cooltech6597

Hopefully this indicates T-Mobile hasn't completely abandoned mmwave and/or small cells? But then again this is the loop, so take that as you will. Hopefully now that most macro activity is done (besides rural colo/builds), they will start working on small cells. 

Some are, the Sprint convert site with ul-ca maxes at 700mbps, so I don't believe all sites with ul-ca are multi-gig.

I'm starting to find FDD+TDD UL sites. It seems to be enabled on a per-site basis, rather than market wide from my testing. So far I've found one in my immediate area, which is a site T-Mobile used to have a low 12/66 rack, and moved up to a higher Sprint rack (while adding n41 and the usual bands) within the last week. I've also found a few UL CA enabled sites along US-23 when I was going up to Ann Arbor today. Uploads peaked at 135mbps, which isn't exactly as fast as I had expected, but that's expected given I can't figure out how to enable 256QAM NR upload on my S24 (I could on my S21).

Took a trip down to Columbus this week and they seem to have just turned up the spectrum in some of the rural counties I passed on the way down in the past few days. This Sprint convert near North Baltimore, OH used to be 50+30mhz n41 on Thursday, but on my way back yesterday it had been converted to 100+80mhz

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I also enabled UL MIMO according to a guide on https://band.radio, and it seems to be working according to AirScreen, however, it doesn't show 256QAM UL being active on n41 which is strange. I didn't do much testing with AirScreen outside my hotel in downtown Columbus, so I'm not sure if 256QAM UL is just disabled on the phone or market wide or something.

Also, it seems like the Sprint DAS in the convention center has been shut down. Even though T-Mobile SA works OK in the convention halls during events, the upload gets congested really quickly so sending pictures/videos take forever. AT&T has a DAS throughout the whole convention center with n5 on it so they work really well in the convention center. The VZ DAS seemed to get overloaded really quickly, I ended up having to hotspot to my friends on VZ since they couldn't even send an imessage.  

Don't know if this is a T-Mobile or phone issue, but if my phone uses SA and chooses n41 as the PCC, n25 or n71 don't get aggregated so it's 2ca n41 only. If the PCC is n25 or n71, it will use the full 4ca combo. Not sure what's up with that.  

Game Pigeon

On 1/4/2024 at 1:34 PM, iansltx said:

A bigger deal would be 4+ CA over n41 + n41 + n77A + n77C, as that would get T-Mobile to 255 MHz TD in a number of areas (20 MHz DoD + 40 MHz C-Band) on 4CA, plus whatever they can pick up on n71/66/25 in that area (likely to hit 15-20 MHz consistently). Comparable speeds without expecting a super aggressive PCS/AWS refarm quite yet.

I was wondering why they didn't do the testing with 2xn77 as well... especially since their report for 4ca last March shows 3.3gbps with 225mhz, so the latest report only increased by 20mhz in total bandwith. If they tested with 60mhz of additional n77 they would have probably been able to get close to 4gbps. 

On 8/15/2023 at 6:28 PM, PedroDaGr8 said:

I have NO IDEA how they decide to allocate BW. That being said, so few of their sites can even make use of the extra BW due to their limited backhaul that maybe it just makes sense to keep it as is?

As an aside, I have noticed a number of new sites near me no longer broadcast B41 at all (though n41 isn't expanded). So maybe they are gradually planning for the transition?

In certain markets 190mhz makes sense... Tmo has a lot of n41 sites with greater than gigabit backhaul on it in my market, with little market share in most areas (b12/66 sites can still do 80mbps at noon). Given the meh density here it would make sense for them to widen to 180mhz so edge cell performace is a lot better as well. 

7 hours ago, dkyeager said:

 

Interesting they got slower... not much 10gig sites in Cinci?

Ultra Ultra Capacity?!??!?!?!?

https://galtronics.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/GP5124-07276-Datasheet_R3.pdf 

https://www.google.com/maps/d/edit?mid=1HbGFtjv6cblda17OCE7k_73928zncy0&usp=sharing

Finally got around to updating the Gig+ map

Looks like the Anna, OH new T-Mobile colocation is online! I've been noticing more and more new colocations/tower adds recently... definitely an exciting time for T-mo

53 minutes ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Pictures don't load. That being said, good to see the more rural parts of KY are getting some love. Sprint used to be REALLY hit or miss outside the more suburban bluegrass region. 

Images load fine for me, but I reuploaded them here https://imgur.com/a/QSjpFFI just in case. I go down to Red River Gorge every year and service is rough there. Need some new sites down there as well

Picture of that site pulled from the American Tower site locator map

Looks like new T-Mobile colocation on an American Tower site has come online in the past month or so near Eubank, KY! Previously a very very dead spot for both Tmo and Sprint

On 5/15/2023 at 3:15 PM, iansltx said:

T-Mobile in Chicago is now running the top 20x20 of PCS as n25 (including G), in addition to the usual 100+40 MHz n41. No VoNR yet but my phone is definitely camping on NR. B2 LTE appears to be 10x10.

Same here in Toledo OH, except we have b2 15mhz on lte

Costco site got gig+, bringing the total of gig+ in the metro area I've discovered to 9 sites (one not plotted on map for privacy reasons)

On 2/18/2023 at 8:14 AM, cooltech6597 said:

Found the 7th gig+ site in the area

 

Found 8th gig+

Side effects of everyone hating Buckeye I guess lol

On 4/22/2022 at 10:11 AM, cooltech6597 said:

Recently took a trip down to the Red River Gorge area. They converted the one Sprint site along the way on Bert T Combs Pkwy (enb 117578), but n41/b41 wasn't on the tower. They also upgraded one of the native tmo towers there to 2,12,66,71 (enb 35565) and I could easily get 300mbps on it. Coverage was just as spotty as when I went last year, but I had an AT&T redpocket Sim card which had service almost everywhere I went in that area. Here is a AT&T/T-Mo setup near Nada, KY (enb 39878):

Took another trip to this area, and the Sprint conversion got an n41 upgrade, and so did a bunch of other sites in this area (but not the site I sent pictures of  ). N25 is live in the area at n25 20mhz, and I did pick it up on the top of a mountain from a distant site (pictures below)

 lol cellmapper is showing ATT b2 sa but its really Tmo

 some nice scenery

Found the 7th gig+ site in the area

24 minutes ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Interesting. We have 15Mhz of n71 here. 20Mhz of B25 sitting quiet, I assume waiting for n25 to fire up. Taking B71 off air would give us 20+20+80 (n71+25+41) which ought to be pretty impressive.

We have 15mhz of n71 here in the Toledo area as well. Currently they have 20mhz of n25 and 100+40mhz of n41 on air, so with a 4ca (i think x70/S23 series supports that?) a total of 15 + 20 + 100 + 40mhz can be aggregated. 

10 minutes ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Where has B71 been shut down? I would have expected that to linger since I don't believe VoNR is in widespread use yet. Certainly not on my phone.

Heard from a friend it was shut down in Harrisburg, PA. N71 got widened to 20mhz there. 

5 minutes ago, transitwatch889 said:

Don't know how widespread this is but on my s23 ultra was looking at Network configurations and noticing here in the borough of the bronx. They're doing a 40 + 20 n41 combination and a 40 plus 40  n41 combination. 

I've seen the same 40+20 combo in Findlay OH. Seems they try to use it anywhere they have limited b41 spectrum access. 

B2 LTE has been reduced from 20mhz to 15mhz, and n25 increased from 15mhz to 20mhz. I wonder when b71 will disappear since it's already going away in some other markets/

No outage here in Toledo, OH last night, however data seems kind of slow rn