mdob07

Got the Sept 1st update on my AT&T phone today. Let's see how long it takes T-Mobile this time around.

T-Mobile has widened N41 to 100MHz now in the Louisville, KY area. Looks like they took the Sprint network down to a single 20MHz B41 carrier at EARFCN 41490 and they've changed the GCI pattern to 31, 32, and 33, this was previously the 3rd carrier using 41, 42, and 43 GCI endings. I noticed a decent speed boost at my house from the increase, I used to get 500-550 down about a mile from the site, now I've hit 700 a couple times. I haven't been about to test next to the site yet to see if backhaul has been increased yet, the best I've ever gotten from this particular site at 80MHz N41 was 730 down sitting right in front of it at 4am.

I just noticed, after the update SA N41 is missing now. It's just NSA N41 and SA/NSA N71. Wonder why they removed it. 🤦‍♂️

Got it on mine today as well. Still no N2/N66 enabled.

I'm thinking the constant band switching issue some are seeing may be more of a Samsung issue. Ever since my AT&T S20 Ultra received the August update yesterday its been doing the same thing. Constantly switching bands and even to different towers every 2-3 seconds, occasionally even showing no signal for up to 5 seconds as well.

As I expected my AT&T S20 ultra got the August update this morning. My T-Mobile S20+ is still happy with the June update. Whatever the holdup is it's only affecting T-Mobile as far as I can tell. I wonder if they'll still push the July update and then the August update separately or just roll them together at this point. 🤷‍♂️

Funnily enough I was about to post the same thing. My Tab S6 updated today. Honestly at this point I feel like whoever is in charge of pushing the update out either forgot about it or missed it. I expect the August update any day on my AT&T S20 Ultra.

Looks like T-Mobile is starting to negotiate spectrum swaps. https://www.lightreading.com/5g/t-mobiles-spectrum-swap-with-verizon-hints-at-merger-progress/d/d-id/771617?

I might have answered my question about the radios. And I found a 4th permit tonight, and this one is a current Sprint tower.

I just checked again on my T-Mobile S20+, it's still saying up to date with the June 1st update.

Just found 3 Dish Wireless permits in Louisville! Anyone know much about these radios? I'm curious what they will be broadcasting here. The full site plans are attached to the permit if anyone wants to see them, you'll have to create an account then just search cell tower permits under building permits here: https://aca-prod.accela.com/LJCMG/Login.aspx

On a T-Mobile sim you can use *#2263# to get into that menu. There used to be a workaround on xda that worked to let you enable bands the phone was capable of but were firmware disabled, but that quit working with one UI 3.0. All I see on my S20+ are what I mentioned above.

It's enabled on my AT&T s20 Ultra, they enabled it several months ago, maybe even late 2020. My T-Mobile S20 plus only has n41, n71, n260, and n261 enabled right now.

Almost 2 weeks later and still no July update. The last time there was a big delay it affected AT&T also but my AT&T S20 got the July update almost 3 weeks ago. I'm really hoping this update finally adds N2 and N66 when it finally comes.

I've found a handful here as well. At least it looks like T-Mobile is fully removing all of the Sprint equipment, including the tower racks. Here all of the old Nextel sites are still up and look functional to the untrained eye. Looks like all Sprint did was kill power and backhaul and walked away. The antennas, coax, and the equipment shelters are still in place for most of the Nextel sites here.

Yeah when mine is on n71 nsa it easily gets over 100mbps upload. I think when it's using n41 nsa it's around 50 up, but download is over 400 and that's with the gateway in my basement. My Spectrum service is 200/10. There are drawbacks though. If you just need internet for basic needs then it's great, but you can't do much on the router except change ssid and channel configuration. There's no options for advanced options like port forwarding and stuff like that, and the NAT configuration T-Mobile uses hinders things like VPN and VoIP services.

Still not out for my T-Mobile phone. It's funny that the June update came out super fast and now it'll be August before they push the July update.

Also I wonder when/if AT&T will flip any of their 2nd and 3rd PCS/AWS carriers to NR. In Louisville it's 20x20 and 5x5 for PCS, and 10x10, 10x10, and 5x5 for AWS. South of Louisville PCS goes to 10x10, 5x5, and 5x5. No phone that I know of can aggregate that many carriers at the same time plus all of the other bands.

I can see it if they include N2 and N66 along with N41 in that number. Has N2 or N66 been spotted yet?

Finally got the July update on my AT&T phone this morning. 790 MB. Still waiting for it to hit my T-Mobile phone.

It looks like N5 supports 5, 10, 15, and 20 MHz channel widths. I wonder how long they'll wait before they make a change to be able to use more of that spectrum for N5. Possible options I see: Use 15x15 as B26/N5 using DSS (If thats an option, or would it have to match and be N26?) 5x5 as B5 LTE for older phones and that still leaves 5x5 for HSPA. A more aggressive option would be to use 20x20 for N5 exclusively and 5x5 for HSPA. This still leaves 10x10 B12 and 10x10 B14 for older phones for low band. Hopefully they enable SA if they go this route. Since I believe you can't aggregate low band LTE with low band NR in most cases, phones using the N5 carrier would not be touching the B12 and B14 carriers. If they enable SA on the 20x20 N5 carrier it would also help free up their limited midband spectrum for older non-NR phones. That would also prevent falling back to LTE only inside a building just because the mid-band anchor band was too weak. In Daytona AT&T was broadcasting 5x5 B2, 10x10 B66, and 10x10 B30 and that was it for midband.

I've found 2 decommissioned Sprint sites in Louisville, both were sites with both T-Mobile and Sprint. In both cases all Sprint tower equipment including the rack were removed. I haven't had time to dig through our permit site to see if I can find anything, but I'll be surprised if I do.

I'm down in Daytona Beach for vacation this week. AT&T seems to be doing quite well here even with having much less spectrum than they have where I live. Network seems pretty dense and even found several small cells along A1A. N5 at 10x10 seems to be pretty wide spread, though since both 10x10 B5 LTE carriers are still on air I wonder why they don't combine them to be a single 20x20 carrier with DSS instead of 2 10x10 with DSS on I assume only 1 of them. Anyone know?

Has anyone seen the Sprint network shut down in a given area yet? In Louisville today I tried in a couple different spots to force B25 or B26 with the band selector app and for B25 it tried to connect to AT&T and for B26 it tried to connect to Verizon. I'm not sure if this is temporary or not. I am on the T-Mobile side so its possible it's just T-Mobile connections being blocked on the Sprint sites. I'll fire up an old Sprint phone when I get home and see if I can connect to Sprint or not.

I've found a couple more recently tagged Sprint keep sites that are really close to existing T-Mobile sites. It'll be interesting to see when these get converted if they get everything or mid-band frequencies only.