AirlineFlyer

7 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

This gives me hope for eNB 74366 in Greenpoint. I desperately want them to keep/convert that site since it'll improve coverage significantly and relieve congestion in much of northern Greenpoint and Hunters Point. T-Mobile already performs poorly there and without that site, things will only get worse with the seemingly endless construction of highrises along the waterfront.

Hope so. Areas like that, really this area and site specifically, is what motivated me to switch to Verizon.

On 10/8/2021 at 6:09 PM, Paynefanbro said:

Went up to Woodbury Common again. Just like all the other times, T-Mobile outperformed Verizon by a significant margin. Verizon still doesn't offer 5G at Woodbury Common which is interesting considering it has heavy foot traffic year round.

The nearest site to the outlet mall is actually brand new. There used to be a lattice tower that only T-Mobile was on up until 2019. In 2020 that tower was taken down and rebuilt as a traditional monopole and it has 3 carriers on it. 

I don't have a clear picture of the site but it's clear that everyone deployed as much capacity as possible. T-Mobile is on the top rack, I believe Verizon is just below them with those massive high capacity antennas, and AT&T was below that with a MatSing Ball. The only reason T-Mobile doesn't have high capacity antennas on this site is because they have another stealth site nearby that neither AT&T nor Verizon are on which also has all of their spectrum deployed on it inside this red building.

I forced my T-Mobile line to LTE so that I could do a "fair" comparison of both Verizon and T-Mobile in the same place at the same time. These speeds I received made me question if the Verizon antennas were even active as they're not mapped on Cellmapper and neither is the AT&T site.

 

Here's a better view of the high capacity site at Woodbury Commons. Verizon is still LTE only here. No 5G.

On 10/4/2021 at 1:09 AM, Paynefanbro said:

Sidenote: Despite Verizon's continued push with mmWave in the city I find that I almost never connect to it. It feels like I have to stay in one place and deliberately attempt to connect by cycling airplane mode while standing within line of sight of the antenna. Recently I connected to a site in Gowanus and while standing near it with LOS, I couldn't get over 800Mbps down which was really weird. I guess not all Verizon sites have been provisioned with massive amounts of backhaul.

That definitely hasn't been by experience since switching to Verizon a few weeks ago. Now that my iPhone 13 Pro can actually connect to mmWave I'm finding it everywhere the Verizon map says I should be, and even a little more. My phone immediately switches to it when available and routinely hits over 3 Gbps. But yea, move a few feet and it vanishes. I have gotten some impressive range, though. eNB 84364 has a new antenna added to a sector recently (Myrtle Ave at Ashland Pl) and I can pick that site up on the other side of Flatbush Ave at 3+ Gbps.

Just like the map says, I can walk down Myrtle Ave in Fort Greene between about Washington Park down to about Pratt and my iPhone stays on mmWave. Ironically, though, the iPhone seems to hold on to it even when the speeds dip far below what even LTE could provide.

16 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

New iPhones have n258. Now all we're missing is n262. Soon enough it'll make economic sense for T-Mobile to do mmWave deployments since all of their spectrum will be supported by phones.

I wonder if the inclusion of n258 will get T-Mobile moving at all. I haven't seen any progress on mmWave in years. In fact, I've just seen it *removed* from sites.

58 minutes ago, AirlineFlyer said:

Well, that's interesting! All the equipment for two separate carriers is still fitting in that little equipment shroud that doesn't appear to be any larger? Really gotta wonder why this didn't happen 5-10 years ago. Can you link to the info where you got this from? Thanks!

Got it https://www1.nyc.gov/site/doitt/business/5g-design/5g.page

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.

Well, that's interesting! All the equipment for two separate carriers is still fitting in that little equipment shroud that doesn't appear to be any larger? Really gotta wonder why this didn't happen 5-10 years ago. Can you link to the info where you got this from? Thanks!

Verizon added mmWave to an additional sector of eNB 84364 in Fort Greene. They again used this new shroud with the ventilation on the side. Still another sector without mmWave installed for some reason.

On 8/19/2021 at 12:02 PM, AirlineFlyer said:

I noticed Verizon doing some work on eNB 84723 (downtown Brooklyn, DeKalb & St Felix St) last week and one of the mmWave antennas has the new ventilated shroud as well.

Here's a look at the site. It shows a new ventilated mmWave shroud but at the same time it's not actually plugged in. I've noticed that at several vzw sites in Brooklyn where one of the antennas isn't actually plugged in. Another sector in this site did have the mmWave antenna plugged in.

On 8/10/2021 at 6:19 PM, thisischuck01 said:

I figure I might as well post this here as it is NYC-specific and the Verizon thread is a bit dead. Haven't yet spotted any Verizon C-Band upgrades in the Williamsburg area (even on their FDC), but I did spot this site upgrade today:

Before:

After:

Compared to their typical mmWave antenna shrouds:

 

I noticed Verizon doing some work on eNB 84723 (downtown Brooklyn, DeKalb & St Felix St) last week and one of the mmWave antennas has the new ventilated shroud as well.

21 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

That's pretty wild! Since Sprint roaming is active in that area, I'd expect for your phone to switch over to Sprint as it did for me. They really need to get that site converted ASAP. There's also another Sprint site across the water on top of the Queens-Midtown Tunnel ventilation building in LIC that T-Mobile should really consider converting.

AFAIK you won't switch over to Sprint roaming unless there's a total lock of T-Mobile coverage, right?

On 5/30/2021 at 5:00 PM, Paynefanbro said:

I was on Box St in Greenpoint last night and finally got to experience T-Mobile's network for an extended period of time in the neighborhood. 

While outdoors, I generally had a decent LTE signal but poor 5G signal. It seems like my phone was bouncing between two T-Mobile sites, eNB 42891 in Greenpoint and eNB 41061 in Long Island City. Performance was usable but still much worse than what I typically see in other neighborhoods throughout the city. Even after midnight I was only getting maximum speeds of around 30Mbps outdoors on LTE. As soon as I went inside any building, I'd drop down to 1 bar of LTE and occasionally, I'd even see no signal at all.

Luckily T-Mobile is allowing their users to roam onto the Sprint tower (eNB 74366). Occasionally while indoors I'd see my signal strength shoot up and I would get over 70Mbps on that single Band 41 carrier.

 

I was in this area again on Saturday and my iPhone (11 Pro) actually dropped to EDGE while standing at the base of this building. EDGE! It quickly bounced back to "4G" before latching on to a weak LTE signal in a minute.

eNB 50319 in Sunset Park sure is weird looking. n41 up on one sector but the other sector is just a weird mess of antennas points in all different directions.

8 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Looks like there's a T-Mobile site at 101st Ave btwn 84th and 85th St in Ozone Park, Queens that hasn't been mapped at all yet on Cellmapper. Sadly I don't have an Android device to do it. I believe that eNB 138730 is the Band 41 eNB for that site.

If we're going to bring up sites that aren't yet mapped, there's also one at Hicks St and Clark St in Brooklyn Heights. Used to live near there and have some images from 2019 https://imgur.com/a/OJDBBlh

6 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

I'm curious about how T-Mobile plans on bringing n41 or n71 to Dumbo considering the two sites (eNB 41051 and eNB 42102) that cover theneighborhood are both using those extremely small antennas like we've seen in some other parts of the city. With their current setup, virtually all 5G in the neighborhood is coming from sites across the river in Manhattan. Speeds and signal are fine outdoors but quickly deteriorate indoors because of this.

I'm hoping that the Sprint site at the intersection of York St and Jay St is converted into a T-Mobile site. The increase in power would mean a large improvement in coverage for the neighborhood over eNB 42102 and could even go so far as completely replacing that site.

As for eNB 41051, I think T-Mobile should consider collocating on the Verizon site in the area which is in a much better place than T-Mobile or even Sprint's sites and provide much better coverage to the neighborhood and Brooklyn Bridge Park.

Here's an image showing where T-Mobile's two mini-sites are in relation to the relevant full macros from other carriers in the neighborhood. I've outlined the boundary of Dumbo on the map.

Purple: T-Mobile
Yellow: Sprint
Red: Verizon

Ugh, the coverage in Brooklyn Bridge Park is just awful in places. A lot of these mini sites have got to go. They just can't keep up with modern needs or uses.

12 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

I wouldn’t be surprised to see them come back and add n41 within a few weeks. 
 

A site near my home that was originally Band 2/66 only got Band 12/71 added and about 3 weeks later the engineers came back and added Band 41 to the site.
 

I’m surprised it took them a week to upgrade though. My home site was done with physical work in about 2 days and it took another 1-2 days on top of that before everything was live. 

I'll be keeping an eye out on it, but it looks pretty done. The Ericsson engineers were still here today, so who really knows. I don't have a 5G phone to test n41, anyway.

On 6/23/2021 at 9:51 AM, AirlineFlyer said:

eNB 56195 is now also undergoing work. Ericsson is on the roof right now installing new antennas and cabling. An antenna that wasn't there yesterday looks to be a low band antenna, but I'm not totally sure which and don't have a fantastic view. No n41 antenna spotted yet but the work is ongoing.

 

Higher resolution image here: https://imgur.com/a/moyQ6Ol

 

It doesn't look like this setup got mid-band added but after a week's worth of work in getting khc faster speeds on LTE. What used to be 30 Mbps is now 100+. I'm sure it helps that one of the new antennas points in my direction.

https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/4649824819

On 6/19/2021 at 9:31 PM, AirlineFlyer said:

Saw today that T-Mobile finally added n41 to eNB 50319 in Fort Greene. This site already had LAA and mmWave but with limited backhaul topped out at about 500 Mbps.

eNB 56195, which is basically across the street, appears to be unchanged and without any 5G equipment.

eNB 56195 is now also undergoing work. Ericsson is on the roof right now installing new antennas and cabling. An antenna that wasn't there yesterday looks to be a low band antenna, but I'm not totally sure which and don't have a fantastic view. No n41 antenna spotted yet but the work is ongoing.

Higher resolution image here: https://imgur.com/a/moyQ6Ol

13 minutes ago, thisischuck01 said:

Spotted this interesting setup in Williamsburg, around 200 Meserole St. Based on Streetview, it seems to have been installed back in mid-2019. It doesn't appear in the DOITT database, so I'm guessing it's not standard cellular. Anyone know what it might be?

It belongs to ConEd for "smart" electric meter reading.

Saw today that T-Mobile finally added n41 to eNB 50319 in Fort Greene. This site already had LAA and mmWave but with limited backhaul topped out at about 500 Mbps.

eNB 56195, which is basically across the street, appears to be unchanged and without any 5G equipment.

14 hours ago, thisischuck01 said:

NYC DOITT database was updated about a month ago. Imported all the new oDAS node locations into my map. Haven't yet spotted anything with the new design in my travels through Williamsburg & Bushwick. Almost 1400 newly proposed nodes (since 3/5/21) is pretty incredible, though.

Made my way up to Harlem and City College this past week. The site (eNB 55893) covering the north side of the campus STILL hasn't been upgraded from B2/B66 (dual APX16s). Pulled ~70Mb/s down on what is essentially an empty campus. Wish I knew what the deal is with that site. I almost wonder if it might be easier to work with the school and keep the Sprint site on top of the engineering building (Steinman Hall, across the street from their current site), instead.

Also haven't yet seen the new design in the wild. The oDAS build in NYC is quite weird, too. One was just put up by Crown Castle NG by me after being reserved in 2016. Another is in progress (but taking months) and proposed in 2019. It just seems so random. Too bad we can't truly tell which is used by which carrier.

On 5/17/2021 at 6:39 PM, Dkoellerwx said:

Dang, that's practically a small cell, if it weren't for that mess of wires!

There's another T-Mobile site in Fort Greene that looks like a small cell. It has been around and untouched for many years and only manages to pump out about 5 Mbps. Sites like this have got to go.

15 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

These setups are becoming increasingly common in downtown areas across the country. Carriers don't want their RAD centers at high elevations in dense areas because that creates a lot of noise between sites. But sometimes, there isn't a short building within the search ring!

Here's another example in downtown Milwaukee:

https://goo.gl/maps/4qhYwCCGAtZkdDAv5

There are tons of these types of installs throughout NYC, I've just never seen it integrated directly into a new build like this. It's very smart.

11 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

eNB ID 84502. It's The Ashland at the corner of Fulton and Ashland Pl. 

Permit states:

 

That's super interesting, I hadn't noticed that before. It looks like the vzw antennas are integrated right into the exterior wall of the building. That is super cool. https://www.google.com/maps/@40.6879694,-73.978504,3a,15y,260.61h,127.91t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1s6EcJxy751hetyHGJxQTV7A!2e0!5s20201101T000000!7i16384!8i8192

13 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

T-Mobile isn't very proactive when it comes to building new sites, they're reactive. While trying to confirm Verizon sites on Cellmapper, I found a permit where Verizon integrated a macro site into the construction of an apartment building in Downtown Brooklyn. T-Mobile is not doing anything like that here. Instead, we'll probably be lucky if in 5 years when most of the redevelopment of the waterfront is complete, T-Mobile adds macros to cover those neighborhoods better.

Out of curiosity, which Downtown Brooklyn building had a vzw macro installed? T-Mobile has shifted some of its sites around recently due to one building coming down and another being remediated for asbestos, but noting new build AFAIK.

On 5/14/2021 at 2:30 PM, thisischuck01 said:

On another note, very amusing to see the T-Mobile subreddit respond to that NYC mmWave speedtest the other day.

Yes, hi, hello. That was my post. This sure seems like a place to post for some more knowledgable info. I took that speedtest standing across the street from eNB 50319. It is one of those weird T-Mobile NYC sites that only has 2/66/12 LTE and had LAA-LTE and mmWave installed a few years ago but never got n71 or n41. I was really disappointed to see mmWave pumping out under 500 Mbps since LAA-LTE can achieve that without mmWave.

On 5/2/2021 at 1:34 PM, Paynefanbro said:

I was in Greenpoint and LIC on Friday and was saying to myself that I hope T-Mobile keeps that site right by the creek. It's a shame that that doesn't seem to be the case.

With all of the new buildings going up near the waterfront, T-Mobile has virtually one site (eNB 45653) to cover all of the high-rises along the Long Island City waterfront and one site (eNB 42891) to barely cover Greenpoint Landing (which when complete will add 5,500 new units to the neighborhood). That's not good. T-Mobile needs to be a lot more proactive about building new sites in rapidly developing neighborhoods. For comparison, Starrett City in southeast Brooklyn has ~5,800 units and T-Mobile has 3 sites covering it.

This has been increasingly disappointing for me with T-Mobile in recent years. There are huge areas being built up in LIC, Hunters Point South, Greenpoint etc and T-Mobile is seriously going to abandon Sites like the Greenpoint location? What are they thinking??