drock2750

Absolutely no band 41 in Chicago since updating. The whole reason I upgraded was to get access to all three bands, and they've killed it. Do they even field test this stuff?

Band 26 at Sheridan and Hollywood. Hoping this indicates a wider North side rollout!

So the upshot of all this is that I was connected to band 26, giving me Lte even tho I was in the basement of the Chicago Theater? That's still pretty cool!

If you're still in the area, keep checking. Maybe do a few airplane toggles. The network will decide what carrier to put you on, but you might get lucky. Also, in signal check, you should enable the logging feature and check it at the end of the day to see the gci of sites you've connected to throughout the day. You'll be looking for the numbers I posted above.

Its also weird because generally when I'm on the 2nd PCS carrier, SignalCheck doesn't report the up and down freqs and I have to go to LTE engineering. As an aside, I did a speedtest near Home Depot on Oakton in Evanston and got 76 megs down on band 41.

That's a very odd screenshot. You have the frequency for the second carrier, but have a gci like you're on band 26. This might break all thought we had of the second carrier being 03/04/05. Maybe you caught signal check floating between the second carrier and band 26.

I'm actually not sure what a GCI is...how does it indicate band 26?

Spotted a 2nd PCS carrier while in the basement of the Chicago Theater this afternoon.

In moving around the city, sometimes Signalcheck shows a "PCI" number beneath the uplink freq, and sometimes it says nothing at all. Any idea what that number is?

I was on USCC spectrum at clark and diversey yesterday according to LTE engineering, but for some reason Signalcheck does not display up and downlink freqs for the new spectrum, only for the old. Those numbers disappear whenever I am connected to USCC spectrum and reappear when I'm back on the old carrier. Outside Wrigley the new carrier appeared unavailable, as speeds were very low on the old carrier with the cubs game going on. I should think that we'll see a lot more of this new carrier when the workweek begins for the network engineers. I would hazard a guess that the vast majority of Sprint LTE devices are PCS only, so this new carrier will make a huge difference for most users. 

As an aside, does anybody have any info on the remaining 7% of towers without LTE? Are these likely to have very complicated problems at the site?

I've been dropping a ton of calls in Wrigley. Just got the Evo LTE upgrade to 4.3 so I'll see if it continues.

Wow the install utility and drivers do not work properly with Windows 8.1. I used my old windows 7 laptop and it worked great.

And, in my opinion, there are probably opportunities to expedite Band 41 deployment even faster.  It's my biggest criticism of Sprint.  I think they could have Band 41 complete on WiMax sites in approximately 6 months, and on every Network Vision LTE site that doesn't require permits within six months.  

 

If Tmo can do an LTE overlay in 9 months, Sprint needs to do the same with Band 41.  Excuses with this are nothing more than excuses.  And Band 26 should be able to deployed on every active Band 25 site (outside the IBEZ in the 3-4 months).  Anything longer is just a failure to prioritize and manage.

Robert

That was similar to the criticism I read on Fierce Wireless. Sprint is building the Winchester Mystery Mansion of cellular networks.

Please post the LTE Engineering screens. You can be the very first to confirm the second carrier!

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

I've been wandering today and have been on the old carrier all day. If I don't see it I'm going to go back to the spot I was in last night to get a screenshot of LTE engineering. Does anybody know why Signal Check on the Evo LTE would display frequencies for one carrier but not for another? 

The second pcs lte carrier is live in Lakeview. My signal check no longer displays up and downlink frequencies and speeds are awesome 

Nexus 5 and GS3 after the latest update show LTE signal strength in the bars because they can't operate LTE and CDMA at the same time. Even if it was showing voice signal, your LTE would be almost non-existent because LTE signal drops way before CDMA under the same conditions.

Even if GS3 shows LTE bars, its still connected to 1x at the same time. Nexus 5 supports circuit switched fallback. If GS3 couldn't operate LTE and 1x at the same time, you wouldn't receive any phone calls. If I am mistaken about the GS3, feel free to correct me, but I'm pretty sure. 

A software update to enable sprint spark was announced yesterday apparently...

http://www.androidpolice.com/2014/01/27/sprint-announces-lg-g2-ota-update-enabling-sprint-spark-bands-and-the-accompanying-spinning-status-bar-icon/

Just days in advance of the US Cellular shutdown in Chicago hmmm interesting...

Are there limits to how wide an LTE carrier can be? I was under the impression that Sprint had quite a bit more than 20 mHz up in band 41, but are we more likely to see multiple 20 mHz carriers rather than one huge one? I'm not even going to ask about MIMO...don't want to make a post that asks 50 different questions, but if anybody could direct me to a thread which discusses inter and intraband aggregation with spark I'd appreciate it! 

The HD voice frequency response is much improved...the old bell labs spec was 300Hz-3kHz, but cell phones typically don't even perform that well. Apparently, sprint is sampling at 16kHz for HD voice, so frequency response should top out around 7 or (theoretically) 8kHz, so there is so much more high end...it's refreshing. Extending frequency response down below 300 would be useless. I would bet that the codec discards that low frequency information.

I have quite enjoyed HD voice when talking to other Evo LTE or GSIII users in Chicago.

I know it stands to reason that the necessary cards have been installed for the new USCC spectrum in advance, but honestly I would be more surprised if they planned ahead than if they started some 6 month project to make site visits to every single tower to install the cards. These are the same decision makers that didn't already have upgraded backhaul in place before upgrading site hardware for NV. I guess we'll know in a couple weeks though. 

SNR values continue to be better than they were. There are still some horrible numbers out there, but they seem to be the exception rather than the rule. I was at State and Lake today and was getting 13-18 db snr. The speed was bad, but snr was ok. It seems to me that the theory of bad snr numbers being caused by adjacent overloaded towers on the same frequency can't be correct, because I can't imagine that traffic has done anything but increase, and yet snr is improving. 

Also, I have been watching the up and downlink frequencies for pcs band lte, hoping to fine a new carrier, but no such luck. Uplink at 1912.5 and downlink at 1992.5 remain static. The improvement in snr must not be the result of a new carrier, as no such thing seems to exist yet. The only logical conclusion I can think of is that Sprint has made some configuration changes/done some fine tuning. No way for me to ascertain what that might be though.

Yes, AJ posted a formula on how to calculate the downlink channel for LTE many months ago in a wall article.

 

You will need to watch your engineering screens unless your device shows the mhz of the channels in SignalCheck.

Oh, my phone shows up and downlink center frequencies...I'll keep an eye on them and see if they change.

Shouldn't we at a minimum be able to spot the different center frequency of the other carrier in signalcheck?

What has happened to this thread?! 

I have noticed much improved SNR values in the loop, in most places. Anybody concur?

I'm just glad that PCS LTE is getting a shot in the arm soon...definitely needed. I also would hope that the launch of 800 mhz LTE will offload lots of iphone 5s and 5c users onto that band. I should think that iphone users are the largest group on sprint with access to something other than band 25. 

Band 41 is really going to shine when the weather gets warmer and you have huge groups of people outdoors at ball games and street festivals. Marketing is nice, but when you're at the pride parade or the taste of chicago and yours is the only phone among your friends that works worth a damn, then you'll get some good word of mouth about Sprint for a change. 

Wow, are you kidding me about the pizza....Im sure, that tomatoe pie they serve in Chicago taste fine, but you haven't had pizza until you eat NYC pizza! Sorry Chicagoland...your tower might have more physical floors to stand on in your "tallest building" interpretation, but you guys aint got nothing on us when it comes to Pizza...

Stewart knows his pizza!

What is a tall building if not more physical floors to stand on?