Trip

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/att-study-finds-less-20-interference-600-mhz-band-mexican-and-canadian-tv-s/2015-04-16

 

What's this spectrum impairment?

There are two distinct issues here, and Robert touched on both of them.  For those interested, I'll do a deeper dive.  (I sat in on the AT&T ex parte last week.)

Recall that the auction is voluntary and as such depends on broadcasters participating in order to clear spectrum.  Now, suppose that nobody in, say, Boston participates in the auction, but the rest of the country has great broadcaster participation.  One of two things can happen, either the auction fails because even though you could clear spectrum in the rest of the nation there was no way to clear it in Boston, or you sell the rest of the country and leave TV stations in what becomes the wireless band in the rest of the country.  The FCC has opted to go in the latter direction, and adopted the aforementioned ISIX methodology to determine such interference.  This is not what the AT&T filing was about.

The AT&T ex parte is about the issue that we do have neighbors to the north and south who may not necessarily clear spectrum in 600 MHz at the same time as us.  Negotiations are on-going and confidential at this time, so people are assuming the worst case scenario:  that those TV stations will remain there.  AT&T conducted this analysis to look at what kind of impairment US wireless licensees in 600 MHz would experience if all of the Canadian and Mexican TV stations did not move.  It turns out the answer is "quite a bit," as their analysis shows.  Much of that impairment is from Mexico and into Los Angeles, which should come as no surprise.  Of course, all involved are hoping that the negotiations turn out well and it's not an issue.

AT&T's ex parte filing is here, for anyone who wants to read it:  http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/comment/view?id=60001029063

Hopefully that clarifies things a bit.  I can also answer some questions, though I'm not the expert on this issue.

- Trip

Just to clarify, this is the incentive auction, not the forward auction.

The incentive auction is a reverse auction plus a forward auction, both parts put together.  So he's referring to both.

- Trip

My fiancee and I went down there after work today and it worked well enough to use Google Maps.  I was connected to DC03XC441.

- Trip

In Farmville?  Farmville is Sprint territory.

- Trip

Well, maybe not so surprising.  A week ago or so, when I reported the site was live, I could barely get it below the -90 dBm necessary for a report to be accepted.  This morning on my way in, I saw -76 dBm while casually walking by the building.  So I'm guessing they turned it up by at least 10 dB.

- Trip

Do you have the GCI?  I would be very surprised if it's WA98XC300, because that tower's range is very poor from what I've seen.  Of course, I'll be out looking at the cherry blossoms with my fiancee this afternoon, so I should be able to see for myself in any case.

- Trip

What tower were you looking at?  Or could you tell?

- Trip

The LTE 800 in Farmville was really nice when I was passing through.  It's the last island of LTE I see before getting to my parents' house. 

That said, Farmville/Prince Edward County could really use some more locations from Sprint.  I haven't been into Wal-Mart since switching to Sprint but I would be very surprised if the LTE held up in there.  The American Tower near the school is an ideal location to get into Wal-Mart.  I wonder if that tower would get a usable signal down to Hampden-Sydney.

Here's hoping the nTelos footprint gets it soon.  I hope they also add some towers once they get LTE up and going on the existing network.  Lest I sound like a broken record, Willis Mountain could use one, for example.

- Trip

Trip, there is a tower on top of Science and Tech I (if that's even what it's called still), but I have no idea what they have spectrum wise. Our next visit is from the backhaul engineer so I'll ask him what he knows about the service there. Building materials didn't prevent my friends with AT&T from posting pictures though. I was parked in lot A by the old police station when the trouble started. It's too bad professer Kelley died, he was good friends with my Dad. He could have probably let me climb the tower if I asked nicely.

Cool, thanks.  I'll be interested to know what you find out!

Based primarily on public records, I came up with this a few weeks ago:

The 35 icon is Sprint/Clear, while the 78 icon is Verizon/T-Mobile.  I couldn't locate good information on AT&T.  I would have thought, though, that Sprint being so close to where I drop my sister off that the signal would be better.

Not sure if any of it is 100% accurate though; you will probably have better info than I do. 

- Trip

I went to the patriot center for some UFC action today and could not believe how absurdly awful the service is at GMU. Sitting in my truck in the parking lot I volleyed between LTE and 1X, and could not use my phone in the arena. I remember being on the event floor in 2010 for graduation and not being able to use it but 5 years later and no improvement is embarrassing.

I wouldn't say GMU service is awful so much as inconsistent.  I know there's a tower on campus, but whenever I drop my sister off, I seem to be on B41 or 1X and nothing in between.  And often the B41 is from Massey and not the presumably closer one on campus.  Maybe it's got something to do with the building materials?

- Trip

Looks like it gives nTelos the right to build out in the parts of the Greensboro EA where they currently serve as Sprint overlay.  Good sign!

In a few seconds of searching, I found similar leases for Charlottesville and for the Roanoke EA for both G-block and 800.  Didn't look for 2.5 GHz.

- Trip

Looks like second carrier ID works on Clear B41.

- Trip

Happy birthday!

- Trip

Yeah, I hate the new T-Mobile map.  Still have the old one open in a tab and it still works, but no idea how long that will last and the first time I have to close my browser, I assume that's gone.

- Trip

New beta looks great!  All my major issues appear to be corrected.

- Trip

I managed to fool it a little bit.  All my Clear sites have site notes like "Crystal City East B41" since the Clear sites appear only on B41, so having B41 in the site notes makes it evident. 

I wouldn't mind doing the same thing with the Sprint B41 sites which appear to have different PCI from the B25/B26 at the same location, but I think it's better to have them tied together for identifying sites that have newly converted to B41.

- Trip

Maybe I should get a job at the FCC working on the 600MHz plan?

I'm one step ahead of you. 

- Trip

I doubt nTelos is thinking about new towers, but they should very strongly consider co-locating on the US Cellular tower on Willis Mountain in Buckingham County.  It was amazing to watch the signal as I went down 15 from Dillwyn to Farmville yesterday.  I started out roaming on US Cellular as I left Dillwyn.  Then it jumped to a 1X 800 Sprint tower in Cumberland County, until I went behind Willis Mountain and it jumped onto US Cellular.  Then I watched it try valiantly to hang onto 1X 800 from no less than four different Sprint towers in Prince Edward County while often failing back over to US Cellular 1X, and I saw it try to hold LTE B26 at -124 dBm from one of them twice.  Finally, coming over the hill south of Sheppards, it was able to connect to Sprint 1X PCS from Farmville and soon thereafter connected to LTE B26 (though that tower didn't seem nearly as strong as I'm used to B26 being, maybe not optimized yet?).

It would be funny if it wasn't so sad.  And probably made the phone unusable for calls or anything as it jumped around and signal went up and down constantly.

- Trip

I continue to be amazed at how quickly upgrades are occurring.  Yesterday I drove to visit my parents and then today I drove back.  On my way down, I had LTE all the way from my home next to the Huntington Metro all the way around the beltway, on 66, on 15, and then it finally gave out when I was on 29 after clinging to B26 from Buckland for a really long time.  I think it finally gave up about half-way to Warrenton and flipped to 3G then.  Then, again, at Opal, it jumped on B26 and hung onto it until I got to Brandy Station.  Not this market, but when I got to Farmville, I was on B26 the entire time I was in town, including indoors.

There was also a surprising amount of B41 additions,  I saw at least 3 more towers (probably more, would have to check) running B41 than when I went down at New Year's, and that was with all the bad weather we've had. 

Now if only they could do something about nTelos land...

- Trip

Waiiiiiit a second did I know about this? I don't have it noted anywhere, so if I did, I'm sorry it fell through the cracks. I will look into this ASAP. As I metioned above, non-LTE feedback has dried up.. and I'm very rarely off LTE myself, so I don't notice those hiccups.

Mike,

I remember discussing it, and I think it was in this thread.  It definitely seems as though if no BSL is reported, the 1X site is not logged.  The exception is if a site note is added while connected, but then it doesn't record any information about the strongest signal coordinates or things like that.

On an unrelated note, I've connected to some Clear B41 with 09, 0A, and 0B at the end, including the one closest to my house, and I'm assuming that's a second carrier of B41.  Haven't connected to it to see if it picks it up or not.

- Trip

Mike, I was wondering if you could get 3G in SCP to behave more like LTE: User Note to display for the entire site (all sectors, including 1x800) and to place the User Note at the bottom of the "paragraph". Even better would be if it no longer displayed bsl if a user note was present

 

Currently a note only applies to one 1x1900 or 1x800 sector. I have screen shots if you need them.

 

We are getting ready to display the real site location for some members in several markets using sid nid bid. Thanks

Won't try to speak for Mike, but I think the problem with this is that not all carriers treat the 3G BID the same way.  Sprint seems to follow the third character rule, which I assume is what you're seeking.  Verizon usually does, but some former Alltel areas I've been to seem to use sequential numbering for different sectors on the same instead.  (So it goes 0x8A1/0x8A2/0x8A3 instead of 0x18A/0x28A/0x38A.)

I'm also not sure how it's identifying 1X 800.  If it's only by SID, then there may not be a simple way to relate the 1X 800 to 1X PCS.  Not sure I know enough about that, though; for all I know the SIDs for 1X 800 may be 1-to-1 mappings to the 1X PCS SIDs.

The thing I want to see changed about 1X is the bug where it won't log a 1X sector if no BSL is being reported. 

- Trip

Another FCC order, though not as interesting as the last:  http://bit.ly/188Hspn

- Trip

Not sure where this should go, maybe here?  http://transition.fcc.gov/Daily_Releases/Daily_Business/2015/db0309/DA-15-301A1.pdf

- Trip

For 1X/EVDO, the BSL gives you an offset location that is not the tower site, as Galaxyguy says.  But there are generally three cells per site and they are usually grouped in some way.  Former Alltel sites are sequentially numbered, while Sprint sites in my area, when converted to hex, have the third digit varied.  (So 0x31AA, 0x32AA, and 0x33AA are on the same tower.)  You can then triangulate the position, more or less, based on those three locations.

Or, if you're on Sprint, you can become a Sponsor here and get maps.

- Trip

As best I can tell, AT&T and T-Mobile have no service in the tunnels. Verizon has spotty service in the tunnel, which Sprint roams on, but there are plenty of places (which tend to be where the trains sit when "there's a train ahead of us, we'll be moving momentarily").

It's not really useful while on the go, at least not as a Sprint customer.

Most of the stations have service, at least. 3G.

- Trip