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Trip

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Posts posted by Trip

    Shentel / Sprint LTE - (was ntelos - West & N&W Virginia)

    in Markets

    Posted

    You are correct. You can hang on to LTE if you take the ramp towards Charlottesville but will lose it if you take the Lynchburg exit. 

     

    My grandparents live in North Garden with a nTelos/Shentel tower on their property. They haven't added any LTE to that tower yet but I am able to pick up one "bar" of band 26 sitting in their living room. I talked to one of the nTelos guys about a year ago while he was working on the tower and he said that they were having some issues with backhaul to the site. I know that Verizon has band 13 on the same site so I have no clue how all that works. 

     

    Is that the SBA Tower there?  My info has AT&T also present either on that one or nearby that I haven't found, and that's HSPA only, no LTE.

     

    - Trip

    Shentel / Sprint LTE - (was ntelos - West & N&W Virginia)

    in Markets

    Posted

    No kidding; I found the coverage on the 3G to be really poor and once connected to it, it was really awful.  My guess is that it was just bogged down given the shopping centers and whatnot there.  I hope they took the opportunity to up the power a bit on the 3G while they were at it now that LTE should be able to handle some of that load.

     

    Really glad to hear they're finally getting I-64 taken care of.  The mind boggles that it took this long.

     

    Now just waiting for Shentel to do some more conversion and addition!

     

    - Trip

    • Like 4

    T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2

    in General Topics

    Posted

    Islands of coverage surrounded by roaming or no service probably helps roaming costs, but does little to convince people who actually live in or frequently visit those areas to switch.

     

    My understanding is that T-Mobile is primarily doing this expansion in areas where they own B12.  In places where B12 isn't available, they're not building much.  I've been in touch with my friend at T-Mobile and sent along some recommendations on places to co-locate now that they're getting 700 in the places I need to go.  We'll see what happens.

     

    - Trip

    • Like 1

    Marcelo Claure, Town Hall Meetings, New Family Share Pack Plan, Unlimited Individual Plan, Discussion Thread

    in General Topics

    Posted

    I often see Clear B41 at -122 or so, but the service doesn't actually work, so pointing out that it holds on that long doesn't actually mean anything.

     

    What I don't understand is why not add an 8T8R to Clear sites that already support dual carrier rather than ripping and replacing?  It would instantly give them the ability to run 5 carriers from a given site.  To the extent the Clear gear doesn't cover as well, push people outdoors onto Clear and those with lower signal onto the 8T8R.

     

    - Trip

    • Like 1

    SignalCheck - Android app to monitor your Wi-Fi/2G/3G/4G LTE/5G-NR signal strengths

    in General Topics

    Posted

    Is it a rooted device?

     

    My gut feeling is to trust the EARFCN.  The "700" indicated by SCP is a guess since T-Mobile's sector IDs are wildly inconsistent.  (In some places I travel, the sector 01/02/03 that's listed as "LTE AWS" is actually on PCS, for example.  In my area, 04 can be either 700 or AWS, depending on whether or not the site has 3 or 4 sectors.)

     

    - Trip

    SignalCheck - Android app to monitor your Wi-Fi/2G/3G/4G LTE/5G-NR signal strengths

    in General Topics

    Posted

    Mike,

     

    I have a BLU R1 HD (Amazon Prime model).  It's a dual SIM device but if I try to enable the second SIM for phone calls, all of a sudden LTE data vanishes from SCP.  It's not the only thing wrong with how SCP works with the device, but it's the most annoying.  When I look at Diagnostic Mode, I can clearly see the LTE data still present, but not showing up.

     

    Additionally, getting under my skin is the fact that it shows GSM and LTE at the same time whenever LTE is connected, but the GSM data is dummy data (which then gets logged in the GSM log incorrectly, too).

     

    I'm sure you're busy, but if you have a chance to give it a look, let me know what I can do to help you piece it together.  I don't remember if I've sent you diagnostics yet.

     

    - Trip

    T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2

    in General Topics

    Posted

    Does it have a software mechanism for choosing which sim is the active one for being connected to LTE/hspa ? An example of what I mean, could you have an att sim and t mobile sim and check the signal of both without having to physically swap the SIMs around.

     

     

    I haven't ever messed with a dual sim phone. This was one of the things that really interested me about it.

     

     

    Sent from my Moto G (4) using Tapatalk

     

    Yes, you can choose in software.  I have an AT&T SIM card in slot 2 but there's no service on it, so I can't actually test the software swapping at this point.

     

    - Trip

    • Like 1

    T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2

    in General Topics

    Posted

    Cross-posting from T4GRU:

     

    Well, as the owner of an LG Leon LTE, I find that phone to spend most of its time on 700, which is fine if I'm looking for 700, but not fine if I'm trying to find towers with AWS and no 700.

     

    So I went ahead and ordered the $50 Amazon ad-included Blu R1 HD and a T-Mobile SIM kit.  It doesn't support B12 (yet; might come in an update from what I read) which is probably a good thing for me at this point. 

     

    If anyone's interested, I'll give some opinions on it once I have it.  I paid for 1-day shipping so I should have it on the 13th, in time for a trip on the 14th.

     

    - Trip

     

    Well, I have the phone in-hand, took it with me to the beach, and here's my two cents.

     

    First of all, I threw $20 on a T-Mobile pre-paid plan just for kicks, but so far, can't get the phone to do anything beyond "Emergency Calls Only."  It IS on LTE while doing that, so it works for the purpose I bought it for, but it's still very annoying that I can't make it work the way I need to.  I'll be calling T-Mobile support at some point to try to get that sorted.

     

    From an RF perspective, the phone appears to be somewhat more deaf than my LG Leon LTE.  On AWS, it seems to be 5-7 dB weaker (according to SignalCheck Pro), and it likes to fall back to HSPA or EDGE much more rapidly than my Leon, even when Band 12 is unavailable for the Leon to fall back on. 

     

    One feature I do really like is that the engineering mode screen (which can be accessed through Activity Launcher) allows a by-band/technology setting, including the enabling of Band 12.  I could make the phone LTE-only if I wanted by disabling all the GSM and HSPA bands, or I could look for B12 only, etc.  If I was starting my phone collection from scratch, I would buy another of these for T-Mobile and have one set for Band 2/4 only and another for Band 12 only.  (Does anyone want to buy an LG Leon LTE?)  I wish it supported Band 5; if it did, I would also want to use it for AT&T for the same reason.

     

    It seems to have some bugs with SignalCheck Pro.  When connected to LTE, it simultaneously shows invalid GSM data and logs it as "LTE" in the GSM log.  Additionally, when connected to EDGE, it says "No connection" even though it's clearly connected.  But it definitely updates more frequently than the Leon, which is nice, but it also seems like it does not report PSC data to SCP for the connected cell even though it does use PSC for neighbor cells.  Not sure what the deal is there, or if that's a bug of some sort.

     

    As for the phone itself, the battery life seems comparable to my Nexus 5 (AT&T) and my Moto E (Verizon).  I like the screen in general, but it's polarized such that my polarized sunglasses make the screen look like it's off when I hold it vertically.  Like the Nexus 5, the Micro USB port on the bottom is upside down, and unlike any of my other phones, it's offset to the left side.  I had fits figuring out how the SIM locking mechanisms worked, but I eventually figured it out.  I don't like the button placement, but I think that's personal preference.  I can't speak to the sound or camera quality since I've tested neither.

     

    Although the phone has two SIMs, as expected and against hopes, it appears that only one will send data to SCP at a time, it seems, though you can have GSM active on both at once (presumably for incoming calls). 

     

    Any questions I can answer?

     

    - Trip

    • Like 2

    T-Mobile LTE & Network Discussion V2

    in General Topics

    Posted

    Cross-posting from T4GRU:

     

    Well, as the owner of an LG Leon LTE, I find that phone to spend most of its time on 700, which is fine if I'm looking for 700, but not fine if I'm trying to find towers with AWS and no 700.

     

    So I went ahead and ordered the $50 Amazon ad-included Blu R1 HD and a T-Mobile SIM kit.  It doesn't support B12 (yet; might come in an update from what I read) which is probably a good thing for me at this point. 

     

    If anyone's interested, I'll give some opinions on it once I have it.  I paid for 1-day shipping so I should have it on the 13th, in time for a trip on the 14th.

     

    - Trip

    • Like 3

    Similar forum like this but for AT&T?

    in General Topics

    Posted

    Yeah, not sure how they do it but AT&T band 4 routinely outreaches band 26 in my area. And it's only a 10x10 of band 4 so it shouldn't be a massive difference. They really push their gear to the limits.

     

    In my experience in this area, all of the other carriers have better LTE reach than Sprint does, even on comparable bands.  In some of the more rural areas here, it seems worse than it does in the city; I lose LTE completely on Sprint as soon as I lose line of sight, even though those towers may have all three bands; meanwhile, AT&T and Verizon and even T-Mobile B2 have LTE available on some band, never falling to 3G.  (I'm thinking particularly of 29 south of Warrenton.)  Verizon's 10x10 PCS LTE, which is only on select towers, seems to go on forever and at good strength, often preventing me from seeing AWS or 700 on towers I don't have without toggling airplane mode.

     

    It definitely seems to be a configuration or optimization issue, as I never had this problem when I visited the Shentel region.  I did see 3G from time to time, but it was in the really viciously rough terrain areas, and in those areas the other carriers were no better off.

     

    - Trip

    • Like 1

    SignalCheck - Android app to monitor your Wi-Fi/2G/3G/4G LTE/5G-NR signal strengths

    in General Topics

    Posted

    Unless my understanding of how a dual SIM device operates is incorrect, it just has two physical SIM slots -- but only one is active at any given time.  In no way is the device attached to two networks at the same time.  That would require multiple baseband modems, which I do not believe a dual SIM device possesses.  Essentially, the inactive slot acts as a carrying case for that SIM and obviates the need to remove and swap between two SIMs.

     

    AJ

     

    That's disappointing, if true.  I'm wondering why it wouldn't be something resembling SRLTE, where it's authenticated and listening to both at once while only actively connected to one.  That doesn't require two modems, right?

     

    - Trip

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