Trip

Seriously? Seems like a waste of effort and resources to have to come back and upgrade the site again right after building it. - Trip

Shentel managed to be competitive with AT&T in West Virginia with the same spectrum that Sprint had anywhere else. I feel like the spectrum excuse is a cop-out; they didn't invest enough. In many of the rural areas I've been in, T-Mobile has deployed 700-only (5x5), which is the same LTE spectrum Sprint had on 800. - Trip

Connecticut is the only state that has any kind of state-wide cell tower siting thing. Anything else is tied directly to the localities, and thus varies widely. Many of the more rural localities don't have anything much online, while the more urban ones tend to have a lot of information online. - Trip

I assume you're referring to the tower on Webb Chapel Road? As you indicate, it's very close to the US Cellular tower that also hosts Verizon and AT&T already. However, it looks like it might be placed to shoot signal across I-68 right at the state line where the US Cellular tower appears to be shadowed by local terrain. - Trip

Yuck. The whole reason I'm a Sprint customer is because it roams on US Cellular. - Trip

Hello, there. I'm a TV engineer. Power for a TV station license is measured as effective radiated power, based on antenna gain and system losses. So a 1000 kW TV station (max power today) will only have a transmitter capable of a fraction of that out of the transmitter. The rest comes from not wasting power aiming at the sky or straight down at the ground. For example, WDRB in Louisville runs 1000 kW, but the transmitter only actually produces 68.43 kW. Still a big power bill, but not quite so big as perhaps you might have been imagining. - Trip

I am about 99.9% sure it did not. Most of the underground B41 is from Mini Macros, at least according to the GCI pattern. There are a handful of locations where they appeared to be 8T8Rs. None of them on my commute, at least, were in the Massive MIMO part of the GCI pattern. - Trip

Whew, indeed! Good thing everyone has landlines and can fall back on them to call 911 when the cell towers go out at random. - Trip

So I just tried rebooting my phone and now I'm even more confused. When it first came up, I connected to B25 and it showed "C", but then when it jumped to B41, it reverted to "B." Digging in, I can see in the edited log database that I definitely updated every row associated with my home site to have a C at the end. However, it looks like when the import occurred, the B41 GCI I was connected to (and perhaps the neighbor cell it was seeing?) did not update, while the other associated GCIs did update. I'm not sure I've ever seen that happen before. https://imgur.com/a/yTcqxX5 Picture is from a new dump in SQLiteStudio. - Trip

I'm... not sure. Hm. So I updated my log this morning and had a fit with SQLiteStudio for some reason. It was not committing properly, and that was causing me grief. I eventually figured out that I could force it to commit by running the Vacuum function on it, which had the side benefit of shrinking the file from 5.8 MB to 5.2 MB. So I solved that. Then I imported that file successfully on my G8X. I tested that by renaming my home site to have a "B" at the end, and it changed right away after import. But then I realized I didn't remember it updating automatically, and sure enough, I was on 4.59b. So I upgraded to 4.593b, changed the "B" on my home site to a "C", and now it's acting like it's importing, but I don't think it's actually updating the database. No error message is being given, and next to the files that are being imported, I'm getting -shm and -wal files with the same name. But the "B" remains. I have to admit I've not been a good tester and did not keep careful track of what version I was on as things were going on. So I don't know if it working 4.59b represents something you changed between an earlier version (I got my phone on 3/12) and now this is a regression, or if my device is just being flaky. I am pretty sure my issue is not the one you were necessarily trying to fix, so that doesn't help either. - Trip

Went to pick up food yesterday from a take-out place in a shopping center where I'm usually on 1X or, at best, barely-functional EV-DO. (The site that should be providing LTE is a B25 GMO.) https://imgur.com/a/Eyr7QKW Can't speak to speed, as I didn't think to try it, but it was a nice change to actually have usable service. I'd never roamed on T-Mobile there before on 311490, so I think it's new. - Trip

I take solace in the fact that this is an article by one of the analysts who, like the other analysts, are basically guessing. - Trip

Mike, Not sure what happened, but I tested exporting and importing the database file again on my G8X and it worked twice. I'll let you know if I see it fail again and look for patterns. - Trip

I'm not convinced much has actually changed yet. It seems to me like they've opened up roaming a touch more, but otherwise Sprint customers are still on the Sprint network as much as possible. I have yet to connect to T-Mobile anything since the day of the merger. - Trip

The reason I checked this morning was that it was still on the old value yesterday. 6163 yesterday, 20243 today. - Trip

That's a T-Mobile TAC. - Trip

dl_freq is the downlink frequency, not the TAC. Since the Internet seems to have no pictures whatsoever of what that screen looks like, I can't tell you what Apple might have called it. If your part of the DC market is like mine and has moved to the T-Mobile TAC values, it should be something like 20234 or 20236. Mine in Alexandria is 20243. You get the idea of the range of values. - Trip

You're on Band 41. - Trip

Google says to get into Field Test: https://osxdaily.com/2018/05/02/use-field-test-mode-iphone-x-ios/ It might be under Serving Cell Info rather than Serving Cell Measurements but I can't seem to find a picture indicating what is in Serving Cell Info to know for sure. - Trip

First thing I did when I woke up just now was to look at my phone. Still connected to Band 41, but my TAC is now 20243, matching T-Mobile. - Trip

I've seen the T-Mobile TACs change a number of times around here, too. I actually strongly dislike the T-Mobile TAC setup, which looks like a trainwreck to me, just like their GCIs and PCIs. I would be willing to go through the trouble of recompiling my entire database for T-Mobile if they would fix their GCIs, PCIs, and TACs to fit some kind of sane and sensible pattern. I fear that will not be the case. - Trip

This implies that the change in Shentel land may have been an interim change, which cleared the 3xxxx range for moves to the T-Mobile values, and then perhaps the Shentel TACs will change again once they make the move to T-Mobile TACs in this part of the country. - Trip

I'm looking at the MLS data for the past few days and it looks like the TACs may have changed in some areas where T-Mobile's TAC values begin with 3 or 4. For example, in Columbia, SC, it looks like one of T-Mobile's TAC values is 31598. It looks like any Sprint data collected from that area since at least 3/16 now has a TAC value of 31598, rather than the older 4353 value. - Trip

I'm aware of the need to use the .db file. I'm not quite that slow in the head, and have successfully been using the .db file for some time now. I'll try to restart after importing, but I don't think it worked. It just dropped everything I had in it and that was that--like I attempted to then dump the database and found it to be empty again. I thought of that, as I'm beta testing. I compared my standard file against the one on my new phone and they looked the same, but I realized that if it dumps it out wrong, then I don't know how I would check what it's looking for at import. But I've only gotten the corrupt file error a few times, and I'd expect to see it consistently. Was the Stack Overflow link at all relevant? I figure it's a long shot, but that did match the symptom, at least, of what I was seeing. Ack. I don't know why the navigation bar turns out to be light gray, considering most of the app is black. Very annoying. Yes, switching to band-only or dBm-only, either one, works correctly. Just the combo does not. - Trip

I didn't realize Gboard had settings like that. Tried it, dug in, and I do like it. Thanks! - Trip