Paynefanbro

Went to Rolling Loud NYC at Citi Field this weekend. Over 100,000 people in attendance. Verizon is a sponsor of the festival this year so naturally they had a ton of COWs set up at the festival. I counted at least 4. As a result, they were virtually the only carrier consistently able to provide a data connection. I didn't see any Verizon 5G, only LTE. T-Mobile on the other hand was a very interesting experience. I was seeing an eNB 331804 which I'm 99% sure is a COW. They also seems to be doing some sort of traffic management because I noticed that if I left my phone idle in my pocket, it would drop down to No Service/SOS or sometimes it would sit on EDGE. But the second that I needed to send a text, make a call, or even use Twitter my phone would switch over to LTE or 5G to complete the task. In an active data session, my phone would constantly flip between Band 2, Band 66, and Band 41. Sometimes, I'd catch myself on the COW and other times I'd get pushed over to eNB 875868, the relatively new Sprint conversion nearby. The network moved at a snails pace though. Where Verizon took about 15 seconds to load Twitter or send a pic, T-Mobile could take up to a minute to complete the same task. Here's some photos of the COWs I spotted. I think that the first two are Verizon and the one in the distance in the third pic is T-Mobile's single COW, not nearly enough for an event that size. — — — — — Edit: Also no more Sprint at Citi Field

Northern Jersey market Sprint conversions: T-Mobile eNB 876455/56/57 Location: (40.61113401914055, -74.2524862287992) T-Mobile eNB 219129/30 Location: (40.75352065564415, -74.12406427496255) NYC market Sprint conversions: T-Mobile eNB 875964/66 Location: (41.39722227227573, -74.33717864431144) This one is in Orange County but was still part of ex-Sprint's NYC market. Sprint eNB 6881 -> T-Mobile eNB 216104/05 Location: (40.89755146946985, -73.80013909444185) In Pelham, just outside of the Bronx

If you find yourself in that part of Greenpoint a lot then it makes sense. I know if I lived up there I wouldn't be on T-Mobile lol. Luckily Crown Heights is the complete opposite experience. 500-700Mbps almost everywhere.

Stopped by the infamous Greenpoint Sprint keep site and it's not broadcasting anything. Antennas still up though.

Found two more new Crown Castle Fiber small cells yesterday. One in Long Island City located at (40.765999786777634, -73.93646507570648) and one in Manhattan at (40.73974895511102, -74.00523143962101). I didn't stop to check the one in Manhattan but the one in LIC wasn't T-Mobile's. I also stopped at the Crown Castle NG small cell in Downtown Brooklyn by BAM. Unfortunately I was unable to determine if T-Mobile was on it because there's a T-Mobile macro within spitting distance. Because of that I want to say it isn't T-Mobile's but if it was it wouldn't be the first time they've deployed a small cell virtually right under one of their macros.

On the flip-side, performance in southern Brooklyn has been improving quite a lot recently despite being stuck at 40MHz n41. 600Mbps+ is becoming a lot more common and 400Mbps+ is quickly becoming the norm. This result is from Coney Island tonight. Phone was also reporting NRCA but unfortunately I don't know what the second NR carrier is or the size of it.

All of the Sprint towers that serve my home were turned off for a while but they've been back online since at least Labor Day. I wasn't getting any sort of signal from them nor were they appearing when I checked the network selector as recently as a week ago. Don't know what that was about.

How AT&T's network chief hopes to cut a $1.6B electricity bill https://www.lightreading.com/climate-change/how-atandts-network-chief-hopes-to-cut-$16b-electricity-bill/d/d-id/780237?

Went out to Huntington for brunch. Great speeds on both LTE and 5G on T-Mobile and Verizon. 2CA on T-Mobile LTE and 3CA on Verizon LTE. T-Mobile — — — — — Verizon — — — — — Also forgot to mention that when I was passing through Woodbury, NY I saw a ton of little omnidirectional antennas on a bunch of the utility poles along Woodbury Road. I couldn't pull over to determine who they belonged to but from the looks of Cellmapper, both carriers use them throughout the town. For example, I believe this one belongs to T-Mobile.

It’s only $1.5 Million worth. They’re likely gonna sell or lease all of it back to T-Mobile. The only exception is the Fairbanks license which is probably gonna go to some Alaskan carrier like GCI. They screwed up thinking that they could bid up the cost of spectrum for T-Mobile. They didn’t bet on T-Mobile just walking away if they felt they were overpaying for it. I’m certain that the second they realized that they were actually winning some of the licenses they stopped bidding altogether because it was virtually useless for them in comparison to T-Mobile.

Looks like T-Mobile got the vast majority of licenses. AT&T and Dish didn't get anything and surprisingly Verizon picked up about a dozen licenses, the largest being one for Maricopa County, AZ. I wonder if they're gonna deploy it or if those were just ones they got by accident while trying to raise the cost of spectrum for T-Mobile. — — — — — T-Mobile also picked up some licenses in Alaska, namely Juneau and Matanuska-Susitna. Native buildout coming soon?

Let’s see how long that’s lasts. Remember when T-Mobile launched their “One” plan.

Another user on Reddit mentioned that they noticed that Sprint Band 41 was absent in eastern Queens last week. They hypothesized that the second n41 carrier is at 40MHz now but they weren’t able to confirm it.

T‑Mobile Customers Get Apple TV+ On Us with Magenta MAX https://www.t-mobile.com/news/un-carrier/magenta-max-apple-tv

Went to Six Flags again and it is a complete 180 compared to the last time I went. Both T-Mobile and Verizon did some serious upgrades to the on-site monopole. On T-Mobile I got 100MHz n41 everywhere I went with consistent speeds of 350+ Mbps. I even broke 400Mbps in some places. You'd never guess it if you looked at the coverage maps because they haven't been updated to reflect the new coverage just yet. On Verizon there is C-band available however it seems that they're shaping traffic so that most people at the park are on a high capacity LTE setup instead. Cycling airplane mode would throw me onto a strong C-band signal but in about 3 minutes the network would kick me down to LTE as if it's trying to balance the load on their 5G network. C-band speeds were decent at ~200 Mbps and LTE speeds were more than respectable peaking at ~140Mbps. I switched my phone to LTE on T-Mobile and speeds were about equal to Verizon, peaking at ~130Mbps with slightly lower upload speeds. What a difference a year can make! — — — — — My fastest speeds on T-Mobile LTE and 5G: — — — — — My fastest speeds on Verizon's LTE and 5G network:

I'm sure nobody saw this one coming. From the loss of it, it's something big since it'll be announced by both Elon Musk and Mike Sievert. Any guesses for what it could possibly be?

40MHz n41 + 20MHz B66 and B2 in Bay Ridge. No evidence of NR carrier aggregation in FieldTestMode. Seems that T-Mobile decided that if they can't get the spectrum they're just gonna throw backhaul at the problem in the meantime.

Looks like T-Mobile added mmWave to Yankee Stadium: https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/t-mobile-5g-swings-into-yankee-stadium

Cool find! Been there since 2018 according to Cellmapper. The only other time I've seen them leave up a temp site like this for a long period of time was when a nearby site is temporarily inoperable like the one in Red Hook Houses. That doesn't seem to be the case here and it's pretty much a GMO site at this point. My best guess is that T-Mobile wanted to put a site there to fill in coverage but because it's on LGA's grounds getting the actual permission to do so is extremely complex so they worked out a deal with the Port Authority to put up a COW in the meantime.

Recently came back from a vacation where I got to spend some time in Puerto Rico. I stayed around San Juan and Carolina 99% of the time. The network experience there is superb, similar to what I see here in NYC which was really surprising. I was seeing 100MHz of n41 almost everywhere I went giving me 400-500Mbps speeds and even when I dropped down to n71, speeds were pretty much always >100Mbps which was really impressive in my opinion. Even LTE performed well. My Verizon line roamed on Claro and was getting speeds in the 40-50Mbps range which would be considered fast nearly anywhere else if it weren't for the fact that T-Mobile is significantly faster than any of the local competition. Here are some speed tests. 20MHz of Band 41: — — — — — 100MHz n41:

Back with another update! This time I went to Haiti, Puerto Rico, and Sint Maarten. T-Mobile has a domestic network in Puerto Rico so I'll leave my thoughts on that for the PRVI thread. Since my previous update I've upgraded my plan to Magenta MAX to take advantage of the free 5GB of high speed international roaming among other perks. — — — — — Labadee, Haiti: Haiti has two networks, Digicel and Natcom. Digicel is well known throughout the Anglophone/Francophone Caribbean and the Netherlands Antilles. They have a presence in 27 Caribbean countries and Panama and they operate LTE networks in every single one. Natcom on the other hand was previously a state-owned telecom but in 2010 they privatized and are now 60/40 private-public with Vietnam's Viettel owning 60% of the company and the Haitian government owning 40%. Upon taking my phone off of airplane mode, my phone immediately connected to Digicel's network and here's the welcome text that I received: It seems that because Digicel's roaming agreement covers 27 Caribbean countries, T-Mobile has opted to provide a generic "Welcome to The Caribbean" message when you connect to their network. I was able to see Natcom's network via the network selector on my iPhone but I was unable to connect to it, indicating that T-Mobile doesn't have any sort of roaming agreement with them. Attempting to connect to it would cause me to lose signal completely. However I could see via ServiceMode that Natcom uses 10MHz of Band 12. Digicel's LTE network on the other hand consists of 20MHz of Band 3 and 10MHz of Band 5. Interestingly I noticed them use MFBI to broadcast Band 26 too. Here are some ServiceMode screenshots showing Band 3, 5, and 26. My phone never aggregated the two bands so speeds on Digicel's network in Haiti weren't impressive but they were more than enough to do any browsing or streaming you need. For a country with so many people and only two carriers, you'd think they'd be using more spectrum or have better performance on each carrier but that wasn't the case. Here are some speed tests. — — — — — Sint Maarten/Saint Martin: Sint Maarten is the complete opposite of Haiti in terms of the telecom landscape. While Haiti is a country about 10,000 sq mi in size with 11.4 million people and 2 carriers, Sint Maarten/Saint Martin is only about 34 sq mi with a population of 74,000 people and has 6 carriers and technically 7 networks. Because I arrived via cruise ship, on the ocean you can see every network operating on the island. Here's the network selector showing every network. The networks in Saint Martin are Dauphin Telecom (340 08), Orange Caraïbe (F-Orange), SFR Caraïbe (not listed), Chippie (340-03), and Digicel (Digicel/Digicel-StaySafe). In Sint Maarten there are two networks, Chippie (CHIPPIE/Flow) and Telcell (Telcell GSM). Here are some interesting factoids about their network situation and how it works with so many carriers. The island is small but very mountainous so coverage on one side can't reach the shores of the other side. All of the French operators with the exception of Digicel (Orange, SFR, Dauphin) offer free roaming in the Dutch part (Sint Maarten) through Telcell. Chippie uses their own partner network (same name, different PLMN) depending on which side you're on, and Telcell has free roaming on Dauphin Telecom. While I typically spend most of my time on the island in Saint Martin (the French side) this time I decided to stay in Sint Maarten (the Dutch side). Because we pulled into port from the north (the French side) my phone initially connected to Digicel's network indicating to me that they're the primary roaming provider for people visiting Saint Martin. Interestingly, they didn't use the normal Digicel PLMN but instead the Digicel-StaySafe PLMN (which I'm assuming was created for Covid awareness). I got another one of those generic "Welcome to the Caribbean" messages just like I did in Haiti. I was seeing 10MHz of Band 12 on Digicel and speeds were similar to what I was seeing in Haiti. When we finally docked in Sint Maarten just outside of the capital of Phillipsburg, my phone switched to Chippie and I got the following welcome text: I thought this was weird given that I wasn't in Curaçao but after some research I found out that Chippie was once operated by a company called UTC which was based out of Curacao. UTC operated the Chippie network throughout the Netherlands Antilles using a single 362-91 PLMN. As a result, they form a single network on all Dutch islands. This means that Chippie users can roam free in Curaçao, Bonaire, Saba, St. Eustatius, St. Maarten and St. Martin. They refer to their combined network as "Chippieland". UTC was acquired by Liberty Latin America in 2019. This is the same company that runs Liberty Mobile in Puerto Rico and the USVI, BTC in the Bahamas, and Flow throughout the rest of the Caribbean. While all of UTC's operations in the Netherlands Antilles have been renamed to Flow, their mobile network is still called Chippie. Speeds on Chippie were pretty inconsistent due to the terrain of the country. Their LTE network primarily operates on 20MHz of Band 3 but looking at Cellmapper there are a few sites where they use Band 66 as well. Here are some sites I took pictures of in Sint Maarten:

Spotted a Link5G at Clinton and Grand.

T-Mobile forks over $3.5B for more 600 MHz spectrum https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-forks-over-35b-more-600-mhz-spectrum Between Auction 108, this purchase of 600MHz licenses, and Shentel selling their 2.5GHz licenses, it seems like a lot of things are lining up for T-Mobile this year.

Looks like T-Mobile just got an opportunity to expand n41 in Shentel-land https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/shentel-sell-its-25-ghz-spectrum-assets