New T-Mobile site in Sterling, CT with 180MHz n41 and 1.6Gbps speeds. Absolutely insane!

Went down to Dumbo to test that site on Grimaldi's. The good news, speeds are great everywhere outdoors. I was seeing nearly 500Mbps sitting on a bench near Jane's Carousel without line of sight. The bad news is that in TimeOut Market speeds still suck. They're usable but they won't go above the low teens. The second you step outside, speeds climb back up above 200Mbps. T-Mobile just needs an infill site in the part of the neighborhood bound by the Manhattan Bridge, Brooklyn Bridge, and BQE.

— — — — —

Also the site on top of Sweet Chick in Prospect Heights is still insanely fast.

One more keep site. This time in Coney Island:

T-Mobile eNB 894791

Location: 40.575474469699365, -73.98828739183008

1.9Gbps over 160MHz of spectrum (120MHz NR + 40MHz LTE) in Long Island City. 

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As an aside, I'm surprised that with the amount of LAA T-Mobile has gone through the hassle of deploying they haven't allowed aggregating it with NR en masse or even enabling NR-U. I know Milan has seen LAA+5G on select sites in the past but that feature seems inconsistently deployed.

With LTE, T-Mobile was limited to 60MHz of Band 46 due to aggregation limits on the UE side but with 5G, they could easily go above 100MHz of n46.

1. Sprint eNB 74807 converted to T-Mobile eNB 893446 (40.912314944943354, -73.83685018328866)
   1. Bonus speed test from the site. 40MHz, no second carrier from what I could see.
      
       
2. Sprint eNB 74823 converted to T-Mobile eNB 879711 (40.918340614561544, -73.81986721486727)
3. Sprint eNB 76809 converted to T-Mobile eNB 878027 (40.92748872281188, -73.85343332944689)
4. Sprint eNB 74756 converted to T-Mobile eNB 893809 (40.92371008212241, -73.86538499506544)

Passed by both of those T-Mobile CBRS sites in Manhattan today. My phone wasn't seeing Band 48 at all. I was able to see every other band though. Maybe CBRS is being used for testing as opposed to commercial use on those sites.

NextWave re-emerges with 2.5 GHz private network service 

https://www.fiercewireless.com/private-wireless/nextwave-re-emerges-25-ghz-private-network-service

https://www.nextwave5g.com/nextwave-news

Quote

NEW YORK, NY -- September 26, 2022 - NextWave, a private network service provider, today announced the launch of wide-area Band 41 (2.5 GHz) network services in the New York metro area by its affiliates and NextWave NYC subsidiary.  The initial Phase I network deployment provides coverage over large portions of Manhattan and the immediately surrounding boroughs, including major transportation and industrial operation areas.  Phase II deployments will cover the entire New York metro area of approximately 15 million people by early 2023.

— — —

The NextWave New York Metro service on Band 41 (2.5 GHz) will be fully commissioned over the next month. The network will expand to other key metro markets, with service launches expected in San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Philadelphia by early 2023.   

 

The only way for T-Mobile to get up to 190MHz now is to either buy out NextWave in it's entirety or wait until NextWave's lease is up and attempt to "outbid" them for the right to lease the spectrum from the Archdiocese.

I'm really curious what NextWave wants for the spectrum that neither Sprint nor T-Mobile were willing to pay them to get off of it. Also what caused them to decide to finally put it into use? Did T-Mobile threaten a lawsuit? Luckily T-Mobile has 60MHz of C-band + DoD and a ton of PCS to make up for it.

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

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

21 hours ago, AirlineFlyer said:

Thanks for confirming that my switch to Verizon a year ago was still the right one 😂

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.

On 9/7/2022 at 7:21 AM, T-MoblieUser207 said:

I also passed by Sprint eNB 6879 to see if it's been converted, but it hasn't, and the tower is currently off. I wonder if they are still keeping 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?

Quote

One of AT&T's new strategies to reduce its network energy consumption is to power down parts of its wireless network at night, when it's mostly unused.

Specifically, he said the operator is turning off its 5G radios working in midband spectrum. He said the operator's 5G radios in lowband spectrum remain powered on to handle whatever traffic the operator's customers generate during the night.

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

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Verizon

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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.

3 hours ago, jreuschl said:

https://www.lightreading.com/5g/it-looks-like-verizon-accidentally-bought-$15m-worth-of-25ghz-spectrum/d/d-id/780140

Verizon accidently owns 15M of 2.5GHz spectrum.  Some of it in a co outside Milwaukee that I live in.

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.  

Quote

More accurately, Verizon won A1-3 (16.5 MHz) in some far northern exurbs of Phoenix (New River and parts of Cave Creek and Carefree) and 49.5 MHz in the (mostly) desert west of the Phoenix metropolitan area

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?

4 minutes ago, red_dog007 said:

I got an email from them that said "one price one plan"

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

2 hours ago, T-MoblieUser207 said:

I haven't been able to properly confirm it, but for the past week or 2 I haven't gotten B41 from Sprint keep sites anymore. I haven't had time to check B25 either, but B26 is definitely still chugging along.

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

On 7/11/2021 at 1:47 PM, Paynefanbro said:

At the actual amusement park there is one macro site that all carriers are collocated on and it was completely overloaded yesterday. I had 5G everywhere I went but it was virtually useless with speeds <1Mbps. I didn't see any T-Mobile n41 antennas but there were definitely Sprint n41 antennas on the site. In order to get any usable data, I had to use the Six Flags Guest WiFi. My Verizon line was also on 5G and was slow also super slow but not as slow as T-Mobile. 

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.