milan03

Good news indeed though Karl Bode is such a joke of a blogger. 

I admire him for voicing a strong pro-consumer opinion, not letting corporate interests dilute it. His site's been around for 15+ years, lots of good reports in the archive.

Sprint did say they (in the q2 earning report) were working with Qualcomm to have devices support 3 x 20mhz CA support for early to mid 2015

Qualcomm's Cat 9/10 MDM9x45 baseband processor was always suppose to come in H2 2015. The major news here is that Qualcomm has decided to upgrade the IP stack in Snapdragon 810 from original Cat 6 3x CA (300Mbps) to Cat 9 3x CA (450Mbps).

I figured that, but when Root Metrics reports, it reports it as a LTE signal. I noticed signal strength average in my area is being affected, overall the average is getting weaker.

If you like your LTE signal, and if you like it "strong", look no further! The power chart is all you need to know!  

But AT&T has the strongest LTE network.  More bars in more places.  I just saw Frank and Charlie on TV last night during the football game.  

 

Watch the comments all be about Sprint, and not AT&T.  

It's even worse... "Strongest LTE Signal". Yes that is all they've got for their new slogan. And a "power" chart. Wow.    http://www.att.com/network/en/index.html

 

I totally get that. What I am saying is that for a press conference that was relatively heavy on tech details I was surprised that they did not specifically mention Release 10 equipment.

At this point Release 10 equipment isn't anything to brag about. It's a basic, minimum system requirement for operators that wish to activate LTE-Advanced features on their network.

Also, historically Verizon's never been the most "vocal" operator when it comes to their equipment infrastructure. Their PR loves to dumb it down as much as possible.

I was wondering that myself. Verizons press release was notable for not mentioning an upgrade to release 10.

They've announced Carrier Aggregation rollout for 2015, so Release 10 equipment is a must. It'll have to be a selective launch as there is absolutely no way that the entire LTE footprint gets the overhaul that quick.

 

I've been keeping an eye on potential 13+2 CA in NYC as that could be something that existing Cat 4 devices could actually attach to. There are still absolutely no signs of backhaul provisioning boost. Sectors are capped at either 80Mbps or 100Mbps, and three LTE downlink channels (10+20+10MHz) are all competing for that same under provisioned backhaul resource.

I take it band 26 isn't optimized yet. Sprint band 26 and T-Mobile signal were pretty much the same. T-Mobile has to be using AWS or PCS band for their LTE. Nice video showing the hot swapping of Sim cards.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

Probably AWS, and he also seems to have a healthy amount of neighboring cells around tested location.

They could definitely do it on their TDD 8T8R sites.

 

I'm also guessing Verizon's 4x4 MIMO user solution is most likely going to be a fixed broadband (Home Fusion), or a tablet. Doubt that we'll see a 4x4 capable smartphone from Verizon in 2015. Let's hope that I'm wrong... 

It's also very exciting that Haberman talked about 4x4 MIMO products in 2015. I know it's not a typo since he specifically talks about "launching 4x4 MIMO products".

In 4x2 network deployments, there is no need to launch a new user product, as the entire 2x2 device portfolio benefits by default.

 

"Another LTE Advanced technology Verizon will introduce is higher orders of MIMO. Currently, Verizon's network supports 2x2 MIMO, meaning two transmitters and two receivers, which is a standard for LTE. Haberman said Verizon will be launching products that support 4x4 MIMO, which he said will improve devices' uplink performance and enhance coverage."

 

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizon-launch-carrier-aggregation-more-lte-advanced-features-2015/2014-12-04

Well, that was quick: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizon-launch-carrier-aggregation-more-lte-advanced-features-2015/2014-12-04

Where does VZW have carrier aggregation capable band 13 infrastructure?  Most of it is old, non RRU, Release 8 infrastructure.

 

AJ

You're absolutely right, but waiting for Cat 6/9 device market to mature gives them slightly more time to perform the necessary upgrades. That Droid Turbo (Cat 4) for instance has CA enabled B13+B4, but it's obviously useless in markets where Verizon has 15, 20MHz of contiguous AWS spectrum deployed. I can see them initially prioritizing CA infrastructure upgrades in markets where they only hold 10MHz AWS spectrum licenses.

There have been reports on Carrier Aggregation on AT&T and T-Mobile so far. They've already started seeding the market with Cat 4 CA capable devices.

Verizon and Sprint are probably waiting for Cat 6 device market to mature before they activate CA feature on the network side, since 2x aggregated capacity on both operators will (for the most part) exceed 40MHz Cat 4 limitation.

Verizon and Sprint will also benefit from 3x CA user equipment that is due H2 2015. Sprint with 3x B41, and Verizon with B13+B4+B2.

As of today, Verizon has 300Mbps of deployed aggregated LTE radio capacity in New York City market. Just launched additional 10MHz FDD LTE in Band 2. At some point, they'll need to start splitting cell and densifying.

 

10MHz FDD in Band 13

20MHz FDD in Band 4

10Mhz FDD in Band 2

 

Crazy.

 

 

Used Nexus 5 with Verizon SIM for Data Only LTE access to Band 2, 4 exclusively.

All devices do it, regardless of the network.

-Anthony

I've never had that issue on Verizon's LTE over the past few years on my trips to Boston or D.C. The user device (iPad or smartphone) was always able to perform intercell LTE handoffs and keep the consistency of that video streaming experience. Granted, Verizon's LTE coverage throughout northeast corridor is second to none.

 

On AT&T the experience would differ wildly, as the device would constantly fallback to HSPA for multiple reasons (lack of LTE coverage, incoming calls, etc).

T-Mobile experience is similar to AT&Ts, with much more "4G" and EDGE.

It 100% is.

It makes sense, considering that in addition to LTE, HSPA+21 and HSPA+42 still offer respectable user experience in this age of heavy mobile video consumption.

CDMA operators largely have to rely on LTE layer for similar experience.

More than anything else I'm curious as to when and where we will start seeing T-Mobile deploy on their 700mhz spectrum. I love S4GRU because I know when/where Sprint is deploying certain bands/technologies. Right now T-Mobile apparently has 1900mhz LTE and 700mhz LTE in some places but no one knows where because there is no site like this one for T-Mobile!

Their L700 project just recently started but reports are slowly coming from different parts of the country. TmoNews is a decent general T-Mobile related news source, although nothing comparable to S4GRU community http://www.tmonews.com/2014/11/t-mobile-700mhz-lte-spotted-in-houston-texas/

Low single digits lte, 1-3 mbps in Wailuku Town. If I'm wrong wrong I'm happy but it seems either air side or backhaul is hurting them.  Plenty of other places it's between 6 and 30mbps. Then there's North and East Maui where you get no signal but that's another story. 

Sounds like the backhaul could be the issue in your area. I know that Honolulu for instance is a 20MHz FDD LTE market, and the backhaul seems to be in place there as HoFo users have been reporting peak rates north of 100Mbps for a while.

tmo has some great areas and some areas collapsing due to load.

 

When you say collapsing due to load, are you talking rural/suburban areas or major metros?

 

Because in NYC around the busiest areas of Times Square, in the middle of the day or night, T-Mobile LTE will definitely slow down a bit, but you definitely won't see it collapsing. You'll still stay on LTE, get data rates in the low teens, and latency will still stay in the 30's. In my book that's still a decent user experience overall.

I've noticed a few of these popping up in my neighborhood in the last week, saw a crew adding new telephone polls with these on Monday by my work. You can clearly see wires going to it. Just curious, hope it's Sprint.

 

External link: http://static.dyp.im/aFjGz30dQS/0e5d6447df6be315076e9af1041661bd.jpg

That's MetroPCS/T-Mobile. Crews are most likely upgrading the cabinets.

Had to do some trickery to get the engineering screen since it is blocked on non-Sprint SIMs, but here it is

EARFCNs correspond to center frequencies of 1957.5MHz downlink and 1877.5 uplink.

Mind me asking how did you successfully get Engineering Mode to load on Android 5.0? 

I'm rooted, access granted, just wouldn't do it.

 

Thanks.

Latest FCC filling by Artemis, asking to reconsider 600MHz FDD spectrum plan, and allocate some TDD as it's more efficient and appropriate for pCell's High Order MIMO (spatial-multiplexing), and they can achieve exponential increase in spectral efficiency: 

 

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7522712418

Definitely a 5Mhz slice in Band 2. Thanks for posting this!

Most likely. I can't check width for sure because the Nexus 5 doesn't support reporting it.

You could check the DEBUG LTE engineering mode. It'll show you the Band and DL channel, unless your Android 5.0 build specifically disallows it.

Well my little college town of Cedarville OH finally got the LTE treatment from T-Mobile. It's just a GMO so EDGE/LTE. Speed test topped out at ~20Mbit/s with excellent signal. I get ~30Mbit/s with Sprint at the same signal level (plus band 26).

I'm guessing 5MHz Band 2, right?