Trip

You would be surprised how many important people think that day is coming. - Trip

The Verizon phone and the MetroPCS phone both came with SIMs. The H2O Wireless SIM I bought on Amazon I think for a few bucks. - Trip

They do, but most of them still do not have LTE, including the one at Zion and, apparently, a number of them along I-64. And 15 in Louisa County between Zion and Gordonsville is a virtual void. 1X 800 for as long as it lasts and then US Cellular or Verizon roaming until the nTelos EV-DO picks up in Gordonsville... - Trip

Pretty frequently. I live in Alexandria and my parents live in "the void" (Charlotte County) and so whenever I go to visit, it's down 15. Visited over the weekend, actually. I know where every Sprint, nTelos, and US Cellular tower is along the way by memory at this point. I have an S5 so it doesn't have Band 5, needed for any US Cellular LTE in Buckingham, Prince Edward, and Charlotte Counties. But my sister's Nexus 5X doesn't pick up the Band 5 LTE either, so who knows. - Trip

Make sure location services are enabled in SCP too. I'm really curious to see if US Cellular's GCI matches up in any way to its site ID numbering system. So far, I've been unable to see even a single US Cellular GCI to even have a guess. If you were north of New Canton, you were getting close to the Carysbrook site by the school, but there's no nTelos LTE there yet. (Just north of the school, though, I hopped onto one of the sites from the lake, and then the site at Troy has LTE.) If you were south of New Canton, then definitely in US Cellular territory. I'm not sure how much data, if any, Mike has about US Cellular, so it's entirely possible that SCP doesn't actually know the provider name in those cases. - Trip

Do you have your SCP logger running? If so, any chance of sending the log dump my way? - Trip

Not sure you're going to get much cheaper on Verizon than the Moto E. You may have to reboot it now and then due to the bug with SCP (depending whether or not it impacts Cell Mapper). I had to reboot it twice on my drive back to northern Virginia on Sunday, both times after brief drops to 1X, which were exceedingly rare, and didn't cause the bug every time. On the trip down, I didn't have to reboot at all. The LG Leon LTE, at the time, was one of the only cheap MetroPCS phones with B12. That may have changed as that was during the summer. You could probably do something cheaper than the Nexus 5 on AT&T, but I wanted to be sure that SCP would work. I still have no solution for US Cellular. - Trip

Yes, government spectrum is being repurposed for AWS-3. The spectrum is technically not available yet, only after much money is spent moving existing things around will it become available, and I think some of it will never become available, though I'm not 100% certain of that. - Trip

I'm actually kind of surprised that the Southern Virginia market and its five whole counties didn't get rolled into the Shentel purchase. It would have put Louisa County into the Shentel market. But, alas, we're still waiting for Sprint to fill that gap. I was hoping that I would be pleasantly surprised driving through Zion Crossroads today, but from the above comments, I'm going to prepare for disappointment. - Trip

In short, your plan would cause lawsuits and political problems. It took years of negotiations to get the spectrum freed for AWS-3, and billions of dollars that haven't yet been spent. Saying "it's an extra 25 MHz the feds would need to surrender" is one of those things that sounds very easy on paper but isn't in practice. - Trip

Just another update here, centered primarily on US Cellular. Unfortunately for me, and I had already suspected this but hoped I was wrong, is that US Cellular behaves more like AT&T than like Verizon, Sprint, and T-Mobile. As long as my phone isn't activated, not only can I not connect to LTE, I can't even update the PRL (which is so old it favors Verizon for roaming). And without a pay-as-you-go service option (I didn't overlook it, did I?) I don't see an affordable way to keep US Cellular service on it. Yesterday, I drove down to visit my parents (hello, from rural Virginia) and my phones were interesting. I came down 29 instead of 15. First of all, Verizon held LTE the ENTIRE trip, until I got here. Here, it showed a lot of "no service" but in the upstairs of my parents' house, it tries valiantly to find a usable 1X signal, jumping between 10 or 12 different very distant -95 dBm 1X sites. Since this is former Alltel territory, the 1X actually has usable coordinates in it, so I know which ones, too; one is more than 40 miles away. Second, I was surprised how little LTE AT&T actually has in the rural areas. South of Charlottesville, AT&T goes to HSPA and stays there until Amherst. Then, most of 460 east of Lynchburg had no LTE, except for Appomattox itself. Third, I was similarly surprised by T-Mobile. I thought their LTE rollout was further along, but except for Amherst itself, there was no service at all south of Charlottesville until I emerged from the mountains, and there it was on HSPA until Lynchburg (except for Amherst itself). Then there was LTE all the way across 460 where AT&T had only had HSPA! Go figure. Finally, my regular Sprint phone jumped right onto nTelos LTE as soon as it came across it. So now, at my parents' house, for those who are interested, my phones show: Verizon: 1X jumping around wildly, probably not usable. AT&T: Mostly "no service" but occasionally jumps on EDGE at -111 dBm before dropping off again. T-Mobile: No service. Sprint: Roams gracefully on US Cellular 1X. No EV-DO still. - Trip

As far as I know, AT&T is the only carrier with a site near there, and even that one isn't so terribly close. Verizon and US Cellular 1X service will be coming from towers near US-60 or US-460. (Or perhaps US-15.) The nearest native service from Sprint or nTelos will be coming from US-460 and likely will not make the trip. No first-hand experience, so no idea for sure, and no idea about WiFi (though the website seems to imply it's "available" which could mean anything, really). - Trip

I have absolutely no inside information, but I would assume they will redo it to match their existing deployments. I can't wait. I just hope that if they do, they keep the convenient ID schemes we've figured out for nTelos, like having CDMA/LTE BSID/GCI data line up as it does. - Trip

It's amusing, but nTelos actually appears to use the same style numbering system Verizon does (except B41). 01/02/03 Verizon 700/nTelos PCS G-block 0C/16/20 Verizon AWS/nTelos 800 0D/17/21 Verizon (reserved? never actually seen it live)/nTelos PCS 2nd carrier 0E/18/22 Verizon PCS - Trip

So today while my phone was sitting on a white screen loading an app, I noticed that the SignalCheck Pro logo and text has burned into the top left corner of my Galaxy S5's screen. I didn't think burn-in was a problem on modern screens. But I think it speaks to the amount of time SCP runs on my phone. - Trip

No, the WISP is using it because the gear was cheap on eBay. They keep changing frequencies to try to avoid interference, which also keeps moving around. - Trip

My parents' WISP is on 900 MHz. And there's tons of interference in the band; I can't imagine this helping that any. - Trip

I just looked and in Shenandoah County, Sprint owns the bottom 15x15 MHz of PCS, and G-block at the top. nTelos will bring them an additional 10x10 MHz right below G-block. If they've already reduced their 1X and eHRPD down to 10x10 MHz total and can support the nTelos customers that are coming over on that much, they could theoretically (if the equipment supports it) do a 15x15 B25 carrier in the current Sprint spectrum and do 3G in the 10x10 MHz immediately below G-block. (Plus the G-block 5x5 LTE, of course.) Long-term, when/if 1X and eHRPD go away, Sprint is positioned for 2 15x15 LTE carriers on PCS in that area. - Trip

Just following up here. I got a Verizon phone from a member here (he can chime in if he wants; thanks again!) which supports B13/B4/B2 and SCP in full. No service required; I get LTE GCI and related data without service. The phone keeps bugging me to activate it, but as long as I keep saying no, all is well. In summary, here is where I stand. T-Mobile: LG Leon LTE (supports B2/B4/B12). Cost was about $110. No activation required. Sprint: Samsung Galaxy S5 (supports B25/B26/B41). This is my actual phone with my phone number and whatnot on it. Cost was effectively 0 since I would have had it anyway. AT&T: Google Nexus 5 (supports B2/B4/B5/B17). Cost was about $115, plus I have to put $10 on a pay-as-you-go H2O Wireless account every 3 months and keep background data disabled. Not bad. Verizon: Motorola Moto E (supports B2/B4/B13). Cost was much lower than others thanks to member here, as mentioned previously. No activation required. On Martin Luther King Day weekend I will be visiting my parents and thus entering US Cellular territory again. When I do so, I will factory reset my Samsung Galaxy S4 Mini and put a new SIM in it to see if I can make it work for US Cellular without activation. I will also direct Premier Sponsors here: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/6784-trips-cell-tower-map-work-in-progress/?p=463440 A few interesting notes about the carriers, and thoughts from others are appreciated. I find it very interesting how Verizon and AT&T have been deploying things. My AT&T phone tends to camp on B2, while my Verizon phone tends to camp on B4. But then, each carrier seems to have a handful of sporadically upgraded towers on B2 (Verizon) or B4 (AT&T) that is preferred and clung to even when sitting under a closer tower with the other band available. For example, I was in the Target parking lot the other day, next to the Beacon Hill Verizon site right behind the Target building, but was connected to B2 from Huntington. Makes it hard to track down GCI values in some cases. I've also noticed that T-Mobile and AT&T, at least, seem to use different GCIs on the same tower sometimes, but not always. I actually asked about this over on T4GRU and it seems like this is acknowledged as a thing that happens. Not sure what the pattern is, if any, between the two numbers. It doesn't seem like there is one, like Sprint has with B41. Verizon doesn't seem to have built out all its permits yet. I know some of the permits I've found for small cells are very new and thus it makes sense, but I drove by a church steeple today which was supposed to have T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon in it, and while the first two were present, Verizon was connected to a much more distant site on B13. I suspect I'll be seeing a lot of changes from Verizon in the coming months. Finally, I found a drive by Mount Vernon to be very interesting on Saturday. While we already knew Sprint wasn't upgraded there, it turns out T-Mobile and AT&T also have no LTE there. Only Verizon does, and even that is B13 only. I wonder what the story is that virtually no upgrades have been done there, given that I would imagine it's probably a decent tourist attraction. Hope everyone has had a great holiday! - Trip

It should have been November 15. - Trip

You tell me. It's odd though. It was only on the East/West platform and dropped off after I rounded the corner to the North/South platform. It was also very weak, only about -95 when I walked under the antennas. Considering the 3G signal is about -50 dBm, I would expect a proper LTE signal there to be -80 dBm or so. - Trip

Ironic, possibly, that this showed up yesterday. I know that for some time now, in the L'enfant Plaza Metro station, Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile have had LTE while Sprint has been on 3G. This morning, I happened to look at my phone as I got on the escalator at the edge of the station and caught a flash of an unfamiliar GCI right before it flipped to the GCI for the Weaver Building. My log shows a GCI which would be one of the highest B25 ones I've ever seen (new sites have high GCI values), 0303D3. I've got my fingers crossed that on the way home, I'll discover Sprint LTE in L'enfant Plaza Metro station. - Trip

I was at the Air and Space Museum's Dulles facility on Saturday and as best I can tell, Sprint was the only carrier with a DAS in that building, and the DAS had B25 and B26. Signal was generally around -80 dBm, while the other carriers were closer to -110 dBm. I knew Sprint had a DAS there, but was surprised to find the others didn't seem to. Here's the link to RootMetrics: http://www.rootmetrics.com/us/rsr/washington-dc/2015/2H And I hope Pentagon City is done soon. Verizon and AT&T have LTE there, T-Mobile appears to have LTE from a nearby building, and Sprint has 3G that often drops to 1X if you're in the wrong part of the mall. - Trip

In the areas where Shentel is the provider now, it's a top tier carrier. Unfortunately, it's going to take time after the sale of nTelos to Shentel closes before they can get the nTelos network close to the quality found in their native area. If you want to jump on the promotion, then by all means do so, but don't be surprised if you find yourself on 3G a lot for a while. Others who live in the area will probably chime in as well. At the moment, it appears that the Sprint LTE rollout in the nTelos region is spotty at best. - Trip

Not that I want to start a debate here, as that's not the purpose of this thread, I can definitely see the value in that placement--when you're making a call and holding the phone up to your head. At any other time (read--99% or more of the time when I'm using my phone), it makes no sense to me, whatsoever. But, to each his own. That's why we have multiple phone manufacturers. - Trip