AirlineFlyer

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

AT&T has an LTE DAS and enterprise WiFi installed at City Point in Downtown Brooklyn. My phone automatically connected to attwifi because of the Cricket line. Pretty cool given that it's a relatively new building.

That building, specifically DeKalb Market, installed its own DAS repeater system for the four carriers. It's really odd and interesting. Cel-Fi has a whole case study on the installation here: https://www.cel-fi.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/ebook_RCR12.pdf

Annoyingly, T-Mobile works great inside the Trader Joes but Verizon and AT&T are totally dead. Not sure how AT&T Passpoint Wi-Fi is managed, but it's a nice option since the building's own Wi-Fi captive portal really doesn't work.

11 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Anyone else notice a backhaul increase recently in Lower Manhattan? Yesterday I ran into a number of sites between Canal and Houston that were showing speeds of 700Mbps+ in the middle of the day. 

For example:

 

Edit: eNB 50088 in Downtown Brooklyn too. This site never used to be this fast. First test on n41 120MHz, second test on mmWave 100MHz with the typical high ping. Once again these are at peak times so I'm assuming it can get over 1Gbps depending on the time of day.

What’s with the high mmWave ping times on T-Mobile?

On 9/4/2021 at 9:55 PM, Paynefanbro said:

NYC DoITT and Public Design Commission approved a new design for multi-tenant small cells last month. They look very similar to the previously approved single-tenant design but they're quite a bit taller. Basically the new design means that going forward, a single light pole or utility can have multiple carriers and technologies on it, reducing the number of new poles that needs to be "converted" to densify 4G/5G coverage. It should definitely speed up mmWave deployment once the city starts allowing carriers to build out 5G small cells here.

They finally got around to installing the oDAS node on the pole used in renderings by the city and…it’s the older version lol.

Elsewhere Brooklyn, Verizon managed to squeeze c-band on to a site in Fort Greene that previously only had two antennas per sector. Nice to see that, but still plenty more to go in the area.

On 9/2/2022 at 4:23 PM, AirlineFlyer said:

Ericsson AIR 6419 just replaced an older AIR 32 on this site in Fort Greene. eNB 56195. Guess that explains why HSPA vanished last week 😂

Tested this site with an iPhone 12 from the same vantage point as this photo. Couldn’t quite break the 1 Gbps barrier, but it was close.

Spotted a Dish site in Brighton Beach, co-located with T-Mobile eNB 894983.

56 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

Stopped by the infamous Greenpoint Sprint keep site and it's not broadcasting anything. Antennas still up though.

Thanks for confirming that my switch to Verizon a year ago was still the right one 😂

5 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

I also stopped at the Crown Castle NG small cell in Downtown Brooklyn by BAM. Unfortunately I was unable to determine if T-Mobile was on it because there's a T-Mobile macro within spitting distance. Because of that I want to say it isn't T-Mobile's but if it was it wouldn't be the first time they've deployed a small cell virtually right under one of their macros.

Here's a better shot of that one. And yea, it's literally a block away from a T-Mobile site that even has mmWave.  This particular site would fill a nice mmWave gap for Verizon, though. But as of this weekend I didn't notice any real change from it.

Ericsson AIR 6419 just replaced an older AIR 32 on this site in Fort Greene. eNB 56195. Guess that explains why HSPA vanished last week 😂

Is T-Mobile's 3G HSPA network still alive and kicking? It was last week but now my phone doesn't seem to see it anymore

Just now, mirskyc said:

Wow, how the heck did that even happen?!?!

I really can't figure it out. I mean, I've seen these damaged by building scaffolding in the past, but usually the antenna breaks off or is at an angle. But this one had nothing around it. And the sheathing broke off entirely! Street View shows it broken since at least when they last went by in July. I emailed Crowne Castle's DAS NOC, we'll see if they ever fix it.

So that’s what the inside of an NYC oDAS Omni directional antenna looks like! Crowne Castle node at Jay and Sands St.

Another Link 5G, on Vanderbilt Ave at Myrtle Ave Fort Greene/Clinton Hill. What bugs me the most about these things, aside from the hulking nature of them, is the placement. This particular area needs no help with cell coverage. In fact, it’s directly under a Verizon macro site with 2 Gbps mmWave. T-Mobile has 3 sites within just a few blocks. Even ATT is just three blocks away. Unless Dish intends to use these things for its rollout, most of the Links are likely going to be empty forever.

29 minutes ago, T-MoblieUser207 said:

I have spotted 2 more Dish sites, one on the corner of Church Avenue and East 16th (photo below), and the other is an in progress site co-located with Verizon eNB 81069.

 

At Verizon eNB 81069, the ports on the Dish panel weren't connected yet, brand new racks were being used on the roof Verizon is on, and it looks like Sprint's equip is still up on the building next door.

You also snagged a shot of the new oDAS in there, too. 
 

I also spotted one while on LIRR above Atlantic Ave. They’re starting to really get rolled out now.

A whole lot going on at eNB 48052 at Park and 31st. Anyone know if the extra panel above the n41 antenna is c-band?

A legacy Sprint site inside the LIU Brooklyn campus in Downtown Brooklyn has been dismantled in the past month or so. T-Mobile has its own site on the campus and a large building was built directly in front of the Sprint antennas so no real loss here. It was never mapped for LTE or 5G but it may have been eNB 565 in the CDMA map.

8 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

 

None of them are broadcasting anything besides WiFi anyway and the carriers have so many deals with franchisees that these Links are gonna be an afterthought for them.

This is what bugs me. Link is going to be installing these giant things regardless of whether or not any carrier is interested. I'm betting many of them, probably a majority, will never have any carrier equipment installed at any point and we'll just be stuck with them forever.

One of those awful new Link5G towers is located at East Broadway and Rutgers in Manhattan, directly underneeth T-Mobile eNB 47000...a site that even has mmWave lol

This may take years to actually result in anything, but we can expect to see the carrier have access to MTA right of way to install antennas in the near future. They're going to be expanding the Transit Wireless network into the tunnels, but the contract also have a provision to build out carrier coverage on MTA ROW. So think something like antennas mounted on above ground structures, or monopoles on ground level sections. We shall see!

On 6/15/2022 at 3:20 AM, T-MoblieUser207 said:

JFK Terminal 5 DAS
Compared to last year July 2021 when I passed through T5 at JFK, the DAS today is downright awful. They changed it to allow Sprint bands to broadcast as 312-250, and it might help with capacity, as T-Mobile's bands are congested badly. All of T-Mobile's bands (B2 20+B66 20+B12) on it don't pull more than 2 Mbps down independently or with Carrier Aggregation (CA), as when CA is added, it's not active on speedtests, no matter the server. B2 and B12 have some upload speeds, good luck with B66. Sprint has B26 plus 5 MHz B25 and 40 MHz B41, and is decently better. The 40 MHz of B41 is fine, but upload is low even with upload CA active, B25 is fine on download, and B26 is pretty much empty. Album of screenshots here.

Meanwhile, when I went through JFK T5 last month with Verizon I actually had fantastic C-band coverage all over the airport, much to my surprise. Inside T5 I was getting nearly 500 Mbps down. I guess T5’s DAS now has C-band. https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/5106801625

An unmapped AT&T site at 47th St and Vernon Blvd has also gotten C-band equipment

Just barely over the NYC border in Valley Stream LI a T-Mobile tower that once has T-Mobile up top, MetroPCS in the middle, and Clearwire converted to Sprint below has recently has the Sprint equipment removed. Yet for some reason the Metro equipment remains in place. Sorry about the bad night shot.

Back in 2020:

AT&T is definitely getting going with C-band upgrades in NYC. In the last month the site on Hicks St at Clark St in Brooklyn Heights has had new antennas added. The site still isn’t on Cellmapper so I don’t know the eNB.

Found another one of those weird non-confirming oDAS nodes with mmWave. This one is in Brighton Beach, in Brighton Beach Ave at Brighton 6th St.

Stupid way to find this kind of thing but there's one of the new oDAS sites at 4th Ave and 36th St in Brooklyn

On 4/7/2022 at 2:52 PM, thisischuck01 said:

Another Verizon deployment, this time at the corner of Graham and Scholes (40.709250369767524, -73.94362128284861). Didn't have my Verizon SIM on hand, but it either hasn't been turned up or it's mmWave-only.

I went to check it out and yea it’s not online yet. There is n77 in the area and my phone eventually connected to that, but the node isn’t yet operational.