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Paynefanbro

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Everything posted by Paynefanbro

  1. Paynefanbro
    Looks like T-Mobile added themselves to the DAS in my office in midtown. I noticed I had a much stronger signal than normal and confirmed the existence of a new LTE eNB but it has an older 5-digit numbering scheme. No 5G on the DAS but I'm glad to see them join anyway. Now I have full signal everywhere in the building. Speeds are fine at ~50Mbps which is slightly faster than what I get on the AT&T and Verizon DAS in here but pings are terrible at 100-200ms. I'm hoping it'll improve over time though as today is the first day it's active. — — — — — Edit: DAS turned off for about an hour for all carriers and came back. Now pings are 30-40ms with peak speeds over 100Mbps on T-Mobile. Edit 2: Looks like Band 2 is at 10MHz on the DAS as opposed to 15MHz on macros. Band 66 is at 20MHz though.
  2. Paynefanbro
    Impeccable timing https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/5g-home-internet-puerto-rico
  3. Paynefanbro
    Just got back from Puerto Rico. I spent a lot of time going around the San Juan metro area, predominantly in Viejo San Juan, Santurce, Isla Verde, and a short stop in University Gardens. T-Mobile's network still performs as well today as it did when I last tested and in my opinion is the best on the island. n41 is still at 100MHz in most areas though I did record a few areas with only 80MHz. Yesterday the FCC announced that they're finally granting T-Mobile their Auction 108 winnings so we'll probably finally see that increase. They also have 15MHz of n25 and 15MHz of n25 and 15MHz n71. The fastest speed I recorded while there was 922 down and 120 up, presumably aggregating n41+n25 and potentially n71 as well but I wasn't able to confirm that. A couple of things I noticed about their network are that their is a ton of split-sector n25 deployed in San Juan, much like in the U.S. I even noticed some n41 sites that had 4 or more sectors. The weirdest being the site on top of SJU Airport where they have 6 n41 sectors each broadcasting 80MHz of n41. AT&T SIMs roam on LIberty's network but they still treat it as the home network. In my opinion they're the second best network in Puerto Rico. Liberty is still using the AT&T MCC-MNC code and is pretty much coasting on AT&T's network upgrades. They have 10MHz n5 virtually everywhere but I never saw my phone connect to any other 5G bands. Their saving grace was just how much spectrum they have to aggregate across midband and lowband. I'd see combos like 10MHz n5 + 20MHz B2 + 10MHz B66 + 10MHz Band 30 + 5MHz Band 2 and get upwards of 200Mbps. Coverage was slightly worse than T-Mobile in my experience, even indoors which is a surprise given T-Mobile usually struggles a bit indoors due to their macro density. Verizon is roaming on Claro in Puerto Rico just as they have been for years. No idea if there is 5G roaming because I was connected to LTE the entire time. Toggling 5G didn't do anything and both pings and speeds weren't great. Speeds were in the 20-40Mbps range consistently and pings over 200ms. For comparison T-Mobile's pings are in the teens and Liberty pings are in the 40's even when roaming using an AT&T SIM. Claro's network is ok in my experience with nothing really notable about it. — — — — — Here are some pics of sites that I took:
  4. Paynefanbro
    I noticed that on my Boost line. I ended up mapping some 2G on Cellmapper because of that lol. Looked like it would connect to T-Mobile 2G for a bit and then disconnect and show no signal. Thankfully it's back up and running.
  5. Paynefanbro
    Nationwide AT&T outage occurring right now affecting all of their brands, MVNOs, and even FirstNet. Although this kind of outage is rare, I bet Verizon and T-Mobile are both gonna try to use this to pull First Responders to their network or at least consider them for backup services. https://www.theverge.com/2024/2/22/24079910/att-network-outage-sos-mode
  6. Paynefanbro
    T-Mobile is willing to give up 20MHz of AWS,PCS, or BRS in Kauai and Maui to expedite assignment of their Auction 108 winnings. https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsEntry/attachments/attachmentViewRD.jsp?applType=search&fileKey=175210842&attachmentKey=21924918&attachmentInd=applAttach
  7. Paynefanbro
    Got my fastest n41 speed test ever on a pretty unassuming macro while driving on the Wilbur Cross Parkway in Woodbridge, CT on Friday. Was stuck in a bit of traffic and ran a speedtest and got nearly 2Gbps.
  8. Paynefanbro
    Just got back from Boston where they now have 180MHz of n41 deployed. I was floored by the network there. It's funny reading my previous posts about Boston in comparison to now because it's a night and day difference. Speeds there are insane and I'd go as far as saying a somewhere between a third and half of all of the upgraded sites have multi-gig backhaul. One thing I noticed was that upload speeds seem to be slower than what I typically see here in NYC with the exception of small cells. Not certain why that's the case. There are still a decent number of sites that haven't been upgraded yet thanks to Boston's weird laws about concealing macros on buildings but speeds were still fantastic everywhere I went. On top of that they have a million midband small cells deployed for added capacity that are easily capable of speeds over 1Gbps on 5G and >300Mbps on LTE. I'd encounter them Downtown, Back Bay, South Boston, Dorchester, etc. Just non-stop n41 small cells. — — — — — Also had a Verizon and AT&T line for testing. For whatever reason, my phone struggled to connect to C-band on AT&T in Boston but it's not as if there is much C-band available. Instead my phone seemed to prefer n5 in most areas. On sites where C-band is installed, they also install DoD spectrum unlike in NYC. Speeds are great when I connected, usually around 500Mbps. Boston is an Ericsson market for AT&T and on upgraded small cells you'll often find little Ericsson mmWave antennas installed. The phone I use to test AT&T doesn't have mmWave so I couldn't determine how well it performed but on LTE I'd see speeds upward of 150Mbps. — — — — — Verizon has a lot of mmWave deployed in Boston in tons of neighborhoods. I didn't take any photos but they typically just look like 3 Samsung mmWave antennas attached to the top of a pole. Speeds are great with me getting 2-3Gbps when I connected. There is also plenty C-band which got me speeds up to 900Mbps but average in the 500-600Mbps range. One thing I noticed about Verizon here is that they haven't enabled ENDC on their older small cells which leads to some issues where if you're connected to LTE on an old small cell, you're phone will flat out refuse to connect to 5G. What I'd often do is cycle airplane mode which would force my phone to scan for 5G and connect to that first. However if your phone is idle, it'll drop back down to LTE and get stuck on that small cell. — — — — — Last point, there is a DAS in the Prudential Center that I tested on my last day in Boston. AT&T had ENDC enabled so I was able to connect to n5 from outside the mall and aggregate with Band 2 inside the mall for speeds of about 80Mbps. Verizon had LTE pulling speeds of about 150Mbps but because there is no ENDC enabled, my phone wouldn't connect to 5G at all. T-Mobile on the other hand got speeds up to 1.1Gbps on 5G and when I tested on LTE, I saw speeds above 200Mbps. — — — — — Edit: I counted about 36 n41 small cells that I connected to in my 3 days there.
  9. Paynefanbro
    I connected to 4xCA in midtown. — — — — — Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile eNB 348926
  10. Paynefanbro
    Looks like T-Mobile is now on the site near Bear Mountain Inn that Verizon built in 2020 and AT&T joined in 2021. — — — — — The Sprint conversion on One Brooklyn Bridge Park (360 Furman St) actually has much better range than we initially thought. It seems that the antenna is adjusted downward to cover Furman St and Brooklyn Bridge Park. I maintained a much stronger signal driving along there than I did walking along the promenade or driving on the BQE. On Furman I stayed connected to the site all the way to Clark St where I only disconnected because I connected to the small cell near the Cranberry Street Ventilation Shaft. — — — — — Also spotted a new Verizon site on top of 10-25 Jackson Ave in Long Island City, continuing the trend of Verizon immediately hopping onto newly constructed buildings. I wish the other carriers were as proactive about new builds. T-Mobile used to be fairly good about building new sites before the Sprint merger and they're finally wrapping those up so we'll probably start seeing more but AT&T rarely ever adds new sites. Even the new AT&T site on Vanderbilt & Myrtle in Clinton Hill was built to replace another site that got decommissioned two blocks over.
  11. Paynefanbro
    Atlantic Ave/Barclays Center has an n41 DAS but they haven't upgraded the entire station yet. For example, the 2/3/4/5 station and transfer concourse all have n41 but the Pacific St platform on the D/N/R is still LTE only even though it does have the NR flag switched so it'll say 5G in the status bar. Difference in speed between the transfer concourse and Pacific St. — — — — — I've also seen the 5GUC icon at High St on the A/C line but I've never run a speed test or managed to get Service Mode on the iPhone to update in time to determine if it's really an upgraded DAS. — — — — — Also 4xCA seems to be making it's way into NYC. https://x.com/milanmilanovic/status/1753499407528415665?s=20
  12. Paynefanbro
    Not much has changed. AT&T is still trying to convince the FCC to not grant T-Mobile the licenses they won, especially in areas where T-Mobile would have significantly more spectrum than their competition. The latest reply is focusing on Hawaii since T-Mobile would have ~190MHz of n41 post assignment while no C-band spectrum was auctioned in Hawaii so AT&T and Verizon will pretty much not be able to compete on speed or capacity. I still think it's stupid that AT&T is attempting to stop T-Mobile from getting spectrum it won fairly just because they didn't have foresight. They spent so much time and money attempting to become a media conglomerate that by the time they realized they were failing and that they needed to double down on telecomm, T-Mobile surpassed them.
  13. Paynefanbro
    mmWave is great for raw speed but one thing I've noticed about Verizon's mmWave iDAS (at least here in NYC) is that they seem to have a limit to how many simultaneous connections they can handle and will simply kick you off once it reaches that limit. At least 3 stadiums/arenas in the NYC area I've connected to mmWave and gotten upwards of 2Gbps and then suddenly my phone gets kicked off the network off and says SOS in the status bar. Then I have to cycle airplane mode to get connected again. I haven't experienced that with the n41 iDAS on T-Mobile at these same arenas.
  14. Paynefanbro
    Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile gNB 1371640 Location: 132-07 14th Ave, College Point, NY 11356 (40.78749217352727, -73.83569067377078) Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile gNB 1358277 Location: 81 W 104th St, New York, NY 10025 (40.79795431905179, -73.96330050041114) Decommission permit came in recently for the T-Mobile site on the shorter building. It's already offline. — — — — — A second mmWave node in Times Square (n260 at 400MHz). Good to see T-Mobile going all out deploying both mmWave and n41 in a single small cell. Hopefully we see a larger deployment this year focused on high density commercial areas at least initially. Areas like Fulton Mall, Fordham Road, Downtown Flushing, etc. could really benefit from these. Even a deployment in the lesser known "Main Streets" like 5th Ave in Sunset Park, 86th Street in Bath Beach/Gravesend, or Flatbush Ave/Church Ave in East Flatbush would be cool.
  15. Paynefanbro
    I think one person reported seeing it in eastern Queens but it may have just been a site bleeding over from Nassau County. It seems to be online there but not here in the city.
  16. Paynefanbro
    This site is live now. It's gNB 1088940/1088852 | eNB 109354 What's interesting about this site is that it is 140MHz despite all of the sites nearest to it being 80MHz. I've marked all 40+40MHz sites with a red dot and the green sites are all 100+40MHz. The site with the highlighted coverage area is the conversion. There has to be some amount of overlap/interference from the site just north of it in addition to NextWave's network.
  17. Paynefanbro
    Orange County update: I thought T-Mobile had 80MHz of n41 in Orange County, NY but they actually have 70MHz live split into one 40MHz carrier and one 30MHz carrier. It's my first time seeing that carrier size on T-Mobile's network. — — — — — I was at Woodbury earlier today and was unable to replicate the issues with NR aggregation that some others were seeing on their MVNO lines. I have a Tello prepaid line which is the same QCI as Boost Infinite and I was seeing 15MHz Band 2 + 40MHz n41 + 15MHz n71 + 20MHz Band 66. — — — — — I also drove a bit further north to Middletown both yesterday and today. T-Mobile built a new site on top of Touro College of Osteopathic Medicine's campus in Middletown. It's difficult to overstate how much this has improved coverage in Middletown. A friend of mine has a home in Middletown that had really poor coverage on T-Mobile. It was so bad that she had to have a T-Mobile Cellspot in her home just to make calls on her phone. She now has a full signal in her home thanks to this new site. T-Mobile shares this rooftop with both AT&T and Verizon and all carriers have upgraded their respective sites. Verizon has 160MHz C-band deployed, AT&T has C-band and DoD deployed for a total of 120MHz, and T-Mobile has 70MHz of n41 deployed. Oddly on AT&T my phone refused to aggregate DoD and C-band. Instead it would connect to one carrier or the other individually. Another quirk is that the new T-Mobile site seems to have super inconsistent standalone 5G. On most sites my Android phone will camp on standalone 5G without issue but on this site it seems to connect to NSA 5G almost exclusively and occasionally for a few seconds standalone 5G will activate but then I'll get kicked off. Other sites in Middletown don't have this same issue. I'm thinking it's some sort of software issue with the site. Thankfully it doesn't affect performance. — — — — — Here are some speed tests on all 3 carriers from in my friend's living room: Verizon 5G and LTE T-Mobile 5G and LTE AT&T 5G Verizon's performance is amazing but it's cool to see the performance T-Mobile is getting out of so little midband with multi-gig backhaul. They're holding their own against Verizon despite Verizon having over 2x the midband spectrum. I was seeing similar speeds on AT&T no matter if I was on C-band or DoD so I have to assume they were splitting the load over the two bands instead of aggregating them to increase throughput. I just wish I was able to aggregate the two because then I'd probably see speeds a lot more comparable to the other two.
  18. Paynefanbro
    This site is now live. gNB 1339372 | eNB 895413 — — — — — Tried to do some mapping in Staten Island and found what I think might be a gig+ site there. Got this while driving by T-Mobile gNB 1340847 earlier today. It's only 743Mbps but most 1Gbps sites in Staten Island cap out in the high 400's. — — — — — Sprint eNB 6235 -> T-Mobile eNB 219116/gNB 1345585 This site is on the keep site map on the outskirts of Goshen, NY near Mechanicstown.
  19. Paynefanbro
    I'm pretty sure Sprint eNB 839191 on the keep site map in Bushwick is the Sprint site located at 101 Wyckoff Ave Brooklyn, NY 11237. Even though it's right across the street from a converted T-Mobile site, there has been no decommission permit submitted for it yet. T-Mobile eNB 53596 could end up getting decommissioned or it could be a situation like T-Mobile gNB 1355290 where the sectors are rearranged on the conversion to minimize interference between sites and boost coverage and capacity in a specific direction.
  20. Paynefanbro
    We have a cluster of n66 sites here in Brooklyn. No idea if they're active all the time or only some of the time but it seems like every couple of months someone ends up mapping it again. The last time it was spotted here was November 2023.
  21. Paynefanbro
    Was in the Barclays Center yesterday. AT&T has 5G+ in the arena according to their coverage map which I'm assuming means mmWave because my test line on AT&T was only able to see LTE from the DAS and no midband at all. I think T-Mobile has n41 deployed on the DAS there. Speeds were reasonable for what looked like a sold out game. I was seeing anywhere from 40-80Mbps. Weirdly T-Mobile seems to be running 10MHz Band 2 in the arena as opposed to the 15MHz we see outside. I was able to see a single 100MHz n41 carrier but I was unable to confirm the existence of a second carrier. — — — — — New Gig+ Sites: eNB 40972 eNB 50450 eNB 41430 eNB 45733 eNB 41286 — — — — — More decommissioned sites from the keep site map: Sprint eNB 253671 located at 128-11 Newport Ave, Far Rockaway, NY 11694 Sprint eNB 6214 located at 41-16 51st St, Flushing, NY 11377 Sprint eNB 6295 located at 37-18 Northern Blvd, Queens, NY 11101 Sprint eNB 6727 located at 89-01 Astoria Blvd, East Elmhurst, NY 11369 Sprint eNB 6877/9452 located at 915 84th St, Brooklyn, NY 11228 — — — — — I think eNB 15833 on the keep site map is the same as T-Mobile eNB 326104 which already got converted. — — — — — Sprint eNB 6208 -> T-Mobile gNB 1355290 Location: 40.726957115554065, -73.89562912664496 Site has gig+ backhaul. Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile gNB 1350688 Location: 40.76419435322034, -73.8102723335394 Site has gig+ backhaul. Sprint eNB 6300 -> T-Mobile gNB 1328802 Located at: 40.76686150886295, -73.90548642920258
  22. Paynefanbro
    T-Mobile Delivers Another World’s First with 6-Carrier Aggregation https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/t-mobile-delivers-another-worlds-first-with-6-carrier-aggregation Now we just have to wait on devices that can aggregate six sub-6GHz carriers.
  23. Paynefanbro
    Did the same thing on Sunday. It's entirely possible that where you're standing you're connected to eNB 879451 in Manhattan. I walked the entire promenade to see if I could map the range of the site and quickly realized that it's not great. I was honestly confused that I could be standing within eyeshot of this new site and still getting coverage from across the water. From your pic it looks like you're just past Montague which funnily enough is exactly where coverage cuts out from that site. — — — — — As an aside I mapped like four n41 small cells in the southern section of Brooklyn Heights each pushing nearly a 1Gbps.
  24. Paynefanbro
    Slightly better pic. It's pretty fast too. Just wish coverage on this site were better.
  25. Paynefanbro
    I might be wrong but I think this is actually a new antenna and it's live. I drove by the site this evening and it seems like I'm actually picking up n41 from it. I think gNB ID 1345521 and eNB 219025 both map to this site. Is this a passive 8-port antenna? I'm gonna swing by again tomorrow to see if I can figure out what's up with this site.
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