Trip

In Virginia, I noted that US Cellular won only three licenses, two of which are in Charlotte and Prince Edward Counties, which are directly relevant to me.  US Cellular is easily the most dominant carrier in Charlotte, but is limited to a single 850 MHz CLR block and a 5x5 AWS-3 block.  I think they've recently won some spectrum in C-band or 3.45 GHz, but I'm not sure how useful that will turn out to be given how rural it is.  Winning C1 here should help with their capacity issues a lot.

T-Mobile got C2 and C3, so hopefully that means they'll be coming back and deploying B41 sooner rather than later.

- Trip

I've done that before.  When my AT&T data first went bad back in June, I used a different phone to plot the locations for my own purposes--but there was nothing I could do on the SignalCheck map.

- Trip

8 hours ago, RAvirani said:

Hey Mike,

I’ve noticed a location bug several times recently—it seems like the location reported by SCP lags my actual location by several minutes.

The outcome is something similar to the “stuck location” bug we used to have. Do you have any idea why this might be happening? @S4GRU and @Trip have see  this recently as well, I believe. 

Yep.  Closing and reopening SCP resolves it, but it's annoying because you can't tell it's going to happen until you're moving, and then you have to ditch any data prior to that point because it's not accurate.

Here's the bug report on the tracker:  https://github.com/bluelinepc/signalcheck/issues/16

- Trip

Ouch: 

https://www.wvnstv.com/news/t-mobile-customers-have-minimal-reception-in-beckley-seek-more-coverage/

- Trip

From the "things not on my bingo card for 2022" department, it looks like the T-Mobile site in Red House, VA is now fully upgraded.  I drove up to it this morning to confirm, and it now has B2/71/41, where previously it had been B71-only.  AWS appeared to be present but not accessible, as any phone locked to B66 would fail to connect to anything, even though it's on high ground and should have seen AWS from sites 10 miles away, as my AT&T phone was doing.  Notably, it also failed to connect to US Cellular B66 on the same tower, implying they have blocked roaming on it, which is also new.  The Shentel gear on the tower was not operating as best I could tell; B26 would connect to more distant sites if chosen.

I assumed backhaul would be a massive problem at the site, but maybe that's been resolved.  In any case, assuming they ultimately offer home internet, it'll be a big deal for people around who have never had great options in the past.

I got pictures of the upgraded setup which I'll post on Reddit next week.

- Trip

Neat!  Thanks.  Most of my issues at the moment are from inexperience.  I've never used AT commands and I'm bad at Python.  I'm not really sure what the best way is to send AT commands to the modem; socat seems to work, and there are Python libraries that should do it, but I don't really know what I'm doing. 

- Trip

8 hours ago, mikejeep said:

I found some automated crash reports from a Motorola Ace.. not sure if they were from you or not, but they are bizarre. The error is a security exception claiming "insufficient location permissions" but the triggering code is the block that runs once location permissions are granted. 🤷‍♂️

EDIT: I'm guessing they are from you. The timestamps were from 5-10 minutes before your post, and it's on two identical devices.

Not sure why you have two devices instead of one, but that sounds about right.  It crashed after I granted Phone permissions but before prompting for Location permissions.  The screen, before crashing, had showed the full-screen message about needing background location permissions with the button to open the screen to enable it.

- Trip

Yesterday, I saw a post on Facebook from an old friend about the Evolve III Maestro, a $60 laptop (at Micro Center) that apparently has an LTE modem in it.  Specifically, the Quectel EC25-AF*.  The nearest Micro Center was sold out of new ones, but offered open box at $48.  So for $51 after tax, I walked out this morning with one.  An absolute steal.

I backed up the Windows product key and then put Kubuntu 22.04 on it.  I spent a lot of time today trying to get the build tools installed so I could get the wifi module installed and running, and once I did that, I pretty quickly got to sending it modem commands, which I've never done before.  I don't have a SIM in it yet, but it does seem to function as it should.  (I figured out the command to get Timing Advance values out of it, but without a SIM, I doubt it would have such values.)

Now I'm trying to puzzle out how to write some kind of script or small program to use it for logging purposes.  I think I've worked out how to send commands to it from bash using socat, but I need to pick specific commands to run.  I'd actually like to replace some of my phones with this if I can get it to record cells, with GPS, and cycle through a set of bands repeatedly. 

My current phone collection consists of 9 phones other than my main S21FE, and they require babysitting while I'm logging.  It'd be nice to pare that down to a more reasonable number and let the computer do the work, hopefully in the back seat with less babysitting.

- Trip

=====

* Per the spec sheet, it supports B2/4/5/12/13/14/66/71.  That'd cover all of Verizon and US Cellular LTE, all but B29/30 on AT&T, and all but B41 and Sprint Keep on B26 for T-Mobile. 

More bizarre.  I just updated my other Ace without issue.

- Trip

I just installed the latest beta on one of my two Moto One 5G Ace devices and now it crashed multiple times on startup.  I tried clearing all data and cache and it got as far as asking for phone permissions, then crashed.  I tried to send diagnostics from Android but I'm not sure if they'll tell you anything.

I eventually set the permissions manually from the App Info screen and it then crashed when trying to import the database, but when I tried it again, it did import successfully.  So I've set everything back up again.  I don't know what happened.

- Trip

4 hours ago, dkyeager said:

https://www.lightreading.com/open-ran/dish-expected-to-walk-away-from-t-mobiles-800mhz-spectrum/d/d-id/779468?

Why wouldn't Dish try to knock down the price or get other sweeteners?  Won't be over until its over.  Still like band 5 plus band 26 being redone to better fit the 5G era.

I hate articles like this.  It appears to be based on the opinion of some nameless analysts who have about the same qualifications as my cat.  Is there one single fact regarding 800 in the story?  If there is, I don't see it.

- Trip

Mike, as an FYI, I've opened two issues in your issue tracker.  Hopefully it helps!

- Trip

I've just installed the latest version on my S21FE.  I'll let you know if it's less crashy now.  Hopefully it is--it was severe enough that it was sometimes crashing and not auto-relaunching, which was problematic for obvious reasons.

I'm going to christen your new Issues system by putting my last e-mail to you into it.  Hope that's okay.

- Trip

I was down in the southern part of Virginia earlier this week and on the way out of town yesterday, had to go through Keysville. From a distance, I noticed the Shentel rack looked like it had more gear on it, so I drove up for a closer look. Sure enough, T-Mobile gear is now in place, though not yet operating.  https://imgur.com/a/LaZIOQt

For reference, here are pictures of this tower I took in April: https://imgur.com/a/dTbr0uc

In addition, there's gear installed but not yet operating at Sprouses Corner and the site at Madison Run (US-15 between Orange and Gordonsville) was offline entirely with antennas on their way up.

- Trip

On Friday I went to get a haircut, and across the street is a Sprint keep site on a high-tension power pole.  I was able to confirm that:

1) It's still operating with B25/26/41.

2) The 2xB41 remains co-channel with T-Mobile 2xB41.

3) The B25 G-block remains operational.

4) An additional B25 carrier is now co-channel with T-Mobile's primary B2, and was able to appear on my phone as "Sprint B2".

I could not confirm that it's running a third carrier co-channel with T-Mobile's second B25 carrier. 

- Trip

I wonder how far along they are in converting Sprint sites in Vermont.  When I was there in 2015, large parts of the state had Sprint (3G) but not T-Mobile at all, and I don't think that's changed significantly.

- Trip

Around here, the GCIs are a complete mess, with some sites having 5 or more.  I do hope they come back and tidy them; I know that some of the newer upgraded sites are not getting separate 600/700 GCIs like previous ones were. 

I'd be nice if they tidied the PCIs also, as they seem to be completely random and have no consistency across bands (or sometimes even within bands).

- Trip

There are only a few sites left running, but I confirmed today that Sprint B26 is still running in Alexandria.  I connected to one keep site and one non-keep site.

- Trip

Returned from southern Virginia today and drove around the I-64/US-29/US-250 loop around Charlottesville on the way up.  Located new B41 from three sites: 

A Shentel keep site, specifically the one where I-64 crosses 5th Street - 035ADAxx

The Darden School - 034D7Axx

Another that I believe is from the site near the Amtrak station but couldn't confirm based on the points I had - 04AFC1xx

- Trip

...and I just this morning realized you meant Cumberland, MD.  It threw me because there's an Ashby in Cumberland County, VA, which I'm far more familiar with.

- Trip

I don't have anything solid to offer on Cumberland, but I came down US-15 today and the water tower site in Weber City is now up and running with B2/12/4/71 (035ACCxx), I believe I saw new T-Mobile antennas on the tower at Sprouses Corner which I will try to confirm on Saturday (definitely not running if they're there), and I believe I may have connected to something that got converted in Farmville.  By process of elimination, my guess is Lancer Park, but I hope to find out tomorrow or Saturday.

So upgrades are clearly coming.  You may want to see if your local government officials can tell you anything.  Probably not, but can't hurt to ask.

- Trip

On 6/14/2022 at 10:05 AM, Trip said:

So this is bizarre, and I'm not really sure what to say about it or how it could have even happened.

My AT&T phone (FreedomPop) is a rooted Pixel 3a.  Somehow, it appears that in both the trail log and the site log, the GPS somehow lagged the cells yesterday.  I noticed it because we went through Detrick, VA.  On my new S21FE, the logs are correct.  I see Shentel's 0FE18Fxx at Detrick, as expected.  Meanwhile, AT&T is on that same tower.  It got recorded with correct TA numbers, but coordinates that were probably 20-30 minutes out of date.  They clearly follow the route that we took, and are even spaced correctly from what I can tell, but they're just clearly mismatched.

I salvaged the data by using the timestamps to match with my S21FE logs, and used those coordinates to locate anything I had issues with, so I didn't lose anything personally, but you can see the incorrect locations on the SignalCheck Map site.  Look at AT&T LTE, 09FB11, and you'll see that the 0x10 and 0x11 sectors are placed very wrongly, while the 0x0F sector as a few points that are right only because one of my other phones managed to connect to it by accident along the way.

It looks like others were impacted too; that's just the one that's most obvious.  I didn't notice it along the way because I had my dashboard phone holders dedicated to various T-Mobile devices, and my AT&T phone was out of my line of sight.

Later in the log, things appear to be correct again.  Utterly bizarre.  Any thoughts?

- Trip

Interesting twist.  Today, I took off for southern Virginia and had my T-Mobile B71 phone (Revvlry on Android 10) and I noticed the GPS was bad as compared to my other two devices on SCP on the dash.  Couldn't get it to clear by toggling the Location Services box, so I quit and restarted SCP.

When I did so, it first came up with the bad coordinates, then extremely rapidly zipped through from where it was stuck all the way up to where I was currently, like the coordinates were backlogged and then suddenly flushed out within a few short seconds.  More bizarrely, I noticed the same behavior on two other devices (Pixel 3a and Moto One 5G Ace, both on Android 11) and had to do the same thing to those.  I also dumped my trails on all three, assuming they were all bad by then.  The rest of my devices were correct.

I was barreling down the highway at the time, so I couldn't investigate further.  Other than my quoted message above, I've never seen this behavior before, and now it seems to be widespread. 

- Trip

My S21FE showed an n41 SA connection as n38 the other day.  I've also seen it show me n41 SA as n71, even though the NR-ARFCN was correct.  I tried to send diagnostics for each case, but I would guess that's what the phone was reporting to SCP.

- Trip

47 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

 

With the factory unlocked, a lot more bands show:

AT&T MVNOs: n2, n5, n66, n77

T-Mobile MVNO: n2, n5, n25, n41, n71, n77, n78

Verizon MVNO: n2, n5, n66, n78

 

Note that Verizon currently limits access to n77 and n78 and mmWave depending on MVNO and account type.

Also note that T-Mobile locked just shows n41 and n71.

Bleh, what a mess.  I was hoping it was consistent.  Sounds like a bit more trouble than it's worth.

Because Network Signal Guru is unable to do any NR band locking at the moment, I'm looking for alternatives for the future.  I wonder if the MediaTek engineering mode is still available...

- Trip

59 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

How?

Enabled USB Debugging, then with ADB installed on my computer:

adb shell
pm uninstall --user 0 com.wssyncmldm
pm uninstall --user 0 com.sec.android.soagent

I also disabled policy updates in the Security settings and the auto update options in Developer Options.  I no longer even have an option to manually do an update on my phone.

- Trip