aliensporebomb

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.

So what are the options for "cool geeky telephony apps" on jailbroken IOS? And it's still early yet. We don't have a final release of IOS 7 so it remains to be seen if more features or hidden features will be unveiled in the API.

From yesterday: I drove by there around lunchtime. Antenna work: completed. Cabinet work: started. More pics: forthcoming.

I'm kind of hoping we see some sign of cabinet work today.

Today's shots (not many). It appeared today they were mostly installing the platform for everything NV related to sit on. They stopped around 6:30 or 7 p.m. while it was still light. Looked more or less like a crew of 3 on the tower and other individuals on the ground. When they were done the configuration looked like this: More tomorrow...

Yeah, it's less than half a mile away from my place. Walking distance. I can see it out my office window easily. As far as distance, I was able to receive the tower on the roof of the Homewood Suites next to the Mall of America up by Loehmann's Plaza which was a little over 7 miles. Not bad. Looks like they weren't doing any work on the tower yesterday but they still have a bit of work to do. I'll check this today and see if they're back at it.

Cabinets new and old and batteries: Look close: Lots of crew on-site on a Saturday: OK so what did they actually do (so far)? I came back early afternoon sunday and found some interesting results: It's kind of hard to see the middle site due to the microwave encrusted setup on the bottom. You probably are wondering whose gear is whose here.... Before I go on about that you might notice the middle antenna array has smaller vertical elements like some NV setups we've seen in Michigan. To recap top antenna array (mostly out of sight in these shots) T-Mobile, Sprint is in the middle and on the bottom Clearwire. No sign of Sprint RRUs but I bet they're here soon. They're definetely not done yet - the cabinets aren't wired at all although the wiring harnesses are sitting waiting and the site is still roped off with caution tape. More pictures as more things happen.

More pics from Saturday (and today) forthcoming...

Latest: No real work done that I can see today - looks like during the storm or moving the cabinet in transit one of the two NV cabinets sustained some damage - crimp marks on the top left and right. You can see pictures I took July 24 the rear of that seemed okay, the divots don't seem nearly as pronounced.

Update: The day of the storm: Antennae: Trailer full of RRUs? Working: But, I get the idea not much happened today: the aftermath of last night's storm right near the site: Power was out for over 12 hours in the area as well as when I visited the site the cabinets were in their proper place but it looked like one of them sustained a hell of a dent towards the top. The wind was so extreme it blew over a power pole and a nearby flagpole and that was less than 250 feet from the site: I'll investigate further tomorrow. It seriously looks like they're just in the beginning stages here.

Update: many more photos of the LTE install going on in West Bloomington. Temporary delays due to last nights amazing storm. Pics forthcoming.

My server with the pictures is offline until 11 tonight sometime according to the power company.

Almost 3 hours later - they're still there but finishing up for the day: First sectors installed. in the northeast corner. Also the northwest. But is this new antenna sectors or is it the old ones pointing downwards being put back into place temporarily? In the top picture you can see two crew members standing on the top array and someone standing below on the clearwire array. You can see how big the antenna segments are - look to the left - it's as wide as the workman's arm span: Placing the segments into place: Night falls - better get down from the crow's nest guys!

Before: After (this afternoon): The Pizza guy is here! Antenna guys have to eat too! Note they've dismantled most of the old antenna array:

94th Street and Penn Avenue South in Bloomington.

Today we have more people there, a pickup truck, a sedan, a van - lots of people arriving. I wonder if antenna and cabinet work is going to be done today? Must be in a hurry, this is the second time on a site where I've seen work on a weekend.

Shots from the site nearest me: Cabinets arrived late last week, this is day three of them being on-site. Seems like it's one or two individuals involved in the installation - it appears that they're deinstalling some of the old Nextel gear to make way for the NV equipment. So far on-site are cabinets, batteries and some antenna brackets. No sign of NV antennas or RRUs but that will come I'm sure. At this particular site the top rack is TMobile, the next rack down is Sprint. If there are too many pictures I apologize but I figure those of you not in the paid sponsor section should see some of what shows up there to a certain extent.

The site nearest my home location had cabinets delivered late last week. Today we have men on the tower right now, guy wires everywhere. Pictures forthcoming.

It's easy: you just have to look at the tower and see that there's NV equipment there in some form or another and then check your phone. If the hardware is there and it's not LTE it's because they're either waiting on fiber or some similar other "we need to wait for X item". It will come.

I know where Moysauce is and what tower he/she is connecting to!

There are quite a few restaurants near the LaQuinta - along the 494 strip. Nearly anything you can think of. We joked on this forum that Poor Richard's Common House on the east side of 84th and Normandale is directly across the street from the bank with live Sprint LTE on the roof! There's a Jimmy John's sandwhich place on the other side.

Normandale is walking distance from my place. There are two LTE towers in that part of town - a tower off 84th and Normandale and another off Hampshire and 98th and I get LTE in my driveway further to the northeast from Normandale College. There are 3 more towers being worked on as I type this. One looks ready to go live too.

In Bloomington MN they tore up a mile plus long bike path to install fiber underneath back last fall then reinstalled the bike path. The path still indicates "Sprint Fiber" and the communications company involved. Then in February cabinets, RRUs, antennas arrived and didn't go live until with LTE June sometime. The big delay was not necessarily fiber as I had thought but getting the fiber conduit underneath a highway, under a major road and into the building where the works was set-up on the roof.

Sounds like it's your phone. My friend has a Galaxy SIII and one time he was standing right next to a Sprint tower and I was with him and I was getting something like between -50 and -60 dBm (wall to wall signal, super powerful, I could feel the hair standing up on my head from the EMI) and his Galaxy SIII was getting nothing at all. We were near a Sprint store and I advised he have them look at it. Turns out they had to give his phone what the store tech called "The Vulcan Nerve Pinch" (no idea what the actual process is). I get the idea the SIII has all kinds of little bugs in it and they basically removed and restored his firmware and after that he was able to get a reliable signal again (for a time anyway) but he still has weird flaky problems with the thing all of the time. But go get your phone checked out.