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Paynefanbro

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Everything posted by Paynefanbro

  1. Paynefanbro
    Converted and live: Sprint eNB 74321 -> T-Mobile eNB 347217 Location: 40.711555634592045, -73.90205282897874 Sprint eNB 253648 -> T-Mobile eNB 344966 Location: 40.739909422602764, -74.00570475706513 Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile eNB 310766 Location: 40.760188344416285, -73.96886037075352 Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile eNB 894887 40.80706983542683, -73.91457816360656 Sprint eNB 6829 -> T-Mobile eNB 347832 Location: 40.5971347474561, -73.95019458988855 — — — — — Converted but not live: Sprint eNB 5888 Location: 40.62612064693741, -73.93488926518539
  2. Paynefanbro
    This site is live now. It's eNB 343958. — — — — — Verizon is gone from the roof of the building at the intersection of Flatbush and Fulton. Noticed it a couple of weeks ago but forgot to post about it. That's probably why they put up that new site across the street from LIU. T-Mobile already decommed the Clearwire equipment from that site but refuses to upgrade it to n41. Only AT&T has upgraded that site to midband. Something's up. — — — — — T-Mobile eNB 51834 is a gig+ site. Got 1.3Gbps in standalone mode. T-Mobile eNB 880578 got a backhaul upgrade. Got just over a gig in standalone mode on that site.
  3. Paynefanbro
    I was just in Greenwich, CT doing some shopping and naturally also doing some recording of cell sites in the background on Cellmapper. Specifically I was along Greenwich Ave which is the most dense part of the city. Verizon: Literally didn't work most of the time. Even though their coverage shows the entire city blanketed in 5GUW you'll only be on their nationwide 5G network or LTE if you're anywhere south of Lewis St. Regular 5G (non C-band) didn't work at all. I don't mean it was slow, I mean it didn't pass any data at all. When I opened Instagram it told me "No connection". In a store I was in I even overheard someone asking another shopper if they had service in the store. I immediately knew they were on Verizon. Switching to LTE gave me data although it was slow. In most stores I'd get speeds in the low teens, outside it'd go up to 40Mbps. Above Lewis St. my phone finally connected to n77. On n77 I was seeing ~180Mbps. It seems like the issue isn't backhaul, it's just that Verizon doesn't have any remaining capacity on the LTE side. AT&T: AT&T was slow but didn't suffer from the same "No data connection" issue that Verizon did. Speeds were in the low teens most of the time and peaked around 50Mbps. My phone hopped between AT&T's nationwide 5G and LTE frequently much like Verizon. Also just like Verizon, north of Lewis St. I suddenly connected to 5G+ which gave me speeds just over 100Mbps. AT&T also at least one small cell along Greenwich Ave for additional capacity and coverage and it's doing wonders for their network in the area. I'd go as far as saying it's probably the only reason they're not in the same situation as Verizon. T-Mobile: Not to sound like an ad for the company but I was really blown away by T-Mobile's performance here. T-Mobile is collocated on the same towers as Verizon and AT&T in the region but they have an extra site in the steeple a church along Greenwich Ave that they've upgraded with n41. As a result, T-Mobile not only has the strongest signal indoors and outdoors, they also have the fastest speeds by a long shot. Nowhere along the commercial strip did I drop below 500Mbps. Indoors I was seeing over 300Mbps and outdoors I peaked at over 600Mbps. For the sake of testing I switched my phone to LTE and saw speeds of 180Mbps indoors.
  4. Paynefanbro
    Sprint eNB 9493/5784 -> T-Mobile eNB 216213 Located at: 40.61611028489374, -74.01141959254353 Sprint eNB 6786 is converted but not live Located at: 40.647096399275, -73.97984672978991
  5. Paynefanbro
    Nice, this just prompted me to check to see if it's live in my area and whaddya know, I'm seeing the Dish PLMN inside my house. I might need to get another dual SIM phone to map Dish and Verizon on next!
  6. Paynefanbro
    Converted and live: Sprint eNB 5895 -> T-Mobile eNB 894894 Location: 40.66466311967771, -73.93960182432919 Sprint eNB 6178/7096 -> T-Mobile eNB 435611 Location: 40.78707921692206, -73.92779049281599 This was the Sprint site on the water tower on Randalls Island. Would've been converted just in time for GovBall but that got moved to Flushing Meadows. Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile eNB 326555 Location: 40.723502188026536, -73.8389076735834 This is also a gig+ site: — — — — — Converted but not live: Sprint eNB Unknown located at 40.73044202152905, -73.85233764709504 Got a pic when it was rainy a couple of days ago so it's super blurry but the silhouette should give it away: — — — — — Gig+ sites: T-Mobile eNB 50319 in Fort Greene is a gig+ site. Pulled over 900Mbps while driving by. Probably could've gotten over 1Gbps had I stopped in front of it. T-Mobile eNB 41153 on top of Chelsea Piers is a gig+ site.
  7. Paynefanbro
    Just got back from Jamaica so here's another quick write-up. Jamaica has two carriers, Digicel and Flow. If those names sound familiar it's because both of those companies are pretty much the duopoly of the Caribbean. You can find them throughout the Anglo, French, and Dutch Caribbean operating either under those brands or under a brand that Flow's parent company Cable & Wireless or C&W's parent company Liberty Global operates. — — — — — T-Mobile's Caribbean roaming agreement is with Digicel which means that in every country that Digicel operates they're the roaming provider and access to Flow's network is completely blocked. While I've tried Digicel's network in other countries, what makes Jamaica special is that they're headquartered in Kingston, Jamaica's capital. Because of this I went into it expecting Digicel to have a much better performing network than other Caribbean countries given it's their home market and their first market. I spent my time on the north coast of the country, traveling between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios. The four primary LTE bands and bandwidths on Digicel are: Band 2: 20MHz Band 4: 20MHz Band 5: 10MHz Band 12: 10MHz There is also one HSPA band on Digicel: Band 5: 5MHz Speeds were fantastic on their LTE network, averaging 40-60Mbps with peaks of over 100Mbps. They're making great use of carrier aggregation which provided consistent high speeds throughout the areas I traveled, significantly higher than what I saw in other Digicel countries. It helps that Digicel operates a fiber network in Jamaica meaning that they're able to supply their own backhaul to their own towers, though microwave backhaul is equally as common. Here's some speed tests on 3G and LTE. Check out how upload CA kicked in on that last speed test giving me 72Mbps upload speeds on LTE. What stood out to me was that Digicel still hasn't overlayed their 3G network in its entirety. Even though Digicel has so much lowband deployed, I found that indoor penetration on their LTE network was lacking at a lot of resorts, regularly dropping down to a strong 3G signal while indoors. At times I wondered if Digicel was using small cells or a DAS at some of these resorts but I never spotted any. Luckily 3G performance was good enough, typically in the low teens which was usable for any task on my phone. Finally, here are some pics of cell sites I saw while there (including a bonus monopalm) — — — — — EDIT: I forgot to mention that while you can use your roaming data allotment in all of these countries, Digicel has made it super easy to get an eSIM for tourists. You just go to this site and select which country you're traveling to and they'll show you all plans available for that destination. Super cool. https://esim.digicelgroup.com/#/
  8. Paynefanbro
    Terminal 5 DAS at JFK is doing well. SA n41 is pretty much the norm there. Virtually no difference in download speeds between SA and NSA 5G however on the upload side I was seeing faster speeds on NSA. Slightly lower pings too on NSA. Here are some tests:
  9. Paynefanbro
    Bye bye Band 5. Looks like T-Mobile wants to trade their Band 5 license in Myrtle Beach for Band 71. Post trade they’ll have 30x30MHz on 600Mhz spectrum. That’s a lot of lowband!
  10. Paynefanbro
    Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile eNB 875923 Location: 40.667111078004595, -73.84858333943421 Sprint eNB Unknown -> T-Mobile eNB 894870 Location: 40.68362651903586, -73.8854428368001 Sprint eNB 5848 -> T-Mobile eNB 347837 Location: 40.65273285505563, -73.97331867356841 This site is also a gigabit site. — — — — — T-Mobile eNB 894636 got a backhaul upgrade and is now a gigabit site too. — — — — — Passed by T-Mobile eNB 43727 which is a super old flagpole site and saw that it's covered in scaffolding so it's either about to be upgraded or decommed and moved to the Sprint site just below. The site is Band 66 only and probably one of the oldest T-Mobile sites in the city so I'm glad something is finally being done about it. — — — — — Also mapped a bunch of small cells in Vinegar Hill that hadn't been mapped before. I was a bit surprised to see my phone reporting a strong signal throughout the neighborhood despite the only macro being the one next to the Manhattan Bridge. Now I know why. Given the cell numbering scheme it looks like I might've missed one, eNB 134692-6/16. — — — — — A couple of oddities I've noticed with AT&T: There are a couple of AT&T tri-band small cells in Staten Island that they don't have deployed anywhere else. Most AT&T small cells in Staten Island were installed by ZenFi but these were installed by Crown Castle some time in the early 2010's. What makes them stand out is that they're using the AT&T Outdoor DAS and Wide Area DAS cell numbering scheme instead of the typical one they user throughout the city. I've also seen a few small cells using a new numbering scheme that I think may be borrowed from another region but AT&T has used on a couple of sites here from some reason. For example, eNB 117069 in Crown Heights has cell numbers 67 and 81.
  11. Paynefanbro
    I was just back there last week. I noticed that Verizon installed a bunch of oDAS nodes along 2nd Ave in Industry City. I think that they're easily the best performing carrier in that area. Sprint also has a bunch back there that I'm hoping T-Mobile will one day convert. Yup, QCI9. But as I understand it most AT&T plans are only QCI 8 and even their most expensive non-business unlimited plan is QCI 7. Performance hasn't been abysmal in my experience and has more or less matched performance when I've tested AT&T in the past on their branded (non-unlimited) prepaid services. From what I've seen, my experience on Boost Mobile also lines up with the general experience in NYC according to coveragemap.com. Some sites perform really well here, but most of them are generally much slower than anything VZW or TMUS has to offer. In the case of the test you quoted, that's just a poor area for AT&T as I've come across small cells that are as much as 4x faster than that one. AT&T just needs better macro density in much of the city.
  12. Paynefanbro
    At the Yankees game yesterday I got to test out all 3 carriers. It seems like not every area in the stadium has had their DAS upgraded to include 5G. For example in the Legends Suite I only saw LTE on every carrier but it performed really well; > 300Mbps on T-Mobile and over > 200Mbps on Verizon and AT&T. At our seats it was another story. To nobody's surprise Verizon was the best performing. I was seeing 1.2Gbps on Verizon thanks to mmWave but I kept experiencing this weird issue where my Verizon line kept dropping to no service/SOS. I had to do an airplane mode cycle to get reconnected the network multiple times. T-Mobile speeds were a steady 30Mbps both down and up but I did manage to get one test at 240Mbps. It seems like T-Mobile struggled with deciding what to connect to. I'd watch my signal strength go up and down as it bounced between SA 5G, NSA 5G, and LTE. Sometimes the 5GUC icon would appear and then randomly disappear. In spite of this there wasn't a single test I did that was below 30Mbps. Good enough in my opinion. AT&T was the slowest of the bunch. I couldn't get over 5Mbps on AT&T at my seat despite AT&T upgrading their DAS to include all available LTE bands, even Band 14. It was a consistent 5Mbps though and pings were also pretty low. I never saw it drop to the kbps range in my testing. Maybe they just got oversaturated.
  13. Paynefanbro
    Beautiful day yesterday so I went to Six Flags again. Soon we're gonna have to call this the Six Flags thread lol. I finally got a pic of the site that serves the entire park. It was super sunny so the picture was pretty backlit but I managed to edit it a bit to bring out some the detail. Sprint used to be at the very top of the monopole but their entire rack is gone now. T-Mobile was just below them so they didn't bother moving up since they still now have highest position on the site with Sprint gone. T-Mobile has an Ericsson 6449 deployed for n41, an RFS antenna for Band 2/12/66/71 and n25/71, and on one sector they have a a Band 2/66 high capacity antenna that actually has it's own eNB. Verizon has a Samsung massive MIMO C-band antenna, CBRS, and their usual Band 2/5/13/66 antennas. They also have a MatSing Ball antenna on the sector that faces Great Adventure. AT&T has their standard setup on 2 out of 3 sectors and on the third sector that faces Great Adventure they have 3 gigantic high capacity antennas. They have n5 deployed but no n77. Dish is a recent addition to the site, lowest on the monopole, just under AT&T. No high capacity setup on this site, just their normal single antenna per sector setup. To be fair they likely won't have the same amount of traffic as the big three so this is more than enough capacity for now. — — — — — Just like last year T-Mobile was still the fastest carrier in my testing followed by Verizon and then AT&T. None of the carriers were slow, just different levels of fast. I was getting upwards of 400Mbps on T-Mobile, 150Mbps on Verizon, and AT&T was ~50Mbps park wide.
  14. Paynefanbro
    Verizon ‘not just chasing POPs’ in 5G mid-band race https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/verizon-not-just-chasing-pops-5g-mid-band-race Sounds to me like Verizon is trying its best to ignore its competitors' biggest advantage over itself. Ignoring their competition is exactly what got them into this position. They coasted on their reputation for so long that they never thought they'd see the day where AT&T has a larger and faster LTE network than them and T-Mobile would have a larger and faster 5G network than them. They've got to be feeling the pressure.
  15. Paynefanbro
    Passed by earlier this afternoon and it's not live yet. — — — — — Saw this AT&T site and laughed because check out that uptilt. I thought it might've been a broken mount at first but each sector had one antenna pointed upward like this. Check out the range on this thing!
  16. Paynefanbro
    Spent some time on Roosevelt Island this weekend and managed to map almost all of the small cells on the island. In spite of all of these small cells T-Mobile's performance is really hampered by the lack of upgrades to their macros on the island. They technically have 3 macros, two are on Coler Hospital on the north end of the island and one on the Roosevelt Island Tram Tower in the southern part of the island. Of the 3 sites only one has been upgraded completely with n41/71, the site on the far north of the island. This site doesn't even cover Roosevelt Island. Instead its sectors provide coverage to the Astoria Houses just across the water in Queens and parts of the Upper East Side in Manhattan. The other site on Coler Hospital that actually covers the northern part of the island is ancient with a single RFS and Ericsson AIR32 per sector. The tram tower that's meant to be the primary site for the southern half of the island has an AIR21, AIR32, and one of those older Band 12 antennas per sector leaving us with only Band 2/12/66. T-Mobile isn't ignoring the tram site though. They actually took down the Sprint antennas on it recently. No idea why they're holding out on upgrading it. Verizon on the other hand has upgraded the site to have mmWave and C-band. While standing right in front of it I was getting just under 2Gbps on mmWave and over 200Mbps on LTE. This is in comparison to the ~200Mbps I was getting on n41 from the new site on Rockefeller University Hospital broadcasting across the water. On T-Mobile's LTE network alone, I struggled to get over 50Mbps in front of the macro. AT&T also upgraded both of their sites on the island with C-band so speeds were a consistent 100-200Mbps islandwide. I wonder what the holdup is for T-Mobile on those two sites. Edit: I've been uploading all of my speed tests on all carriers to that site coveragemap.com to contribute data to it. Looks like someone got over 2Gbps around 45th and 6th Ave in Manhattan. Maybe eNB 45491 is a super site lol. Another person got 1.9Gbps right by City Hall. May be a cool way for us to track down those sites with multi-gig backhaul.
  17. Paynefanbro
    New keep sites: Sprint eNB 6705 -> T-Mobile 879271 Location: 40.700897107313175, -73.94338796296525 Sprint eNB 9063 -> T-Mobile eNB 344410 Location: 40.68192690523196, -73.84800823154443 Sprint eNB 73989 -> T-Mobile eNB 216502 Location: 40.67885867359578, -73.80499277403715 — — — — — Also confirmed that I'm mapping a bunch of Sprint keep sites under 310-120. I hit 9043, 6867, 6193, 6256, and 6178 today. While I'm still able to manually connect to 312-250 to see if a site is a keep site or not, my phone is automatically connecting to them via the 310-120 PLMN now.
  18. Paynefanbro
    I mapped 15848 recently last week so it's definitely still live. I think I also mapped it under the Sprint PLMN on my A13 as opposed to 312-250. While I don't think I've mapped 6178 recently my iPhone still connects to it while driving by so I know it's still live and being recognized as a keep site. I don't understand why it hasn't been upgraded yet. Every other carrier is on it so it shouldn't be such a hassle to upgrade.
  19. Paynefanbro
    Deutsche Telekom regains majority control of T-Mobile US https://www.sdxcentral.com/articles/news/deutsche-telekom-regains-majority-control-of-t-mobile-us/2023/04/
  20. Paynefanbro
    Another new keep site in Gowanus. eNB 880679 It's either the site near Lowe's that'll hopefully finally provide good coverage to the Home Depot on the other side of the Culver Viaduct or it's site at the corner of 5th St and Smith St. I won't be able to confirm until tomorrow. — — — — — Edit: It's the site near Lowe's. They kept the Sprint antenna but it's not connected.
  21. Paynefanbro
    T-Mobile Fiber expansion. They're charging $55 for 500Mbps. 1Gbps is available but no price listed. This appears to be a native buildout to individual homes as opposed to what they're doing in NYC which is reselling another company's pre-built fiber. That makes 3 cities where this is available now: NYC Pueblo, Colorado Northglenn, Colorado
  22. Paynefanbro
    Bloosurf is petitioning to deny T-Mobile's request for an STA specifically in their service area. https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsEntry/attachments/attachmentViewRD.jsp;ATTACHMENTS=Ghl9knTSFp8J4nVm1P9qL4541XR1gy58whH7Yyz0MwGs037gQrNV!-2042069078!-79842837?applType=search&fileKey=1297203795&attachmentKey=21718533&attachmentInd=applAttach Short read but pretty much they're saying that T-Mobile's operations in the BRS/EBS band has been interfering with Bloosurf's LTE-based WISP network and that this has caused them harm (lose customers, etc.) They claim that allowing T-Mobile access to all of the spectrum they bought in or near Bloosurf's service area would cause even more interference. To be fair they aren't wrong. They mention that in 2021 the FCC investigated and determined that T-Mobile was operating outside of its licensed spectrum band there. However, I get the sense that Bloosurf is just trying to stop a competitor from operating in their service area. Typically carriers work this kind of stuff out among each other. Here in NYC, 3/4ths of Brooklyn has 140MHz of n41 deployed and the southern 1/4th of it has 80MHz deployed thanks to an incumbent that leases the spectrum from the archdiocese. In spite of that there are no complaints of interference from NextWave in such a dense environment. Seems to me like Bloosurf just doesn't want to coordinate with T-Mobile and would rather complain to delay the deployment of spectrum for as long as possible. EDIT: It's not just their service area, it's a larger area surrounding their service area as well. Something's fishy about this request.
  23. Paynefanbro
    Really cool blog post from OpenSignal giving a broad overview over the mobile network experience in NYC. https://www.opensignal.com/2023/03/30/localized-analysis-reveals-huge-network-experience-gaps-between-mobile-users-in-the-us
  24. Paynefanbro
    Sprint eNB 5777 -> T-Mobile eNB 219211 Located at 40.598077070553046, -74.06554695233527 I actually passed by this site last summer when I was searching for Staten Island keep sites and at the time it wasn't broadcasting the keep PLMN. Sprint eNB 74209 -> T-Mobile eNB 219521 Located at 40.763144172633055, -73.97134451879535 This Sprint conversion replaces a decommisioned Band 66-only site across the street (eNB 42185). Sprint eNB 196271 that's on the keep site map as converted but not live is live now. It's T-Mobile eNB 331073. — — — — — Also the Sprint conversion on the billboard next to the BQE in Red Hook is a gigabit site.
  25. Paynefanbro
    Yup 80MHz C-band + 40MHz DoD for a total of 120MHz. They should be pretty well setup post-clearance. — — — — — Famous Verizon site on Atlantic referenced in this reddit post got moved to the top of the building next door. — — — — — Also looks like I mapped a T-Mobile oDAS node eNB 347812 in Brooklyn Heights. Streetview shows it as one of the CC nodes with no antenna on top as of May 2022 but this specific eNB was first mapped this month. I didn't notice that I mapped it until I got home but the range on it is significantly greater than the normal "antenna-less" nodes T-Mobile deploys. I'm wondering if it got upgraded to the new 5G oDAS design but I won't be able to check it out until next weekend.
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