Trip

Microwave licenses are on file in ULS for much of that area; glad to hear much of it is live.  You don't happen to have an SCP log file for that drive, do you?  I suspect that not all the towers needed microwave backhaul and that some of them are missing from my dataset...

- Trip

I continue to find Sprint's poor position to be kind of depressing given the natural advantages that Sprint should have.  When AT&T deploys more spectrum, for example, they have to send a crew out to touch a site, whether to add a radio or an antenna or both.  They're in the midst of rolling out Band 14 which, of course, requires new equipment at the sites, even sites that already have four bands of LTE, many of which appear to have been installed with separate tower touches.  With Sprint's Band 41 holdings, as long as Band 41 equipment is in place, adding spectrum should be as simple as changing software settings.  As long as the backhaul is fiber, that should be relatively straight-forward to increase as well.  Even on PCS, because of the Network Vision upgrades, refarming spectrum should be very cheap and not require much if any additional equipment.  For Sprint, adding bandwidth should be significantly less expensive than it is for other carriers, and yet despite that advantage, it is in the position of weakness.

I hope that someone writes a book about how Sprint got to this position one day; one of those well-researched and heavily-sourced ones.  It would be a fascinating read.

- Trip

For BRS, it's pretty straight-forward.  This map may help:  https://specmap.sequence-omega.net/

For EBS, the licensing on it is so convoluted that it basically requires manually sorting through license data.  I've done it for select locations, but it's not something I do regularly because it's a real pain.

- Trip

I've seen it pick up T-Mobile roaming due to short-term drops in signal that otherwise I wouldn't expect to see roaming pick up.  I don't know what triggers it.

- Trip

Mike,

I just last night got a new Moto E5 Play (Unlocked) for AT&T.  I've locked it to Band 14 and here it is:

https://imgur.com/a/yI1vVEz

Would it be possible to instead call it "LTE 750" rather than "LTE 700" to be able to differentiate it at a glance from Band 12/17.  I know that will make it inconsistent with Verizon, but Verizon only has Band 13, no 12/14/17 to confuse it with.

- Trip

Hm.  I'm wondering if the FFFFx sites are COWs or Mini Macros or something.  I have FFFFD3A and FFFFD3B in my log in Charlottesville near JPJ, both having 41062 as the EARFCN which matches other second carrier GCIs in the area.  (41260 is 31/32/33, 41062 is 39/3A/3B.  No third carrier in my log in TAC 32537, though I see in the MLS data that a 41 sector was spotted since the last time I was there.)

- Trip

Speaking of AT&T, by the end of the year I want to try to get a Moto E5 Play, unlocked, which will add Band 14 and Band 66 to bands I can receive on AT&T.  It will replace my HTC M9 (which does support Band 30), which has the worst battery life of any of my phones.  I'm pretty sure AT&T has been deploying Band 14 here at least, so I should be able to provide some information on that.

- Trip

Yes, Shentel uses 41/42/43 for third carrier.

- Trip

http://imgur.com/a/qk2Adnj

T-Mobile roaming as spotted, uh, in my house in Alexandria. Have great service so not sure why since I have at least B26 throughout the house...

- Trip

On 10/4/2018 at 9:04 PM, Trip said:

So remember some months ago I had T-Mobile roaming while on Sprint 1X, and then it vanished?  I was sitting in the hospital in Farmville earlier today on 1X when suddenly, my LG G6 popped up that it had received a profile update.  When it finished reconnecting, I was still on Sprint 1X, but on US Cellular LTE roaming.  And, indeed, I've continued to have US Cellular roaming available to me in areas where Sprint LTE is unavailable throughout the day.

No sign of T-Mobile roaming though.  I would imagine they want to prioritize US Cellular roaming over T-Mobile anyway, and US Cellular is a lot better than T-Mobile around here.

My wife (Galaxy S7) and my mother (Moto E4 Plus) both do not seem to have gotten such an update yet.  I hope it is coming.

- Trip

Quick update; I've been here for a few days now and it seems to be freely roaming on US Cellular and, to a lesser extent, T-Mobile.  I've seen the same two T-Mobile sites I saw a few months ago a few times, but US Cellular much more frequently.  Sitting in the hospital right now, I'm looking at Sprint 1X at -105 dBm, while also connected to US Cellular Band 5 LTE at -103 dBm.  I've been connecting to US Cellular LTE all over down here now, and it makes the experience far, far better.

- Trip

So remember some months ago I had T-Mobile roaming while on Sprint 1X, and then it vanished?  I was sitting in the hospital in Farmville earlier today on 1X when suddenly, my LG G6 popped up that it had received a profile update.  When it finished reconnecting, I was still on Sprint 1X, but on US Cellular LTE roaming.  And, indeed, I've continued to have US Cellular roaming available to me in areas where Sprint LTE is unavailable throughout the day.

No sign of T-Mobile roaming though.  I would imagine they want to prioritize US Cellular roaming over T-Mobile anyway, and US Cellular is a lot better than T-Mobile around here.

My wife (Galaxy S7) and my mother (Moto E4 Plus) both do not seem to have gotten such an update yet.  I hope it is coming.

- Trip

15 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

@greenbastard in Sprint's case it did not have to be an outright cash bribe to the police chief. But a charity fund set up by Sprint can donate funds to the police department to replace the police chief's aging police car. All in the name of increasing police response to emergencies. Now Sprint probably did not have enough money to set up such a charity fund.

What police chief?  I'm talking about the Mexican government.

- Trip

On 9/15/2018 at 12:30 PM, mikejeep said:

Also looking for feedback from everyone regarding the new main screen icon.. I think the colors are a bit ugly and using the blue signal beams to indicate data is flowing is counter-intuitive so I'm still playing with it.

-Mike

The colors don't really bother me, but you could either flip the blue and green so that "Active" is blue and the "Send/Rcv" is green.  Or, you could make both colors green, with "Active" being just the tower in green and then adding the waves for "Send/Rcv."

- Trip

21 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

I prefer to call it marketing expenses.

You can call it "involuntary transfer of assets" but that doesn't make bank robbery any less illegal.

- Trip

5 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

Oh I know how to deal with the Mexicans and the Indians and the police chiefs in Florida with the wink, wink brand new Ford Explorers.

So, your answer is to commit a federal crime by bribing foreign officials?  You do know that felons are prohibited from holding FCC licenses, right?

- Trip

10 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

I can guarantee you that if Nextel merged with Verizon the merger including the rebanding would have been concluded in 3-4 years as planned.

Clearly spoken as someone who has never dealt with the Mexicans.  Or, at least, didn't deal with them in the previous decade.  During the digital TV transition, there were stations in early 2008, leading up to the 2009 transition date, who had not yet had their applications approved by Mexico.  Applications which were filed in 1998.

- Trip

Shortly I'll be leaving to drive into the 20" of rain zone, because my father-in-law has a chemo appointment tomorrow.   We'll see how it goes.

- Trip

2 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

Because I think they will have plenty of band 41 spectrum available in rural and semi rural areas but not enough left over in more urban settings.

Isn't the point of the upcoming millimeter wave auction to provide large, ultra-wide bandwidth spectrum that will likely only be of much value in urban areas, thus providing the capacity necessary?  And isn't most of the Band 41 spectrum unlicensed in rural areas because EBS spectrum never got assigned?

- Trip

2 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

3. They will offer a fixed wireless product at very competitive prices in 50% of the zip codes in its service area.

I don't know how to read this.  Why only 50%?  Are they going to offer service in Manhattan where they're dense but not in the rural areas, where the service is actually needed, because they're not dense?  Or does it mean something else entirely?

- Trip

7 hours ago, BlueAngel said:

Dealing with some weird roaming right now, in a friend's basement I have full bars of LTE on B41 but voice is roaming on Verizon. No reason for this my signal is great. Was hoping it was T-Mobile roaming but nope, I'm also getting upload CA from this tower which is still clearwire so said scp. Weird lol, it's apparent they are doing some work around here.

6 hours ago, BlueAngel said:

Don't know why my phone is roaming for voice when I have calling plus full bars of LTE I don't get it.

SCP cannot show you CA, so I'm not sure what you're looking at.

If you're near a Clear-only site, I could imagine you seeing full Clear B41 but no Sprint 1X and thus roaming on Verizon 1X.

- Trip

Looks like Shentel has started to move their new market pieces to new GCIs.  Passing through Zion Crossroads today, the tower there had changed to 0FE799xx.  Some of the other sites along I-64 also changed, but the sites in Farmville are still on the old Southern Virginia GCIs.

- Trip

3 hours ago, swintec said:

T-Mobile roaming active for me, started today, in Maine.

Fwiw, it wouldnt be a sprint change / enhancement if it didnt cause me some minor annoyance that I need to deal with.  In this case, when connected to t-mobile lte, it seems to be running on GMT for time so the phone rolls ahead 4 hours causing issues with texting (and probably other stuff).  Progress I suppose. lol

EDIT- I did see some quick connections to band 12 as well.

Everything in your post is consistent with my T-Mobile roaming experience, except that I could not connect to Band 12.  I'll be back in that neighborhood early next week, so we'll see if that's changed at all.

- Trip

1 hour ago, greenbastard said:

This doesn't kill the merger talk. This is just 4G. Sprint is going to need a lot of money if they want their 2.5 Ghz spectrum to really work.

There are still too many outdoor spots were 2.5 Ghz doesn't reach in major markets today. I don't think I have seen a new Sprint macro tower go up in my area in ages now. Hopefully after the merger, the EBS/BRS band is put to good use.

It should kill the merger talk in this thread, because we have a whole thread dedicated to merger talk here: 

- Trip

Sprint's lack of density is definitely an issue which I encounter now and then.  However, I do find Sprint's site distribution to generally be good.  Rarely do you see two sites practically on top of each other, unless one is a Clear site that was left in place.  With T-Mobile, and with AT&T for that matter, I sometimes see deployments on adjacent towers, and then areas not far away that have poor service because they're not on a nearby tower.  T-Mobile has been fixing some of those areas lately, and I do agree that using T-Mobile as the "base" network makes sense in most cases (Shentel region not included in that).  They've been adding sites around me and it makes their network the one to beat.

I also find that in places where Sprint has bothered to serve a more rural area, they do an equal or better job of it as compared to T-Mobile.  Just look at Fauquier County southeast of VA-28, as an example. 

- Trip

Mike,

I'm inclined to agree with Bob in one area, and that's the alerts.  In most of the country, being on 1X 800 or LTE is no longer noteworthy and I'm not sure it makes sense to have those alerts enabled by default.  When someone I know installs it, the first thing I do is have them turn off the alerts.

Actually, the alerts that would most make sense to me are alerts for new sectors not currently in the database, but a lot of them would be false positives since there are usually a number of rows with garbage in them in my log from between sites.  Also, Band 71 alerts for T-Mobile (and I intend to send some diagnostics next week when I'm in a Band 71 area, whether it handles them correctly or not, so you can see what they look like if you haven't already).

- Trip