mdob07

I found yet another variation of the new small cells, this is the 4th style I've seen so far around here. I think this design looks a lot cleaner that the H bracket setup next to a wooden pole. Now if only they could get the power meters installed and turned up as fast as they are getting the rest of the equipment installed. This particular installation is back in an office park. Ansco is the contractor AT&T is using for everything around here. http://anscollc.com/ https://imgur.com/I1WsUKH

I think I've seen this mentioned before, but I ran into the issue of SCP pulling the wrong site note for B41. I've noticed that a lot of the B41 sites using Ericsson B41 equipment don't follow the +1450 hex offset, it seems to be randomly assigned. The note for the neighbor cells is what it should be displaying, so far this is the only site I've seen this on. If I change the note for the B41 GCI will the app also change the note for the site -1450 hex too?

Just found some more CRAN permits, and one is literally my office address!! Maybe all those Mark The Spot reports actually do something after all. Permits were just filed today so it'll probably be several months before I see any construction. They're going to have CRAN nodes everywhere at the pace they are going, I guess that's a benefit of being the ILEC and having fiber everywhere.

Here in Louisville Sprint has PCS B block (15x15MHz), T-Mobile has E, F, and C3 which combined is also 15x15 MHz. Together it will be 30x30 contiguous plus G block on top of that. Plus T-Mobile has H and I blocks AWS 3 for a 10x10 channel, and dish has G block. If they share and combine together they could have a 15x15 AWS 3 carrier. Plus 10x10 AWS 1, 5x5 B12, and whatever 600 T-mobile has here. T-mobile has much better density here than Sprint, if they can get everything deployed on all sites rapidly they could blow away Verizon (90MHz with everything deployed here) and compete well against AT&T.

Same here in Louisville, I wasn't impressed with Verizon at all, I don't know how Rootmetrics rates them #1. I posted over on HoFo about the day I setup my account at a Verizon store, the associate told me to use their WiFi if i needed to set anything up on my phone because the network was so slow there. That has to be embarrassing for a corporate Verizon store. Expanding their B5 carrier helped a little, but I didn't see much of a difference in the macro only areas. They even still have a few weird coverage holes within the metro area. I haven't done a lot of speed tests since I've switched back to Sprint but I have tested the network in a few places. So far I've been very impressed, they seem to have come a long way here since I ported out 18 months ago. The new TMO-Sprint would have a very nice spectrum portfolio here to go up against AT&T, and I think they'd blow Verizon out of the water. Sprint actually has more spectrum here than Verizon, 100MHz vs 90MHz, and that could go up if they deploy more B41 carriers beyond 3. Sprint's biggest problem here is density, but they started deploying small cells finally about a year ago.

I've seen that here between AT&T and Verizon. Verizon has been ranked #1 here but with AT&Ts upgrades they are are feeling the pressure. They recently widened their B5 carrier to 10x10 even with their 1x carrier still Iive in the middle of it. They also have their EvDo channel in the middle of a 5x5 B2 carrier.

I have 2 S9+s. One is AT&T model and still locked to their network, that's my primary line and phone. The unlocked one is my second phone that I move around. Its actually an old work number they let me transfer to a personal account when I got promoted to management and got rid of my company owned phone. A lot of my work contacts still call me on that number since I had it for years. I travel a lot for my job and like having two phones on different networks.

Factory unlocked.

I'm not sure if its 100% true VoLTE or not, but here is what I see looking through my phone. I turned on the LTE calling option under Settings -> Connections -> Voice Menu From the Radio Info menu: During a call: Comparison to my AT&T phone on VoLTE call:

Ported my unlocked S9+ to Sprint tonight from Verizon. VoLTE (LTE Calling) seems to be working good here so far. I left back before any of the T-Mo network roaming started last year so it'll be interesting to see how well that works around here. Definitely seems better than when I left based on what I've seen so far.

Correct. It's actually 3 TDD B46 carriers aggregated to the B2 carrier. This config has been live for over a year here on other small cells. Other regions have seen B2/B66/B46 all aggregated together also. Distance wise it doesn't seem to travel very far. I was practically under the thing and you see what the RSRP values are. The B2 carriers up to I'd say 1/4 mile give or take. This particular location has 3 of these around an apartment complex.

Another new small cell, this was installed in April and went live in June. These things are popping up all over the place, definitely a benefit of AT&T having their own fiber everywhere around here. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

So far I've found 5 or so of these small cells. I wasn't able to locate either a building or electrical permit for any of these, but I'm attributing that to the new permitting system that went live last month. Between all cellular permits in the last 2 years I only found 91 records, so a lot seems to be missing. But I am pretty confident that these are AT&T as one is in the shadow of a Verizon/TMO tower. None of them have the electric meter installed yet so not sure how long it will be before these get fired up. These have a pretty minimal footprint, it looks like the radios are under the antenna in the brown enclosure. The only thing on the ground is an H bracket setup for the power meter and fiber termination. This particular one was installed on an existing pole, but most are on newly installed poles. Map of AT&T small cell permits, as I mentioned earlier, this list is just what I pulled from the permit portal. View AT&T CRAN in a full screen map

I found 21 new permits for AT&T CRAN installations for Louisville, and I've found more installed that I can't find the permits for so the count is likely higher. Louisville just switched to a new permitting system and everything filed prior seems to be hit or miss on finding the permit.

Ive also noticed recently while sitting at my desk in my office, if wifi is on it will connect to our T Mobile cell spot. It doesn't actually connect and pass traffic if I turn off wifi but it will sit on it for hours as long as I keep wifi with wifi calling on. I wonder if they are getting ready to start refarming the last HSPA spectrum in some markets and are about to enable domestic LTE roaming? Either way, I don't remember my phone showing Verizon or T Mobile until recently. The PCI is wrong on the service mode screenshot, 67 is the weak AT&T site I hit at my office. But it shows the T Mobile PLMN of 310260 and correct EARFCN. Interesting either way. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

There are a couple of ways to determine the channel size, though none of them are as easy as opening the engineering screen. The first is to check the FCC licenses for your area for Verizon. 2nd is if another carrier you use has adjacent licenses, for example here I knew Verizon had a AWS carrier centered at 1725/2125. I also have AT&T which happens to have a 10x10 AWS carrier centered at 1715/2115. That puts Verizon's carrier as 10x10 also. 3rd process I use is I have an old rooted nexus 6 running NSG. Since the phone is rooted NSG call pull loads more info from the modem than my S9 plus. None of these methods are a direct replacement for the engineering screen and all require a little work, but anyone of these three can get you what you want.

My office is about the same, this building is a black hole for all cell service. The only carrier that works in here is T Mobile since our LAN admin put in a Cell Spot for his phone. Thankfully we have good wifi and wifi calling works great on my S9 plus. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Versailles Indiana this morning, I believe this is the fastest upload I've gotten so far from a macro site. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

I drove out of the area and back in and had the same experience. There was a several mile stretch going into Milan that I was connected to Verizon. I never did get data though, looked like it was seeing but not authenticating. I saw flashes of Tmobile B12 and B66 also but it never lasted more than a second or two before going back to Verizon. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

This was up in Milan Indiana. Pretty sure it was active as my phone sat on this for well over an hour while I was in a store working on something. My phone said emergency calls only while I was on Verizon. I also briefly saw tmo mobile b12 but it never stayed more than a second so it may may just been scanning.

That is correct.

I saw some Verizon roaming today. AT&T service is non existent where I am currently, my Verizon phone is barely usable. Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

Interesting. Did you notice if the RSRP and GCI values were updating as you moved around? I'm wondering if it's actually showing 5G info or just still showing the last LTE info it had.

Can you post a screenshot? I'm just curious to see what it shows on 5G.

I haven't seen it on my S9 plus either. Samsung will have to include those bits of code that pull that information in their Android build. We may not see it until Android Q. Hopefully we see it soon than later but we'll see. Even on the phones that have been passing that info its been wildly inconsistent. Hopefully in future releases Google will get that issue sorted out.