aliensporebomb

I was out on a golf course near paynesville, 56362, and service was terrible, even though things are upgraded.  Really hope the site needs to be optimized, always had great serivice , now it was in and out of service, nexus 5.  Anyone know anything about this.  

Probably the optimization in combination with whether or not B26 is enabled on any tower near you. That being said, I've had issues with the N5 on certain radios, especially the .15 one that everyone uses to get B41. Could that be it?

Exactly.  That and the CSFB issues that the tri-band handsets such as the Nexus experiencing on towers not upgraded to 3g 800 mhz as yet (not sure about your local tower).  Stay patient, this should be addressed soon.  Much of the delays in my experience are related to towers waiting and waiting and waiting for fiber connections to be installed.  Not Sprint's fault, the fiber vendor dragging their feet or high demand for fiber

in that area and they do need to dig usually.

FYI - apparently the original iPhone5 (not the 5c/5s) has HD voice capability but the type of HD voice capability it has is not compatible with Sprint's network.  My guess?  Apple wants more 5c/5s adopters so the old 5 is out of luck.  Wouldn't be the first time.

Getting back to cases - when I got my Sprint 5 there was only one case available at the local Sprint store and it was a weird rubbery russian case I really like.

I dropped the phone once and the case is such that it recesses the screen away from not hitting the ground in cases like that.

The information I have on the next iPhone is there will be two sizes: 4.7 and 5.5 inches and currently the larger version will take longer to come to the market since they were supposedly having problems finding a battery that large but thin enough.

See:

www.macrumors.com

Looks like this one is a bugfix release.  Have at it.

I bet part of it is 4-5 feet of snow on the ground.

Seems like some progress has been made in the mid to south metro lately.  LTE wall to wall from what I can see.

You weren't the only one to notice.  My buddy works on the frontage road on the west side of 35W, on the north side of 94th across from the Green Mill/Holiday Inn and is presumably served by the tower on 94th and Penn.  He said just a few days ago that he received LTE on his G2 for the first time at the office just a few days ago!

Yep.  Cabinets and all have been there since late July/Early August but all the other stuff like fiber backhaul took a while and once everything was going they realized they needed to have the circuit switched fallback issue addressed before bringing LTE live.  No problem though.  Seems real nice so far.

I am begining to think Sprint forgot to throw the switch on the 94th and Penn ave tower. lol.   It's been almost 2 months since the tower has been upgraded and still no LTE.   It seems like most of the surrounding towers are already live with LTE....  wonder why they're waiting on this one?

Try it again!  

Did anyone see this news article this morning?

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/t-mobile-buy-spectrum-licenses-122007329.html

Its probably waiting for a cluster launch like the rest of the Samsung markets. Due to the eCSFB issue affecting tri-band devices, Samsung is not firing up any new LTE until that site, and the rest in the cluster have NV 3G and eCSFB active. Once the NV 3G cluster is activated, any sites that are ready for LTE will be brought online as well. Even if the surrounding towers have LTE active already, if they do not have NV 3G active, new LTE will not be brought online in the area. Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I believe you are correct.  They are trying to avoid what happened in Chicago by bringing the sites up in clusters.  The site nearest this one to the north is the aforementioned Richfield site and the site at Valley West and Loehmann's just got their cabinets within the last couple of weeks and the one at Loehmann's doesn't even appear to be completed (there is wiring wrapped in plastic but only half of it is connected to the ground mounted RRUs yet).  

Hopefully before Christmas but you never can tell.  As far as backhaul goes the 94th site has had it installed for a while now.

If you have enough transmitting sites near your residence you might get LTE inside your house.  I get it from time to time but I hope that when the tower nearest me goes live it will be most of the time.

That Bloomington tower looks ready to go.  I saw them digging out the place where they had dug fiber in august last week (right off Penn and 93rd or so) so they might have needed to make some changes prior to launch.  

Staying tuned.  That's been filled in again and little flags are all around so we might see something happen soon.  Or not.

I've been keeping a close watch on sensorly for any signs of activity at that site.  

Site nearest me looks like they could switch it on today.  Site second nearest to me they've done fiber and nothing else.  And one up in Richfield looks ready to go too but it's been quite a while waiting.  And third nearest to me it doesn't look like much has happened though I've seen an Ericsson truck at the site.  So.  Still in process for a lot of things.

Yes downtown Minneapolis.

However I have to say, I live in Richfield, pretty close to the mall of America, and I have been getting consistent 4g from my home fire a while now. Usually in the 4mbps range.

The signal you're getting is probably the site just southeast of the Mall of America, there are two other transmitter sites near there which means pretty much most of the eastern half of Bloomington is getting LTE to some degreee.  

There's two operating sites on the west side and three sites that have been underway for quite some time now (two Bloomington, one Southern Richfield) that aren't live yet.  Stay tuned.

The tower near 94th and penn just two days ago:

Stay tuned.

Where are you guys located? I fully expect the hangups are EXACTLY what happened in Chicago during the NV rollout:

The hangups are because of the new NV equipment has issues handing off NV LTE connections to 3G legacy Motorola cell equipment. We have more legacy gear running than non-legacy.

So when it hands off, the line goes dead apparently.

Chicago fixed it by ramping up NV LTE rollouts - they will need to do that here to avoid the problem.

Not Sprint's fault, the problem is two different cellular equipment vendors are involved and competitor equipment doesn't always play nice.

I can understand being frustrated for months but I suspect they only have so much staff to get this stuff installed and operating. And it's not a matter of dumping new cabinets and antennas off, there's a complicated process for getting everything running.

Interestingly, the tower <2000 feet from me was undergoing testing last night: I actually drive right under the antenna right next to the cabinets and the signal went to -116 dBm (shutting the thing off possibly) and the signal was "o" not 3G or LTE.

I'm right around 2000 feet from the tower so that's how I've been able to keep such close watch.  Keeping an eye out still.

Why wait that long?  Stuck in a contract or??

The problem with the one on the roof of the high school is that it's relatively low to the ground - whereas the 94th tower is between 200 and 300 feet off the ground.  There's lots of trees around the high school too so when I was on ground level I didn't get signal from that tower any farther than 98th and near Oxboro or thereabouts.   They're probably still adjusting it since it hasn't been live for more than a couple of weeks.

Hmmmm.  I also got LTE standing right underneath the tower this evening but the signal strength leads me to believe it was the site at Kennedy (pictured below):

Back to todays festivities:

Three trucks on-site this morning:

This afternoon:

Just a refresher - the cabinets looked like this a few days ago - silver discs covering all cable entry/engress:

Now - big honking amphenol style connectors in place:

All cables seemingly connected.

Fiber seemingly connected:

Other cables power/data connected:

Soon I'd imagine.

I noticed 4g at my house this morning, but now its gone again. They must be working on getting 4g turned on at the tower on 94th and Penn.

I haven't seen it go LTE as yet (except ONCE but it may have been the Hampshire avenue tower filling in). If I stand in my driveway I get LTE from the Hampshire tower which is neat but not in the house. Oh well.

I forgot to mention my signal strength went from -60 to -119 then back to -60 and back to -119 every 3 seconds for about 5 minutes on friday morning right before 7 a.m. It was like watching a weird stopwatch.

Finally it stayed at -60.

Thursday night the Ericsson people were there again and there was another guy onsite looking like he was working on the telco connections. So that was two nights in a row. I'm keeping a close watch on that site, 2-3 visits a day. If anyone sees me they must think I'm nuts.

I still don't believe that tower has the necessary fiber connections running 100% as the speedtest I ran a minute ago was half a megabit down and 0.26 up. It will get there though. Soon I'd think. The fiber is in place, it's just not connected 100% as yet.

Back to the tower nearest me - tonight, just 30 minutes ago: three Ericsson inspection trucks on-site:

Any idea when they might go live with LTE?

Soon I'd hope.  Everything looks good to go.  I haven't seen anyone at the site since last friday but sites have sit for months waiting for backhaul or other things but I'm optimistic.

The tower nearest me has cabinets completed:

All equipment appeared to be up and running - I could hear the cooling fans running:

No LTE.....yet.

I guess we'll know in a little under a month now.  Very curious about this.  I might even switch to a newer phone a year early if we get tri-band.