RAvirani

That's a very region-dependent claim. The number of times I see T-Mobile EDGE per week would strongly suggest otherwise in the greater Seattle area.

Effectively, yes. I'm not sure if this is as robust as the technology pCell was working on, but it's the same concept at its core.

Awesome! If you're tracking the n41 deployment on the east side, feel free to post updates in the sponsor forum! It would be great to get that data on our maps.

It's not high capacity, but it is high order MIMO. That is a Commscope 8-port midband antenna.

Quick question - what did you search on to get these results? I always struggle to find AT&T permits in Accela-built permit systems because of the ampersand...

Agreed, but I definitely wouldn't go as far as to say Snohomish is "covered" by n41. There are a lot of residential areas that remain uncovered by n41, some even by T-Mobile LTE.

There is only one N41 site in Snohomish - that's funny.

The BAS band was probably recently allocated to a TV station or something similar (and it was probably previously unused). This could explain the sudden deployment of filters.

These are AWS/PCS filters to minimize interference with the 2097.5-2109.5 MHz Broadcast Auxiliary Service band.

Does anyone have experience removing ROAMAHOME from a line? My sister got moved over and the data experience has been absolutely horrendous so far...

That's looks awesome - great work Mike.

Seeing lots of Nokia AAFIAs going up in Seattle too.

I'm the same way - I tried a new place in downtown Seattle today called Sisters and Brothers. It doesn't beat the fried chicken in Louisville, but it's some of the best you can get around here!

I'm not 100% sure about the MIMO drop, but if it's true I can see why new T-Mobile is avoiding L2500 even more than before. New T-Mobile's logic is that the drop in Tx/Rx diversity is quite a hit to 5G performance for just a 20 MHz LTE carrier. In their mind, gains in "virtual" coverage (via SNR, improved beamforming, etc.) far outweigh the need for a 20 MHz LTE carrier. Plus, that last 20 MHz can also be configured as a DL only NR channel to be aggregated with the primary NR channel - I believe NR TDD config 0 consists of 14 DL timeslots with no UL or flex timeslots.

That's not necessarily true. Most markets had three L2500 carriers (60 MHz) with some markets, such as Seattle, boasting up to five carriers for 100 MHz of L2500 on air. The other thing to take into consideration is equipment limitations; massive MIMO units Sprint was deploying had a 120 MHz bandwidth limit, and I believe T-Mobile equipment is the same (someone correct me if I'm wrong). Without DSS, this means every bit of spectrum that goes towards LTE is spectrum that can’t be used for NR.

Oh boy that map is ugly.

Nice find. Where exactly is this this site? I'm guessing somewhere around Jeffersonville? This is unfortunately very common on T-Mobile network-wide. It makes tracking frustrating, to say the least. I guess it's not as bad as Sprint's one GCI per band in Louisville though...

That's when NR is running in NSA mode. In standalone mode, behavior should be different. I assumed the question was about SA since NSA behavior has been widely observed.

Unlikely. The UE will likely hang onto NR until the signal is too weak to connect. If the UE connects to the femtocell when it loses NR, it may or may not reconnect to NR before leaving the femtocell's coverage area (depending on the handoff config).

I have Qualcomm and Intel devices both running iOS 14, and the new interface is only available on Intel devices as of now. Perhaps an update to the Qualcomm field test application (with NR reporting) will accompany the new iPhone this fall. But as of now, Qualcomm devices running iOS 14 have the same interface as before.

That field test mode is only on Intel phones. Qualcomm phones have the same field test application as before.

Is that the tower off 405 in Canyon Park?

I wonder what the plan is for EDGE-only sites. I don't imagine they'd be turning EDGE down given the fact it can be thrown into an LTE guard band...

Yes. That's an 8 port dualband (4xLow/4xHigh) antenna in the middle, a 4 port midband antenna on the right and a massive MIMO 2.5 antenna on the left.

Not exactly...600 MHz antennas haven't been in production for very long and manufacturers are still refining their designs. Since T-Mobile wanted to deploy their spectrum as quickly as possible, they ordered what was available when they started the rollout. Now we're feeling the pain that comes with that early tech. And unfortunately, the shared transmit path means 700 performance takes a hit as well. There are a lot of much higher performing non-600 4x lowband antennas. For example, Verizon has deployed Amphenol HT4C6318x000 antennas (https://amphenol-antennas.com/product/ht4c6318x000/) throughout the greater Seattle area. These antennas get ~18 dBi gain from 696-900 MHz. As a result, there is a tremendous coverage difference between Verizon and T-Mobile setups from the same site - I'll often drop T-Mobile LTE altogether while Verizon is hovering at -110ish or better. Newer 600 MHz antennas have significantly more robust coverage patterns than the antennas T-Mobile is deploying. For example the Amphenol TWIN6510LU000G-T/TWIN658LU000G-T (https://amphenol-antennas.com/product/twin6510lu000g-t/ and https://amphenol-antennas.com/product/twin658lu000g-t/) get ~17.1dBi and 16.4 dBi gain respectively in the 617-906 MHz range and both support 4xLowband/4xMidband. That being said, I doubt T-Mobile will climb towers to swap out 600 MHz antennas in the near future. As a result, where T-Mobile's density is similar to AT&T and Verizon, as far as raw coverage goes, AT&T and Verizon will have a definite and noticeable edge.