PedroDaGr8

22 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Not sure honestly. We've been wondering the same thing here in NYC for a while. Our setup is a bit different than other parts of the U.S. but sometimes T-Mobile leaves one of those APX16's behind post-upgrade and other times they remove it completely

On Sprint to T-Mobile conversions here, it's a toss up. Sometimes they don't add a mid-band only antenna at all and other times they'll add an AIR32 or an AIR3246.

Per Rey:

Quote

From glancing at the spec sheets it looks like the Commscope antenna has a clear leg up over the RFS antenna when it comes to polarization diversity. The cross polarization ratios at boresight are both roughly 18 dB, but the Commscope antenna is 14ish dB over the entire sector while the RFS antenna is closer to 8 dB (keep in mind the dB scale is logarithmic so +6 dB is four times the performance).

This means UEs connected to midband on the RFS antenna will lose transmit diversity very quickly as they move away from the center of the sector; the Commscope antenna will perform much better under these circumstances. If this is an area with a lot of buildings (i.e. diversity loss due to clutter/shadowing is a concern), sacrificing a small bit of gain for much better XPOL is definitely worth it.

A post over on Reddit notes that when TMobile has been deploying the new Erickson 4460 radios, they are deploying a separate antenna for B25/66 rather than use the mid-band ports on the larger multi-band antenna. 

They are curious why "...when T-Mobile deploys the Ericsson Radio 4460 (capable of B25 + B66), they often connect it to a separate mid-band antenna, and leave the mid-band ports on the low+mid-band array empty.

In this case, they've connected it to a CommScope VV-65A-R1- that one is pretty common, in other cases, I've seen them use a (much older) RFS APX16.

The reason I ask is because both the APX16 and the VV-65A-R1 are seemingly worse than the APXVAARRAPXVAARR24_43-U-NA20 (or APXVAALL24_43-U-NA20 on newer setups) in terms of gain, so there must be something else to this pattern. "

It seems strange to use the Low+Mid and then not use the mid ports (rather than just use discrete low and mid antennas.

Anyone have any ideas?

Link to the Reddit thread: https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/t4aosq/what_is_tmobile_doing_with_these_radio_4460s/?sort=confidence

On 2/23/2022 at 7:40 AM, dkyeager said:

My home site is similar. After 8 months, more fiber just arrived at the site.

Honestly, this one is in a horrible location. It is located in a low spot in the area meaning it would only appreciably serve the small area around it. Everything else is better served by one of the other two towers nearby. 

We will see, they have made MANY dumb decisions before.

15 minutes ago, Trip said:

Can anyone confirm whether the S22 supports band locking?

- Trip

 

It does. I can easily band lock on my T-Mobile S22.

I ordered through T-Mobile

Interesting, the tower by the Shell station located just south of 405/522 interchange just got the full upgrade. This dramatically improves capacity in the north Kingsgate area.

Strangely though, the Sprint conversion across the 405 (just south of Cedar Park Christian School) is STILL not live. This site was fully converted months ago, way before the site by the Shell station, but isn't live. My guess is Tmo might have changed their mind about this site since it offers almost no benefit now that the other two nearby sites are live.

4 hours ago, dkyeager said:

I will curious to see if esim support improves with the s22 models. In many cases in the US esim is iPhone only. Also hoping it does not lock to your phone put rather can be moved amount your devices like a physical sim.

Per /u/revik2 (a verified Sprint Corporate Employee) over on Reddit: 

Quote

eSIM activations are not supported for Samsung phones on the Sprint stack, just for select Pixels and iPhones. After your account is migrated to the T-Mobile billing system later down the line you would be able to activate that Samsung with a T-Mobile eSIM.

As for my opinions on the device so far. It seems like a solid incremental improvement over my Note20Ultra:

• The modem is clearly significantly better with my deivce showing a stronger signal and faster data speeds. These speeds get even a bit faster with n71/n41 aggregation . 

• WiFi6 performance is about 100Mbit faster (400-600 rather than 200-400).

• The display is notably snappier with QHD/120Hz

• I wasn't expecting much improvement on the camera but rather surprisingly, the new 100x zoom is actually really damn usable. 

• Edit: Another thing, the fingerprint reader is much much faster than on my old N20U. This is a HUGE improvent.

Just received my phone, time to start transferring everything and getting it setup.

2 hours ago, mdob07 said:

I've pre-ordered S22 ultras to replace both my T-Mobile and AT&T lines. I've had the tracking info for a week now and it's just been on label created status but today both have changed to in transit and both show delivery ETA of Monday. So if it holds true it looks like they may be shipping out early again! Original estimated delivery was Friday the 25th for both.

Same here!

Someone posted this over at Reddit, n41 small cell site plans for LA. Looks like they will be using the AIR 4435 for the B41/n41 portion.

https://epicla.lacounty.gov/energov_prod/SelfService/#/plan/2a27f8d0-790f-49b2-807d-dc7bfb935370?tab=attachments

2 hours ago, RedSpark said:

Some additional background on SoFi's Network Infrastructure and DAS: https://stadiumtechreport.com/editorial/cellular-carriers-bring-5g-blitz-to-sofi-stadium-for-super-bowl-lvi

Perhaps that explains Verizon's high usage numbers?

There are also some great insights on how usage is modeled/anticipated in this article. Definitely worth a read.

This is one of the first times I have seen them explicitly mentioning 24GHz deployment.

3 hours ago, chamb said:

I saw a comment somewhere that went as follows.   Any S-22 WILL be on the T-Mobile network.  Will NOT work with a Sprint network Sim.  It also mentioned that an UNLOCKED S-22 was not different than a T-Mobile S-22 as to needing to use a T-Mobile Sim.   Can not find that statement right now, so I can not verify just who put this out.

From what I understand, this has been true for a bunch of the 5G phones per the start of 2021H2 

3 hours ago, dkyeager said:

I have not found any good cellular specs on the s22 bands and CAs.  The later is where I expect the action is especially for AT&T.  Obviously will need to pull apart the s22 FCC certification tests along with s21 for comparison.  The x65 modem indicated 3 new bands more or less, but s22 could be slightly different.

n53	2483
n70	1700
n259	41000

 

T-mobile lists the bands as follows:

GSM: 850 MHz, 900 MHz, 1800 MHz, 1900 MHz; LTE: 2, 4, 5, 12, 46, 48, 66, 71; LTE Roaming: 1, 3, 7, 8, 13, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 38, 39, 40, 41; UMTS: Band I (2100), Band II (1900), Band IV (1700/2100), Band V (850); 5G: n5, n25, n41, n66, n71, n260, n261

I have also heard that the bands you mention will roll out as a software update because they just got FCC approval. 

30 minutes ago, mdob07 said:

I've pre-ordered my s22 Ultra. I was surprised at the trade in value offered on my 2 year old S20 Ultra. 

Same here, I was quite surprised. The value for my N20U was double the Swappa value. 

Trade-in offers will not show until the device is paid off. My N20U is fully paid off and my offer for the S22U is $8ish per month.

Also, the tower at NE 116th in. Kirkland just got the full suite of upgrades. The addition of B71/n71 and n41 should dramatically improve coverage/performance in the Forbes Creek area. 

15 hours ago, falconhand said:

Would anyone happen to know if there are plans for new colocations or new build sites in Silverdale, WA? I was reviewing previous permits to try and determine why performance at the mall, Costco, etc is so incredibly poor, and noticed that when T-Mobile upgraded their site there with 71 and 41, they strongly deemphasized the heavy load areas around the mall and other stores (Photo attached). This change in azimuth would lead me to speculate that they plan a new site to be built, so I was wondering if this was an accurate assumption or if it’s just one of T-Mobile’s questionable decisions. Thank you!

 

 

 

That's a great question, hopefully Rev can chime in. 

Also, the permit for the Motel 6 in Totem Lake just got approved last week. Looks like they are pushing ahead with the full B2/B12/B41/N41/B66/B71/N71 upgrade: http://permits.kirklandwa.gov/WebDocs/2020121224/1d9365f9-f6c7-4c3d-9e87-8e14d89ef198.pdf

Interesting that this one has no mention of n2 or n66 in the configuration frequency map. 

5 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Fiercewireless was just saying neither Verizon or AT&T has a standalone core, but were waiting for C band iirc.  Your report is likely a first.

Huh, interesting. Never expected to be a first in something like that. Someone in Michigan mapped a bunch of n78 but nothing else. I guess I'm the first showing they are at least broadcasting n2/n5/n66-SA, even if you can't fully connect to it.

4 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

Just saw them! Went ahead and located the ones you mapped.

I also confirmed that AT&T is using 1024 cells per site. 

You were damn fast, I had just got home and went to go map them and boom they were almost all done. 

22 hours ago, RAvirani said:

Excited to see if AT&T SA NR data will upload now!

Yep it does!

15 hours ago, mdob07 said:

Still nothing out for my T-Mobile S20+. It's still says its up to day with the Nov 1st update. 

That's so strange, the N20U got it a week or so ago. 

Not sure if this is on your list but someone at /r/CellMapper indicated the tower at 2080 1st Avenue NY NY 10029 is gig+

https://www.reddit.com/r/cellmapper/comments/s8poyo/n41_speeds_at_home_and_no_ca_isnt_on_not_bad_for/?sort=confidence

1 hour ago, RAvirani said:

Excited to see if AT&T SA NR data will upload now!

I'll try to get some readings tomorrow when I go get my COVID test. Been working from home due to an exposure. 

16 hours ago, mikejeep said:

The latest SCP version is almost done working its way through beta testing, and a full release might be ready next week.

In the meantime, I'd appreciate it if users could take a moment and 'star' this Android bug that directly impacts the reliability of 5G-NR info that SignalCheck (and similar apps) tries to display. It only takes a moment, and helps prioritize what gets looked at by Android engineers.. thanks!

https://issuetracker.google.com/issues/215232946

Seems to have worked, the bug just got upgraded from P3 priority to P1 (the second highest priority).

Per Google, a P1 bug is defined as follows:

"An issue that needs to be addressed quickly. Such an issue significantly impacts a large percentage of users; if there is a workaround it is partial or overly painful. The impact of the issue is to a core organizational function, or fundamentally impedes another team."

5 minutes ago, clbowens said:

I think it's because they have finally deployed it in your area.  We've had T-Mobile B41/N41 for a while.

Maybe I didn't explained, we have had B41/n41 for quite a while a well. That being said, my phone would almost never connect to B41 instead preferring B2 or B66. Just in the past couple of days, B41 appears to now have a priority much closer to B2 and B66.