MarkyD311

How many sites max and avg have you seen fed by 1gbps donor site?

They're just getting started. I don't think they have any of the microwave-fed sites in OK online yet, but they should start turning them up in the next few weeks. I don't have exact numbers on how many sites will be fed by each donor site. 

I haven't seen a lot of that yet in the T-Mo rural installs. Mostly AT&T fiber for now. Frontier areas are mostly untouched.

 

Downstate IL has another major problem as well - T-Mo has the old Dotson/Humm era "we don't care" site density, and most of the 700 MHz spectrum is controlled by USCC (who is out of most of IL now but still has 700 MHz spectrum in areas they do not operate).

I can only speak specifically to Oklahoma, but they started hitting the microwave rural installs heavy last week. If they don't have AAV/AT&T available to the site in the immediate future, they're using microwave. In Oklahoma and NW Arkansas alone they're doing about 300 sites on microwave backhaul, fed by 1gbps donor sites. I can only assume they have the same strategy elsewhere, as there's no way they'll meet their goal without it (especially in CenturyLink/Frontier areas). By the end of March, I expect to see all highways in Oklahoma covered in LTE, with lots of the areas in between trickling in as well. 

I'm going to guess yes, but I don't know for sure. I don't know if Sprint is using IMS for WiFi Calling. If they are, it should be good to go.

Sprint WiFi calling does not currently hand off to the cellular network. I've been testing it for work so we can approve Sprint as a BYOD option for our users (since Sprint won't pay for DAS on our campus). T-Mo hands off from WiFi to VoLTE, as you'd expect, but Sprint does not hand off a call from WiFi. It just drops. I only have two Sprint devices that I've tested with (HTC One Max and GS5). We'll see if this is the case when they finally implement WiFi calling on iOS.

I'm probably too cynical but I suspect that T-Mo will be doing some 'dressing of a pig' at rural sites to meet the buildout timeline.  Something tells me those LTE sites in BFE will be connected to the same old backhaul.  A crappy speedtest in the middle of nowhere isn't going to make much of a wave to the 'YouTube jury' and the average consumer will be content just seeing 'LTE' on their phone.

In Oklahoma and NW Arkansas alone, T-Mobile is using microwave to reach 300+ sites. They're not turning up sites without backhaul in place. 

Why am I not surprised that these pissant little LTE 1900 ground mount rural sites work well?  Of course, they work well because...

 

Every little thing she (John Legere) does is magic.  Everything she (Neville Ray) do just turns Magentans on.

 

Meanwhile, everything Sprint does is wrong or inferior -- or so we are told.

 

AJ

I can only speak to my personal experience in OK - and from the perspective of the engineers who are building the network here. Whether or not what is being said matches up with reality is something we'll have to wait and see. I'm far from a TMO evangelist, but I'm pretty impressed with what they've done in my state in a short amount of time. 

For work, I always have a current flagship from each carrier in my desk drawer, and I rotate them out frequently. VZW continues to be the most consistent carrier in my state, with AT&T lagging behind slightly in the more rural areas. T-Mobile has always been the worst outside of the city, but that is changing very quickly. Sprint, on the other hand, is an absolute disaster in the OKC metro. It's no more usable than it was a few years ago, but again, that's just one guy's perspective. I'm all about rooting for the underdog when they deserve it. In my region, Sprint has done tons of modernization but the cell grid is still so sparse. They don't stand a chance in this state unless they start putting up more macros, which doesn't seem like it's in the game plan any time soon (unless I missed something). 

I think GMO lte means no RRH which means 1900 lte range is reaaaaally bad. They're just reusing same 1900 antennas that have been tgere for 10+ years.

 

Yes TMO is using GMO 1900 lte as a quick and dirty way to get lte up and running. Later they'll come back and put 700/AWS/1900 RRUs up.

I wouldn't say the range is bad. Let's use the network in OK as an example. These sites they're upgrading from EDGE/GPRS are being upgraded from 10+ year old Nortel base station equipment to modern NSN equipment. Even with GMO, the engineers here are seeing an INCREASE in range with the new 1900 LTE sites over what they were getting on the old Nortel stuff. So, at least here in OK where they're upgrading from really old stuff, the 1900 LTE coverage is actually better than the 1900 EDGE was, in many cases. 

Have you been to OKC? How's network there?

A little better in some areas of OKC, but not much. 

It's 8:45 pm in Yukon, OK. I'm a quarter mile from Sprint's cell site at SW 15th and Mustang Rd. I can see it from my window. I can connect to B25 and B26 from my house. Both deliver less than 1mbps down, and 2-3mbps up. It's just congestion, plain and simple. It's bad. T-Mobile, on the other hand, is making some pretty big moves nationwide, including here in OK. Lack of low band spectrum in the state will continue to hinder T-Mo indoors, but their cell grid is pretty dense. I'm really impressed with the rate at which T-Mobile is improving the network here.

Just got a couple test devices for work. Seeing lots of B26 in OKC...and lots of timeouts when connected to B26. I can't even get a speedtest to complete. I'll try again on a different site later...

Different crews are responsible for Network Vision installation and legacy deinstallation.

 

AJ

I see. In a situation like my pic above, there are two legacy and one NV antenna on each sector. Surely they won't just have a single NV antenna on each sector, will they? When the legacy stuff comes down, will more NV stuff go up?

 

Sweet. I work there so I can't wait to see if I have it in my building.

Best I could do with a cell phone, but notice the 4 RRUs behind all the new antennas:

I'm not fully versed on how Sprint is doing these sites, but I was under the assumption that all the antennas would be replaced. They added new ones with RRUs, but left what appears to be the legacy ones on the Sprint rack as well (top rack is Nextel, I'm not talking about those). Do they come back later and hook up the old antennas to the new equipment, or how does that work? 

Thats awesome, capture any pictures?

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Nope, was in a big hurry. Will get out there this weekend to snap some pics. The antennas and RRUs are up, but not connected (wires are hanging down from them)

Ran into a crew putting up NV equipment on the cell site that serves Chesapeake campus today (I-44 and Western). 

looks like the cell site near my place in Yukon (SW 15th and Mustang Rd) has NV equipment now and is broadcasting LTE.

Looking like it **COULD BE** October for NV completion in Oklahoma.  Everybody hold on to your hats. 

 

 

Also, i have been seeing more and more little yellow flags along the roadways leading to Telco boxes. 

A colleague of mine is a project manager for Ericsson in the area, and has said Sept-Oct for completion in OKC.

I've watched them on a few towers in Tulsa. They are speedy,I'll be interested to pit their LTE network against Sprint's.

I know they're not having to do near as much work as Sprint, but I'm really impressed with the speed. It seems that they spend no more than 2 days at most sites before moving on. They're all activated within a few days of the panels and Flexi BTS being put up. I'm sure it helps that these are mostly sites that had HSPA+ 42 already, so they have adequate backhaul in place.

T-mobile is re-configuring for 1900 as well as installing LTE equipment. The 1900MHZ HSPA is active in parts of Tulsa and most of OKC. LTE is not on for T-Mo yet here or almost anywhere else in the country.

 

Side note i was able to connect to LTE inside my classroom with a window in TCC, nabbed it on Sensorly.

Serving cell was 26, so this was picked up from aprox 6 miles & through an exterior wall.

Impressive! As for T-Mo not being on LTE in most areas, you're correct. That said, I've been able to connect to it for a few minutes at a time in various spots throughout OKC. It's visible almost everywhere in the metro, but it's hard to get connected. If you hammer it for several minutes it'll let you in long enough to do a speed test, but you get kicked out after 2-3 minutes tops. They're not like Sprint, unfortunately; they don't seem to allow registration on the LTE network until it's pretty much done.

 

 

Wait what? T-Mobile has been using Erricson air panels with integrated RRU's I thought, is Nokia deploying here as well?

NSN here in OK. Most of the TMO sites in the OKC metro have been modernized already. Was testing out their network with an unlocked 4s up until last week, and was getting 3G nearly everywhere.

No those are the legacy cabinets unfortunately. The NV cabinets i've seen are 2 very wide cabinets & also a little skinny stand-alone.

Thanks for the response. I wonder what panels I'm seeing up on that tower with 4 RRUs/panel? I was looking directly into the sun to see them, too, so it's possible it was a mirage

I'm not a Sprint customer so I can't test this, but I think I found a couple sites with NV equipment. Unfortunately, I only had my cell phone so I couldn't get good pics of the panels, but they're brand new and Sprint is the only carrier around here that uses that many RRUs per panel. Do these look like NV cabinets? This is at OK33XC092 by Lake Hefner at Hefner Rd. & Portland at the OKC Water Utilities maintenance yard.

Also, I spied the same setup with the same panels and cabinets that recently went up on the rooftop site at Weokie Credit Union on NW Expressway, site OK03XC079.

Edit: Also looks like OK23XC118 over by OSU-OKC has NV equipment that has recently been installed.

At&t does have 10x10 in Tulsa, I saw many 50-70mbps tests at launch, now that has "dwindled" into the 20s. I have a friend with Verizon that has about 12mbps everywhere he goes,and back at launch time (December 2011) it was getting 25mbps. I look forward to 4x4 mimo the additional spectrum offerings will be given their chance to shine.

Correct; Tulsa is 10x10 on AT&T; OKC is 5x5 and already stupid slow in most areas.

Just checked OKC's permit site. Looks like a permit has been issued for the tower on SE44th (permit number - BLDC-2013-01708) Hopefully this is a sign of things to come....

 

How long do these upgrades typically take?

What is OKC's permit site? I haven't been able to find it.

nevermind: answered above.

the fact that Oklahoma City is listed as Sprint being the best in terms of coverage immediately invalidates this in my mind. I'm really rooting for Sprint, but they are the absolute worst of the major carriers in OKC in terms of just about everything - coverage, dropped call percentage, data speeds...everything. This is from my own personal experience as well as RootMetrics' findings.

Exciting news for sure! I know exactly what you mean about the panels, my local site has become dark grey. I can't wait to see some clean new panels in the OK!

 

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I hope I'm not wrong! This is a hard site to survey because it's all on top of the building, cabinets included. I didn't see any RRUs, but I didn't have time to really look very hard, either. I can't imagine there would be new Sprint panels on this building if they weren't for NV, especially considering this is a very busy part of town. T-Mobile also has a site on this rooftop, but I know which panels are theirs because I saw them working on it recently for the refarm.

While I haven't seen any activity in person in OKC, I think I might have spotted NV-style cabinets in OKC on NW Expressway at the site that sits atop Weokie Credit Union. There are also several panels that look new (they're very white as opposed to off-white like the rest). I'll try to get a closer look with a good zoom lens this weekend.