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Been doing some mapping in the Williamsburg area. A disappointing amount of B/n41 deployment, but have discovered some new oDAS deployment (eNB 137445). The node I mapped was Sector 5, so here's hoping there's a few more in the area. B2/B46/B66.

Agreed - I've been pleasantly surprised by B41. Even with a relatively poor signal (-105dBM), I've regularly been able to pull 60+ Mb/s. Would love to see further B2/B66/B12/B71 CA combos added to devices. T-Mobile should at least be able to push Sprint's B25/B41 CA combos to devices without FCC approval.

Band priority has definitely changed, as well. B41 still doesn't seem to be the primary band in my area, but I've often found myself on it without the need to band-lock (which tended to be the only way I could connect in the past).

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Also looks like T-Mobile pushed out a software update the small cells in northern Crown Heights so that they're now broadcasting Band 66 in addition to Band 4. I don't know how that's supposed to help but at least they haven't forgot about them lol. 

Are you referring to eNB 55177? Glad those things are finally getting some attention. I used to live around the corner from one of the nodes and they were all practically useless B4 SISO. I pulled ~30Mb/s off one at 2AM, but most of the time I couldn't pull >5Mb/s.

Spotted two new B41/B71 upgrades over the past week. 

First site is at the corner of St Nick & W 123rd (eNB 138889):

I believe the second site is at the corner of Fred Doug & W 132rd (eNB 41244), though I haven't yet confirmed. Prior to the upgrade, B71 signal was relatively weak around here - the closest site was ~6 blocks away. Here's hoping a full site modernization is the new norm!

Also discovered the site at the corner of St Nick & W 145th (eNB 104892) has been upgraded with B41, though B71 has been deployed here for quite a while.

I've been able to pull >100Mb/s on a single 20MHz B41 carrier (with a strong signal) on all these sites. I'm curious how T-Mobile is going to prioritize B41 in the future, and/or how long they are going to keep it around before refarming it to n41.

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

I also wanted to note that the Band 12/71 installation has caused a split eNB to occur however I'm aggregating with Band 2/66 on a different eNB ID just fine which is a first for me.

It also appears that T-Mobile is running both Band 2 and Band 66 off of that single RFS antenna instead of splitting it between two like before. Does that mean no more 4x4MIMO? I did notice that they put new RRUs behind the antenna but I can't identify them. 

The new RFS APXVAR18_43-C-NA20 (B12/B71) antennas they're deploying also support midband (PCS/AWS).

2 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Surprised that they're going for LAA instead of mmWave.

IIRC, NYC regulations lead to a pretty restricted DAS network - thus lots of hardware limitations. You go to any other major city and you'll see multi-sector small cells with higher-order MIMO. Here we're stuck with 2x2 MIMO omni-directional nodes (with the Transit Wireless system being even more limited).

AFAIK, mmWave isn't compatible with the current oDAS hardware. LAA likely fell under the umbrella of "relatively close to what we're already broadcasting", and that's why they were able to deploy.

Seeing so much extra capacity with these oDAS upgrades. Near City College - eNB 59919, Sector 11 (though every oDAS node I've run across north of 110 has been upgraded).

Found two in-progress n41 site upgrades this afternoon, neither seem to be live at this point. 

1. One of the sites overlooking the Central Park North - 110th St 2/3 station (eNB 45803). B2/B66/B12/B(n)71 --> B2/B66/B12/B(n)41/B(n)71.
2. Site at the corner of W111th and Fred Doug (eNB 45535, see below). B2/B66/B12 --> B2(?)/B66(?)/B12/B(n)41/B(n)71. Workers were actively installing the new antennas as I took the pic. Nice to see further 600MHz densification.

Also, found some new B41 around the Smith-9th St station. T-Mobile (along with several other carriers) has been relying on a COW to cover the area for the past couple years, while the NYCHA housing down in Red Hook has been under construction. T-Mobile's COW is totally overloaded, even though it's equipped with B2/B66/B12 you'll be lucky to be able to complete a speedtest most days. I band-locked to B41 while at the station and was able to pull 40/5 at -115dBM on a single 20MHz carrier.

17 hours ago, mirskyc said:

Also just noticed my phone is now doing 3x CA with B2/66/71 + N71 5G. It would never do more then 2x CA + N71 before and the LTE bands were always B2/66 and sometime B12.

 

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Do you know if this was this on a site where B12 and B71 are split onto a new 13xxxx eNB ID? Been doing a little testing and while I can get B2/B66/B12 CA active on these sites (indicating some form of inter-eNB CA), I can't seem to B2/B66/B71 CA active. Could have sworn I was able to use that combo before the eNB split.

They're leasing an additional 5x5MHz from Dish in the NYC area. Lease was submitted and approved a couple weeks ago. See attachment A for more info.

Did some more mapping between 110 and 165 yesterday. Connected to 7 new B41 sites, only one of which I was able to locate. Three sites I spotted with n41 antennas several months ago still aren't broadcasting B41 (47004, 43911, 43918). I wonder if they're waiting to upgrade them with 6449s. Also, spotted a site that looked to be recently upgraded (41956) with 6449s that wasn't yet broadcasting B41. B71 had been moved to 140190 on that site (the first 14xxxx eNB I've spotted), so it appears as though eNB splits are still occurring. Including the site on E110 and Lexington I spotted a couple days back, that brings us up to ~12 sites spotted between 110 and 165.

On another note, successfully roamed on Sprint (310-120) yesterday. For reference, my device is an unbranded Android that doesn't have access to either 311-490 or 310-120. Sprint keep site, perhaps?  

Regarding upgraded oDAS nodes, maybe I totally missed something but the vast majority of them now seem to be equipped with LTE-LAA. Pulled this off a node on Edgecombe and 162 (59823).

16 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

In my testing T-Mobile's small cells are super low on backhaul which may explain the poor speeds despite using 3 Band 46 carriers. There's a T-Mobile small cell near my home that only gives me about 40 Mbps maximum whereas Sprint small cells in the same area regularly gave upwards of 100Mbps on 20MHz of spectrum.

IMO, T-Mobile is pretty conservative with backhaul for most of their sites. Not to the point where it’ll start causing congestion issues, but I haven’t seen peak speeds at quite the level as I have on other carriers. Likely something to do with them not being in the wireline business. 

That said, I was testing during rush hour and the engineers may still be working on optimizing these sites. AFAIK LTE-LAA was turned on in the past couple of days (plus they're the first non-macro sites in the city that I, personally, have seen LTE-LAA deployed on) and it was running at super lower power. Additionally, these oDAS sites are pretty limited on antenna diversity. I’ll have to check again, but I believe B46 was running in SISO mode on some nodes.
 

16 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I think it would be in T-Mobile's best interest to rethink their anti-small cell position in a city like NYC. Both Sprint and Verizon have invested heavily in small cells in the city and it paid off for both carriers.

It's really pretty interesting how different the approach is in every neighborhood. Where I predominantly map (135 to 155), small cell density is pretty staggering - by my count, 22 new nodes have been activated in the past year and a half. The small cell count in East Harlem (specifically 100-110) is equally impressive - I've mapped 10 new nodes in the area over the past 9 months. That said, other upgrades seem to hit Harlem more slowly.

On the other hand, places that I first mapped 2-3 years ago (ie. the East Village and Crown Heights) still have next-to-no small cell roll-out. Here's hoping the roll-out begins to become a bit more ubiquitous over the next year or two. So much congestion and spotty service in areas that small cells are made for, but T-Mobile hasn’t built out as dense. Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, DUMBO, Red Hook, and even Gowanus - just off the top of my head. Hell, I haven’t been able to run a speedtest at the Smith-9th St station for three years. 

2 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I've been noticing a lot of split eNB's on T-Mobile sites and it's really annoying because what it means is that on some sites, my phone won't aggregate bands that I know are available. For example there is a Band 12/71 eNB split on a site in my neighborhood and because those two bands can't be aggregated my phone is stuck on 5MHz of either Band 71 or Band 12 despite the site that it's broadcasting from having Band 2/12/66/71.

Sometimes these splits last for a few days and other times they stick around for over a year. This can really affect people perception of T-Mobile's network performance. If I were them, I'd be working to control that.

Posted on Reddit about this a couple weeks back. Not just happening in the city.

I understand why split eNBs exist when site upgrades occur - there typically have to be alterations to the BTS to allow all bands to operate under a single eNB ID. Sometimes the BTS isn't upgraded at the same time as the antennas, which means that you're stuck with split eNBs for several months. 

However, this seems like a conscious choice. Sites that were previously broadcasting over a single eNB now have split eNBs without any upgrade to the antennas. Would really like to know the purpose of this, myself.

8 hours ago, thisischuck01 said:

Spotted LTE-LAA broadcasting from what appears to be a Crown Castle oDAS node. First time I've seen this.

eNB ID 127312 on CellMapper.

Confirmed on two other oDAS nodes in my area, 59985 Sector 15 and 59773 Sector 12. Maxed out at 4x CA, with 3x LTE-LAA (though this is probably a device limitation). Speeds weren't especially fast, around 60/20 Mbps. LTE-LAA seemed to be running at super low power, typically ~20dBm lower than the corresponding B2/B66 (even when directly under the node, with B2/B66 ~65dBm).

On 9/15/2020 at 10:24 AM, thisischuck01 said:

New n41 deployment in Harlem. First AIR 6449 I've spotted, as well.

Was finally able to connect to B41 on this site after messing around with some modem data on my OP6T. I haven't yet enabled any B41 CA combos, but was able to pull 80/10 Mbps on a single 20MHz carrier. Mapped on CellMapper, eNB ID 134868.

Spotted LTE-LAA broadcasting from what appears to be a Crown Castle oDAS node. First time I've seen this.

eNB ID 127312 on CellMapper.

3 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Super cool "Layer Cake" site! According to the T-Mobile subreddit, it looks like T-Mobile may be actually revisiting some sites in the NY metro to replace the n41 antennas that they've already deployed with the AIR 6449's.

I saw that! Strange approach, I wonder if there was some issue with their supply chain. That said, I'm not about to complain about future-proofing sites for >100MHz EBS/BRS deployment!

New n41 deployment in Harlem. First AIR 6449 I've spotted, as well.

20 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Can anybody identify the antenna on the far left? I'm pretty sure the two antennas on the right are RFS APX16 antennas for Band 2 and Band 4/66. The antenna to the left of that is a 4-port Commscope Band 12 antenna. All of that is pretty standard in NYC.

I initially thought that the antenna on the far left was an Ericsson Air but I think it's too skinny to be that. There is a logo on the bottom of it that looks kinda like an Ericsson logo if you zoom in so I'm not sure. 

Not sure on the vendor, but it's an old 2G/3G antenna that was decommissioned but never removed. Doesn't look like it's hooked up.

The B12 CommScope antennas T-Mobile rolled out are all 2 port antennas. I believe this one is from the LNX-6513DS series. They didn't start deploying 4x4 MIMO low-band until the B71 rollout.

On 7/9/2020 at 7:28 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Got my fastest speeds on T-Mobile 5G yet, today. This is on mmWave in Brooklyn. I have a feeling that the reason I never connect to n41 is because I'm either close enough that I can connect to n261 or so far that I can only connect n71.

Edit: The site has Band 2/12/46(LAA)/66, and n41 installed but it doesn't have Band 71/n71. T-Mobile really confuses me sometimes. 

 

Doesn't surprise me one bit. Look how B/n71 is deployed in NYC - it's built out to make their 5G coverage map look good, but otherwise provide no real benefit.