RAvirani

Is the site you're looking for close to Kirkland Marina or the intersection of 405 and 85th? There are two mini macro sites within range of SE03XC353.

Yes, Sprint was required by the US government to decommission all Huawei equipment due to security concerns. Sprint has historically had issues with the property owner of that Motel 6. It was one of the last sites upgraded to LTE, and it will probably be one of the last sites upgraded to triband. That permit is for the Clear site by Kirkland marina. There is a mini-macro setup on the roof of Evergreen Hospital by Totem Lake.

Sprint doesn't love MM/SC setups, they were just the cheapest way to replace Huawei Clear equipment per government order. That particular site was a Clear equipment swapout. It is scheduled to get triband this year, I believe. Any MM clusters in the area are from former Clear sites. We do not have any MM on NV setups in this area.

Do you mean wifi/ethernet backhaul? VoLTE over MBs is being worked on.

Interesting stuff. I'm excited to hear how performance is, especially latency.

Something else to note is that in NR TDD config 2, all 13 timeslots are flexible. This means cell sites will be able to assign any and all of the timeslots to either download or upload on the fly. This will do wonders for Sprint's speeds when they count. Imagine running a speedtest on an unloaded sector where you used the entire 60 MHz carrier to download and then the entire 60 MHz carrier to upload. That would be fast.

It will most likely aid speeds but I'm not sure how much. At the edge of cell, L2500 almost never gets more than a megabit on the upload in my experience. NR2500 range will likely be slightly greater than L2500. This is because it is significantly easier to take advantage of higher order MIMO in NR environments and because the greater uplink capacity/speeds will allow them to reduce the Qrxlevmin on NR2500 to below that of LTE2500.

Yes SA NR deployment with ENDC on the downlink. UL NR+LTE ENDC will likely be deployed in the future although I'm not sure the exact forecast on that.

No. Notice the time stamps. The SCC data was almost a day old.

Use imgur.

Not yet, I don't believe.

AT&T uses the radios on the left and second from the right in my market. I would guess AT&T.

The way LTE is optimized in my market, I often fall from L800 straight to 1x800. There is no gain in data speeds when this happens. Additionally, I've never experienced usable EVDO when I fall off L800. I think this is the rule, not the exception, as only either one or two EVDO carriers are left in all major metros today. Lastly, falling to CDMA severely delays the reconnect time to LTE. If your data is going to be useless regardless of which network you're on in that location, it's wiser to leave you connected to LTE so you reconnect to something usable sooner. SRLTE will ensure that voice reliability is not impacted. Good QoS can take care of this, especially with lowband 4x2/4x4 MIMO, which Sprint is aggressively deploying (via RFS/Commscope 8-port dualband antennas and KMW 16-port triband antennas). Recall that AMR-WB only requires 12.65 kbps and that AMR-NB doesn't even require that (as little as just 5-6 kbps depending on configuration). If you ever have the chance to use the TELUS network in British Colombia, you should note their TM parameters. They run 5x5 L800 with a Qrxlevmin of -128 alongside 15x15 L1900 and 20x20 L2100 (note the similarity to Sprint's network in many markets). VoLTE calls work comfortably at -126 on their 800 LTE because their QoS is well configured and the network moves users up to midband quite aggressively.

Just initiated a RDP session from my iPhone on Sprint LTE here in Las Vegas with no issues. There's something wrong with your setup.

They will get it post nationwide VoLTE launch in the coming weeks.

The device software was never finished and fully tested though, if I remember correctly. Yes, I remember reading about this at length somewhere on xda.

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

That's what I've heard and experienced. Band 13 goes for miles from those setups. Do you recall which exact JMA models they are deploying? I'd like to take a look at their spec sheets. That's what I thought. Thanks for the clarification.

For those asking why older devices won't be supported until the nationwide VoLTE launch: To roll out VoLTE on a market-by-market basis, Sprint has added a "VoLTE enabled" flag to each site. This is not a part of a traditional VoLTE implementation and thus, additional software is required on the device end to support this 'hack'. When Sprint launches VoLTE nationwide, all of this will no longer be necessary, and they will be using a traditional VoLTE setup. Adding support for older devices will then be very simple. Interesting side note: some people with rooted Android devices have found a way around the VoLTE enabled flag and have been using VoLTE on Magic Boxes as well as sites that aren't currently officially enabled. The network is ready for VoLTE nationwide, Sprint just needs to flip the switch.

How do the Sprint Commscope/RFS antennas compare performance-wise to the new antennas the big two (namely Verizon) are deploying? Verizon towers 'feel' a lot more powerful when it comes to lowband coverage and propagation in my market, although I haven't been impressed with their midband performance. How is T-Mobile deploying 4x4 600 alongside 700 on the same antennas? I though the antennas had four lowband ports and four midband ports? Are the 600 and 700 transmit paths shared? Or are they using RF combiners?

I know. If you take a look at the sponsor maps, you can see all of the sites that were in planning.

If I were in charge of Sprint and the merger fell through today, here are the changes I would make: Day 1 changes: Drop the L800 Qrxlevmin to -128. I don’t want users falling off L800 at -120 or -122 because: L800 will almost always offer better speeds than CDMA at those signal levels. This will reduce the reconnect time to usable LTE. The pocket 3G problem will be eliminated. VoLTE reliability will skyrocket. Remove the per-site “VoLTE enabled” flag (which by the way is a big part of the reason Sprint is struggling to support older devices) and allow it on all sites and Magic Boxes. This will allow software updates enabling VoLTE to be pushed to ISIM devices in a matter of weeks. Revert L2500 to Config 1 to both increase L2500 upload speeds and effective range. In markets where spectrum allows, split 8T8Rs into two 4T4R transmit chains and run 6 L2500 carriers. Some markets such as Seattle already have this. Short-term changes (within the first 12 months): Contact high-traffic venues (casinos, airports, stadiums, arenas, concert venues, underground train systems, convention centers, etc) and sign onto DAS systems. Begin buildout in high-roaming high-traffic areas such as ski resorts (e.g. Big Sky, MT and Sugarloaf, ME), rural tourist attractions (e.g. Mount Rushmore, SD and Yellowstone National Park) and large cities (e.g. Billings, MT and Chyenne, WY). Identify and begin to close in-city coverage gaps by means of: Implementing a verified coverage map to identify areas without LTE. Allow T-Mobile roaming and possibly even AT&T roaming everywhere and focus on high-roaming in-city areas. Expedite the Massive MIMO rollout to stay at the front of the 5G race. Expedite the tribanding of any remaining single-band/dual-band/non-redundant Clear sites. Look to increase backhaul to high-usage sites. Prioritize interband CA deployment. Prioritize the implementation of dynamic NR UL and move NR to the PCC. Begin talks with Dish to host their 600 and AWS-4 spectrum. This will at least double Sprint’s lowband capacity nationwide and give them greenfield lowband to deploy NR on. Long-term changes (after the first 12 months): Cut EVDO completely ASAP. Run a 1x1900 carrier in L1900 guard bands and maintain the 1x800 carrier. Begin to replace 800 radios with NR/LTE/1x DSS-capable radios. Begin a rural highway buildout in areas where the most T-Mobile and AT&T roaming occurs. The deployment will primarily be lowband. This task is not as daunting as it seems for sites already exist that cover effectively every major highway in the United States. The only thing to do will be to negotiate a reasonable lease. Open up an NR test drive program similar to the one T-Mobile ran for LTE and advertise it heavily.

Yes. VoLTE launched almost everywhere on Friday. They're ahead of schedule for nationwide VoLTE.

No. If Softbank attempts to acquire more than 84% equity in Sprint a tender offer is triggered (this means they must buy the remainder of Sprint stock).

You can under promise and overdeliver with or without money. You just need to make the right promises.