aliensporebomb

Anecdotally it seems like 3G speeds are edging upwards in recent weeks. I never got speeds on 3G that high last October.

And we have more - looks like a large swath going west to east from 694 and Brooklyn Boulevard all the way east to 694 and 100. Then there is more farther to the east; near 694 and Central. Then the previously mentioned Bunker Hills Park blip is now a long north/south swath from just north of Blaine High School to south as far as 116th and some additional spots at 113th and 111th. C'mon Bloomington!

Did anyone see the new one pop up between last night late and this morning near Andover/Anoka? It looks just south of Bunker Hills Park off 242. If you take 242 and exit at University and head to Adler you should be getting LTE there. Jordan's coverage is a bit odd - it's all near Sunset Drive and Creek Lane near the Spirit Hill cemetery.in one little section on the west side of town. It also looks like the Eden Prarie/Chanhassen coverage has extended further east and west although it could be more people running sensory to get a bigger picture of the actual coverage. I was out there last night and if you were near Audobon Road and highway 5 (right near Prince's Paisley Park studio) my phone practically glowed red in my hands and I was getting about 22 Mbps down and about 9 Mbps up. Very strong signal but not 100%. Speedtest gave the location of the server as Minnetonka with GPS co-ords of 44.9800 latitude and -93.2638 longitude.

I was unware that Sensorly tests on the iPhone doesn't report the conditions - maybe they'll improve it. That being said does anyone know why they opted for turning on Chanhassen/Eden Prairie and Jordan first? My friend had a weird idea that they'd turn it on at the MSP Airport first so that visitors would know that Sprint had LTE.

Latest: Over lunch I decided to drive up Dell Road between 212 and highway 5 in Eden Prairie as it is close to my workplace and also smack dab in the middle of the mapped area yet there are no sensorly readings in that area yet. Dell road seems to be recessed down into the land a little bit as if any radio signal present from a cell towers might go over it but rises to the top of a hill near highway 5 at the north. I saw only 3g readings in that area and had to head to the west on 5 to start seeing LTE on my phone... I thought perhaps it could be that my phone won't easily switch to LTE while in sensorly or the like. I'm not sure. iPhone5 if anyone cares. I drove west a few miles in LTE territory, then swung back along Lake Drive which parallels 5. Waste of time really. I should have stayed on the freeway - cover more territory that way. I then headed back towards Edina as I didn't have much time to play today. On the way as I headed east towards the Eden Prairie center I saw LTE signals hanging on even with 1 bar of signal strength (-112 to -116 db) as far as approximately two and a half miles west of Eden Prairie Center. My guess is having my phone on my passenger seat wasn't the greatest spot for it - I should have a passenger running the sensorly scans with the phone well above the level of the window.

Update: I now see LTE down in tiny Jordan Minnesota! I'm going to do some mapping over my lunch hour here!

Update: does the sensorly maps on the phone get updated before the actual website? I'm seeing purple spots near the flying cloud airport, the MSP international airport as well as the Crystal Airport. I am not showing these on the actual website looking on my computer here.

Sensorly map is interesting: it's showing LTE from as far west as 212 and Powers Boulevard and as far east as just east of a point past Eden Prairie Road. Then it goes as far south as Halla Greens Executive Golf Course going north on 101 past Chanhassen all the way to near Kerber Pond Park! So if anyone lives in Bearpath (gated community) they've got it for sure! Then, there is a funny little purple blotch right near Willow Park off country road 39 - must be just one tower since it's separated by a few miles from the farthest LTE spot on in the initial batch. Come on guys, just a little farther East to Bloomington/Edina. Keeping a big eye on this today!

Chanhassen!?!?!?! Eden Prairie! So close! I'm in Bloomington. Time for a little drive!

Very nice pictures - I get the willies with the pics at the top of the tower though - heights freak me out a bit.

I'm going to be running past a particular location tonight that might have gone live or at least was tested briefly today - more later.

I'll be doing that as well. I'll keep an eye out to see if anything interesting is afoot. The nearest sprint tower to my house is on the side of an assisted living/senior housing type building and it looked like there were some new antenna pods the last time I went by but couldn't tell for certain that they were LTE because everything was painted brown to match the buildings trim on the balconies.

Robert: you made my day. Thank you! I wondered if it was going to be on or around 12/1.

Yesterday in the Star Tribune there was an interesting article about Clearwire being one of the first 4G providers in the Twin Cities area and Sprint is poised to acquire 50.8 percent of their business. Interesting. The pertinent quote was ""We continue to work with Clearwire on identifying sites and timing of their LTE network build, which we will use to help with capacity on our LTE network," said Sprint spokeswoman Stephanie Vinge." See the article here http://www.startribune.com/business/180641171.html I also am curious on any ETA in the Twin Cities area.

When I drove thru Chicago on my trip in mid to late October there were noticeable more LTE connections on the way back thru about a week and a day later. It couldn't have been an accident - they must have switched on more towers.

I took a cross country trip with a friend in October and had my 5 along with his Android phone and work issued Blackberry. When we were way out in the sticks (went from Minnesota, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Indiana, New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio etc) the iPhone5 routinely got a tower much more consistently than the other two phones along with and at one point the 5 was able to receive and make calls when the other two weren't. The only thing I can say about that is they obviously improved the antenna design over past iPhones and/or it was at least 2 years newer than the droid and 3 years newer than the blackberry. Anecdotally.

The local Sprint store I bought my iPhone5 in had a great signal in the store but it was not an LTE repeater. I've yet to see LTE anything in the Twin Cities with regards to Sprint.

I was east of Downtown St. Paul yesterday and saw no LTE so yeah, the news it was TMobile/AT&T doesn't surprise me. I guess I'll just keep an eye out.

Nothing in the Twin Cities area thus far that I've been able to detect.

No problems on mine either although it could be you are exactly equidistant between towers causing your phone contention as each tower struggles for supremacy.

So my question is: when do these installs typically take place? During daylight hours or during off peak? I'd be curious to see if these poor installer guys get bombarded with massive RF doing the installations while the older equipment sits at full power right next to them.

Keeping a big eye out in Minneapolis/St. Paul where I live. So far no sightings but I've got my Sensorly ready to go. Come on Sprint!

I literally drove within 50 feet of my local tower (my phone was practically glowing red in my hands due to the signal strength) and it was showing Sprint 3G only. No LTE yet. I took pictures of the cell tower if anyone cares.

I moved from AT&T on an iPhone4 to Sprint on an iPhone5 and was SHOCKED at the increase in voice call quality. Those railroad people really knew what they were doing when they put the voice side of the network I must say.

I get the impression a lot of work is going on on getting the equipment and instrastructure installed prior to cutover. I work in I.T. and generally when we are working on a server cutover we keep the old equipment running (but not live) alongside the new when we are configuring the new equipment but not yet ready to cut over 100%. I take it this is what's happening here.