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

52 minutes ago, iansltx said:

They don't need 600/700 on every site. That just raises the noise floor in areas where sites are less than a mile apart. They should definitely have 600 on every site that has 700 though.

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

15 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

I hear that switching part from a lot of my Sprint friends. Locally, Sprint's network is nothing to crow about and T-Mobile has a better network so I keep telling them to hold on and test the T-Mobile network before they jump ship but T-Mobile brought this upon themselves.

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

46 minutes ago, clbowens said:

And let's say they only plan to put it on half their sites, that's still abut 3.5 years.

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 hour ago, RedSpark said:

I'm pretty impressed. It seems faster than Sprint has ever done any site upgrades and it's during a pandemic/shutdown to boot. If T-Mobile focuses on the site locations with the greatest need, a substantial number people will benefit as a result of each upgrade rather quickly I'm thinking.

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

14 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

The first Missouri town (Jennings, which is part of St. Louis) showed up after one tower had an install. It's not like it's a small town either, there are dozens of sites.  I'm sure some parts of the country have had more of a head start before they were listed, but if the threshold is one tower for Missouri, I'm sure it is elsewhere. 

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

On 9/26/2020 at 12:58 AM, JonnygATL said:

Shit. Wrong one. That was the after. This was the initial....

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

7 hours ago, chamb said:

Welcome to T-Mobile Trip. I hope the ride is smooth.  Sorry to say that REDDIT is full of people that are not satisfied as they have a very rough road to ride on.  Of course, it is REDDIT and many users are not technically savvy or have any idea of what is happening. 

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

20 hours ago, mikejeep said:

I've been looking for someone else to notice this.. all summer, the Sprint B41 GCI's in my area have been slowly transitioning to new 000xxxxx ones that don't seem to correlate to anything. B25/B26 hasn't changed at all. Do we know if this is a temporary "work in progress" sort of thing, or permanent?

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

48 minutes ago, Lockedtight said:

Hopefully once the Shentel purchase has gone through T-Mobile will just throw their antennas and any other equipment needed onto Shentel towers and be done with it.  I'd hate to be thrown on T-Mobile's current towers in my area as there are so few in WV and coverage is spotty at best without many more.

That's what I'm hoping for as well.  I'm wary of T-Mobile's rural deployments, and I'm hoping they'll at least take what they're given and not try to cut tower costs...

- Trip

If a customer is on Sprint because it works best for them (as I am), and shunting them to T-Mobile changes that (it would for me, in a vastly negative direction), it doesn't matter which network is "overall" better.  I don't think you can translate your experience or even a statement about which is better overall into a general statement about whether or not there would be a lot of complaints.  Even in areas where T-Mobile is better, Sprint is on different towers.  People who have reception in their homes, workplaces, or other frequently visited areas today could lose that just because the exact tower location is different.

Here in DC, I agree in general that T-Mobile has the denser network with more consistent coverage.  Yet, without hesitation, I can take you to places where Sprint has better service than T-Mobile (just as I can take you to places where T-Mobile is better than Sprint).  There's a community nearby that has somehow managed to fight off all the cell towers.  Sprint has strand-mount gear installed, and T-Mobile has... nothing.  Guess which network is better.  There's a Trader Joe's sitting in a basement unit of a shopping center.  Sprint is on a nearby building and works (barely), while T-Mobile is not and has no service.  Large portions of the Shentel region that I regularly visit have reliable Sprint service and T-Mobile has very poor service.

But I do agree that we should see the networks start to look transparent to each other at some point.  There's no reason not to do so, and it would make this issue go away, at least on the large scale.  As integration happens going forward, some people could lose out, but it would be tower-by-tower and not a wholesale change-over of the network all at once.

- Trip

Ah, I see, I misread.  I thought it was best 5G network.  😳

- Trip

Interesting.  A network you barely ever connect to wins the prize for best network.  I suppose if you never leave the urban core or, like, go inside buildings.

- Trip

58 minutes ago, dewbertdc said:

T-Mobile is famous for only deploying capacity where they need it

You say this like it's a bad thing, but Shentel does it too and that's the best part of the Sprint network that I've experienced--and I'd argue that some of Sprint's problem has been that it doesn't do this.  Not prioritizing the deployment is how you end up with Band 41 on towers surrounded by corn fields and cow pastures in Fauquier County, but a Band 25 GMO serving multiple shopping centers in Alexandria. 

But to your other point, there's a ton of Sprint 8T8R and MMIMO gear they could recycle in the short term to cover the rest of the Band 41 spectrum; perhaps even just moving it from the Sprint rack to the T-Mobile rack.  Or they could just leave it operating in the current tower position until the T-Mobile gear is upgraded with newer n41 gear and then remove the legacy Band 41 gear at that time.

- Trip