Trip

The obvious way to find them would be to find a way to lock my phone to the 312250 PLMN, but do you happen to know if it's being applied to Band 26 on those sites as well as Band 41? Because I could just lock my phone on Band 26 to achieve the same goal in that case. - Trip

Amusingly, that would fit the bill. The site I connected to was definitely one that represents a gap in T-Mobile service on any band. I have no idea why T-Mobile wasn't on that building in the first place. If that is in fact the case, I'd be thoroughly interested to find out which sites fit are broadcasting 312250. Hm, I wonder if I can lock my phone to a specific PLMN... - Trip

I think this is new. I have my T-Mobile phone locked on Band 41 to pick up sites with the new Massive MIMO gear. Until today, moving outside an area with T-Mobile Band 41 has always resulted in "No Service," but this afternoon: https://imgur.com/a/TCo2cs8 I'm not sure I've seen the 312250 PLMN before, and considering the phone has no service (just a never-activated SIM), it doesn't roam, so I'm guessing the phone thinks it's native. Any ideas what I'm seeing here? - Trip

Looking at the map in this area (Fairfax County, VA), I see sites that I know do not have Band 5 LTE that are showing as having 5G NR. I need to check if PCS is now running on some of them, as I've not done that in a while. If it is, then PCS. If not, AWS. EDIT: In Richmond, they hold both the A- and B-blocks in 850 MHz. Pretty sure they're using 850 MHz there based on the far less defined coverage area, but I wonder if they're doing DSS at all and are, instead, splitting the spectrum. Maybe next time I'm down that way I'll take my spectrum analyzer and see what I can see. - Trip

It befuddled me too. I must be such a pest to work with! I'm sorry! But I've not had a problem since I rebuilt my database for the second time. Over the long weekend, I merged my T-Mobile and Sprint databases together at last. I'll let you know if it misbehaves at all. I haven't seen any issues with it thus far. https://imgur.com/a/P7RjuRK That's what it looks like now, with the subscripts indicating which carrier the note is for. EDIT: One question I had is what the sector ID in brackets at the end of the note is supposed to indicate. I've been wondering that for a while. I'd love to have the ability to either turn it off or have it give the sector ID in decimal rather than hex in that spot. - Trip

B4 and B66 are the same in this area. T-Mobile doesn't own any AWS-3, so they're just different names for the same spectrum. - Trip

That would make T-Mobile the only carrier not running low-band on every site. I'm not sure why they would want to be at such a disadvantage. Not that there are many sites less than a mile apart in rural areas. (Note that when I say "every site" I'm referring to macro sites, not small cells. Though there are plenty of Verizon 700 MHz small cells, as well.) - Trip

You may have missed the part over the weekend where I was suddenly shunted onto the T-Mobile network without warning. In the places I go, the T-Mobile network is certainly not better. I was fortunately able to get that reverted on the three lines of my account where it was relevant, with a lot of fighting Support's attempts to keep me on the T-Mobile network. I'm holding on for now, but I suspect a time will come when they don't give the choice, and if the network still isn't ready by then (I'm skeptical), then I'll be switching to a carrier who is less prone to the "move fast and break things" method of operation. Verizon is definitely worse than Sprint in the places I want to go, but it's head and shoulders above T-Mobile. Honestly, I was expecting them to merge the networks, so a T-Mobile site and a Sprint site could hand off to each other. That would be the ideal way to go. Then, to the extent that T-Mobile decommissions things gradually, it wouldn't shock people so much all at once. This wholesale pushing people off Sprint mere months after the merger closed and before any Sprint sites have been integrated (as far as I can tell) seems like the worst possible path. - Trip

The problem with that is many of their sites in rural areas need attention even if they're not putting 2.5 GHz on them. I'm aware of sites that are 700 MHz-only (so only 5x5 LTE available!), for example, or PCS-only (so if co-located with a Sprint site, that site would lose the low-band advantage of Band 26). If they do it right, they'll put 600 (and 700, where available) on every site. If they are serious about also being a fixed ISP, they'll do AWS and PCS as well. And pick up a lot of Sprint sites. - Trip

1,000 sites per month sounds impressive (up from 800/month we heard previously), but if they're talking about having an 85,000 site network, it would take them 7 years to touch all of them. They actually need to speed up more, IMO. Especially given how weak the network continues to be outside of populated areas. If they kicked me off of Sprint's network today and said I couldn't have it back, I'd switch carriers as soon as possible. (Not possible right away, mind you.) - Trip

So first, I resolved my database issue by rebuilding it again. My database came right back up after the update. I wish there was a way for SCP to know when the database is having such problems, but I'm not sure there is. When I run an integrity check on my old file, it comes back "ok" so I'm not really sure what the issue was. Second, I've installed this new beta on my Sprint G8X, as I'm not planning on going anywhere new or infrequent for a while. I'll probably also stick it on one of my E5 Play devices. Is there anything in particular we should be looking for other than just generic instability? Also, wanted to let you know that the text color in the header has worked perfectly for IDing my phones. It's now very easy to tell them apart. Thanks again for all you do! - Trip

I only say I think there's a threshold because on 9/2 when they made their first news release, they already had at least three sites with the gear installed and running at least Band 41 LTE in Alexandria, but they waited until yesterday's release to announce it. - Trip

There must be a threshold value. In Alexandria, some of the towers have it and others don't. (I need to drive around and check on Old Town to see what's what there; haven't been in a while.) Based one what I've seen, I'd say it's probably less than half, but they're pretty spread out, so I could see the argument. In some smaller towns, there might only be one tower, so upgrading that one tower would get it listed. Not sure if any of the places on the list fit that bill yet. - Trip

This is new. I picked up my phone a moment ago and found it roaming on T-Mobile. Like, with the "R" icon and everything. I toggled Airplane Mode a few times but it wouldn't switch back. I checked and I could still toggle VoLTE off and on, so clearly ROAMAHOME wasn't to blame as the VoLTE switch is grayed out when that's enabled. I toggled VoLTE off and then it switched back over to Sprint. I've turned VoLTE back on and I'm still on Sprint now a few minutes later. Very, very odd. - Trip

T-Mobile has been rolling out two Band 41 LTE carriers on sites that have the Band 41 5G gear on them. I think that's what you're seeing; it looks a lot like what I can see it around here as well when I lock my T-Mobile phone onto Band 41. - Trip

I did Sprint chat from my account on the website. The front line support folks didn't want to do it, but once I managed to get myself in touch with the technical support people, they were able to handle it. - Trip

I had to do it again today, as it reverted to T-Mobile on me around mid-day. Took a very long time to get myself connected to the right person this time. I got my phone back on Sprint again, and I'm told some type of block was put on to keep it from reverting again. We'll see how it goes. - Trip

I have no idea how they picked it. I know that when the person on the chat first told me I'd been moved to the T-Mobile network and it couldn't be undone, I was told it gave me access to 5G and VoLTE. My phone does not have 5G, of course, and VoLTE is burning garbage in my experience, so neither of those were selling points. I told them the truth--that the service was atrocious--and the tech support person took care of it. - Trip

Confirmed, I'm back to Sprint-primary behavior. - Trip

Seeing the discussion above about ROAMAHOME, I looked into what it is and decided that it was very much like what I was experiencing. So I went on chat this morning and asked to have it removed from my account. I was first told that couldn't be done, so I just asked that if s/he couldn't authorize it, to please escalate me to a manager to authorize it. I was redirected to Tech Support chat, and she took some time to review the chat, then I got the profile update screen, and now I can disable VoLTE again, which is VERY promising. I'm currently in US Cellular roaming area, and will see if I'm back on Sprint when I get into town this morning. - Trip

I am not terribly familiar with Reddit but I looked just now and didn't see any similar issues in the past few days so maybe it's just me? I happened to be making my way down to the sticks today, and the service was as poor as I expected it to be on T-Mobile. So along the way I tried to do SCRTN while "roaming" on Shentel (seriously, with the R and everything), and then when that didn't work, I went to a Sprint store and they swapped my SIM. When it first came on, it connected to Band 25, but once the network configuration ended, it kicked me right back over to T-Mobile. I'm trying to figure out how to get myself in touch with some advanced technical support type person to get it sorted out. - Trip

Yesterday I got an "Update complete" notice and now I note my G8X seems to be preferring the T-Mobile network, or at least, I haven't been able to convince it through toggling Airplane Mode to switch back to Sprint so far. I wanted to try toggling VoLTE but it's now grayed out and forced on. Anyone else having similar behavior? - Trip

I first noticed some changes right around the time of the merger, when some of the sites in Richmond got shuffled up from 21xxx to DBxxx. Later, when in Baltimore, I noticed that some sites that had been 02xxx or 03xxx now had 00xxx IDs, quite a few of them, actually. I'm guessing the distinction is where there's a conflict with T-Mobile GCIs, though I've not chased down each one to know for sure. I imagine that as the Sprint network is decommissioned, they will just fade away. - Trip

I'm not sure it tells you anything about T-Mobile. You're not roaming at that moment; that's still the Sprint network. The oddball GCI is because for Sprint sites where the GCI had a value already used by T-Mobile's existing sites, they very quickly shoved the Sprint GCIs off to other values that T-Mobile doesn't use instead. T-Mobile doesn't really follow very many patterns. - Trip

Several interesting articles on my radar this morning. https://www.lightreading.com/4g3gwifi/t-mobiles-mexican-standoff-affects-hundreds-of-cell-sites/d/d-id/763945?_mc=RSS_LR_EDT "T-Mobile said that it has been forced to shut down or power down hundreds of cell sites along the US-Mexico border due to interference from Altán Redes, a private company building a 4G network for the Mexican government." ----- https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/t-mobile-american-tower-ink-new-15-year-pact "T-Mobile announced a new 15-year master lease agreement (MLA) with American Tower, paving the way for faster 5G deployments." Another source for same news: https://www.lightreading.com/5g/t-mobile-inks-$17b-deal-for-5g-cell-towers/d/d-id/763935?_mc=RSS_LR_EDT ----- https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200915/opinion/kagan-t-mobile-needs-to-update-its-marketing-strategy An op-ed piece talking about how T-Mobile needs to update its marketing strategy. It all sounds well and good, but to me, until the networks are transparent to each other, all the marketing in the world won't help. Poor service can't be overcome by PR. - Trip