shmget

Moody Road tower in Enfield is getting new panels today... drove by and saw cables hanging off the tower, and people working on the Sprint rack.  Looks like the new panels are in.  As I said previously in this thread, I needed to switch carriers, but am still following what Sprint is doing.  So those of us in Enfield should be getting some better signals soon.  We have some good friends down the street that have Sprint, so I'll have to ask them if their signals improve in the coming weeks.  I believe this tower covers most of the east side of Enfield into Somers.

Ok so I've been following this post for quite some time, finally had something decent to add to the conversation so I broke down and signed up.

 

Spoke with customer service yesterday regarding lte. Although they told me there was nothing in the works in terms of LTE in my town, they did say there were 2 towers within 10 miles that were currently being upgraded to LTE. Driving home from dinner last night I noticed there was a tower across from the McDonald's distribution center in Enfield that had all sorts of stuff (rope pulleys etc) hanging off of it. Hopefully it's LTE in progress...

I drove by this morning, and noticed that one of the racks now has no panels on it.  I'm assuming that they are either putting in new Sprint panels soon or they cleaned off the Nextel ones. 

I drove by again this morning, and it looked like there were RRUs behind some new panels.  Looks like things are happening around here! 

Does anyone know, can I activate my old phone on Boostmobile right away, or do I have to wait 6 months.  I thought I heard with some carriers they make you wait.  I'd just do a daily prepaid android plan, and use it once in awhile to see how things are progressing.

I saw tower climbers on the tower near Exit 46 on I-91 this afternoon.  They were working on the third rack from the top, and possibly the second.  Maybe this is a good sign.

Hate to say this, but the wait was just too much, and my wife started to really complain, so we switched to Verizon three weeks ago.  Not trying to be negative about Sprint here, but Verizon is working better for our needs.  I'm still hanging around here, as I'm interested to see how the new network performs.  I will probably keep my Nexus 4G around, in case I want to try a prepaid at some point to see what things are like.

Will continue to report things if I see them.

Hmm.  I'm going to drive RT5 on the way home.  If I start getting indicators I'll fire up Sensorly.  This might be very good news.

I was at Sonny's Place in Somers today, and there is a cell tower across the street which I assume has sprint, since my phone was showing a -60 RSSI (Thanks to this board I got the Signal Check Pro app to watch all the numbers).  I was getting 2000kbps/1100kbps and about an 88ms ping to Boston there.  Seems like if the tower hasn't been upgraded, at least the backhaul is sufficient.  Maybe this one will be done soon.  

Here is an update.  I filed a network ticket last week with executive customer care, as the only answer I got about slow speeds with *2 was "everyone is on social media".

A network technician personally called me back.  Here's what I know:

Where I work in East Hartford, several towers across the river have been converted to NV.  I have the unfortunate location of being right on the fringe of three towers, so my signal in the building bounces back and forth quite a bit.  He said hopefully with the 1900 upgrades it will get better, and then when the 800 voice rolls out, that should help even more.

For where I travel alot in Enfield and I-91, he said that plans are underway now to upgrade the backhaul.  They don't have a firm timeframe for NV upgrades, except that it should done within 3 months.  We should have LTE on some towers in 3 months he said, and the one closest to my house should have 3G/4G NV in about 6 months at the latest. 

So we should keep looking for activity, as we are very, very close.

Does anyone know what old cellular antennas looked like in the early 90s when Nextel was FleetCall?  I ask because I remember a tower as a kid that had three antennas next to each other that looked like basic vertical antennas.  Now, the same site has three panels and looks to be Nextel, according to a database search.

When digital cellular came on the scene in the late 90s, is that when the cellular carriers switched to sectors and panels with antennas in them?  Or has cellular always been this way.

If you have pictures of towers from the analog days, I'd be interested in seeing them.  Just looking to see a bit of history.

Thanks.

I noticed that Rt 5 in South Windsor has some pretty fast speeds.  East Hartford to the south and East Windsor and Enfield to the north it gets bad.  They must have upgraded the backhaul with the 3G in South Windsor, as I was getting something like 1.4Mbit/0.9Mbit and low pings.

Maybe I'm just seeing things, but I thought I saw a tower at exit 35A on I-91 that looked like the panels were removed.  I will try to look harder tomorrow (it is closer to the southbound direction).  Maybe a Nextel tower?

I am going to try to peek at the water tank above the nursing home (essentially above Walmart) tomorrow. Since its a Saturday, I don't expect to see much, and then I am driving out to the cape (love me some of that LTE there)

 

I'll watch closely Monday.

 

Someone took panels off the rack at the tower behind Hotcakes on RT 5, I don't know if they were nextel ones, but who else would be removing anything from that tower?

 

I have a hunch, we are getting closer. Signal in this area was awesome, for years and years, and last week it started being crappy. I used to live by the river in EW, now, I live a few miles away in EW, so the signal woes were obvious to me.

 

Sent from my Galaxy S3

I agree, I hope we are close.  Sprint still has pretty good signals at my house for data (although I use WiFi at home).  I've been testing data speeds on Verizon 3G, and they can be slow in this area too.  I read somewhere that they aren't putting more money into their 3G (why would they?), so there probably won't be more carriers added to speed things up.  So I figure I'll be patient and wait for Sprint. 

Only problem is that my desk at work moved to where I'm roaming now, and I've already exceeded the 300MB cap.  I might get forced off in a few months, I guess we will see.  If the get the 1X going on 800 soon, maybe that will keep me from roaming.

I thought I saw in another thread that NV towers get turned on in clusters.  Does this mean that probably we will see work at a bunch of sites, and then all of a sudden things will get much better at once?  I noticed there are 4 towers marked complete in Hartford, and around there, it is hit and miss.  sometimes my downloads are 1.2-1.6mbps, other times they are 0.1-0.4mbps. 

Well, horrible signal in East Windsor lately.  Tower next to me keeps dropping off, and then down in the center of Warehouse Point/Windsor Locks the signal is even worse, like the towers across the river have died.  Sad part is, I dont see any evidence of work going on to justify it.  

 

Any eyes see anything in the i91 north of hartford corridor going on?

Unfortunately, nothing.  I was getting about 1100/1000kbps in Enfield around Wendy's (Exit 48) the other night, but in general, the speeds are very bad.  I keep looking at the tower right around Exit 46, as I go by every day, but no trucks or anything like that.  I guess we will just keep waiting and hoping it hits our area soon.  I got some nice 4G speeds in Natick, MA over the weekend, so I'm sure once the backhaul and 4G is in place, things will be very much improved. 

Was at the Natick Mall today.  Didn't get 4G inside the mall, and noticed in the parking garage I had no signal at all (not even Verizon roaming).

I did turn on Sensorly and mapped around the Natick area as I drove around.  Maybe I'll add something to what has already been done.   How long does it take for the updates to appear on their website?

Sensorly shows good 4G coverage around the Natick Mall area.  Does 4G work inside the mall too?

http://www.speedtest.net/android/459303234.png

Got off 84 in Hartford today, and got these speeds and ping. Do things get this bad during network vision upgrades?

I called about Enfield again this morning. The rep said they would put a real time note on the tower for the "network team to monitor. She said the slow speeds were everyone getting on social media. :-)

i remember a month or two ago i was at st francis hospital on rotation and i had ~2000kbps down and 1500up, it was impressive, and had great signal

It's interesting you say that.  I became a Sprint customer because my wife was going through treatment at the cancer center there, and I got Sprint so I could tether and do work while she was getting chemo and medical stuff.  The Wifi at the hospital is severely overloaded for doing serious work over a VPN.  Of course, not long after (this was March 2011), Sprint changed things so that the Hotspot plans were not unlimited 4G.  I got a WiMAX signal as long as we were in a room where I could sit near a window.  The 3G was pretty slow from what I could remember.  Maybe things have improved since then.   I think I was there last in February of this year.  My wife is doing well now and just goes back once in awhile for checkups, so I don't use the hotspot anymore, but it is nice to have the feature if we have a bunch of appointments, so I can get some work done and telecommute and not lose as much time.

Oops. Meant to say kbps. It's been a very long day.

Ran a speedtest today in Hartford, about 1400mbps/1000mbps. Maybe we will start to see some NV towers working well soon. I'm getting about 700mpbs/700mpbs at my house in Enfield. Today the data speed issues definitely were better, but still some pretty high ping times.

I'm going to be visiting Nashville in July, and specifically for a few days I'm going to be at Belmont University. Does anyone know if this location has solid 4G coverage? I am hoping to turn on the mobile hotspot feature on my phone and use that. If there isn't solid in-building coverage, I'll just use a Verizon LTE MiFi that I have. Any reports on how coverage is around the University would be appreciated.

Thanks!

I finally got tired of the network issues and called customer service. They put in a network ticket for me. There are also other network tickets for the tower in East Hartford that seems to be very slow. I was getting very erratic data, about 800-1400ms pings (yes you read that right!), and speeds were sub 100kbps both ways. Most of I-91 was just as bad this afternoon. This evening I am getting about a 95ms ping and about 600kbps up and down. Maybe they fixed some of the issues, but the CSR told me that the whole area had some issues going on.

Same here. Kept dropping down to 1xrtt on my Note and my sister was complaining her 3D wouldn't connect to wimax and 3G was dead slow. Hopefully those are signs they're working on our towers. I'm a little tired of waiting for lte lol

I have noticed this the last few days on my drive home on I-91. Data speeds are VERY POOR in East Hartford. They get a little better after I get on I-91 and am near Bloomfield.

I wonder if we will ever get a tower near Rentschler field in East Hartford. Their maps claim a good signal, but I struggle to transfer anything when I'm around there.

If anyone sees work in progress in North central ct can you shoot me a PM? I want to get some pictures of them working to try and build some emergency response scenarios for fire/ems training. So far, I haven't caught action in Windsor Locks, East Windsor or Enfield. But I have to imagine it's close, I saw a lot of stuff on the state database.

 

Sent from my Galaxy S3

Good to know. I go by the tower on Moody Rd in Enfield frequently, and also the towers along I-91. If I spot anything I'll post it here. I can't wait for things to get better, my wife keeps nagging me about switching to Verizon as her data speeds are very slow (so are mine). I guess a few towers in Hartford near where I work have been upgraded, but I'm not seeing more than about 600-700kbps download/upload speeds.

In looking at the siting database, I only see the tower in East Windsor and the one in Enfield at exit 46 so far slated for LTE. I guess its a start.

My signal in Enfield got bad last night and dropped a call. I'm wondering if they are starting.

Maybe it is because I switch to a Galaxy Nexus from an Epic 4G, but the Nexus is definitely holding a Sprint signal more than the Epic ever did. I'm roaming quite a bit less. But then again, I have heard that the Epic 4G had a very poor radio.