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mdob07

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Everything posted by mdob07

  1. I came across this site watching a YouTube video and looked it up on the sponsor maps and Google Maps. Is it safe to have people that close to these antennas? Especially the life guards and attendants that stay up there for hours at a time? This looks to be a full marco site as the site ID has an XC identifier and its listed as having all of the Sprint technologies active. It might just be a very low power site.
  2. Good news, borrowed 600 MHz spectrum extended through June 30th. https://www.tmonews.com/2020/05/t-mobile-extends-600mhz-spectrum-agreements-june-30/
  3. Its mostly south of Louisville, there's a large chunk where Bluegrass Cellular (Verizon's LTEiRA partner) owns the upper 5MHz of A block. In Louisville its 20x20 (A+D) (plus the 5x5 C4 block for a 2nd carrier), but south of the Metro area that's split into 10x10 and 5x5, plus the additional 5x5 on C4 block. Not sure if Bluegrass would be open to any swaps, I guess they could swap the 5MHz chunk of A block for D block or C4 block so they'd at least have one 15x15 or 20x20 carrier, but if they haven't already done that I'm assuming there is a reason. In Bullitt county where I live AT&T has lower and middle A block, D block, and C4 block. T-Mobile now has B, E, F, and C3 blocks in PCS for a 30x30 chunk plus G block. Verizon only has C5 for 5x5 around here in PCS. AT&T also has 3 AWS carriers here with Blocks A, C, and J.
  4. They turned on the 10x10 AWS-1 carrier and B30 overnight last night, as well as N5. Now I can play around with N5 and N71 from my house. When I went by the tower on my way into the office this morning there was someone up on the rack working on something again. Ill try to do a comparison with just B2 and B2+N5 overnight sometime when there should be minimal load on the site to see how much N5 is contributing.
  5. wow, phenomenal upload speeds! Do you know if that is using uplink CA?
  6. Here's all 3 B2 carriers showing around me. EARFCN 1125 is the 3rd carrier I should see soon on my home site. Its the old B2 HSPA 5x5 block and it only goes live on LTE after a site has been upgraded. Technically AWS has 3 carriers here also with the 2 AWS-1 carriers and J block AWS-3. Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk
  7. Yeah, I'm just comparing it to other sites around here. And since I've noticed them returning and doing more work on previously upgraded sites I'm curious if this one will be handled in 1 phase or 2. They just completely rebuilt the Shepherdsville site and used dual 12 port panels there for everything. It had already received the First Net upgrades and had all current spectrum active, including B5 before it was shut down for N5. Must have been a modernization upgrade as it had 4 or 5 antenna panels per sector before. It has the 5G indicator but is not yet broadcasting N5. IIRC it was B2/B4/B12 before being upgraded in 2018. It was one of the first sites around here to get the First Net upgrades and it needed it badly for capacity. I also found another new site this week up the hill on hwy44 past Shepherdsville. Mapped and located it on CellMapper. There's still a large dead spot on the other side of the hill close to Dixie Hwy. Verizon has a site that covers that spot pretty good, I want to swing by it sometime soon and see if there's any signs of AT&T co-locating there also.
  8. Yeah those are the new ones. Edited to add: those look like the skinnier 2 panel setups they were adding before where it was either the one large wide panel or the 2 skinnier ones mounted together, though in this case they are separated a bit. They did remove 1 old antenna per sector, might have been the old 1900 gsm/hspa gear since that was shut off 2 years ago. Once the site has a newer B2 radio running I should see the 3rd B2 carrier go live. We'll see if anything happens tonight.
  9. Has anyone gotten the May update yet? Both my phones are still saying no update available on the April security patch. Seems to be running a bit late, I wonder if the COVID pandemic is slowing them down also.
  10. Looks like they finished it up either late Friday or early Saturday morning. I went back Saturday afternoon and their hoist ropes were gone and I haven't seen any activity again until last night. LTE went offline completely for about 6 hours overnight. When it came back up this morning it's still 2/12 only but I now have the 5G icon on both B2 and B12. Even on N5 sites B12 is still 5Ge or 4G LTE. Not sure why the flag is on for B12 here. Looking at some of the pictures I took it doesn't look to have all the current radios either, so I wonder it this was the first of multiple phases. Maybe they cutover new ground equipment last night to come back later and remove the legacy radios/antennas and add the rest of the new equipment. The big 8 port B2/B66 radio is very distinct and easy to spot with the large heat sink fins around it, and I don't see it on there. Plus the 2 new antennas they installed are skinnier than the 2 panel comscope setups they've been doing and don't look to have enough ports for everything it should have. My guess is they'll be back later to remove the old legacy equipment and put up the remaining new equipment then fire it all the way up. I don't usually get to watch a site progress, I usually only notice it when new bands go live and I catch it in SCP so I'm not sure if this is par for the course or not. AT&T is dense enough here that even with LTE being down on that site I had usable LTE from neighboring sites even in my basement. HSPA stayed up on that site throughout and is still on. Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk
  11. I'm out in Southern Illinois today for work and this is the first time I've seen the 2nd B66 carrier notation. They use a different GCI pattern here than in Louisville. It got me wondering, would it be possible to move those variables that define the carrier notations to a table in the database that could be manipulated? That way more advanced users like most of us on here could change if needed to match our home market structure. AT&T seems to be different in each major metro area I've been in for B14 and 2nd and 3rd carriers on all bands. I haven't traveled enough with T-Mobile yet to see if they're consistent. I have no idea how much logic you have in the background to determine carriers now, just thought I'd throw the idea out there. The notarions help to make things easier to spot while driving but other than that its not a big deal it if its too much to do. Sent from my SM-G988U using Tapatalk
  12. Interesting, I'll have to check this new site in Louisville, this one went up about 8 months ago. Not sure if the one panel is M-MIMO or just an AIR type unit. That's Sprint with B41 M-MIMO on the top rack.
  13. Still up and running around Louisville. They're using 5x5 of their 15x15 PCS license here for edge and HSPA+. Well with the merger now they have 30x30 plus 5x5 G block in PCS. Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk
  14. That's a good thought, I didn't think about it that way.
  15. I wonder if AT&T plans to deploy it at some point. On my AT&T S20 Ultra B48 isn't enabled right now, though the phone does support it. It is enabled on my T-Mobile S20+. Its funny what they pick and choose to enable in their firmware, the only NR bands enabled right now are N5 and N260. I guess they'll enable more in future updates as they flip more spectrum to NR.
  16. Just sent a diagnostic report from both phones when on NR. If you want to add me into an alpha release to test feel free.
  17. Still no 5G info showing on my s20+. Service mode shows I'm connected to n71. I can send more diagnostic reports if you want for both AT&T and T-Mobile. CellMapper is able to see that info on my phone so Samsung must either use different methods or they named them differently. Does anyone know anything about the CellMapper developer? I wonder if they'd share how they pull that info, SCP isn't exactly a competing app as it doesn't have a mapping part to it. Mike, not saying you wouldn't figure it out but it could save you time and headache. For those that do see 5G info in SCP, does CellMapper show data similar to what my screenshot shows? Sent from my SM-G986U using Tapatalk
  18. Several people have seen B48 active on Verizon already. Its just the licensed bit that gets auctioned off in July. The rest is like B46 LAA if I understand that correctly. Theres 3 priority levels, Government, license holder, then everyone else IIRC. https://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1916611-Verizon-4G-LTE-Speed-Test-Results-Round-2/page6 (posts 81 & 89)
  19. I found a new type of AT&T small cell in Louisville Friday also. Its B2/B12 and looks very much like the typical Verizon small cells around here except for the large base cabinet. This just had RRUs and the antenna. Guess they needed the B12 for coverage vs the B46 LAA for capacity they usually install. They also used macro RRUs instead of the much smaller ones one the B2/B46 builds. SCP log shows this is the first B12 small cell I've connected to in Louisville for now.
  20. Visited this site again on Friday, appears they are wrapped up and gone already. Looks like it just added B71/N71 and both are up and running. SIte is now 10x10 B4(B66) 10x10 B2, 5x5 B12, 15x15 B71, and 15x15 N71. I believe this is the fastest upload I've ever seen from a macro site.
  21. it does look similar, but the ground cabinet is different than what they are using here for new sites. Could just be a different vendor or engineer. AT&T loves Commscope and uses all Ericsson equipment around here. This is what they've been using here: Also, my home site is (finally) getting upgraded. Its about the last 2/12 only site left around here. Found some more AT&T work and some new T-Mobile work in Louisville Friday, they're certainly keeping the tower crews busy right now.
  22. You might be able to do *#2263# to see if it did. If that works it will show you what is firmware enabled on your phone (and you can enable/disable). Not sure if a Sprint SIM will let you get to that menu or not, T-Mobile does. The April update enabled N41 on my T-Mobile S20+.
  23. The Nashville tornado back in March wrecked havoc on Verizon and others networks. We had a bunch of stores in various parts of KY lose their WAN circuits for almost 2 weeks. One of our stores in Nashville took a direct hit from it. I've seen some additional cameras from the one in the linked story and it was pretty gnarly inside the store. I was saying the same thing though, I thought they could have rerouted traffic differently to get those circuits that were 200+ miles away from the damage back up sooner. Nashville must be one of their main network hubs. https://www.wkrn.com/news/nashville-tornado/surveillance-video-shows-impact-of-tornado-at-hermitage-kroger/
  24. Thanks, Its different than what they normally use here, but it didn't look new either so I wasn't sure.
  25. Its sad to think that at some point we'll have a new generation of followers that the phrase "Sensorly or it didn't happen" will mean nothing to. The OG Evo 4G was my first smartphone also. Oh how things have changes over the years. I found this site one day on a break in between classes at UofL when I was googling why Sprint was so slow compared to others. Started learning about EvDo vs HSPA and also about Network Vision that day. Once LTE finally started rolling out my job lined up perfectly to track a lot of sites since I traveled a lot and my division lined up almost perfectly with East/West KY and some of the Nashville Sprint market. I still get to travel some but not nearly as much, I'm now in management and manage 7 field techs across 3 states. We actually use Sprint as a cellular backup for WAN in some retail locations, and we also use Sprint wired circuits in some office settings. Typically Spectrum is the LEC for our Sprint Ethernet circuits. It'll be interesting to see how the mergers affects both of those aspects.
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