gusherb

Here in Minnesota I see B12 way more than B71. I keep doing airplane mode over and over to try to get it off of 12 and onto 71 with no luck 
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They’ve been rolling it out very aggressively in Chicago and across the metro. It’s not as ubiquitous as it should be in rural areas here yet.

Where is 'here'?

In the Chicago area.

The KMW triband antennas have notably poor 800 coverage patterns. The new octoport 4x800/4x1900 antennas are really great though. In Seattle, there are areas where I can pick up -105 L800 when L1900 drops off with the new RFS antennas. The Commscope antennas are a close second place contender. 

Most of the new setups I’ve seen around here are using the KMW panels.

I have noticed with my T-Mobile phone that LTE 700 is allowed to run all the way out, but often it won' t function at that point.

^^This^^  Most of my Tmo B12 signals will hold on for dear life, even though they are unusable, or so slow it is practically unusable for more than a text.  And I suppose I am glad I can still text at the edge, but I will never confuse it with something useful like Google Maps or Spotify.
Robert

IME B12 is only good for a call or SMS. I’ve hung onto calls for miles driving through areas that I can’t use any data. T-Mobile B12 is basically a voice-only carrier.
B71 since they widened it to 15 MHz in this region will have usable data all the way out to cell edge, about 10 or so miles from the site.

Wish I could get some of this upload in my market (East Nebraska/West Iowa)...

 

No issue doing that here and this was on native Sprint. 

1 hour ago, dkyeager said:

Sprint typically chose to have b26 operate better within its given range when they increased the radios from 2 to 4 ports. Most all sites were also given b26 which definitely helped. Rural sites where b26 was added often have the extended range. The biggest area to benefit was cities with lots of former WiMAX sites when they were upgraded to triband. Building penetration is far superior and essential for VoLTE.

I’ve yet to see B26 operate at a greater range than B25, and that includes the newest tri-band setups. Going from 2xB41 only to tri-band seems to have helped a bit though. 
Out in the rural areas it dropped off LTE a number of times while it was on B25 and had nothing stronger to grab onto. Each of those sites is Tri-band so B26 was definitely around. T-Mobile or Verizon will cling to low band for miles past what PCS or AWS will do. 

Opened a Kickstart line cuz I was getting the itch to see what B41 was like these days, and my first time using sprint since April 21st 2015.
The PCS layer is a god awful mess between lack of optimization and congestion, they never did do anything to increase the range of B26, but I’m impressed with B41, especially when it’s running 3xB41 with it as PCC. I drove out to rural parts of Indiana where T-Mobile loses native coverage and found myself on B41 doing 80 mbps up to 6 miles from sites as PCC and still saw it 10 miles as SCC.

I can see how this is such a gold mine for T-Mobile, especially for rural areas when paired with 600. I’m super excited to see what they do with it and hope they try to build out to cover as extensively as Verizon (maybe a bit idealistic but they’ve tried to be like Verizon in every other way). 

Have been seeing 25+25+41+41 and 26+25+41+41 CA combos, though I don’t see nearly as good speeds on these combos as I do when it’s all B41. Also have been seeing UL CA on B41. And while driving out in the rural areas I did roam on T-Mobile 2+71 for a little bit. 
 

That’s all my findings for now. 

1 hour ago, IrwinshereAgain said:

Does Dish have much spectrum in Chicago?  I think they want to use that extra capacity during the switch.

They got another 30 MHz of 600 (60 MHz total) with it split 50/50 between 4G and 5G. Verizon got 20 MHz of AWS-3 and AT&T got AWS-4.

3 hours ago, dro1984 said:

Can't say who said, but looks like some of the network hiccups on the T-Mobile side are due to software and migration going on.    Also found out T-Mobile is sticking to the original plan (2 years ago plan when merger was announce)  to use the T-Mobile network as the "Host" network, move the sprint customer base over to it quickly as possible and then use the Sprint equipment from the old Sprint network to add on and enable additional load (Market-by-Market) until complete.   Currently T-Mo is increasing use of it's AWS spectrum and Dish's to be able to handle the addition of Sprint person's on to it's original network.      It's going on now.   Philly is first.    Don't know details as to who-else is being  upgraded at this time.   

Anybody else having odd network things going on?   Might be an indicator your market is undergoing transistion.   

That sounds like it’s gonna be very painful in places where the combined have over 50% market share. T-Mobiles network in the Chicago market can’t comfortably handle the T-Mobile user base as it is now. 

2 hours ago, dkyeager said:

I figure somewhere in the country new equipment is being installed on T-Mobile sites for the former Sprint bands. That should tell us which markets will be converted first so keep your eyes open!!

T-Mobile has been very busy in the Chicago area over the last year upgrading sites with Massive MIMO and B71, however in the last few weeks I saw two new macros pop up on the south side including one on a tower Sprint is on, plus others with B71 adds. Haven’t seen any evidence of B41 carrier adds to T-Mobile sites, but I’m assuming T-Mobile will just use what Sprint already has up to begin with and go from there. 

7 hours ago, S4GRU said:

And what will this all mean for S4GRU?  We are in a wait and see mode before we decide how to adapt.  Until then, we will be here every day with you all, plotting our wireless destiny.

Robert

Perhaps a rebirth as T5GRU? 

AT&T went from the best to the worst carrier in the metro here in the course of 3 years. But since 2018 they've been working their way through downtown Chicago and upgrading every oDAS node to C-RAN and adding LAA to each of them, and they've been adding new nodes around the city. They've also been going around the metro and doing partial rip and replace jobs on macro towers adding B14 and upgrading midband to a 4x4 setup as well as adding that capability for B14. 

Need help identifying this one. I’d normally assume T-Mobile but the middle panel is unfamiliar to me, not sure if that’s massive MIMO or something else.

This seemed like a rather odd placement for a small cell, on a pole in an alley. Not sure anyone's getting the best use out of it there as opposed to being along the actual main road instead.

 

On 8/24/2017 at 5:33 PM, gusherb said:

I found another new site going up and this time it's not AT&T or Verizon (Verizon is already on this tower). It doesn't look like TMO....So could it actually be a new Sprint macro!? The only thing I could tell that it might be Sprint is the two equal sized outer panels and shorter inner panel (two B26/25 and one B41 panel in the middle), but I'm holding reservation about it being Sprint just because they don't really ever add sites, and there's already a Sprint site right in that area. 

 

 

 

On 8/25/2017 at 8:03 AM, Dkoellerwx said:

 

It looks like it might be T-Mo to me. No indication of a new Sprint site going in in that area.

Turned out to be T-Mobile

If I remember correctly Verizon has phones hold LTE much longer than it would if the phone were just active with data, etc. when a phone is on a VoLTE call, because even at the weakest of signals data can still be transmitted, the data rate is just so low it's not good for anything other than the very low data rates used by VoLTE. I imagine Sprint will do the same with their LTE network. 

Yes that is the typical behavior on Verizon and AT&T. They will hang onto the call until the LTE UL to the site is 100% lost. T-Mobile will try to hand down to UMTS and GSM. (AT&T sets parameters to prevent any hand downs in most places)

I have the same issue on Tmo VoLTE. They sent me a Cellspot.  Sprint customers will need a VoLTE capable Airave or Magic Box for these types of situations if WiFi Calling is not a good option for them. But that won't help you in a client's home in most situations.  I believe Sprint will optimize B26 for better coverage in VoLTE circumstances.

Yep, time to stretch out that B26 as far as possible and make it as useless as possible for data use. Though 26+25 CA would help tremendously in fringy areas where UL on 25 wouldn't work and 26 is too slow on the DL to work.

Thanks for all the help [emoji4]

 

This is one that I have seen recently as well. I don’t think it’s Sprint, though. Verizon?

 

 

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That's a Verizon node setup for B2/4/5/13. T-Mobile often goes on those same poles with Verizon using Nokia Flexi Zones.

So this is the ad I mentioned running on Facebook.

It is making customers upset because it reads "upgrade today" which naturally is interpreted as referring to existing customers who want a new phone. When it comes to cell companies, people have been conditioned to read "upgrade" as "get a new phone for your existing line"

And yet only when you log in to your account, is it clear that this offer is for new customers only. It feels like a bait and switch.

Sprint doesn't have the best reputation, and this kind of thing doesn't help. I started my day with zero thoughts about Sprint. I saw the ad, and thought "great". I clicked through and became disappointed and angry. The 100+ comments all expressed the same sentiment.

Spending money to make people upset is not good business.

 

I'm finding it hard for me to say this tactfully because that issue just makes my blood boil, but things like this is why Sprints image is not improving whatsoever. If they can't even stop making marketing faux pas like this then that just proves to me that they haven't really fixed the management issues that plague the company. They can make their network as great as they want but as long as marketing is run by a bunch of fools and CS is off-shored to people that can hardly speak the language of their callers let alone have the correct training to resolve issues properly, they'll never get anywhere. So this, in addition to people's sour taste about Sprint already is just continuously reaffirming their beliefs that Sprint is to be avoided like the plague.

I think if they had already fixed these marketing and CS issues people's opinions might already be making a turn for the better.

9 hours ago, S4GRU said:

You guys don't get it's all just a joke based completely on the image? It's not related to something specific in the news.

 

The V and R are burned out. Multiple outages. Get it?

 

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I can't believe nobody else got it lol. I saw the title and was like "what?" then saw the sign. There'd have been news everywhere if they had any real outages. 

9 hours ago, derrph said:

Very much so.

What's funny is the Tmo Reddit is ripping it apart saying it's an inferior service.I personally like Hulu more than Netflix. I'm sure if John offered Hulu it'll be the best move ever. I even saw one comment that TMo doesn't need to hand out free things...umm sir where have you been? 

Funny because I haven't found a thing to watch on Netflix in months and everything I wanna watch has been on Hulu. 

13 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

Negative. Only Nokia units currently used in Samsung land are the Nokia mini macros on macros.

 

Sprint doesn't use many of the Nokia flexi zones either. Mostly mini macros.

 

Tbf, you probably aren't at the areas where most the sprint small cells are listed. They like deploying em in tiny clusters.

 

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No I'm probably not near them. But I also don't notice many of them downtown, in the most touristy areas. I see far more Crown Castle and AT&T oDAS nodes. 

 

Do we have any maps of Sprint small cells around here, for my market or any market? 

39 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

In chicago and a few other areas they often used existing infrastructure. Chicago area has quite a number of Airspan small cells deployed.

Ok here's the re-write: 

I don't see very many of those Airspan small cells, the ones I have seen look like this:  

 Something I have seen ALOT of recently are these Nokia small cells, which TMO is on SOME of them, but not all. Is there any possibility Sprint has been using these too? If not, then I'm really at a loss as to what in the world they're doing for small cells since I don't see alot of those Airspan setups. 

 

 

20 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

Plopping down 75-125' poles for small cells without asking local entities for permission is a great idea. We're going to use right of ways and not care about the locals. Lets see them fight this. ~mobilitie

>> gets all small cells deployment blocked and while deployed ones are forced to be removed by local authorities <<

^^ TLDR of sprints small cell deployment via mobilitie

Yeah that did NOT go over well... 

I never did see any of those pop up in the Chicago area though. 

I guess Sprint probably has no choice but to go macro dense using existing towers in several places now. 

3 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

One thing that Marcello talked about is that the small cell strategy while successful in some areas was not as successful in others and that basically forced the pivot to traditional macro sites.

“The last year and a half, two years have been a great learning experience. We’ve tried to disrupt the way networks get built. We’ve been successful in certain areas and, to be fair, we haven’t been successful in others,” he conceded. “So we’re going to go toward a more traditional network build-out. Our friends at the tower companies I think are going to be very happy.”

http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-s-claure-tower-companies-going-to-be-very-happy-our-capex

Glad they figured that out. Small cells are a poor substitute for making up for bad macro coverage, but a great supplement to already good macro coverage. Verizon deployed a bunch of metrocells in my area 3-4 years back and seems to have figured out that they're pretty much useless unless one is within 500-1000' of one. They've replaced at least one that I'm aware of with a macro site. 

20 minutes ago, kg4icg said:

Can't do what T-Mobile did, 2 different types of networks. Plus Sprint did a total network rebuild, T-Mobile at first did add ons after getting money from AT&T and then start on partial rebuild.

 

I think that goes without saying, what I mean is Sprint can follow TMO's ability to approach the situation efficiently and get things done quickly.