aliensporebomb

Anyone with Sprint connections able to find out why?

Interesting; I attended a Christmas party in Eden Prairie right in the middle of their LTE land and a strange thing happened; I flipped the airplane mode switch and it would connect to LTE for a few seconds then revert to 3G. It did this repeatedly - I wonder if they are indeed blocking access? I do notice connecting to LTE hasn't happened reliably since my last carrier update.

Sensorly shows lots of LTE all over the Twin Cities but not near my own location so much: http://www.sensorly.com/map/4G/US/USA/Sprint/lte_310sprint I've gone to certain areas where it purports to be and found that despite toggling airplane mode and back on again it was still stuck in 3G purgatory - this was not the case 3 weeks ago when the original batch of LTE sites went up. I suspect some of what occurred was the storm a few days ago that dropped a foot or more of snow on the city delayed some of the workers. But I spotted a couple of guys on a lift the day after the storm right near the MSP airport (likely the source of the brief LTE signal spotted there): Another view: They were fighting loss of daylight and it looked like the lower antenna array was only partially assembled.

And LTE is live off highway 94 from Woodbury, Minnesota all the way into Hudson, Wisconsin. So did any sites go live yesterday?

tbs123456: I was just over near Eden Prairie/Chanhassen and I didn't get a peep. Is LTE up for anyone else? I didn't see any LTE at all despite voyaging all the way to Loretto (long story) and back.

In addition to the Rochester report I see a blip of LTE as far east as Byron on highway 14 west of Rochester nearly all the way to Kasson. Interesting developments for sure.

Sensorly shows that we have LTE in Northwest Rochester, Minnesota. This is about eighty miles to the Southeast of Minneapolis if you're unfamiliar. It's just to the west of Highway 52 and 55th Street NW - so it you are heading south on 52 and pass Bandel Road NW then point your cellphone antennas to the west and flip the airplane mode off/on and hope for the best. I haven't been down to the office in that area for my company recently but I know that area very well. Nice to see!

Latest: I visited the Taft Park tower and found that it was just a plain old Sprint Tower pumping out very strong 3G. No footprints since the snowfall so I don't see any way this was the source of the LTE signals caught near the airport. Then I looked to the Southeast a bit (walking distance) and saw another tower with a odd sight: a two person lift up against the tower and two guys working hard on the bottom antenna array which looked only partially assembled. Anecdotally the signal strength from where I was about 80 feet away in my car was very strong, 3g only, and right across from the MSP airport on the west side near a Home Depot. I suspect this is the source of the LTE signals near the airport - it's not quite ready to go and the two guys were fighting the loss of daylight (it's nearing twilight as I type this).

Update: the closest spot Google Earth shows cellular transmitters to the point closest to that onramp (where Sensorly shows strong signals) seems to be the roof of the VA Medical Center. Interesting. The other candidate which looks more "modern" and possibly "LTE Like" is the tower in Taft Park which http://network.sprint.com/ says is a Sprint tower.

Then if that's not the tower that was transmitting it might actually be located on the roof of the federal building across the street. Pretty heavy security and I'm not going to delve into it too much farther then. I'll wait until something turns on then I'll go look. Interestingly, Sensorly shows the strongest signals from whatever tower was near there near the highway onramp - so I wonder if it's a little further down the road nearer the airport. Time to get out Google Earth and take a look at the area from above.

That's Brooklyn Park/Brooklyn Center. I know that area well since my wife used t work very near there. Hilltop is actually to the South of Fridley. Such as south of 694 and Central down south of 49th Avenue NE. My years of driving all over the twin cities for my IT job finally comes in handy extracurricurally!

I found the one over by the MSP Airport - it's right by the light rail station near all the Government buildings and it's directly next door to a tennis facility: It's in a strange place - the whole get-up looks brand new and there is still a yellow vault-like structure on site for the contractor I suspect, it's in a space that will soon be a Metro Transit park and ride but no asphalt has been poured so I couldn't get any closer. Oddly, it's not transmitting LTE at the moment - it's just transmitting 3g (very strong). It's no more than 50 feet off the ground though - not sure what the range on this place would be. There's no other cellular anything anywhere nearby this particular structure.

I received this too. Also, isn't there a way to dial a number that forces the phone to grab the latest carrier information? Does anyone have that information on hand?

I've heard all kinds of odd reports about a plethora of phones from a variety of manufacturers needing to be briefly put into airplane mode and then back to regular mode again or even updating their carrier information to be able to flip over to LTE at a moments notice. Unfortunately, I haven't found any threads about how to "force" a given phone to go over to LTE mode.

A friend of mine and I ate dinner tonight at the Culvers at 7801 Nicollet Avenue in Bloomington tonight and his Galaxy SIII read 4G (not sure if it does that all of the time but it sure seemed like his phone was responding quicker than usual). My own iPhone5 did not pick up LTE although it may be a stretch at that distance from one little tower. He's not into LTE geekery and doesn't have any speedtest or sensorly apps on his phone otherwise I'd have done some testing. Shrug.

Confirmed on the blips by the airport on the PC version - right off Highway 55 and Federal Drive right next to the Fort Snelling memorial chapel foundation. I need to go near there after work today anyway so I'll check it out. I don't know about the Android version of Sensorly but on the iPhone version airports show up purple. It's maddening since the blips for 4G are purple on that version so it blends together.

Looks like that blip is right near the Landmark Center and another over closer to the river - near Kellogg Boulevard & Shepard Road. Very interesting indeed. The Linwood Township signal is interesting - it appears to curve around Martin Lake directly to the east of St. Francis. Strongest signals are right near the Linwood Fire Department and Township Building and Lutheran Church. So far nothing new (meaning yesterday's power-up of towers) south of 494 this go round that I can see. I don't see any blips near Plymouth but it could just as well be a bleedover from the Corcoran signal as it's showing farther south on the map than it did last week - be interesting to have someone head south on County Road 101 and checking as far as south as Hamel. I bet there is some signal there.

Maybe more will show as the day goes on. I've seen no changes in sensorly over the last few days. I suppose it's possible if there's a tower in Linwood Township we might have users who don't even know about Sensorly or other towers in outstate Minnesota etc.

Plymouth and Downtown St. Paul? Anything else?

So this explains why I can do voice/data simultaneously when I'm on my iPhone5 - I was on the wifi at work and it's definetely using both the cellular data and the wifi connection to do it. Weird.

Thanks for the tip on sponsoring. I'll look into it. So far it's been unseasonably mild in Minnesota of late - it was literally 50 degrees fahrenheit the day before yesterday (I put the Christmas lights on the house in a t-shirt and jeans and no jacket!) and almost strangely warmer than usual although in the last 24 hours the temps have been dropping to in the 30s and 40s so it could be properly heading into winter - I heard someone talking about snow falling tomorrow too. I'll keep my fingers crossed. Bad enough the poor installer guys have to climb hundreds of feet into the air but it's cold up there too? They definetely work hard for the $.

So, tonight as of 6:30 p.m. it will be approximately one week since they turned on LTE operations in certain areas of the Twin Cities. My question is: will more sites turn on tonight? Is it going to be a "several sites per week" operation or is it "they're ready when they're ready?" I'm curious but the sensorly maps for this area shows a pretty good picture of the coverage for this area now: http://www.sensorly....St.%20Paul%20MN

Anecdotally my local Sprint provider indicated that LTE would be activating by March 2013 in the Minneapolis area so to actually have live LTE in multiple locations as soon as late November 2012 in this area shows they are being realistic about widespread deployment taking a while. And the biggest problem I suspect is they can't upgrade every tower nationwide simultaneously - it's a big job.

Some towers are up now in the Twin Cities as of late thursday the 29th of November or Friday the 30th. See Sensorly's maps for the locations: http://www.sensorly....t/lte_310sprint The cool thing is that friday it seemed to be pretty sparse coverage but more was showing all of the time over the weekend so if this keeps up we'll be in good shape in short order I'd say. I actually drove over to Eden Prairie to try it out and had speeds nearing 30k downloads and 8 k uploads. Was pretty nice.

A pattern is starting to emerge - sensorly's map now shows Hugo as definitely active. So in the northern 'burbs we have several blips on the map showing Andover/Anoka, Corcoran, Brooklyn Center and Hugo all evenly distributed from west to east. In the South it is thus far weighted to the Southwest with Eden Prairie and Chanhassen although Jordan is not really a suburb, it's pretty far out. So far, nothing in the south or southeast but I do not think we will have to wait for long.