greenbastard

On 6/15/2022 at 12:32 AM, iansltx said:

IIRC both topped out at 5x5 MHz, though 1.4x1.4 was more common. 5x5 was e.g. on MetroPCS in Dallas.

I remember Cricket only had CDMA services on the AWS band in Las Vegas (or was it Phoenix?...I remember it was somewhere in the southwest).

The old fabled BC15.

On 4/28/2022 at 5:33 PM, RedSpark said:

 

The company is on track to upgrade or decommission substantially all of the Sprint sites this year; it’s been selectively decommissioning sites since the merger closed.

At about 5:02 PM today (literally moments ago), another batch of Sprint sites seem to have been turned off in Houston. My house is no longer covered by any Sprint LTE coverage and I have no signal anywhere. I guess it's time to turn on the T-Mobile bands 😢.

Goodbye B26, even though you spent most of your life as a congested band, it has still been a pleasure.

On 4/6/2022 at 8:59 PM, greenbastard said:

T-Mobile turned off a bunch of Sprint towers somewhere between Sunday evening and Monday noon in Houston. All equipment is still physically there's, it has just been shut off. The remaining network is now extremely bare bones. B41 seems to have also been turned off from the few remaining Sprint towers I can still access (but I am still able to see fringe B41 neighboring cells coming from somewhere from time to time). I've gone from having great B25 coverage in my house to fringe B26. Putting the phone in my pocket creates "No Signal" situations.

I'm not sure why T-Mobile is doing this. Maybe they want to annoy the very few CDMA users left into switching to T-Mobile devices? Or maybe a bunch of leases expired? It doesn't make sense to just turn off large parts of the network like that.

Another update in Houston. T-Mobile has moved their LTE B41 carriers up to the higher end of the band. On Monday (April 18), the EARFCN for their two carriers was still 40780 (2609.00 Mhz) and 40978 (2628.80 Mhz).

Today, T-Mobile now is broadcasting B41 at 41244 (2655.40) and 41442 (2675.20 Mhz). Both are still 20 Mhz wide (but I assume you could do the math and figure that out yourselves).

I'm not sure what exactly is going on. Sprint hasn't broadcasted a B41 carrier since January/February (41374 was the lone carrier being broadcasted from Sprint). I guess it is safe to say Sprint is down to just broadcasting a B26 carrier and B25 on the G block. 

I'll have to root my phone later to see what exactly is going on. I'm assuming T-Mobile is launching another n41 carrier with the cleared up space. 100 Mhz + 40 Mhz of n41 would make sense if they increased their back haul capacity (which they haven't).

10 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Are you on an original Sprint sim or the TNX sim?

Neither. I switched to T-Mobile a month before the merger was announced back in 2018. Using NSG, I have forced my phone to roam on Sprint bands since the merger closed. Partly for nostalgic reasons, but mostly to track the decommissioning of the network. 

Until earlier this week, I have only see one Sprint site get turned off and have it's equipment removed (and that happened last summer). But the latest tells me T-Mobile is moving forward.

It's the end of an era boys 😟. I still remember the days where many of us were organized and carefully mapping B26 or 8T8R equipment sightings. Using custom PRLs on my Evo3D just to track 1x800 was peak S4GRU for me.

Goodbye Network Vision... it's almost like it was all in vain.

T-Mobile turned off a bunch of Sprint towers somewhere between Sunday evening and Monday noon in Houston. All equipment is still physically there's, it has just been shut off. The remaining network is now extremely bare bones. B41 seems to have also been turned off from the few remaining Sprint towers I can still access (but I am still able to see fringe B41 neighboring cells coming from somewhere from time to time). I've gone from having great B25 coverage in my house to fringe B26. Putting the phone in my pocket creates "No Signal" situations.

I'm not sure why T-Mobile is doing this. Maybe they want to annoy the very few CDMA users left into switching to T-Mobile devices? Or maybe a bunch of leases expired? It doesn't make sense to just turn off large parts of the network like that.

2 hours ago, iansltx said:

In Austin, n41 is now a non-event; you have to be deep in a building away from a cell site to drop connectivity. 

I'm noticing the same thing in Houston. It just goes to show you how bad Sprint botched this treasure trove spectrum. Any time Sprint deployed B41, the range was abysmal in this market. If you turn the corner and lost line of sight from a Sprint site, B41 would become non-existent. Indoor coverage was a joke, especially with those mini macros.

With T-Mobile, n41 performs very well indoors. I'd say even better than AWS does. There are still a few more sites they have to add n41 to. But overall, T-Mobile has managed to do more with the EBS/BRS band than Sprint ever got to do. And this was done in 1.5 years vs Sprint's 7 years of ownership (nevermind that they inherited a Clearwite infrastructure).

Sprint was who we thought they were.

I was always fascinated at how Las Vegas was one of the few markets serviced by AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile, Sprint, Cricket, MetroPCS, and Nextel.

The other forgotten carrier is Alltel 

Not NR related, but T-Mobile has begun decommissioning Sprint sites inside the urban area of Houston. The Sprint equipment that serves two heavily trafficked shopping strips has been taken down. It's an end of an era for CDMA.

On a different note, Dish has been adding several sites here in Houston. In my area, their network will be more dense at launch than Sprint ever was and Verizon currently is.

10 minutes ago, IrwinshereAgain said:

Just curious, could some squatters be hoarding some licenses in those areas creating a shortage of usable space?

It could be a local ISP/WISP that helped drive those numbers up. Remember, those numbers are by Price Per MHz-POP.

On 10/25/2021 at 12:30 PM, iansltx said:

Surprised Dallas and Houston are that expensive. Denver makes sense as it's late-clearing on C-Band.

The two largest markets in one of the fastest growing states in the nation. While Austin was the largest growing market in the state percentage wise,  Houston and Dallas grew way more in raw numbers. (Or at least that's what I remember reading from the last decade...i don't have the numbers in front of me).

It makes sense that wireless carriers are buying based on future projections of population growth.

12 hours ago, clbowens said:

Guesses?

According to reddit, "HINT" is what T-Mobile uses internally to refer to "Home Internet".

My guess is they're going to expand Home Internet in some way, shape, or form. My guess is they're just going to throw in some Google services like Google One with every subscription. Apparently, standalone Home Internet plans are also eligible for the YouTube TV and PhiloTV discounts, so I'm sure that will also be pushed.

6 hours ago, RAvirani said:

This is likely due to HPUE. Carrier aggregation gets disabled when HPUE comes on so maximum RF power laws are not exceeded.

It's possible HPUE is enabled on sites in Austin but not in east Texas. 

I'm talking about Band 2/4/66/12/71 aggregating. My bad, I should have specified I wasn't talking about a weak B41. 

I was able to hit 200+ Mbps on B41 LTE from the site at Banister and 290 on the south side. Pretty impressive since I've never achieved these speeds on B41 in Houston or Galveston.

One thing I have noticed about Austin is that a lot of towers aren't doing CA properly. In East Texas my phone will always attempt to aggregate at least three carriers, no matter how weak of a signal I have. In Austin, getting a weak signal usually mean no CA at all which leads to awful service.

On 2/19/2021 at 11:01 AM, shaferz said:

What kind of generators are in use?  Natural Gas fired?  From what I understand, natural gas delivery is also an issue.

 

Diesel?  Gelled up diesel could cause problems as well.  

 

Neither of the above issues would happen during a hurricane.

 

Not making excuses, just pointing out that sometimes even backup ideas fail,

Generators in my area are all Natural Gas. I also know that my area never lost natural gas. The natural gas outage was very limited to a few areas in Houston, so it wouldn't have impacted T-Mobile's ability to fire up their generators (it sure didn't affect AT&T).

1 hour ago, iansltx said:

Bumping the top-tier plan from 720p to UHD for video is significant though, as is doubling the hotspot cap...and removing the deprioritization limit on the entire network is a testament to how string TMo feels their network is. 

It says existing promotions can be transferred to the new plan for existing customer. I wonder if they'll honor free lines and 20% hookup? These promos were meant to stick with the plan and not the account iirc.

1 hour ago, clbowens said:

Whoa.  Were you hugging the tower?!

He IS the tower.

On 2/16/2021 at 12:05 PM, iansltx said:

Stuff's somewhat recovered here cell network wise, though the Sprint site I was using before is now offline. TMo finally figured out how to run B41 again from the NR-enabled site, which is nice, as that covers a mile or so radius, including a fair number of folks without power.

A lot of Houston sites have generators. yet they're still going offline with the blackouts. What a huge disappointment on T-Mobile's part. Even now that most of the power is back, sites are staying offline. AT&T kept working even through the blackouts, yet T-Mobile offered absolutely no roaming for basic calling/texting. Total disappointment. There needs to be some type of local and state investigation on the failure of basic communications. It's unacceptable. My guess is backhaul failed for T-Mobile.

You can also tell that T-Mobile now owns Sprint as that network also failed miserably. Back during Hurricane Ike, Sprint kept going even with the power outage. Not your time around.

9 hours ago, iansltx said:

So, all of my nearby T-Mobile sites are offline right now due to blackouts. Closest signal is B12 in the mid -120s...no B71 etc.

Fortunately the Sprint rooftop site near me still has power somehow, and TMo very recently (last hour or two) added back a B41 carrier centered at 2680 MHz, next to the 2660 one, so connectivity is fine as long as you're close enough to the site to get B41. B25 is a mess though...probably 26 as well.

Same in Houston. Areas with blackouts have a lot of T-Mobile sites down even though they have permanent gas generators on site. My guess is backhaul is an issue.

Sprint network is useless in these areas as well as they take on T-Mobile users who are roaming.

56 minutes ago, Cardsfan96 said:

Their video throttle is the most aggressive of all three carriers and it shows.

Doesn't Verizon throttle their "HD" feature to 720p?

On 1/18/2021 at 6:45 PM, dkyeager said:

I would say given the Everything Data plan wording and the premium price paid for Everything Data, you should have unthrottled.  

The fine print actually gave Sprint the ability to throttle those legacy plans. People kept saying there was also no deprioritization, but the wording was there to implement one at any given moment.

Ever since Sprint got rid of 2 year upgrade options, that plan has not been worth it. Anyone still holding on to that plan is just throwing money away. T-Mobile will likely not honor something that was never promised. They've done this in the past when they changed the unlimited roaming in Mexico and Canada to 5 GB.

If you still have that plan, I recommend dumping it.

9 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Suddenly T-Mobile comparing their midband to Verizon's mmWave makes a lot more sense.

I took advantage of T-Mobile's free OnePlus 8T+ and was quite surprised at what T-Mobile has been able to do with n41. My speeds went from 20-60 Mbps on LTE during the day (depending on the band) to a solid 200+ Mbps on 5G indoors. T-Mobile just became a real threat to Verizon. Comparing n41 to mmWave is fair game IMO. 

It's quite sad to see what a competent company has been able to do with the BRS/EBS band. I'm a lot closer to a Sprint tower and was never able to get B41 indoors as a Sprint sub. Sprint really screwed the pooch by not properly investing in their infrastructure. T-Mobile is doing it right in urban areas and continues to upgrade existing towers and adding several new ones each month. T-Mobile is likely going to lead in the 5G game for the next 5 years or so.

Does anyone know if the current Free Line on Us 4 is available for legacy Sprint customers? This year alone, I've grown my plan from 5 to 8 lines. Getting a 9th line would mean changing my plan...not I want to leave T-Mobile One for Magenta.

On 12/14/2020 at 12:49 PM, RedSpark said:

Now this is cool. Sprint was so ineffective at marketing and partnerships by comparison that I cringed at times.

Pulling out of mainstream sports and going all in on soccer was a dumb move by Sprint. You could tell Marcelo pushed for this as he loves soccer and had a financial interest in it. It was a move made by someone who is way out of touch with what America likes.

This is the US. Not enough people care about soccer. The sport pales in comparison to the big three sports. This was a terrible investment from the very beginning and the fan boys defended it by saying "but soccer is the largest growing sport in the country". Sprint needed the exposure today, not tomorrow. 

6 hours ago, ZERO_COOL said:

can't wait for this in my market.

T-Mobile is moving extremely fast in Houston. Almost the entire I-45 corridor between The Woodlands and downtown is covered with native T-Mobile B41. By comparison, it took Sprint ages to get this much coverage in town. The scary thing is that they've only added B41 to maybe 1/3rd of their towers, so coverage will only improve.

There's still a lot of load balancing and optimization needed. B41 falls off too quick in favor of B66/2. Also, active data sessions prevent phones from moving to B41. This was an issue early on for Sprint, but they eventually got the network to working correct. 

4 hours ago, jbahlman said:

At one point i was on B66 all the time at our house, but now i almost never see Band 66.  I haven't paid attention to the PLMNs,  i will have to check.  We haven't had the issue in a few days, hopefully they have fixed whatever the issue was.

 

Has your site been upgraded? Because B4/B66 performs worse on the new Nokia AAFIA Massive MIMO equipment in Texas. Before the upgrades, T-Mobile physically split sectors for B2/4/66 and coverage+performance was pretty impressive. B4/66 coverage was actually very close to that of B2 (even outperforming it in some instances).

Now that my local tower has been upgraded, I still receive B12 and B2 from it. But my B4/66 now comes from a different neighboring tower as my home tower's B4/66 is drowned out. As you can imagine, I no longer get the same peak speeds as before since CA doesn't play nice with bands coming from different towers. Even the newly added B41 has a better reach than B4/66 (getting 80+ mbps downloads on B41+B41, T-Mobile just needs to optimize load balancing as B41 thresholds seem very conservative).