Joski1624

Got another brief shot of B41 near Rockside Rd & 480 today...only brief

early dawn

I think I've done about as much online digging as possible. I did my searching in Ontario, but I would imagine that the rest of Canada is in a similar situation. I narrowed my search just to 863-869 MHz after I took another look at 800MHz reconfiguration literature and discovered 860 to roughly 863 will be outside of the repacked SMR band for Region 3, our region. The good news is that frequency authorization dates according to Industry Canada with only a couple of exceptions, has only authorized licenses receive or transmit on frequencies above 866MHz since 4/2012 (with the other frequency being below the repacked spectrum). The bad news is that the 2nd chunk of SMR spectrum to be eventually cleared, 866.45-869MHz has lots of new authorizations up to the present.

 

A vast majority of the licenses from 863-869MHz are marked as active (6 designation), so it doesn't appear that relocation efforts of existing licensees has progressed much. So from what I can conclude, Canadian efforts to free up enough spectrum for 1x800 operation seems to be in the works, though still a ways off. There aren't any frequency statuses yet being marked as transferred (8 designation). Unfortunately, enough freed spectrum for LTE operations in our border region seem to be a ways off. I hope I'm wrong on this but the government records seem to reflect this trend.

 

Industry Canada license search (frequency authorization dates box needs to be checked) Correction: It's called Spectrum Direct Radio Frequency search.

 

http://sd.ic.gc.ca/pls/engdoc_anon/web_search.frequency_range_input

 

to help decipher the frequency statuses column

 

http://sd.ic.gc.ca/engdoc/decode/frq_stat.txt

Doing a search at Industry Canada's Radio, Spectrum and Telecommunications division for 861-869MHz yieled a huge pile of public sector licenses just in Ontario alone (over 6,000 results). Boiling it down to indvidual municipalities, it still is probably a few hundred at the very least. Who knows how many, if any, have been relocated to another rebranded part of 800, so we may still be waiting a good while longer, unfortunately. I still haven't found anything about rebranding efforts in Canada yet. I'll make a new post if I find something

Rebanding in the U.S. is only one part of what it will take to open up the IBEZ.  Rebanding in Canada must also be complete, or no narrowband providers operating on the other side of the border.  I have no idea what the status of rebanding is in Mexico or Canada.

 

Robert

That's all I could come up with too. The documentation I've read on 800MHz rebranding seems to apply on both sides of the boarder. I'd love to get my hands on Sprint correspondence with Industry Canada on their progress.

Yeah, if anyone finds 1x 800 within 30 miles of Lake Erie, please post a SignalCheck Pro screenshot.  Thanks!

 

Robert

I'll certainly make it known if and when I see 800 from accepted sites in my area. Hopefully someone closer to Erie county can keep tabs on those.

Has anyone used the CDMA 800 sites around Sandusky lately? I heard a rumor that all the Cleveland 800 sites in the IBEZ were turned off. I'd love to get verification.

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

What kind of verification is needed? I haven't seen anything 800 from any of the sites in the northeastern part of the market, only in the extreme southeast so far. I work about a mile from a 1x800 site and I either get a really crummy PCS signal, or roaming if I'm lucky.

As far as a lack of 800MHz, I think it's more of an IBEZ thing now than anything else. I've received plenty of 800 around and south of U.S. 30. It's just too bad that it is at the extreme southern edge of our market.

tprevett, you seem to be extraordinarily lucky with finding b41. I've only found it near the airport, and as you have noted, the speeds aren't very impressive. I'm still scratching my head with LTE GCI's. The sequence is identical to B25 GCI's unless one stumbles across a Clearwire signal. By the way, the next time you go by that site, grab the info for B25 as we're missing that sector on the spreadsheet/map...Thanks I've done quite a bit of work on it, but it'll go faster with help since I rarely deviate much from 480 when traveling through town.

Has the latest PRL "upgrade" put Verizon roamimg on the bottom rung? My phone seems to now want to hang onto a -116dBm PCS signal, something I can't even really use; it used to switch at about -105. .Utilizing the SMR frequencies doesn't appear to be on the horizon anytime soon with me being in an IBEZ area. .I'm not a happy camper at the moment.

So what ever became of Flash-OFDM? I've never heard of it, though it must have had some big drawback if nobody adopted it even if it was better than EV-DO.

I've seen att adding new antennas in my area recently. Glad they are because I may I have to move to them since my Sprint is still unbearable to use here.

I hope they can get it together because I'd return.

I stayed in Arlington for a few days a couple months ago and b25 seemed to be humming along okay. 3G was slow as molasses during peak times, but I wasn't surprised there. I have a history of falling back to 1x when the 3G congestion was too bad, though I haven't needed that option since getting a tri-band LTE phone. I think band 41's capacity will probably definitely help ease congestion, though I didn't get any while I was there

Anyone else having a harder time getting onto Sprint 3G lately? The first few weeks after most of Cleveland was lit up things were noticeably better for me downtown, but the last couple weeks my 4S will go onto Extended 1x forever. Example: when I park in a garage downtown it will pick up only Extended 1x while inside. Used to be that by the time I made it onto E. 9th St I'd be on Sprint 3G. Yesterday when leaving downtown I was on Extended 1x until I passed Independence on 77S. On top of that, there's some areas on 21S that used to be iffy Sprint 3G areas, and now that the towers in that area have been upgraded with NV I only seem to get Sprint 1x from them. To be fair, they are pretty rural areas, but I expected things to get better with NV, not worse. Anyone else noticing anything similar?

 

Here's to hoping that they are still fine tuning things....

The only difference I experience is that it takes longer for my device to connect to 3G since the NV upgrade, though it usually does it within 60 seconds. It use to average 15 seconds or less when the Motorola equipment was in place. It's not a huge issue for me since I'm primarily in LTE service areas, but super annoying if I'm streaming music while traveling and the phone has to switch to 3G. No amount of buffering seems to make up for the lag in the switchover.

My local club is setting up two stations at separate locations. Not sure if I'll operate, but I'll try to pop my head in for a bit.

AB8MO - Cleveland, OH

I talked to a sprint rep today and idk how good his info was but he told me most of the towers in the stow and Kent area only have 1 or 2 sectors complete. He said many of them are only 1 sector complete so only 1 of the 3 sides of the tower are done. That's why you might get strong signal at one place then little to none on the other side of the tower.

Sent from my HTC M8

That makes sense to me, although why would they only upgrade one of the sectors and leave the rest for another time?

I also don't think that they've taken iDEN conversions into account either.

The Sprint coverage map was updated on 6/13/2014 and now Cleveland is there as having LTE coverage.

 

I think that's a little premature, as there are still several places where I can't get LTE.

Nah, I don't think so.There's far more LTE penetration here than in other launched markets.  However, I think it's real wishful on Sprint's part to have this kind of LTE footprint unless perhaps they somehow have SMR-LTE up their sleeve somewhere.  In my observations, the "best" areas indicate LTE coverage, no matter how good or lousy, and "fair' often times means no LTE reception at all.

Very impressive for low signal strength.

Here in Houston, when I'm on b41 my upload speeds are usually around 1mbps, where as my downloads are usually around 20-40mbps .  It almost seems like the upload speeds are similar to the old wimax cap of 1.5mbps. The fastest upload I've seen is around 3mbps, and that was a great signal where I was getting  around 55mbps downloads speeds.

That's odd, most places I've found, including my home market of Cleveland, generally have had a ratio of about 3:1, so I've managed to test down up to 32MBPS and upload was around 10. Those measurements were done within a 1/4 mile of the tower line of sight on b25. I think It's entirely possible that channel congestion could be a factor too, especially if you're in a densely populated area. I only have ever acheived those b25 speeds in rural areas. Urban areas are typically half that or less. Despite b41 being more roomey (20MHz channels last I heard on this forum), I think congestion could still bog things down if enough users are connected to the same site.

Sorry I said anything... I wasn't trying to ruffle any feathers here.

So I'm curious if or when the NV running list will be updated again. A couple of Ohio markets have made significant progress since the April update, and it'd be nice to see it on paper, so to speak

I've only connected to 800Mhz in the area once, and that was a tower near Jamestown, PA. I traveled to VA last month and connected to 800Mhz several times, so I know the phone works. There are a few sites in my area that are supposedly 800Mhz capable, but I've never seen it. My phone just kicks into roaming once the 1.9Ghz signal is gone.

Yeah, the one on Frost Rd. seems to be in a good location as I connected to it when I was in Bainbridge (Geauga County). Unfortunately with the foliage mostly out now, it further attenuates radio signals, especially being primarily 1.9GHz too. I lose LTE more frequently when I travel now since all the leaves came out a couple weeks ago.

I think local interference/noise sources and/or obstructions are a big factor in how well ones data connection works. In a more populated area, I've found that LTE signals of -115dBm are almost useless. However in open or more rural areas, I've experienced LTE signals around -125dBm that were able to pull faster than 3G speeds.