greenbastard

12 minutes ago, red_dog007 said:

I think I discovered why my signal (TMobile) was barely one bar for a little while.  Picked up B41 on TMobile.  It is just a single 20MHz carrier at 2600MHz.  Premerger Sprint wasn't using this block. It was something like 2628 to 2668.

What market?

5 minutes ago, iansltx said:

Dunno about that. BC10 1x carries a long ways, and easy enough to optimize that 1xA channel for coverage rather than capacity as the number of folks needing CDMA for voice drops. I'd be a lot more concerned about fringe data issues than voice coverage.

Depends on the terrain. But for every tower removed, my guess the nearby vicinity will have indoor coverage issues (1x800 or not). You also run into issues with voice capacity. As more users crowd an enlarged sector, the more calls will fail to go through/drop. 

30 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Not everybody has a phone that can do that. 

Or is savvy enough to do it or understand the process. Phones without VoLTE are going to be severely handicapped moving forward (which is a massive amount of Sprint users). Decommissioning Sprint towers means removing 1xRTT coverage (specifically, indoor coverage).

It's a bold move by T-Mobile. Especially since Verizon is also killing off CDMA in major urban areas, so there isn't any roaming to fallback on.

1 hour ago, dro1984 said:

SDX Central News article:   T-Mobile Details $40B Network Upgrade Strategy

From that article;

...through redundant site decommissions on the back half of its network integration project, which it expects to wrap up

before the end of the current quarter.

Sprint customers are about to have a bad time.

38 minutes ago, red_dog007 said:

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/dish-marks-progress-5g-network-build

States that Dish is looking to launch one market by end of year.  Wonder which city this will be.

My guess is Knoxville, TN. 

3 hours ago, RAvirani said:

That's not necessarily true. Most markets had three L2500 carriers (60 MHz) with some markets, such as Seattle, boasting up to five carriers for 100 MHz of L2500 on air. 

In my experience, the markets that had 5 B41 carriers didn't have it on every tower. It was a limited rollout. Now that may have changed after I left Sprint, but I highly doubt it since Dallas and Houston were still littered with old Clearwire equipment.

21 hours ago, ingenium said:

How did you get those?

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 

Have one from when I signed up, then the other two from promotional offers were T-Mobile gives out free lines with no strings attached. This last one was from the 4th of July deal last month. It wasn't publicized at all, but a ton of people got it (without even knowing the promo was active).

On 8/7/2020 at 3:12 PM, Paynefanbro said:

I don't think it's T-Mobile trying to pull the wool over people's eyes with this announcement. 

Let's not leave out the fact TMUS loves to give out "free lines" every blue moon. I have two fully activated SIM cards with unlimited everything + HD Video + Hotspot just sitting in a drawer not being used. 

1 hour ago, RedSpark said:

site decommissioning has begun

That was quick. My guess is they're starting in rural areas?

2 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

The US has already automated all of that. There are vey, very few automation efforts that need the low latency of 5g. For example control system scans for Utilities are 3-5 secs. Automated metering  data are cached and only need to be sent at 5 minute intervals. IoT connections are $1-2/month. Automated cars and trucks need precise GPS and collision avoidance  but no cellular connectivity, unless you want to stream audio and video. There's an effort to utilize Cellular V2X over LTE but the technology is way ahead of its time. Let's get the autonomous driving part down before we use V2V or V2N. Plus those applications can be just accommodate by IEEE 802.11p a short range comm protocol.

IoT doesn't necessarily need 5G. Sure, low latency helps in some scenarios (like remotely controlling heavy machinery), but it's not a deal breaker for most other stuff. There are endless amounts of automation that still needs access to the cloud or servers. 

5 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

Good luck making money out of IoT. 

🤣

Why don't you think there isn't any money to be made out of IoT? There's already vending machines, cars/trucks, security systems that require Cellular connectivity. What makes you think the demand isn't there? The automatization of farming/agriculture is going to be huge for IoT.

2 hours ago, jthawks said:

So does anyone have experienced band 71 that's basically unusable and band 12 unusable? I've had no luck with either one in month's.  I'm in the Denver area. Just wondering if it's just my area or nation wide.  

I rarely see B71 or B12. T-Mobile's network is very dense in Houston for me to see those bands. With Sprint, I used to see B26 very often outdoors when I was within the city limits.

Only time I see Band 12/71 is when I'm in East or South Texas. Both Sprint and T-Mobile have terrible tower spacing outside of major interstate corridors. US-59 in East Texas and South Texas has a few noticeable gaps in service, even though coverage maps don't show them. 

13 hours ago, Yuhfhrh said:

 That actually moves Verizon from 5x5 AWS-3 & 15x15 in PCS, to 20x20 PCS. T-Mobile from 5x5 PCS & 5x5 AWS-3, to 10x10 AWS-3.

 

In Houston? I believe Verizon only owns 10x10 in the PCS band, don't they? I know from the A-F blocks, T-Mobile owns 30 Mhz, Sprint owns 20 Mhz, AND AT&T owns 50 Mhz.

This leaves 20 Mhz unaccounted for (which I assume belongs to Verizon).

9 hours ago, Yuhfhrh said:

In Houston, T-Mobile could probably get Verizon to swap their AWS-3 I block for T-Mobile's PCS E block, giving them both 10x10 contiguous.

I'm not sure Verizon wants to do this just yet. It all depends on what percentage of their mobile phones can support B66.

But definitely something to keep an eye on down the road.

Quote

It sucks ATT has PCS F&C, which basically forces the G block to remain 5x5 for T-Mobile as I doubt ATT would ever want to move.

As it has happened in the past, it wouldn't surprise me to see TMUS help AT&T in one market in exchange for AT&T helping T-Mobile in this market. 

Having said that, it is not going to be easy. Outside of the FCC stepping in, I'm not sure T-Mobile will ever be able to defragment their entire holdings nation-wide.

11 hours ago, iansltx said:

Interesting. I'll swing by the lone 600 site near me and see if I can catch AWS-3 there.

If the only upgrade was swapping the B12 panel for the B12/B71 panel, then it's likely they didn't add AWS-3 (or at least that's what has been happening in Houston and South Texas). The only site around me that I know has AWS-3 is a site that had to be downsized due to space and weight limitations (it shares the tower with AT&T, which already has 4x4 lowband equipment). I haven't found it anywhere else, but then again I'm not actively looking for it.

I haven't checked to see if the new FDD massive mimo equipment is being set up to broadcast AWS-3 spectrum. They've going up around Houston since the Fall of 2019. 

27 minutes ago, iansltx said:

On the LTE side, just went through various band combos and realized that T-Mobile doesn't own any AWS-3 here I guess. 

In Austin? I think they own a 5x5 block. T-Mobile just hasn't gotten around to widely deploying it in Texas. They were getting around to it on some 600 Mhz upgrades, but not all of them.

8 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Never a good idea to broad brush the whole network. We know your area struggled, but there were many markets where B41 was essentially ubiquitous, and had excellent capacity and speed. Essentially everywhere I went in KC I was on B41, and rarely struggled with speed. Same with Denver when I visited. Others clearly had similar experiences in other markets.

The fact is that there are more neglected areas than good areas. New York, Las Vegas, KC, Denver were good markets. Everywhere else? Swiss cheese coverage with overloaded B26.

19 minutes ago, derrph said:

I find it funny that all the T-Mobile fanboys are pressed over Sprints b41 all of a sudden and wanting to use it. But when it was used on Sprint, it was considered horrible spectrum and that T-Mobile was better positioned with spectrum. If T-Mobile isn’t using it then it’s no good. The same goes with DSS. Right now they’re trashing it but as soon as T-Mobile implements it, it’ll be the best thing since sliced pie.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It wasn't horrible spectrum. It was just horribly deployed. Sprint needed a more dense network to make it work, but they never added towers. They really wasted most of that spectrum and never got good use out of it.

Every step Sprint made was the wrong one with the EBS/BRS band. Opting for mini macros in some places was a half-assed attempt at adding capacity. They should have just spent money on better performing 8x8 radios/panels that had more robust coverage and performance. Also, Small Cells wasted 40 Mhz of spectrum because Sprint didn't want to pay for proper backhaul. And the plan to go all in on small cells was a joke. Thinking that macro towers weren't needed was just a huge swing and a miss.

Sprint did everything they could to cut corners, and it showed by the Swiss cheese coverage of B41.

19 minutes ago, CAL7 said:

Are you seeing B41 LTE upgrades now? I have a beautiful Sprint tower just 500 yards from my back window but Sprint has been uninterested in putting B41 on it. With the announcements from T-Mobile that they are going to use B41 for 5G, I had given up hope that "my tower" would ever see B41 LTE.

Sprint probably had a clearwire tower nearby. It's rare for them to leave a tower without any B41 unless it is a tower in rural America.

It also isn't guaranteed that all Sprint's towers will get converted.

41 minutes ago, floorguy said:

me either... the Sprint ones out here were easy to find, could pick them out quick, with those attached RRUs... now.. pfft they all blend in

AT&T seems to be the hardest to spot in my area. They don't deploy their entire spectrum in every tower, so the pattern of the antenna panels always throws me off. T-Mobile seems to have uniformity, but is quickly losing that due to their new towers getting different setups as technology evolves.

Fortunately, the antenna used for B41 seems very unique, so spotting T-Mobile in the future should be somewhat easier. I have yet to see any other carrier use a similar antenna.

14 minutes ago, red_dog007 said:

TMobile appears to be shutting down 3G in a few months.  I wonder if this was more an emergency decision.  Possibly seeing speeds tank as they bring in more Sprint customers. It's the fastest way to get more spectrum for LTE.

It makes sense. WCDMA seems to be mostly unused nowadays in my area. With the Sprint merger now complete, T-Mobile could go from a 10x10 carrier to 20x20 on PCS (which would complement their 20x20 B4 carrier). 

With more and more B41 coming online in Houston, T-Mobile may soon have the best 4G network and the only decent 5G network for the foreseeable future. It will definitely wipe AT&T's spectrum advantage.

2 hours ago, JonnygATL said:

It's almost definitely related to retiring of the Sprint brand with some network news as well.  A clear cutoff needs to happen and we all know that day is August 2nd. Or have you forgotten? 

That said tomorrow is a great time to have an announcement about the pending major shift.  Makes total sense. 

We're overthinking this. 

Prepare for disappointment as this announcement probably has something to do with MLB.tv and some type of T-Mobile exclusive fan interaction. If T-Mobile really wanted to impress me, they'd bring back kickback to unlimited postpaid customers.

2 hours ago, bmoses said:

potential new "uncarrier" announcement this thursday

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/hqhhv5/sievert_you_feeling_like_this_industry_needs/

being teased as being network related

It's probably nothing. "Uncarrier" announcements have been worthless PR stunts for a while now. 

1 hour ago, Yuhfhrh said:

From that site on Monday. That brings the total of 2.5GHz currently deployed to 160MHz here (60MHz Sprint LTE, 40MHz T-Mobile LTE, 60MHz T-Mobile NR.)

I don't have a Sprint phone to check, but does this mean Sprint Small Cells are no longer operational? IIRC, 160 Mhz was all the EBS/BRS spectrum Sprint owned in Houston. (I remember reading they owned or had leases for the entire EBS/BRS Band, but I don't feel like searching the FCC site to verify this.)

Not turning off the small cells using LTE UE Relay for backhaul (which is all of them AFAIK) could create issues if all Sprint owned in Houston was 160 Mhz.

1 hour ago, chamb said:

They are trying to get two different results with the upgrades.  The 600 Mhz upgrade was to get more range from the site to cover fringe areas.  The 2500 upgrade is to get faster speeds & capacity in major population areas.

All the 600 Mhz sites in my area were already part of a very dense network, so coverage was never an issue. It seems like every 600 Mhz upgrade was for capacity issues since T-Mobile was also deploying the 5x5 block they had in the AWS-3 band.