kyle_4thousand

I noticed more work being done at the site behind the UCF Stadium yesterday.. They had a bunch of generators there for a few weeks, with a guy in an Ericsson pickup truck filling them up with gas periodically. I have no idea why they had generators there, but they are gone now. The new RRU's and antennas have been up for a little more than a month and it still isn't live with LTE.. Any guesses on what the hold up is with this particular site?

A Miracle has apparently happened!!!!!

 

Site CH[censored] at Routes 31 and 176 in Crystal Lake, IL, has gone live with Band 25 LTE only 14 months after the NV hardware was installed!  This morning, I clocked data speeds up to 34.4 Mbps down and 10.4 Mbps up, with pings between 53 and 85 ms.

Screenshot_1013-09-22-09-05-48.jpg Screenshot_2013-09-22-08-51-23.jpg

 

Why is this important? Because several sites in the far Chicago exurbs (Crystal Lake, Dekalb, others) have been stalled for months, for no visible reason. The upgraded Network vision hardware was visibly installed (new antennas, RRUs) in the summer of 2012, and in a number of cases, 800 SMR for voice and text was activated in the late spring and early summer of this year, and that has been a good thing.  But LTE has been completely missing.

 

3 NV-upgraded sites remain without LTE in Crystal Lake and Cary, and now one can only hope that they get their LTE soonest.

 

Now what will I rant about?  Hmmm.  Well, I was actually chasing Band 41 on a co-located Clear site when I found the new Band 25. No Band 41 evident.  And I have been chasing an elusive Band 41 site in Algonquin, IL, for weeks.  I KNOW where it is, and I get Band 41 signal from it on my Zing only in really odd places, but never near the site itself (so I can't get good speed numbers).  And, oh, yeah, where's that pesky new Band 26?  I guess I'm not out of topics yet.

 

But I am so irrationally happy over today's discovery, I am almost tempted to forgive Sprint for all of its past indiscretions.  Almost. ( )

That's some great news, my parents live in Fox River Grove and when I was home from school over the summer I noticed there was a dead spot in CL along route 31 and in Cary. I'm guessing the sites at Cog Circle by Portillo's and the water tower in downtown Cary are still not live with LTE? When I'm out there I mostly see my phone connecting to those sites when I'm in Cary or Crystal lake. When I'm at home in Fox River Grove it's usually a split between Cold Spring Rd, the downtown Cary water tower and the Kelsey Rd site, and LTE being pretty scarce.

I know that there is a Clear site located on the Ski Jump in FRG, and that there is a USSC site on top of the FRG water tower. I hope they convert those to NV eventually, because Sprint doesn't have the best coverage in FRG.

And those sites that still aren't live with LTE, don't they have microwave back haul installed?

I'm getting so sick of all the service disruptions this week in the UCF area, I literally have zero data 75 percent of the time and connecting to towers 5+ miles away. It's definitely getting worse as time progresses. I wanna go back to Chicago! Service there was outstanding. Do any of you think calling about this horrible service would make a difference?

I hope it doesn't take to long for them to fix it. My phone now loses like 10 percent battery in like 15 minutes when I'm not connected to wifi or on the verizon prl. I know they just upgraded a site on the north side of UCF a few weeks ago with new antennas and RRUs, so hopefully when they resolve it there will be LTE and 1x800 for miles!

So there has been no 3G data on the UCF campus since last night. What the heck! I'm seeing a decent connection to 1xRTT and eHRPD but no data. Anyone know what's going on? In the meantime I'll be rocking on the 0001 Verizon PRL lol

I was at the UCF football game last night and other than data being totally useless (LTE and 3G) I did see on my signal check app that I connected to 1x800. My calls and SMS went through with no problems but data was totally useless even when I did have a decent LTE signal (overall it's crap on campus anyway, I usually keep my phone on 3G only because it likes to hold onto weak LTE). Since I was kind of drunk and watching the game I wasn't able to get a screen cap of the 1x800 but I did map the site broadcasting the 1x800 being at Colonial and Goldenrod. Pretty impressive for the site being almost 7 miles away

I was in Chicago for the last 3 weeks and I enjoyed some great LTE and 1X800 out there.. But I'm back in Orlando now and I noticed that there has been some significant work done on a cell tower site behind the UCF Stadium on W Plaza Drive. I'm 90% certain it is a Sprint site.. Here's a picture. You can see on the middle rack that they have new antennas and what looks to be two RRU's per antenna. Before I left the middle rack had only a few legacy antennas. It's not activated for LTE yet but I'm pretty sure they are super close to turning it on.

Did a few speed tests at my chiropractor in Lake Barrington, which is right across the street from an LTE tower. The upload speeds are SCREAMING. I've never seen anything this fast..

I'm out of state right now, anyone know if there is an improvement on the UCF campus and in research park?

Anyone know what's going on in Cary/Crystal Lake? The Sprint maps say that there should be coverage but NOPE still getting 3G. I am getting 1x800 though, so that's definitely a good sign

I saw Ericcson working on a flagpole tower on University just east of the 417. I'm not sure if that is a Sprint tower but seeing them in the area is hopefully an indication of things to come.

Is Clearwire deploying TD-LTE on brand new sites or are they shutting down previous Wimax sites and retooling them for TD-LTE? I wouldn't mind seeing TD-LTE on the current Wimax footprint at all!

I saw some work being done on the tower on the north side of UCF campus (directly behind the stadium). I know Sprint has panels on the tower as well as Clearwire but it looked like they where working on the top section of it. That section looks pretty dense with equipment (RRUs, cables hanging down, etc) so I am assuming it is for LTE. But the question arrises, is this Sprint's equipment on the top section of that tower? It's been there for a while so I'm just hoping they where having backhaul delays on it. I was going to snap a picture of it but my camera froze right as I was passing by. If anyone is familiar with that tower, I would be curious to find out if I can hope for some LTE on campus sooner rather than later.

It's great to see they finally flipped the switch down by Waterford and E Colonial. I'm still waiting at UCF for decent LTE.

I went to Universal for the 4th and last night as well, I couldn't help but notice how ATROCIOUS my signal is there. My phone literally dies after 3 hours because it's constantly going from 3G to 1XRTT to roaming. When I used to work at the Hard Rock Hotel last year I don't remember the signal being so horrible there, anyone know why it's gotten so bad? 

I've looked EVERYWHERE and I can not find a screen, app, or menu that will tell me what frequency band I am connected to (800, 1900, etc). I like to force my phone to roam and I'm curious what frequency band I get, as well as knowing if/when I get Sprint SMR 800 1xRTT/LTE. 

When I had the hybrid iDen/PCS Motorola ic502 It would tell me right in the network menu. But this was a good 5 years ago and I haven't been able to find a phone that does this since.

I downloaded signalcheck pro and a handful of other signal apps and I still can't find this. I'm also running CyanogenMod 10.1 and I can't figure out how to get into my engineering screen to find it via the dial pad (or any other of those screens for that matter). 

Any insight or help would be awesome! 

I can feel that pain. The only thing that keeps me sane is my wifi speed, which is fortunately 50 and above for a killer price... Got lucky there

 

Other than that, every second I'm outside the apartment it is basically pointless to do any thing related to data . Sucks I pick up LTE but no data! Just a patiently waiting now

I've noticed especially south of Colonial and north of 408 (inc. Waterford) there is basically no data service. I do pick up LTE there as well and you are right there is no data. When I switch to 3G only I still crawl with my speeds (sub 100 kbps). I think it may have to be partly because of the congestion of the area since it is where everyone goes shopping, to dinner, movies, etc. I hope Sprint realizes this and gets some greater capacity over there. At times I miss my WiMax phone because I actually had pretty decent coverage in the area and my data speeds where consistent around 6-8 mbps. (but going into Target or a large building, poof it was gone)

I have noticed some new panels being put up on a tower at UCF near the gym, so hopefully they're getting ready to deploy it further in the area.

Ah thank you! Glad to be on board. I'm pretty excited about LTE coming to Orlando, I was driving through Statesville, NC last week and I got a screaming 28mps down speed on LTE off of I-40. That's better than what I have for my home internet, I was so impressed!

Anyone know what's up with the signal around UCF? I used to get consistent EHRPD 3G running around 2.2 mps but as of yesterday I'm getting shotty EVDO rev A around .450 mps. Still get faint LTE here and there, but i primarily keep it on CDMA only because those LTE signals are barely usable.

I could guess:

1. IDEN shutdown
2. LTE NV upgrades
3. Lightning?

Also, is there an app to figure out what frequency I'm on? I'm curious because of the whole iDen thing as well as when I roam. I remember when I had one of those iDen/CDMA hybird phones (nextel chirp with sprint voice) it would tell me in the menu but I can't seem to find it on the S3 or any app in the play store that will tell me.