Trip

So, wait, Sprint constantly screws up and would be out of business in two years, but if they bought T-Mobile they'd be the best company?  Am I missing something or do those two points conflict?

- Trip

I didn't realize newer TV licenses were being auctioned, I can't imagine they have much monitary value outside of spectrum constrained markets. My point is that if you are merely relocating their license, as opposed to simply just taking it, then they should be only be compensated for the cost of moving. AFAICT, outside of NYC and LA, moving to "only" 38 OTA TV channels shouldn't result in a loss of stations.

I can definitely tell you that is not true.  You're correct that stations which are not purchased in the reverse auction will only be compensated for the cost of moving, costs of which are larger than you might think they are.  However, in order to clear out channels 38-51 (making 70 MHz available for auction) requires more than 250 eligible stations nationwide to be purchased as opposed to relocated.

In North Dakota, sure, nobody needs to be bought.  In most of the east coast, Great Lakes region, Florida, Texas, and California?  You can't clear anything without turning off stations.

- Trip

Any TV license issued since the mid-90s was won at auction.  Any older ones that have changed hands have included spectrum value in the purchase price.

Although the licenses were "free" they came with lots of public service obligations and regulations, which wireless doesn't have.  Wireless isn't required to provide local programming, educational content for kids, provide its service for free to the general public, etc. 

- Trip

2-line family plan (2GB) with devices through a contract, I'm paying about $115/month total.  I never went over 1GB when I was paying $74/mo for 500 minutes/no texts/5GB data on one line with US Cellular, nor did my fiancee who is now on my plan, so this price beats the heck out of that.

- Trip

My S5 avoids B26 as much as it can, but does fall back to it if B25 and B41 are unavailable.

It similarly prefers 1X PCS over 1X 800.

- Trip

I'm working on redoing the nTelos tower map I put together in the Sponsor section to include data on tower owners and the like, where such information is available.  You would be surprised just how many of their sites are on wooden poles. 

I also think nTelos must have previously sold towers to Crown Castle because just about any tower in the nTelos region with a registration that says "CROWN CASTLE" in all caps like that has nTelos on it.

- Trip

When I visit my parents, we take 66 across to 15, then down to 29 until 15 in Culpeper.  The 29 stretch had two more LTE towers on it when I went last weekend than at Thanksgiving, and the only LTE tower in Culpeper County (as best I can tell) had added B26.

- Trip

My area now shows no Spark at all even though I am parked on B41 now, park on it at home, and on most of my commute. 

- Trip

So what would happen is US Cellular would advertise its network as B5 and B26 and then it would work on my phone, essentially.  Right?

- Trip

Will a B26 device operate on B5 given that B5 is a subset of B26?  In the area where my parents are, US Cellular has no B12, only B5.

- Trip

From what I am gathering, it looks like it doesn't log sites without BSLAT/BSLON at all, but if you add a Site Note for it, then it adds a row with a bunch of missing data just to hold the note. 

- Trip

It's not just nTelos, but US Cellular and some Verizon sites too.  I've used different programs for that too but would really prefer to use the much nicer SignalCheck Pro.

- Trip

AJ and swintec,

That's really helpful.  Thanks for the info.  AJ, what spectrum analyzer do you have?

- Trip

Good afternoon, all,

I find myself at my parents' house for the weekend, way off in the middle of absolute nowhere.  If there was work here and reliable Internet, I would want to live here in this peaceful, pleasant area, but there isn't an FCC field office here, so DC is where I live.

For Christmas, my parents got me an RF Explorer spectrum analyzer.  I already have a spectrum analyzer, but it's for cable TV and tops out around 800 MHz, putting it below any of the bands of interest above TV.  This unit, much smaller, lighter, and with better battery life, is really nice.  I've used it first of all to verify what I already knew, which is that out of the hundreds of MHz in 700, SMR, CLR, AWS, PCS, and BRS, the only spectrum being used here is US Cellular's A block in CLR, the only spectrum they own here.  (Rural spectrum shortage my rear end; the other guys are sitting on piles of licenses here and simply not using it.)  I've attached a snapshot showing US Cellular's chunk. 

It appears that there's LTE in the 869-874 piece, then EV-DO above that and 1X at the top.  My phone is connected to 1X on channel 242, which is apparently around 877 MHz.  It also appears the small piece of A block at the top of the band is unused. 

But this raises an interesting question.  Does US Cellular only allow 1X roaming?  My deactivated US Cellular Galaxy S4 Mini no longer connects to LTE since only 1X is used for 911 voice calls, but it does still seem to connect to EVDO.  My Sprint Galaxy S5, however, only seems to connect to 1X here, even though it sees EVDO when roaming on Verizon.  At first I thought maybe US Cellular had done what Sprint does with 800, 1X and LTE only, but the spectrum analyzer and my deactivated phone both seem to indicate that's not the case. 

Finally, does anyone know why US Cellular might be transmitting two different NIDs?  At first I thought it was frequency specific, that I was connected to one carrier with the NID 10 and then a different with NID 65535, but that's not what's happening, because my phone tells me it's on channel 242 in either case.  I'm at a complete loss because it only seems to be happening in this county and not in the surrounding areas to the north where I came from yesterday. 

Happy New Year!

- Trip

Mike,

Did you get my e-mails about the CDMA logging issue I've noticed?  I haven't heard from you.  I know it's a busy time of year but after Sunday it will be weeks or months before I can do any testing on it if you want me to.

- Trip

In large parts of the nTelos Sprint overlay area, US Cellular is probably the company to go with. 

- Trip

Interesting that their test more or less backs up what I've seen in the DC metro area, which is that Sprint has better performance than Verizon. 

- Trip

I noticed the three towers nearest to me with only 3G are all cell towers sticking up through power distribution towers.  I've been wondering if there's a special crew or special arrangement that needs to be made to work on those.

- Trip

There are still a large number of untouched sites in this area.  At home, I'm on a Clearwire site, as I am at the grocery stores at Beacon Hill, but not at Safeway in Rose Hill, which is still 3G only.  There's a tower near L'enfant Metro which is 3G only still, as is the tower nearest to Smithsonian Metro (which grabs weak LTE from a more distant location), Pentagon City Mall is still 3G, and there are many others.  Granted, these are just in places that I go regularly, but I can understand why Sprint might want to hold off until the LTE coverage is more consistent.

- Trip

The beta has an option to ignore the TAC for neighbor cells and just get the nearest PCI match.

- Trip

No, it's not complete, and was not claimed to be.  The word "substantially" modifies the word "complete" to indicate it is not 100% complete.

And while I wouldn't choose the word Paynefanbro used, you definitely appear to be nitpicking over wording.  Building a new tower when one already exists and would make no difference in coverage in a location is not only wasteful and unnecessary, but local permitting boards would almost certainly reject it.  Replacing all the equipment on a tower, including the equipment on the ground, is as close to "ground up" as you're going to get in many locations. 

- Trip

Same here.  I can stomach 3 years behind VZ & ATT (well...kinda but not really) but US Cellular?  Come on man!  You mean to tell me the farmers have LTE on their tractors in the middle of po-dunk and I can't get it on Sprint?  SMH

If anything, being behind US Cellular is more understandable, at least in my mind.  Whereas the big four would need to upgrade thousands of cell sites they have in big cities presumably before moving on to the rural areas, US Cellular primarily serves rural areas, so it would understandably get to those rural areas faster since it wouldn't need to build out thousands of cells in New York, Los Angeles, etc.

- Trip

It seems like every time I go out I find a new B41 deployment.  Today it was on Rt 7 between Seven Corners and I-66.

- Trip

I have an S5 and the new beta has fixed the bug where Clear sites would show as Sprint sites and the bug where it would show "No connection" at times even though it was connected.

- Trip

Just got the new beta and it does fix the PLMN on the Galaxy S5.  I now see "Clearwire B41" instead of "Sprint."

- Trip