bluepoint951

So I guess I am one of the few people left that keep up with this area; I recently moved  from the Houston market back home with family to north of Beaumont. Where I saw lots of love of 4G speeds and improvements in Houston, back home near Silsbee things seem to have been at a snails pace

Long ago, I posted a thread about iDEN towers Nextel used to have in the area.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/967-rural-iden-decommissiong-and-network-vision/

Is there any possibility of some of these old locations re-entering service?

I sent in a $10 donation last Friday and hadn't heard back or been re-up'd as a Sponsor. Was curious if I might have been missed?

So i took a late night trip on BW8; I turned on RootMetrics Continuous Testing to get an updated comparison of the two networks.

Just out of curiosity, does anyone know the carrier config of the two in Houston? 5x5, 10x10

SPRINT:    HTC Evo 4G LTE 

                 Stock ROM rev 3.16.651.3 (Andrioid 4.1.1; PRI 2.24_003; PRL 25016)

VERIZON:  HTC Thunderbolt 

                  Unofficial JB update rev 7.00.605.2 710RD (Andriod 4.0.3; PRI 1.41_002 & 1.64_002; PRL 15256)

Route:       W Sam Houston Pkwy S @ Blackhawk to N Sam Houston Pkwy W @ Briar Forest @ 0120hrs

On Saturday, I took a trip over to UTD and here are three tests I ran:

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Then today, while I was out running an errand in Lewisiville, near Vista Ridge Mall, I noticed 4G was on! Cause I was driving, I only had two test while I was stopped at a red light.

I went on a trek Saturday to find the closest Active LTE tower I knew of in Richardson, TX (I was right across the street from the Sprint tower - http://goo.gl/maps/JBC2) here are the results.

Sprint LTE:

and Verizon LTE in the same spot:

How are AT&T LTE speeds looking at this point? That's the only service I'm unable to test, due to lack of equipment.

 

Sent from my Galaxy SIII-32GB using Forum Runner

AT first, it was just like Verizon, I'd get some crazy 35-45Mbps down and 15Mbps up with 40-60 pings; these days its still a high 10s sometimes the occasinal 20 and 5-10up. It also depends on weather you keep the LTE or get pushed back to HSPA+, for some reason the Vivid will prefer a strong HSPA+ siginal over a weak LTE signal unless you force LTE only.

My Thunderbolt with VZW still gets 12-15 Mbps down consistently and 3-7 up; though, I will say at the convention in Downtown Ft. Worth I was at, at the beginning of June (10k~ish ppl in 1 or 2 sectors) I was have some trouble getting more thank 6Mbps down and 1.5Mbps up and an 80-120 ping. That was better than the avg 80kbps down and 66kpbs up with 1500-2500ms ping my EVO LTE was getting in the same areas, you could tell the Sprint network was struggling those 3 days.

I'd run some side by side tests with AT&T LTE, Verizon LTE, and Sprint LTE via tether on 3 HTC Andrioid Phones (HTC VIVID, HTC Thunderbolt, and HTC EVO 4G LTE [all owned from day 1 on their respective launch days]); unfortunately, Sprint's flavor is not yet active in my part of the Metroplex (Lewsiville/Coppell near 121 and 35E). I have to go over to Far North Dallas later today and was going hop a few roads over to north Richardson where I know there is an active site and see what I get.

I had a TMo HSPA+ HTC phone until a few weeks ag; I traded it for a few $ to help pick up the EVO 4G LTE. I guess you could say I like to early adopt. (As does my best friend/roommate)

After a battery pull, I was finally able to get LTE signal on my GNex in Lewisville, TX - pretty decent speeds (got up to 23.91Mbps down, 9.71 up)

 

While my home and office are indicated as LTE covered at sprint.com/coverage, I can't get a LTE signal at either location (indoors or outdoors). I only got the LTE signal when I was right next to the Vista Ridge mall in Lewisville, TX

 

So, does this mean that the coverage indicated at sprint.com/coverage is 'future' coverage plans?(hopefully not!)

I work right near Vista Ridge; Sprint has three tower co-los (One on the big main city tower down the raod from Vista Ridge, the 2nd right near where 121 @ 35E intersect in the NE quad, and the 3rd up on Bennett Road) that I know of from the Clear coverage maps [and a little help from some apps on my phone]

On the other ead of FM3040 aka Round Grove, headed towards Flower Mound is where I live, I figure that area won't see the 4G love for awhile, I'm in the middle of a big hole in Clear's service area that was future coverage at one point. If I can position the antenna just right /w the CPEi25150, i can get an RSSI of -76 and SnR of 13-17DBi, that to the tower up off Bellaire near Edmonds. I never understood why this little pocket with a few subdivisions seems to be lacking in coverage, 3G and 4G. My t-bolt has decent coverage on VZW LTE.

With the HTC EVO 4G LTE, there isn't a battery we can pull. I did install the 1.22 update and the newest radios, but after a few reboots here and there for the fun of it, no 4G in Lewisville I can find. I'll have to venture south later in the week and see what I can discover.

No Love in Lewisville, I've been up and down FM3040 all day to no avail...

FYI: you are incorrect about FIOS in Plano. All of Plano has FIOS, as does Allen. Verizon is doing overbuilds here in Collin County at least, so there are areas in Allen, McKinney, and Plano where you have a choice of AT&T or Verizon.

I knew of the overbuilds in Watauga, Euless, parts of Colleyville, and a few neighborhoods in Frisco back when Verison started overbuilds in '07. There are parts of Plano off and east of 75 that are serviced out of the AT&T CO ALLNTXSA; as well as parts of Plano near the DNT and 121 being serviced by the AT&T CO FRSCTXES; hence the deduction made based on previous and now dated information. I have a friend in Watauga who is on the border of where Charter and Time Warner met. At her house, she can choose: AT&T UVerse, Verizon FiOS, Time Warner Cable, or Charter Communications. She has an iNID, ONT, and two cable DMARCs on the side of the house.Talk about real choices.

Anyways, I can imagine with the ever expanding suburbs, its not a surprise that Verizon is green-fielding FiOS. Right before I left AT&T last year, I had read of a new 500 home subdivision where both AT&T and Verizon where green-fielding FTTP. (One thing to note, even until today, AT&T's FTTP customers are limited to the 25/2 UVerse profile due to the network structure; they weren't slated to fix this for another 18-24 months from what I'd read in early '11)

Most of the endless thought process I shared as you can see was at 4:00a in a delirious state trying to pass a sleepless night, wondering where my new HTC toy.... err phone would be here.

Sprint awards backhaul contracts based on regions within a market. Since the regions cover several ILECs in most cases, Sprint ends up using a backhaul vendor that is third party to the ILECs and arranges several types of backhaul, depending on the availability at each site within their contract area.

 

The successful backhaul bidder in an area will most likely need to mix fiber, AAV and microwave over many site locations in order to get enhanced backhaul at each that meets the minimum backhaul requirements outlined in the contract.

 

So if "Bidder A" wins the contract for the Northern part of the DFW market, they may have to provide the backhaul for every site between Carrollton and Sherman. In most cases, an ILEC wont bid on a backhaul region like that. Unless they already service most of that area. If an ILEC does bid, then they are agreeing to act as a third party to secure service of other backhaul vendors within their contract in the areas outside their service area.

Taking some experience and corroborating it with the information on how the back-haul contracts are set; I still think one of the points I raised of the ease/price/complexities/staffing between the major ILECs here might be playing somewhat of a role. Given the plethora of fiber solutions and hot competition in the FTTx wholesale field here, for the dense areas in the 4 major counties here will see an FTTx or AAV solution, the bottle neck being either the ILEC or MSO that runs the last mile. In some of the more obscure parts of Arlington, Burlenson, even in some parts of the areas near Garland/Mesquite/Seagoville, you will see the occasional XO, Time Warner, or Towerstream connection to some sites (not necessarily Sprint).

What ever the case may be, when it is up and running, at least in our market, I can imagine we will be seeing awesome speeds. A little more than a year since I got my HTC THunderbolt with VZW and still gt good speeds up and down:

The backhaul is not ready in Lewisville/Denton areas yet. But they will start coming online in June and run all through the summer.

Robert

What I find as slightly funny and slightly un-nerving about this. Looking at where towers are on now versus where they are not, I kinda figured why the Northern Burbs have not gotten love yet..

Nearly all of Tarrant and Dallas counties have AT&T as the ILEC (local telephone company.) AT&T started their "Lightspeed" aka UVerse build back in 2005/06; UVerse officially launched in 2007 and Dallas was one of the first areas. AT&T has been running Fiber to the Node for their VDSL equipment known as VRADs since then; also, with AT&T's expanding their back haul to most of their sites for HSPA+ and LTE launches in the last year and a half, the number of FTTC(ellsite) seems inline with what we see.

For the eastern and northern parts of Collin County the same is true, AT&T is the ILEC, however, UVerse stops in Little Elm, Aubury, Frisco, and McKinney; of those, Little Elm and Aubruy see pockets of UVerse but not as dense at the more southern burbs. I would take a stab at saying the tower on/near SH/Toll 121 in The Colony is getting backhaul from the AT&T CO on FM 423/Main St [CLLI: FRSCTXCO Frisco-The Colony] while the lone tower over in Flower Mound is serviced also by an AT&T CO in Roanoke [CLLI: RONKTXWO FTWO-Roanoke]. At one time I had a CO map of the area showing where the AT&T, GTE/Verizon, and other ILECs where from the surrounding areas.

In contrast, for the northern parts of Tarrant that skate Grapevine Lake, NW parts of Dallas Co., and most of the populated parts of Denton County. Verizon is the ILEC; the FiOS build started in 2004 in Keller and slowly made its way across northern Tarrant counties, Carrollton, Lewisville, Grapevine east into parts of Plano, but not past 75 and nothing north of 121 in Collin county (that goes back to AT&T turf) a small part of western Flower Mound is AT&T, but the rest as well as most everything north to Denton is Verizon.

There is a small pocket of Embarq/Centurylink along I-35E around Lake Lewisville; shout out to my telcom buddies in this small bastion of communications equipment. ;-) [No hard feelings; I promise not to wave my FiOS at your in spite.] There are some other Embarq areas in the western/northern part of Denton Co.

From what my IT friend who works with both of the Tier 1 companies here in the Metroplex says, AT&T isn't so difficult to get Fiber/Metro-Ethernet to your DMARC; however, they are "proud" of their service and bill astrono.... err accordingly. Where as, Verizon offers a hands down more "bang-for-your-buck" connection for FTTx but getting the equipment installed to the DMARC is a bureaucratic nightmare. Apparently, when VZ ended thier primary build here 2-2.5 years ago, most of the install staff went with them; therefore, getting locations wired can take longer when trying to get things connected en-mass (since there are fewer available installers for this equipment/service.)

Keep in mind, aside from installing conduits or "pre-fielding" work to the location, the actual installation and connection from the ILEC to the DEMARC has to be done by the ILEC Techs, they are Union/ Bargained-For positions. While I am neither for or against these men/women (I've worked for AT&T in the past) with the trends in wireline telcom in the last 5 years, their numbers are drastically reduced from when the primary build was going on.

Or, I could be totally wrong on all this and its just random conjecture to appease my desire to see this so-called LTE that Sprint speaks of *rollseyes* I also am a little anxious about getting the new EVO; sadly, its probably sitting in Customs somewhere in California or Kentucky thanks to our somewhat antiquated IP laws.

OK, so I was bored on a Sunday afternoon and started lookin around the various places I visit when I have vacation time. One of these places is my home town in South East Texas. I remember way back when, circa 1997, Sprint came to town via UsUnwired. It was great if you were in Beaumont but anytime you went north to the lakes after Silsbee you were roaming.

My uncle had a Nextel phone from about 1999-2007 and I remember he never would lose that coverage until Jasper. Today, I found that the highway north outta Beaumont had iDEN towers, while Sprint never built any antenna/towers/cells along that same route; even after the Merger in 2005, this area since then has remained as it was.

So, fast forward to today. I've lurked and read, thought it through, and concluded the following.

Would these conclusions be valid? Is there any hope for those areas where there is Nextel/iDEN but no Sprint/CDMA that they will not be left behind. I know this area I am referencing may be small, but what of the iDEN customers when decommission happens; as there would be no CDMA coverage, they would not be able to get Sprint DC, so does Sprint just say: "Sorry, you're SOL?"

Here is a little map i spent 20-30min putting together from Sprint's website; I know its a little "cut-and-paste" like, but the information necessary is available to see.

I live in one of those pesky WiMax holes in Lewisville; Denton County did not get much love when Clearwire announced they were complete. There were several sites that were "future coverage" near here from Clear until early last year. Sadly, the only WiMax tower I can get service from (http://g.co/maps/2kr6u) is 1.3mi (2.1km) and that means unless I am in the right spot in the house there is no 4G.

With the Motorola CPEi25150 (Sprint 4G Desktop Modem) and the Clear Series 'M' modem's I can get an RSSI of -72 to -80 and CINR of 11-17 depending on the day, weather, mood of the trees, and if the City of Lewisville is performing their monthly tornado sirens (I kid not, on the 2nd of every month they test the reception on my WiMax devices dips to a RSSI of <-80 and 6-10 for CINR for the 5-10 minutes they test).

While I am holding my breath in the hopes that Sprint might one day have a "desktop modem" for the LTE network; I am going to hold onto this 4G Unlimited Plan for as long as I can. Its only $30 a month and I can use it to host a small Minecraft server for friends and a fun little server for personal use/backup storage.

I have an HTC Thunderbolt with Verizon right now (I picked it up on Launch day in March of last year); 4G LTE is nice, but unless you set your device right you can eat through a battery in under 4 hours. I dropped AT&T for Verizon for getting LTE and haven;t looked back. (I even gave up a 19% discount for working for AT&T, I was that pumped) I am going to pick up one of these fancy new EVOs and see how it runs around here. If it goes well perhaps I can switch my Verizon line to Sprint and save some $. The difference in price is staggering ($79.99 vs $104.99) taxes and all that jazz its nearly a $30 difference.