LTE4All

What are the chances that a Sprint tower isn't listed on their network.sprint.com site? Red circle is the tower I always thought I was connected to, black dot is around where I live, red dot is the location of the mystery tower, I always thought the cell tower closest to my house (about 1.5 to 2 miles away) was a Verizon tower since when I had Verizon I noticed I always had full bars and about -77 dBm when I drove by it, it's the only tower that I know of that's in that general area and my signal strength at home was decent. A few weeks ago when driving by the same tower, I noticed the same results on my Sprint phone. Full bars/-77dBM, the farther away I got the lower the signal, so it must me a Sprint tower as well. I know providers share some cell sites, but with Sprint I can stare on the phone sitting on the table and watch it go from eHRPD to 1X to Roaming. So I always assumed that I was connected to the tower that I have circled in red since that's I believe exactly 4 miles away and every thing I read a while back said the typical max range for a tower is a 4 mile radius depending on building materials, terrain and frequencies and that would explain my poor coverage. If I'm incorrect on any of that please let me know. And then earlier in the week I noticed I had No Service at all on Monday evening, had service when I work up Tuesday morning, when I got home from work, No Service again. Wednesday on my way to work when I was within eye sight of that mystery tower, where I usually have 4 or 5 bars of 3G, I had one bar of LTE! Yesterday on my way home from work I did some playing. I drove by the tower again, it didn't pick up the LTE right away, I had to pull over and reboot the phone, still one bar, beiing parked directly across from it, speedtests only give me about 2Mb download, and if I drive more then a half a mile in either direction on Clinton St, it goes back to 3G. So it looks like that tower is indeed Sprint, but it's not, nor has it ever been on their map. I'm just hoping I can get LTE at home when it's said and done given my inconsistent signal. Even 1 bar would be great.

Who provides the backhaul in WNY for Sprint? Is it fiber from Time Warner Cable?

Excellent thanks for the info guys. If those speeds hold true in Penfield I may pull the trigger. Nice to see those speeds in Target. If I’m in Rochester on Tuesdays and venture into Penfield I’ll usually hit up that Target if there’s any new movies coming out that I want. If the tower is in the park that would be great. That would almost guarantee me excellent speeds when I’m in the area. And I have high hopes for Pittsford when that goes online. Got some of my best wimax speeds in Pittsford. Best wimax speed I ever registered was in East Rochester by the Paetec office in the Technoplex building. Just under 20Mb down IIRC. I’ll have to check and see what locations I’ll be going to, to do you know actual work . But I believe I’ll have a site in Irondequoit to go to, and maybe one in the South Wedge area of the city, should have a few more, but it’s not all planned out yet. Don’t really need cellular data when I’m on job sites, but it would be nice to have.

Hello everyone, new guy here from the Buffalo area and I was just looking for some feedback. Every couple of months I spend a few days a week for a few weeks in the Rochester area for work. I get put up at a motel and the whole 9 yards. It's been a few months since I was in Rochester and the last time I was, was back in November when I still had Verizon. Instead of doing my paperwork and such back the the stuffy motel room, I'll usually hit up the Wegman's on 441 & 250 or the Wegman's in Pittsford on Monroe, grab some pizza and wings, do some work, eat, VPN into the office in Buffalo, eat, people watch, do some more work, grab a coffee, finish up and go back to the motel room and crash into bed. I'd rather not rely on the free wifi at the motel and at Wegmans and I need more upstream bandwidth then what is typically offered. Right now I still have my Verizon USB air card still active and that works very well for what I need to do. Prior to that I had a Sprint Air Card and always got awesome wimax service at the Pittsford Wegmans, even though the upload was capped at 1.5Mb, which was a killer. Now I'm looking to switch the USB modem back to Sprint as well and get one that can do LTE, but I need some info on the LTE speeds, specifically in those two areas. I usually stay in Henrietta off of 390, but I don't really care about reception there, since all I do is sleep and shower there, if I'm not at a job site, I'm at at either one of those two Wegman's in the cafe. I see no LTE activity on Sensorly yet for Pittsford, but it looks like LTE is alive and well in Penfield. Does anyone have any real world experience on what the speeds are like in that area or better yet inside of Wegman's. Ideally for what I do, minimum 5Mb up and 5Mb down would be great. I won't be back in Rochester for about another month, either last week of Feb or first week of March, depending on how things work out, so I still have some time, but if the LTE speeds are decent, I have no problem switching. Thanks for any input

Thanks for the info! I saw that in searching about the problem but I just skimmed though when I saw that is was about the new Nexus and G2, thinking it wouldn't apply to the One Max even though these are all triband phones. When I get home from work, I'll reread that article for real. But yeah, that makes sense why I don't see much LTE. Kind of funny, I never had an issue connecting to the tower by work. That one must be good to go. By the way, also got a txt message about a week ago from Sprint saying we're a month away. Strange though, my wifes One got the txt, my Max didn't. Wonder if they send out the txts by bill address or area code. My phone is a 585 area code, the wifes is 716, but looking at the info posted here, Rochester is getting ready to be official in the not too distant future as well. Either way this is an exciting time to be back with Sprint!

Hi everyone, Last month I switched from Verizon to Sprint in anticipation of LTE. The tower near where I work (Akron) was one of the first towers lit up with LTE in the Buffalo area from what I understand. I get one bar of service but a very solid 20-25Mb downstream connection. I have an HTC One and an HTC One Max on the account, the One Max is mine the One is my wifes. I just happen to have both phones with me as I wanted to play around with doing some Sensorly mapping on Sunday. I know the One Max has a slightly weaker radio then the One, I could barely pick up any 4G with the One Max. Over the weekend I was out and about in the Cheektowaga area by the Galleria Mall and Dick/Geo Urban area with both phones, and the One was able to pick up LTE without a problem, the One Max would stay on 3G. I was up and down Walden and Genesee and nothing but 3G on the Max and yes, I have it set to CDMA/LTE. I tried rebooting the phone, updating the Profile and PRL, each time I would connect to LTE for maybe a minute or two and go back to 3G Saturday during the snowstorm I was at Eastern Hills having lunch at Dave and Busters and my One Max was on 3G, but kept losing data connectivity every few minutes, same thing at a relative of mines house in Lancaster near the High School. Is this normal behavior prior to LTE launching? I also read something about the phone staying on eHRPD if the 3G signal is stronger than the 4G signal. Is that true? Could that be why I can barely get 4G on the One Max, maybe the LTE signal isn't as strong as it will be one Buffalo is official.