vryan44

So some great news here! I have spotted 2 mobilitie small cells in Chesterfield Twp, MI,  48047 on Jefferson ave and 21 mile rd, as well as another at Sugarbush rd and Jefferson... two horrendous areas where data is non-existent and maybe make a decent phone call and stay connected if you're lucky.  I am currently with at&t and have been taken advantage of sensorly's iphone app now capable of mapping coverage; which is how i discovered these sites. I'm curious to see what kind of improvements these two relatively close cells will improve performance but have no way to test as I am no longer a sprint subscriber. If anyone living relatively close to the area and is willing to visit these sites and report on their performance it would be awesome to see what speeds these site can provide as well as range. Let me know! In the Detroit Market it seems that Sprint's small cell deployment speed is on par with Verizon's. New small cells popping up everywhere. If anyone is able to take some time out of their day, let us know what you can find. Even map it on Sensorly if you can! If this fast pace installation continues I may consider moving my account back to Sprint. SO EXCITING!

Side note: Still no small cell deployment that I have seen from at&t or magenta, also a note; Verizon has been erecting new macro sites like crazy in and around the whole Detroit Metropolitan area. 

Edit: If I have time within the next few weeks during daylight hours(screw daylight savings time) I will upload shots of these two new small cells. Also, I have spotted between 5-10 of these same sites in Saint Clair Shores MI, along intersections on Harper Ave, and about 2 dozen in the Downtown/Midtown/Corktown neighborhoods in Detroit. 3 have been recently installed along Warren Ave 48201 right near Wayne State University's campus.

So some great news here! I have spotted 2 mobilitie small cells in Chesterfield Twp, MI,  48047 on Jefferson ave and 21 mile rd, as well as another at Sugarbush rd and Jefferson... two horrendous areas where data is non-existent and maybe make a decent phone call and stay connected if you're lucky.  I am currently with at&t and have been taken advantage of sensorly's iphone app now capable of mapping coverage; which is how i discovered these sites. I'm curious to see what kind of improvements these two relatively close cells will improve performance but have no way to test as I am no longer a sprint subscriber. If anyone living relatively close to the area and is willing to visit these sites and report on their performance it would be awesome to see what speeds these site can provide as well as range. Let me know! In the Detroit Market it seems that Sprint's small cell deployment speed is on par with Verizon's. New small cells popping up everywhere. If anyone is able to take some time out of their day, let us know what you can find. Even map it on Sensorly if you can! If this fast pace installation continues I may consider moving my account back to Sprint. SO EXCITING!

Side note: Still no small cell deployment that I have seen from at&t or magenta, also a note; Verizon has been erecting new macro sites like crazy in and around the whole Detroit Metropolitan area. 

Edit: If I have time within the next few weeks during daylight hours(screw daylight savings time) I will upload shots of these two new small cells. Also, I have spotted between 5-10 of these same sites in Saint Clair Shores MI, along intersections on Harper Ave, and about 2 dozen in the Downtown/Midtown/Corktown neighborhoods in Detroit. 3 have been recently installed along Warren Ave 48201 right near Wayne State University's campus. 

Has anyone heard anything on b26 for the rest of Michigan?

All of the panels on the cell sites in this side of the state are only 1900 capable. It seems like a huge waste of money if sprint planned on swapping them out for new ones or even just bolting an extra 800 panel up on the racks when the ibez crap is all figured out

Site density will have to be increased in Howell as well as the rest of Michigan to stay competitive. There are too many lte drop offs in between sites across this whole area and the lack of 800 doesn't help. Data demand is continuously increasing and 3G just isn't going to be enough to handle the increasing traffic . Once the 8t8r setups are largely complete and speeds are at full potential, I hope sprint starts to focus on consistent lte coverage by adding fill in sites. Fast speeds will be great but won't be worth much if the experience isn't consistent.

Those handfuls of rural sites going live are just an added bonus to the more urban work taking place right now.

A lot is going on here in this area right now. Several GMO sites were converted to full builds and are now broadcasting lte. More and more sites in the area are being upgraded to dual panel dual RRU high capacity sites.

Regarding the 8t8r builds, equipment going up all over the place. And they are going up around other sites that already have this equipment. It seems that Samsung is focusing on grouping these sites together. It isn't a sporadic deployment like NV 1.0 was.

This is just what I've been observing in the past month or two.

T-Mobile has been pretty serious about converting metro pcs sites to modernized NSN equipment to further density their network around here in the Detroit area. I seen 3 specific sites in the past couple weeks. If sprint did this with a handful of old nextel sites I'm thinking of, LTE coverage without band 26 would be golden.

I'm in East Michigan and where I live Sprint is better then Verizon and AT&T. I'm not going anywhere and think the Sprint network works good enough. I can't wait for Band 41 and carrier aggregation across 25/41 (with 26 coming later). Sprint does need to add another b25 carrier in Detroit. Hopefully that will come soon to help throughput...

^{Impressive. I really wish I could say I full understood you. But, thank you for the detailed info anyways!}

^{I do have a dumb question: Why are some outside sites (like where I live in Farmington Hills, Zip: 48334 about 20 miles NW of Detroit) basically up to normal standard LTE coverage and speeds (at least good enough for me) when 20 miles down the road in the proper city are lagging behind. My city should also be affected since I live within the IBEZ zone. I'm guessing the towers that would hit me are part of the "difficult sites to backhaul"?}

This is just because In the city more people are within range of a certain cell site. This creates more load which yields lower speeds. Farmington isn't nearly as dense population wise, so when you connect to your home tower theoretically speeds should be higher.

If Sprint had the site density of Tmobile or at&t here then we wouldn't even need band 26 lte, just more capacity.

I've been using a sprint iPhone 5s for a few days now to test out the network in the area (personal phone is att) and wow, the network is in need for a second 1900 carrier and tons of new cell sites, considering band 26 isn't an option here. I believe sprint can pull it together but they better do it quick with band 41 upgrades and lots of new cell sites or else sprint will never be as good in detroit metro as verizon att or even tmobile.

Took a drive up 75 yesterday and between Pontiac and Saginaw there are about half a dozen sites with the 8T8R equipment up! All rural highway sites but still a great sign!

Finally the legacy pocket in macomb is gone too!

It is nearly impossible to keep a call in some parts of Troy now. Problem is random sites in the area have been converted while adjacent sites are still on legacy. I don't doubt that the problem will be fixed soon though.

Chicago has a good chance of getting an extra 5x5 carrier soon with that new us cellular spectrum, can't forget about that

T-Mobile is expanding their faster networks into some edge only markets. For example, Saginaw, MI, (previously an edge-only market) now has 3g green and 4g purple showing up on sensory.

With a metropolitan population of just under 200,000, I'm glad t-mobile decided not to ignore this market any longer.

Nope. The panels that are being installed in our area are not capable of broadcasting 800 MHz. So unless sprint deploys all new panels at every site when Canada gives the ibez(800 MHz exclusion zone) the all clear, we may not ever see 800 MHz here in this part of michigan.

Was browsing a little into howard forums when I found this:

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1757531-AT-amp-T-4G-LTE-Latest-markets-launching-and-speculation/page99

Looks like at&t has already started deploying lte on band 5 with 5 mhz channels. 

The panels I'm trying to ID are these:

 

 

 

I apologize for off topic.

Those were what I was referring to, sorry for the confusion.

Not a Verizon they look like this:

 

Is it Metro PCS CDMA/LTE setup? Or some old school ClearWire? It's puzzling with 6 ports at the bottom and no RRU... Cabinets right next to them. Looks legacy to me.

On your previous photo they look just like the panels vzw uses in most of michigan(excluding the old alltel areas) for evdo and 1x on 850. 

Could possibly be metro. I doubt its clearwire.

 

Ah good to know. Then it looks like WiMax is at the end of the range, although that may vary...

 

On a completely unrelated note, can anyone ID these, they're driving me crazy I can't figure them out:

 

 

 

6 ports at the bottom, no RRU.

Nice pictures!

Is it common for Sprint to attach their antennas and panels to high voltage towers?

This is very encouraging. I never would suspect ATT to be the one building the higher density network at 700 but rather Verizon. Gives me confidence that when I switch to AIO aka ATT I won't see such slow speeds.

 

Also, this means that there is something to the "fastest LTE network" claims of ATT: their higher density sites. I always thought it was because they had less LTE subs.

 

This leads me to ask: why isn't Verizon doing the same thing with the downtilting + densification?

They are focusing already on AWS.

 

"We will deploy 5,000 AWS sites this year and it will be a lot more next year"

 

Read more: Verizon's Palmer details the company's AWS deployment strategy, VoLTE launch plans and more - FierceWireless http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizons-palmer-details-companys-aws-deployment-strategy-volte-launch-plans/2013-03-13#ixzz2X0GD6iWi

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Verizon does not have the site density for contiguous lte in the AWS band here in metro detroit. With the speeds i'm seeing on family/friends/coworkers phones, AWS is already needed on most urban sites.  After that, the lte on AWS will only be like "hotspots".

Too many people are on Verizon around here. 

At&t has some sites around here with some intense downtilts.  I can recall seeing three towers within one square mile from each other, each equipped with their 700 mhz panels. Each panel facing the other two sites are pretty much pointed directly at the ground. 

Personally, I believe they could have achieved full coverage by installing the lte equipment on one or two of the three sites. Verizon achieved it by only using one site. But Verizon's lte speeds have been plummeting, so maybe that was a good move on at&t's part. 

I should add sprint is collocated on the same three sites at&t is on, all of which have had the new IBEZ network vison panels added. Of course the downtilt is nowhere near what at&t's is, but thats obviously because 1900 mhz doesn't need that kind of downtilt.