

 

also, i know this has nothing to do with 10x10 or even Sprint probably, but I have an HTC phone and while I have SCP, it drives me nuts that it only shows 1 bar for LTE unless the signal is -99dbm or better no matter the band. i wish i could fix that because -100ish on B41 is pretty decent and I think it should have more than 1 bar. it shows 1 bar many places i go and i think this is bad for many Sprint customers who don't have SCP and think their signal is always bad when in reality it's not. oh well.

EARFCNs are the center frequency of the carrier.  In this case 8640/26640 is 1990MHz downlink and 1910Mhz uplink.  The nationally deployed standard 5x5 carrier is 8665/26665 (1992.5/1912.5) which are the center frequencies of the PCS G block which is 1990-1995/1910-1915MHz.  The center frequency of the 10x10 FDD carrier is sitting  on the C and G block boundary which are adjacent to each other.  The whole C block is 15MHz wide, but Sprint is only using the last 5MHz of the block plus the G block to form the wider carrier (a contiguous 10MHz).  Sprint does not hold the license for the entire C block for any of the counties in the Cleveland market, but they do at least hold the  1985-1990/1905-1910MHz portion in a handful of our western counties where 10x10 has been found.  I've seen engineering screens of newer devices that are CA capable show the bandwidth which is 10MHz in this case.  For older devices like mine, it is not shown.  The only way to really tell outside of a spectrum analyzer is that the upload speed in a speed test will especially be higher on average than any 5x5 carrier can accomplish.  I can barely crack 10Mbps upload in the best of conditions on a 5x5 carrier, and it usually doesn't take a whole lot of effort to exceed 10Mbps upload on a 10x10 carrier, plus the download speeds can easily hit 50Mbps when the signal is strong and the amount of traffic is low.

    To my knowledge this is the only place where a 10x10 carrier has been found so far, though Sprint does have different holdings in each county that in some cases are big enough to support a 10x10 carrier if Sprint chooses to put a 10x10 LTE carrier elsewhere.  Chances are that CDMA carriers in these portions would need to be moved to make it a reality.  I don't know the scope of logistical hurdles of doing that, or if that is even an option.  I have only seen 5x5 FDD carriers deployed in other blocks that are elsewhere in the PCS band.  Cleveland has at least two different 2nd carriers deployed depending on where you're located, but it has only been one or the other at any given location.

   Oh, and regarding the lackluster signal strength displayed in the notification area on devices, that was largely rectified with the android lollipop update.  The LTE thresholds were lowered significantly where a -99 RSRP signal or better now yields a full S-meter reading.  My only peeve with it is that I almost never see it drop below 2 bars before I get thrown onto 3G because the thresholds for 1 and 2 bars on LTE are lower than -120 which I only see on B41 once in a while and almost never on B25.

Both of these are from different towers in Toledo

...

 

Yeah, your first speed test is about what I would expect to see for the 10x10 carrier, though looks somewhat loaded considering the signal strength. It still is certainly fast enough that most wouldn't complain about their data performance. Your other two are showing B41 in the notification bar. I'm jealous that you've got it. I live in a county that doesn't have it now, but could possibly stand a chance at getting it should Sprint decide to start refarming their PCS spectrum holdings. A couple counties in my market just plain don't have enough PCS spectrum to allow more than 1 5x5 carrier plus the CDMA voice and data services.

Looks like you guys have got some 10x10 B25 carrier. The upload is almost as good as the download in the speed test. 26640/8640 is where Columbus' is and where it is in Erie, Huron and Sandusky counties in the Cleveland market. I Did this test at the SR-2 rest area in Ottawa County. The numbers aren't super impressive because I didn't have a strong signal. I also saw it in Lucas County too, but I suspect you've got more counties in your market where this wider carrier exists. One site I tested in Columbus market got me about 50 down and about 30 up...pretty darn good for B25 and especially is beneficial in rural areas where B41 doesn't reach or isn't deployed. Has anyone found it anywhere else in your market? Most of the counties in the Cleveland market can't have 10x10 at least where Sprint is deploying it now because they don't hold the license for any or enough of the adjacent PCS C block.

Getting back on topic... I'm sad to see network.sprint.com go, but I'm not entirely surprised. The bookkeeping started to get a little messy towards the end anyway. While it was a valuable resource for me, there's still tools here like the iDEN network map which has helped me track down quite a few conversion sites. As far as new sites are concerned, my experience so far is that true BSL coordinates are initially used. And eventually they get flipped to offsets, but it often takes a few months before that happens. This is where user participation with keeping track of network progress is even more important especially for markets that track this sort of thing.

26640/8640 has been found in a few western counties in the Cleveland market. Details can be found in the Cleveland market hunter's thread.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/6041-cleveland-market-mapspreadsheet/page-16

The post that has a link to an engineering screenshot (about 2/3 down the page) that also shows the 10MHz bandwidth is crossed off because the said site was found by someone else a month ago.

The one does say that it's hosted by University of Hawaii...wherever in the state that is, so at least the closest server is closer than 2000 miles away . I think Hawaii is one of the more recent NV markets. It took a several months after my market was converted to NV to get the ping times down. It gradually has got better as time passed. Even 3G EVDO pings are now under 100ms in most tests that I have done.

Detroit's in the primary IBEZ (100km or less from Canadian border), and so far nobody has found 800 in this zone, only the secondary boundary is known to have it so far. It's still better than the whole IBEZ+20km that Sprint had imposed for the longest time.

I was waiting in my car yesterday and just thought let me do a speed test with my new LG g4 and I got the following:

 

 

Now I do have signalcheck pro on my phone so if someone could tell me what to look for so I can figured out what upgrades have been done that would be great. 

 

I was just very surprised to see those speeds when I did this. 

 

This is located near Youngstown, Ohio BTW.

 

In SCP, a "LTE2500" GCI ending in 03,04, or 05 indicates that you are connected to the 2nd carrier. The only way to check for CA is via LTE engineering screens. You will be connected to two separate download channels (a single upload channel will match one of the DL channels) if CA is present at a particular site.

Yes sir, Band 41 2nd carrier is showing up in more places. I've found a few B41 2nd carrier sites around Warren, but have not been near Youngstown in a while. Nobody in our market yet has provided proof that Carrier Aggregation exists (we are documenting additional carriers and CA in the hunter's threads), though ancedotal evidence based on speed tests such as yours and the discovery that both B41 carriers are adjacent to each other certainty paves the way for CA. I do not have a CA capable device, so I cannot confirm it myself.

Those are actually decent speeds for 1x. Basic web browsing or a lower bitrate audio stream would probably be tolerable

You SoCal folks have my sympathies.  I reside inside Canadian IBEZ region 3 where 800 of any flavor still does not exist.  Despite our handicap of not having 800, 1900 still has improved simply because of the NV upgrades and Sprint tweaked the heck out of B25, so I often don't lose LTE until even the CDMA signal is sub -100dBm.  Sprint still has a reputation around here of sucking even though Cleveland is probably one of their better covered markets overall.  In building penetration, especially in rural areas, is still an issue.  And my phone hardly roams anymore because 1900 is overall better, so my battery dies even faster-especially at work.      Secondary IBEZ zones are finally getting 800, but that's all the movement there has been so far.  Overall I can't complain too much as ATT and Verizon prices are more than I want to pay

I've been scratching my head about this ESMR stuff. I took a peek on Wikipedia and the FCC websites and I can't find a ESMR band, only a SMR frequency band(s). The only explanation of ESMR that I can find is that ESMR, or Enhanced Specialized Mobile Radio, is a type of radio or radio system that has additional capabilities to that of unenhanced two-way radio operation.

Getting to the question about 800MHz SMR band rebranding, I've found that it's difficult to find any information about the progress of rebranding on the Canadian side. Industry Canada's website (Canadian FCC) leaves a lot to be desired and I find it difficult to find the information I want. About a year ago, I went digging through the Industry Canada license database in what is to be rebranded spectrum and all I could conclude was that no new licenses were being issued since I believe sometime in 2012 for a portion the said spectrum and renewals were only a handful (see the post I made in my local market thread and the post below it http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4171-network-visionlte-clevelandne-ohio-market/?p=348645 )

Fast forward to the present, 1x800 is starting to show up as of the past few weeks in the secondary IBEZ boundary here in OH and in the Akron and Youngstown, OH IBEZ exclusion zones. I'm not sure why Sprint waited so long to deploy in the exclusion zones other than they wanted to keep the Canadians happy and not cause any lick of interference (my guess). I'm somewhat discouraged of the local reaction to the progress (has mostly been "who cares about 1x, we want 800 LTE"), but I'm excited to see it showing up in more places because it means that LTE is just around the corner .

Encountered this yesterday near Route 30 in the Orrville-Dalton area (Wayne County), which is within the IBEZ and outside the Akron "crop circle." I found it quite intriguing. Didn't get a chance to turn off wi-fi and test data connection, though. Thoughts?

 

Note: I'm using a Nexus 6 on Project Fi.

I did track the site location down based on your field data and it is within the secondary IBEZ boundary. It's good to have further confirmation of that occurring in our market. The only other one so far that's been found outside of the exclusion zones and within the secondary IBEZ boundary is a site just west of Mansfield near US-30. This may not be a big deal for those with already good service, but for folks like myself who live in rural areas with CDMA dead zones, it is a welcomed development. Also keep in mind that 1x800 is a precursor to 800 LTE and is normally launched first. Those with services from Virgin, Boost mobile, et al. who have an 800 capable device will especially benefit from 1x800 because they only work on the Sprint network.

Displaying 3G while on 1x really bothers me, it's deceptive. I never had the privilege of seeing the icon on a device until recently and didn't like all the animation in the status bar anyway.

I've already found WiMAX equipment removed at a collocated site in my market. No big loss for Sprint apparently and probably cheaper to operate. I just hope Sprint will consider flipping some protection sites to B41 too as it would greatly help fill in a few B41 holes that the adjacent Sprint sites fail to cover.

Edit: Oh, and they didn't bother installing any 8T8R equipmet at the now former WiMAX site, but at least it has B25 now which is still an improvement.

1x800 is probably widespread in the Youngstown IBEZ exclusion zone now. I will have logs with more sites in the Cleveland sponsor Hunter's threads within the next day or so, hopefully. The best part is that it is no longer in testing mode , so anyone with a capable device can connect to it with the standard PRL.