DCC233

I think your math is a tiiiiiiiny bit off there. 495 sites at a pace of 1 site every 3.8 days amounts to 1881 days to complete which would mean they would finish on June 27, 2021.   I certainly hope to God it doesn't take them that long, although I'm positive it won't.

Good catch.  I had actually written out the post and then the computer crashed so in my haste (and frustration) to rewrite the post I screwed up the math.  However, I think my general point still stands that I think things will be significantly better before the year is over.

Full disclosure but I'm a Shentel supporter for years and think that their management has an excellent track record for network deployments.  So while I fully acknowledge, and not trying to be apologetic for their performance, I think some items have to be rationally and realistically considered.

1) They deployed 1900 throughout their entire market much faster than Sprint or any of its contractors across the US.  And once they were granted access to 800 for LTE they did the same thing.

2) Assuming that in the most recent quarterly report (3/31/2016) where they reported that they had deployed 61 sites with 2.5, that they did not consider any existing clearwire sites (~75 in the York and Harrisburg markets) that may or may not have had any 2.5 gear on them, then they deployed 8T8R on a site every 3.8 days*.  In my opinion that seems like a pretty good pace.

*Based on the press release of the NTelos merger and amended network agreement giving them access to 2.5 announced on 8/10/2015 through 3/31/2016.  Approximately 234 days which includes the winter months.

3) Looking at their planned capital expenditures budget for 2016 they have allocated $148.7 million which covers their deployment of 2.5 and also updating Ntelos’s network throughout Virginia and WV.

Not trying to be a Shentel (or Sprint) apologist but I’m optimistic and excited to see the network improve especially with the expanded coverage in WV.

They have to keep minimal traffic on 800 because if you are on 800, it is the one and only last resort for service.

They want as much traffic on 2500 as possible because they have loads of capacity there.

1900 is used to handle the the traffic that 2500 can not handle.  2500 works great for people that are close to a cell site. If you are a little further away or in a tough old building, 1900 takes over.

800 is reserved for the traffic that can not be handled by 2500 or 1900.

It makes me wonder what the "acceptable" and/or "ideal" site usage (mean and peak utilization) is for Sprint and how that impacts the implementation of a new site to offload a overloaded site.

I know people have been grumbling in the Shentel market that their data speeds have been slowing down signifcantly over the past 1-1.5 years, and after looking over the slides from Shentel's most recent quarterly presentation it contains some interesting supporting data.

Here are some of my takeaways (excuse my early morning math):

• 62% of their LTE data is on 1900 MHz which supports the slow data speeds being reported.  
• 61 sites (11% of their network) have 2.5 GHz deployed which are generating 5% of their network traffic.  
  • I'm struggling on what conclusions to draw from this stat.  It appears that there are a lot of devices in their area which have been upgraded to tri-band which bodes well for balancing data across all three bands as 2.5 is deployed.  I think it also is indicative of a good network balancing approach.  Any ideas on what the "ideal" proportion of traffic across the bands Sprint is looking to have?

556 Cell Sites

 95% have a second LTE carrier at 800 MHz 

 193 sites have three carriers, including a second carrier at 1900 MHz

 61 2.5 GHz sites

 Traffic

 92% of data traffic is on LTE, with 30% on 800 MHz, 5% on 2.5GHz

 Data usage grew 19% in Q1’16

 Average speeds of approximately 5 Mbps

 Average customer uses approximately 5 GB per month

 Dropped calls - 0.4%

 Blocked calls - 0.3%

I picked up some B41 in Harrisonburg, VA yesterday as I was passing through. I didn't have time to stop, but I'm hopeful Shentel deploys it to more areas this year, especially after the ntelos acquisition goes through.

 

Sent from my Note 4

Given their increase in capital spending I wouldn't be surprised that B41 is deployed quickly and throughout much of their market.  Based on their year-end presentation they have basically quadrupled their capital expenditures from 2015 for wireless expansion an nTelos upgrades from $25 million to $148 million.  Based on their past deployment speed I wouldn't be surprised to see B41 deployed through the majority of their market by mid-year and WV covered in B25/B26/B41.  

The strange place names are mostly a Lancaster County/Amish/Pennsylvania Dutch thing.  Yep, I may live hundreds of miles away, but I gots mad geography knowledge and skills.

 

 

AJ

You forgot one.  Technically it's not in Lancaster County but Virginville is not far away up past Reading.  So the full joke is you start by driving through Virginville and then turn at Blue Ball at which point you want to go through Bird in Hand and head towards Intercourse and Paradise is just down the road from there.

I found some interesting info from the presentation Shentel made at the Drexel Hamilton's Telecom, Media & Technology Conference on 9/10 (http://investor.shentel.com/eventdetail.cfm?EventID=164269).  Below is the info from one of the slides that seemed the most relevant to the forum.  I can't wait to see what they do with the deployment of 2.5 and rebuild of ntelos's "network".

• November 2013 Sites: 527 (2nd Carrier Deployed = 0%) (3rd Carrier Deployed = 0%)
• December 2014 Sites: 538 (2nd Carrier Deployed = 92%) (3rd Carrier Deployed = 22%)
• June 2015 Sites: 546 (2nd Carrier Deployed = 94%) (3rd Carrier Deployed = 30%)

Excerpts from the earnings call on 5/4 that may be of interest (this is from the transcript of the conference call so the computer that converts the audio to text is off here and there, but you can figure out what they were saying for the most part):

We have 542 sites, 95% of the sites have 800 megahertz LTE service, 126 sites have a second 1,900 megahertz LTE carrier. We’ve been able to harvest 10 megahertz of our original 30 for LTE and will continue to deploy the second 1,900 LTE carrier as need growth. 84% of all of our data traffic is on LTE, with 35% of the LTE traffic on 800 megahertz. Average speeds are approximately 5 megahertz.

Data usage grew by 15% in the first quarter, with LTE up 19% and EVDO down approximately 5%. The average customer use approximately 3.8 gigabytes per month in the first quarter.

We have 800 megahertz voice service on 95% of our cell sites approximately 28% of the voice traffic is on 800. Voice usage decreased slightly in the first quarter. Drop calls were at 0.6% and blocked calls at 0.4%. We have our fiber built to 194 cell sites, 152 Shentel’s sites and 42 for others, with 22 additional sites under construction and 11 in engineering.

the deployment of 2.5 is going to be relatively simple, I never want to say simple, because nothing ever it is, but we will be just adding a 2.5 carrier card into the base station and the base stations are all set up to able to take that card and we will have to put an additional set of antennas on the tower, because the antennas that we put on the tower were a combination 800, 1900 antenna, so we already have been working through and then working for well over a year with the tower sites that we has designated as being high traffic and have most of the agreements done at this point, we’ve all the work for the, once we’re going to deploy this year and a lot of the work done for, once we’re going to deploy next year, so the amount of work will be relatively small, obviously, we will require climbing the tower, but not nearly the effort that was done for network addition

In reference to small cell deployment:

We actually have done, kind of taken two different approaches, one, we think the best use of small scale it was actually in building, and we’ve deployed them in a number of buildings and malls and we getting very good results from that. We did do one exterior, our outside deployment in Hagerstown and just because of the density of our markets we didn’t really get the bank of the box on that deployment. And so at this point, our plan is to use the small sales in building and in areas like stadiums or that sort of thing that there would be a lot of focus in a very small geographic area, but because of our density the outside ones on pulls really has not given us the results that we had hoped. It makes sense.

In reference to B41 deployment:

No, we’ve always said that we would be launching a 50 to 75 sites this year. It was just always going to be at the end of this year. We really - even though we’ve continue to have very, very high utilization - at this point, we have had enough capacity to be able to carry it, but we’re looking forward to using as a laser not as a Broadway to identify sites that do have lot high usage and that’s what primarily in our Hagerstown, [indiscernible] Harrisburg, Harrisonburg, Winchester markets is where we’re going to be deploying those types.

A new thread has been created in the Sponsor section.  Please feel free to contribute, review submitted questions, and throw out ideas to make a really great listing over the next couple of weeks.  Spread the word to other members.

I

Excellent idea. I'm on board.

I was disappointed there was no talk of B41. It should be imminent for Shentel now. It illustrates how important having the right question askers there is critical.

Thanks for your write up.

It's disappointing when the analysts from FBR Capital Markets don't join the call because they are the only ones it seems that understand the technology deployment and strategy side to Shentel's operations and ask the "good" questions.  I feel like they would have pressed hard about B41 deployment status and plans, but neither one of the two (noted below) joined.  

I would be glad to coordinate a separate Q&A submission or chiming in on the next earning's call.  I just need the questions in advance and will try and consolidate them into something that Shentel might be interested in responding to.  I would say post your question out in the forum so we know what people are thinking and I can work on keeping a master listing.

David Dixon - FBR Capital Markets

Neil Macker - FBR Capital Markets

The Q&A section was extremely dissapointing, as the one analyst who really knows wireless networks did not join the call so the Q&A was not very insightful.  Here are the last few points of interest from the call:

• Most customers aren’t taking the “Cut your rate plan in half” but taking other plans.
• They are aware of customers wanting stronger LTE signal and service once they leave the Shentel footprint.  Cited the Rootmetrics results from Harrisburg showing strong network results and then poor results for other non-Shentel areas that are adjacent.

*** I think it would be awesome if we could get together a list of questions for next quarter's earnings call and join the Q&A portion, as Shentel is a "small" company and I don't think we would get shut out.  At a minimum they have been very receptive, in the past, to questions submitted outside of the earnings call.  ***  

I'm sure the more network savy members and visitors could contribute some insightful questions that I/(we) could submit.

Any takers?

News from the earnings call (I'll update as the call goes on and from the Q&A):

Network Statistics

·         538 Cell Sites

·         94% have a second LTE carrier at 800 MHz

·         120 sites have three carriers, including a second carrier at 1900 MHz

Traffic

·         77% of data traffic is on LTE, with 40% on 800 MHz

·         Data usage grew more than 2x in 2014

·         LTE traffic grew more than 3x in 2014

·         Average speeds of approximately 6 Mbps

·         Average customer uses over 3GB per month

Cross band load balancing is preventing some deployment of LTE and voice functionality.

Yep that's true, once I pass the river, I hit b26 instantly for shentel market, I was just surprised to see b41 out here in lancaster, now obviously since I'm not a paying person on the forums, I'm not allowed to know the details, but I can do my own testing since I know where the towers are. But that's great news, I hope the rest of pa gets covered in b41, but I just hope it's optimized because it really got bad in baltimore or at least since the last time I went there

 Just for clarification, Shentel does extend east on the other side of the Susquehanna river but that is only up towards the Harrisburg area and not as far south as Columbia, PA.  Shentel's earning's call is this week so maybe you will find out more about their B41 deployment and maybe if they have already started deploying towers.

Well guys, some very exciting news!!!!!! Lancaster has some b41!!!!!!!!! Now I couldn't really do a test because I was driving and mapping some areas, but when I glanced down and saw this, I just had to take a screen shot. Man this makes me excited....GO SPRINT!!!!!!! This was near the HACC lancaster campus if anyone was interested. I'm going to go back over there and do a little bit of testing and I am using a nexus 6.

Congrats on coming across it in Lancaster.  I can tell you that there are a few deployed B41 towers in Lancaster that have been accepted for 8T8R equipment, but no-one has confirmed if they are broadcasting.  Can you pull down the tower info once you connect and let us know which ones you found it on?  I don't think I can give out any additional information from the Premier Section without violating the rules, sorry.  If Robert is all right with me giving out the general vicinity (no specific tower info) with which to look for the B41 8T8R towers to check I would gladly give it to you to go check if you were interested.

Like I said, it's definitely usable. I'm just hoping they (Shentel) ends up deploying B41 in more than just the cities in their footprint. Speeds are only going to continue to slow everywhere as Sprint upgrades users to LTE phones. I'm sure most postpaid users are now on LTE, but more and more prepaid users are upgrading to LTE phones every day.

 

Sent from my Note 4.

We will just have to wait and see what info they release during their Q4/2014 Annual Report earnings call which should happen towards the end of February.  They had solid user growth 14,146 (5.2%) to 287,867 for the year end 2014 for postpaid and in the prepaid world they added 8,115 customers since last year for a (5.9%) increase to 145,162.  So if you consider that they now have 22,261 more customers in their footprint it would explain the slow down in network performance.  You would hope that as users upgraded their phones to support B25 and B26 the congestion would alleviate itself a little, but it is becoming apparent that they will probably need to deploy B41 more rapidly than they originally planned and in more areas.  During their Q3 call they indicated B41 would hit only the major metro areas in their footprint where they saw the need, so it will be interesting to see what they indicate during the call and what questions the analyst ask them about their B41 deployment.

The one thing to keep in mind in the positive realm is that Shentel deployed Network Vision in their footprint very quickly and I wouldn't be surprised if they did so with B41.  Sprint revenue is their primary source and I can't imagine them risking customer growth.  I mean look at their growth rate compared to Sprint as a whole and even AT&T, Verizon, and possibly T-mobile.  They are generating great results because their network deployment has been very good these past few years, and I have no reason to believe they would drop the ball when it comes to B41.  Just my $0.02

I don't think I agree with this. Maybe a bridge too far. If that were true, wouldn't Shentel be completing B41 installs already? Shentel has decided to start B41 next year. And I don't begrudge them that choice. But if Shentel were always chomping at the bit and ready, but being held back by Sprint, they would be pushing B41. Also, Shentel still does not have backhaul to all of its sites and have LTE available. Is this Sprint holding them back? No.

 

Instead, I would say when Shentel is ready, they manage things very successfully. They are a well run company. They will take the necessary time to plan a B41 strategy, and then they will implement it well. It's probably because they don't rush, but rather plan thoroughly, is why they are successful.

 

I don't think I have ever seen an instance on the network level where Shentel was ready to do something good, but Shentel was held back by Sprint. But it is definitely fair to say that Shentel shows how good things could be on the Sprint network when managed to the Nth degree.

 

But no matter how you shake it, the best Shentel advantage is density. Shentel builds out site density the way it should be for PCS spectrum. Towns like Waynesboro, Front Royal and Strasburg would likely have one site if it were Sprint corporate. Shentel builds 3-6 in the same area. Cities like Chambersburg, Gettysburg, Hershey and Charles Town would have 2 sites from Sprint and Shentel has 5-10 sites. And cities like Hagerstown, Winchester, Martinsburg and Harrisonburg would have 3 or 4 sites if built by Sprint and Shentel has 10-20 sites in them.

 

The only city of significance that is under dense in Shenteland that I can tell is Altoona. Which, I would guess, is because they just don't have as many customers up there. Shentel is not afraid to add more sites when necessary. They've added 20 sites since NV started.

I agree with you that Sprint isn't holding Shentel back, other than from a marketing perspective where I think Shentel has a market fully or at a point to go to market, only to lack the support from Sprint for the market announcement and related marketing push.  And it is my understanding that Shentel is well on their way to have B26 deployed across the majority of their market by year-end.  Which would give them sufficient LTE capacity for the current customers, aside from the markets Robert noted, to figure out their B41 deployment approach.  

For one thing they are inheriting some existing Clearwire infrastructure in their market which they must coordinate and figure into their deployment strategy, while considering their CapEx expense for 2014 and 2015.  Keep in mind that Shentel has spent a lot over the past few years with all the NV upgrades, and it is reflected in their continuous subscriber growth which has exceeded Sprint's own growth numbers.  At the same time I imagine they are probably considering their market situation with B25 and B26 already deployed and if/where capacity constraints exist, and you may see B41 deployment primarily focus on the congested markets first and the deployment to the remaining sites be at a pace slightly slower than B25 and B26.  

They have other businesses that could use the CapEx (i.e. their cable division), and in conjunction with a ever present need to show financial growth for their shareholders, it is entirely realistic and expected, in my opinoin that there B41 deployment not kick off until 2015 and be at a pace slower than customers in their market may be used to.  I still think they are a great company and are very effectively managed. 

New to the site, but wanted to let all of you know that I'm helping roll our our social media and we now have two twitter handles to help with issues in Quad State (VA, WV, MD and PA) as well as Central PA. So please follow and message @CentralPASprint and @QuadStateSprint  I'd be more than happy to help!

Sorry, for clarification are you indicating that you are a rep for Shentel?

I posted some excerpts from Shentel's Q2 earnings release (which has some insightful information about their current deployment status and future plans for B26 and B41 deployment) in the http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/6216-shentel-market-b26b41-info/ premier forum.

Shentel had a great quarter and have been consistently a contributor for subscriber growth for Sprint.  

Once again there is great value in becoming a member and contributing financially to support the hosting of all these great forums and user cultivated information and Q&A.  Thanks again Robert (any many other official and unofficial contributors) for creating this site and all the contributors who have been around since the beginning supporting a constructive environment for discussions on Sprints NV deployment.

Saw this article on Qualcomm's site regarding Sprint's small cell hyper dense network at Phoenix International Raceway.  Has anyone been down to the speedway and were able to connect to B41 that was deployed?  

http://www.qca.qualcomm.com/thewire/qualcomm-transforms-the-sprint-nascar-garage-with-small-cells/

Wow, good to know. I live right next to a WiMAX site. I'm surprised a company as small as Shentel can afford the cash outlays of these modernizations. I know it was a big topic in their earnings calls regarding their large amount of capital investments. Glad to see it though. However, I'm curious what will occur here since Sprint owns the old WiMAX sites post Clear merger and Shentel rents their own space on towers or owns their own towers.... will the old WiMAX sites be turned over to Shentel? Or will many be decommissioned and simply co-located on Shentel racks?

Look at shentels earnings closely and you will see how important Sprint is to their bottom line and why those cash outlays have a much shorter ROI than there cable or wireline operations. I think Shentel is one of those companies that has a longer term outlook and is not as short sighted as other companies.

My big question, amongst the others everyone has noted about there B41 deployment, is there potential to overbuild ntelos's footprint given their slow deployment.

I live in East Petersburg which is approx 3-4 miles north of Lancaster. I have LTE in my living room currently. 2-3 bars at best. I mapped on Sensorly north on fruitville pike, West on Petersburg road and around that area. This was not the case yesterday so im assuming that they turned on the tower by State Road in Landisville today sometime. My Sprint account executive showed me very tower in the Lancaster County area and all are due to flipped on in the next 6 months. As far as 800 mhz goes, the dates said TBD.

Sounds about right after seeing most of the towers during various bike rides around the county.  A lot have the hardware installed and new fiber runs put in, but as you noted it is just a matter of bringing them online at once.  There is a good bit of mapping that can still be done on Sensorly about by the airport, east towards Ephrata and then circling back towards Lancaster on New Holland pike.

They have been testing a tower in Mt. Joy that just popped up yesterday on my phone. 

Thanks for the info.

Speed improvements according to Sprint's NV site can be a variety of items that may not be readily apparent when deployed to the end user.  The best place to track NV roll-outs would be in the sponsors map section on this site as it will indicate which towers have had NV deployed and in what stage (3G upgrades, 4G upgrades, 800 voice upgrade, etc.).  I wish I could provide you more information but that is one of the perks of becoming a member.  

All I can tell you is it varies and could be a week or two all the way to a few months.

A Sprint (Shentel) rep just told me that today when I was in my local Sprint store. They received an email today stating exactly what you just said.

 

Now hopefully they'll start working on 800 LTE and 2600 LTE.

 

 

Sent from my Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk.

Technically Shentel doesn't have an existing agreement to deploy 2.5 in their service area, yet. I don't foresee it not being amended to include 2.5 but for the time being they can only manage 1900 and 800 services. Also, I believe the only work they need to do for 800 LTE is more technical in nature since the hardware has already been deployed.

The tower near Penn Cinema is currently broadcasting LTE along with the one off Geist Road behind the Worship Center off New Holland Pike is also live.  I noticed them when I was out on a bike ride today.  Those areas are not mapped on Sensorly if you feel so inclined.

Just an FYI regarding 800 LTE deployment, but Sprint will not be deploying it on all towers due to it's propagation characteristics, but in the end 800 LTE deployment should makes things even better.

I believe it has been noted elsewhere but 800 LTE will be on 80% of towers.  In Shente's case the hardware/radios/etc. have all been deployed as they are almost done with their build so it's basically a matter of Sprint's OK for activation is my understanding.