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lilotimz

S4GRU Staff
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Posts posted by lilotimz

  1. Interesting. I'm mostly curious about the rounder ones.
    Their 2500 coverage is not great but their 800/1900 range/propagation is incredible. They are much better than the old PCS-only antennas and even put the brand new Verizon Amphenol panels to shame. 
    Yeah they were definitely optimized for low mid bands plus they're much newer designs than most of the dual band NV hex ports.

    I wonder how the new octoports would compare in terms of low mid propagation...

    Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

  2. I have been getting more and more LTE Roaming on Tmo Band 66 in the Allentown area. Is this new, or am I just noticing it in places I haven't been to before?

    Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk


    Sprint has been purchasing roaming access to T-mobile sites for in market roaming. Helps them increase capacity and coverage for sprint users without resorting to building new cell sites.

    Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

  3. That was my point. The S9 is not at all an "old" phone, especially when it's predecessor has it. Lol. 
    The S8 was one of the Volte test devices that engineers were running around with for more than a year before the soft launch.

    The S9 were released a half a year before the soft launch and was not. Therefore it's considered an older device that predates volte while devices that came out after (2019) are considered newer devices which have volte Enabled out the box.

    Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

  4. The S9 was a phone, just like all the others, which they did not have time nor budget to customize software for.  


    It and most others were slated and actually prepared for VoLTE in January when the decision was made.

    It's funny because Google actually included the sprint IMS settings for sprint volte but sprint didn't block the Pixel 3s access capabilities. Hence why force enabling it works on all sprint eNBs (macro + A4/3/MB OG - Gen3).

    Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

  5. 4 hours ago, greenbastard said:

    Interestingly enough, T-Mobile has started to add B71 to a lot of towers around the Houston Metro area. I'm assuming a lot of their towers will have to be remodeled since the B71/B12 panels are beafy (4x4 MIMO). Most of their towers already have 4x4 PCS/AWS split sectors, so space and weight are probably an issue.

    Meanwhile, Sprint continues to disappoint me. Their towers are not spaced for the 2.5 GHz band around here. The massive MIMO panels didn't do much to improve their 2.5 GHz coverage. The network is still a Swiss cheese style network where speeds go from 100+ Mbps in one block to <1 Mbps in the next. If they aren't going to densify, then they need to split sectors and add 4x4 MIMO. The original NV radios and antennas are outdated by today's standards.

    In terms of radios, Ericsson actually has the most modern radios for 1.9 as the NV RRUS11s were ripped out literally right after they were installed. Penalties for doing a shit job in NV.... It's the same generation as the RRUS32s the other three are still deploying to this day which are very good designs.

     

    Antenna wise you do have a point. I've seen ATT and VZW swap out their antennas for newer high gain and performance ones thrice already (LTE B12/13 --> B2/4 --> B5/14/29/66/71 etc) At the bright side they're being very proactive in many regions and going back and changing them to brand new RFS / KMW / etc 8 port antennas that add 4T4R 800 MHz capability while increasing 1.9 coverage patterns / range. My home Clear NV site 800/1.9 antenna was turned on a few days ago and I've been very impressed at its coverage pattern at a 40' elevation. Newer antennas can make a lot of difference! (10-20% perf improvements in same cases)

     

    Edit: I've seen pics of those new T-mobile low band antennas. They're the same octoport low band model series from RFS that Sprint is now using. 

    • Like 5
  6.  

     

    Best modern example I suppose is buying 600mhz that many panned as meh and many here said Tmo wouldn’t get it operational soon and have issues with local tv stations. I’d say they rolled it pretty damn quick (not finished yet though).

     

     

    Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

    I mean for a lot of urban areas it's still not going to be available til 2020-2021. Time sure did fly by though. We're past the halfway point of 2019 already!!!  

    It feels like it was just yesterday when I first began looking at my local cell sites in 2012 waiting for NV to begin.

     

    Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

     

     

     

     

     

    • Like 2
  7. I'm new to this forum, and I've seen people mention cell sites with specific ID's (for example, SF33XC664). Is there any significance to these ID's, and is there a way to decode them? Also, how do I figure out what the cell site ID's are for towers near me?
    Thanks! I'm excited to start talking on this site more [emoji3]
    First two digits indicate region code, next two is cascade 4 is site type with the last three being unique site identifier.

    So something such as SF72XC would be a northern California cell site macro class.

    Something like SF90XS would be a northern California small cell mini macro site.

    XC is macro, XS usually denotes small cell. XR is repeater. XM is microwave. Xt is toy cell (internal usage). XD is DAS.

    Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk

    • Like 1
  8. 10 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

    So how come TMO can do 66+46+46+46+2 then? Isn't B46 TDD also.

    Sent from my SM-G965U1 using Tapatalk
     

    B46 is LAA unlicensed LTE on 5 GHz. I believe LTE-U is as well (Band 252? or around there). 

    As far as I can see it's mostly 1 PCC of FDD type + multiple LAA carriers. 

    The newest specs for it has 1 lowband PCC + 1 midband SCC + SCC LAA's.

     

    There is no B66-2-46 standard config i can find  at glance but feel free to find it and let me know. 

  9. 13 minutes ago, Terrell352 said:

    Your right about that but that begs the question of why cant Sprint use b25+b41+b41+b41? Is there a reason?

    Sent from my SM-G977P using Tapatalk
     

    FDD-TDD limitations due to different radio technologies. Samsung phones has the most advanced radio configs and thus supports the most carriers but have limitations on MIMO streams as in no 4x4 MIMO on any component carriers. Most other devices are FDD+TDD and some are FDD+TDD+TDD but again there are limitations on MIMO streams.  

    Most of Sprints 1.9 network has 4x4 or 2x4 now live  and a large portion on 2.5 is 4x4  so that's a chunk of downlink capacity being traded off. It's a large balancing act and with the turnaround inside of Sprint and with the rudderless leadership, we can see why many projects do not come to fruition.  

    FWIW, FDD+TDD was identified early in the industry on as one potential solution to slow uplink speeds years ago alongside uplink CA using higher order MIMO. It is not the end all solution but a very useful tool in the toolkit if they can figure out how to use it. 

    • Like 3
  10. 6 hours ago, S4GRU said:
    Yes.   But we didn't live in a bubble.  There were two other vendors.  Ericsson was clearly the worst of the three in Network Vision deployment (in some ways they had to do it twice). 
    Also, when it comes to network management, a third party will almost NEVER do as good of a job yourself, because they don't take ownership of the issues the way you would yourself.  And so there is not the sense of urgency when an issue or roadblock comes up.  And you're much more likely to accept no as an answer.  I see it all day long in my line of work.
    Robert

    Sprint calls in Ericsson for site work ==> Ericsson assigns available local peons of varying quality to work ==> some time later ==> Ericsson worker arrives on site ==> worker connects to Ericsson employees in India to do the actual work ==> worker verifies work is "done" and calls it a day ==> tells sprint all good.


    TLDR of Ericssons network management work.

    TLDR2: Remember the 65 MHz PCS project? Ericsson completely ripped out the entire PCS NV ERC network in 2014+ for brand new radios for basically free while ALU and Samsung NV era PCS radios are still in use. 

    Sent from my Pixel 3 using Tapatalk
     

    • Like 5
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