Trip

Be careful with these. In some states, it is illegal to have any object besides a rear view mirror attached to your windshield. - Trip

The problem with that is that there's a 3G DAS in the building. - Trip

Walked into work this morning after a week and a half off and instead of sitting on B25 from the very strong B25 signal I get here these days, now I'm sitting on a new Sprint B41 signal. Sector is 33 (GCI is 0x0317F933), suggesting I'm looking at a west-facing panel but I can't tell, for the life of me, where it's coming from. I didn't have a corresponding B25 or B26 in my database for it, so I'm quite stumped. It has to be pretty close since if I walk to the window, I get to about -95 dBm. When I leave today I'll see if I can determine where it might be coming from. I was thinking that the B25 I started getting was from the adjacent building, but now I'm thinking it's this building (which would explain the -78 dBm or so I usually see, and I note a building permit on this building was approved in April though I can't tell for sure if it's Sprint). I'm also thinking this B41 I'm seeing is from the adjacent building, but I am east of said building, unless the 33 is just pointed oddly. - Trip

I have actually been working very hard on my personal SignalCheck database this weekend and found not only the second Clear carrier I already knew about in several places I hadn't noticed it before, but I've found second carriers on 8T8R sites as well which I didn't notice live. All of this was in my database and I just hadn't seen them when they were picked up live, probably because I was driving at the time. - Trip.

I feel like it's been better lately but still not perfect. There have definitely been times when I've been in there and there is no data period. - Trip

Here are some items about 800 MHz rebanding. http://bit.ly/1NurDIl http://bit.ly/1f2kFzv http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0701/DA-15-775A1.pdf - Trip

But if you go to uscc.com, it takes you to US Cellular. I think its their preferred abbreviation. - Trip

Could be atmospherics playing with the signals. Look up "TV DXing" for an example of what happens in the UHF TV band during tropospheric ducting, and that band is right below the 700 MHz/800 MHz bands. I wouldn't be surprised, also, if that made the downlink path much stronger than the presumably much weaker uplink path, meaning that you would see a signal you can't actually use because you can see the tower but the tower can't see you. - Trip

I know you're referring locally to your area in Michigan, but I just wanted to report that I've seen evidence of the T-Mobile expansion, in the event nobody else has seen it either. I was poking at microwave licenses a few weeks ago and found several new ones in Fluvanna County, VA which appear to be on newly constructed towers. Interestingly, these newly constructed towers seem to be well placed to provide strong service to areas which currently have poor service from Verizon, AT&T, US Cellular, and nTelos. (Insert joke here about how all Sprint customers in nTelos territory currently have poor service.) Almost as if they're trying to be competitive for those customers which should be easy to pick up. - Trip

It depends on the network configuration, which gives Sprint a flexibility that FDD does not have. (Need more downlink than uplink than currently configured? Just change the configuration to dedicate more time to downlink.) But it's a single 20 MHz wide carrier which spends some fraction of the time as downlink and some fraction of the time as uplink. Calling it 10x10 is not accurate. - Trip

Wow. I would hope Sprint follows along soon. Just having better service in the stations would be a huge help, since I suspect most people spend more time on their phones while waiting at stations than on the trains. - Trip

I am not on unlimited, and mine is a little bit of two options, but I voted for the better coverage option. I get a much better price on Sprint than I had with US Cellular or than I would have for the same service with Verizon, but Sprint will roam onto US Cellular and thus works in areas I frequent where no other national carrier will work. - Trip

Does tower-side output even matter that much? If the tower is unable to hear your request for a web page, it won't be able to deliver it. - Trip

But with the dollar figures floating around, I won't be surprised if a number will. - Trip

While I'm planning to put together an official thread with an up to date first post about this auction, here's some news today: http://www.broadcastingcable.com/news/washington/appeals-court-denies-broadcaster-auction-challenge/141696 - Trip

The only issue I've had with Wifi calling on my S5 is that, without fail, at exactly 30 minutes, the call dies. Not really sure whether that's the phone or something with my router or what. - Trip

They offer 1 Mbps unlimited (for $50/mo) and have raised it to 1.5 Mbps for my parents (who are grandfathered at $35/mo I think), but the service is very spotty and often much slower or non-existent. http://www.rabbitears.info/tvdx/signal_graph/101B48F4/tuner1/WBRA-TV All of the gaps in my graphs of TV signal levels there represent total outages of their service, as my server has been running continuously for more than a year. They use 900 MHz unlicensed on gear purchased from eBay, and when you call to complain that the service doesn't work they say "then find another provider." (There isn't one.) - Trip

I also don't use Facebook, but wish you the best of luck. It sounds like you provide significantly better service than my parents' fixed wireless ISP. If there was absolutely anyone else who would provide them service (even satellite isn't taking customers!) they would be long gone. - Trip

How can they? It's an 11x11 block and they're doing 10x10 with it already. - Trip

I have an automatic monthly donation to S4GRU set up as well. It works well for me. - Trip

The map uses the data from the FCC database which can be very hard to parse. If you click around enough, you'll find that Sprint actually has 800 MHz SMR holdings nationwide, just scattered across different categories of licenses due to oddities of the database. I don't put much stock in the 2.5 GHz data because of the scatterbrained way it's licensed. - Trip

I spent the better part of three years roaming almost nonstop with US Cellular and they didn't seem to care. (I lived in a part of Tennessee outside the US Cellular footprint, then here in the DC region.) If you can deal with the 3G-ness of the service, US Cellular didn't care how much roaming I did. I only switched to Sprint because they were 3G on Verizon at the time, and the Verizon 3G is atrocious. They now use Sprint, I believe, and Sprint's 3G is very usable. - Trip

The only carriers I'm aware of with unlimited are T-Mobile which you have and Sprint which doesn't have LTE in the area right now. (Hopefully soon, but there's no inside information on whether that's just a hope or close to reality.) When you say "towns around Lynchburg," what do you mean? I grew up in Charlotte County and US Cellular never let me down. I would recommend them again in a heartbeat. The downside is that you would be roaming/3G in Danville/Pittsylvania County and in Raleigh/Durham proper. And, of course, the complete lack of unlimited. Once the nTelos LTE gets turned on for Sprint customers, that might be your ideal choice, but we simply don't know the timeframe on that. - Trip

Not exactly what you're looking for, but probably as close as we can get in the near future: http://specmap.sequence-omega.net/ You might also try this, but the data may not be up to date: http://reboot.fcc.gov/reform/systems/spectrum-dashboard Big problem is that the FCC's database is rather hard to parse. To do anything else would be to hand-manage it, a lot of work that would require a lot of maintenance. - Trip

Who else would Shentel partner with? Verizon and AT&T have their own networks in the Shentel region, and T-Mobile definitely has service (albeit not on the scale Shentel does). - Trip