PedroDaGr8

There is only one N41 site in Snohomish - that's funny.

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1 minute ago, RAvirani said:

Is that the tower off 405 in Canyon Park?

Yes! How the hell did you get that from the limited info I gave? I'm impressed!

I don't know if it is live or not because I don't have a 5G phone but the Park & Ride location is still broadcasting B41 on all three carriers. 

I think I spotted a Nokia N41 panel on a tower which hosts T-Mob, ATT, and Verizon. Sprint is nearby in a much worse location on a building, so it makes sense that T-Mob would prefer this tower.



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I think I spotted my first N41 MMIMO panel on the Eastside.

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Most sites are just listed as antenna upgrades so as to keep fees down and in most cases no permit is required because they are simply replacing like for like. This not only keeps pricing down, but speeds up processes with less paperwork/hoops to jump through

Wait, so what's the difference between T-Mobile's 2.5GHz 5G and Sprint's 2.5GHz 5G, that causes older 5G phones that could connect to Sprint's implementation to not be able to connect to T-Mobile's? I figured it would just be a PLMN change or something (if that's even a thing with 5G).
 
Apologies at my lack of understanding of 5G. It's been awhile since I've been active on the forum and I'm going off my previous LTE knowledge. Feel free to link something that may help me understand better [emoji28]
 
-Anthony

Came across a strange small cell broadcasting on only low B41 EARCFNs. It's on top of the Overlake Sprint store in Redmond. At first I thought it was the tower right behind the store but that has the usual tri-band setup (which used to be on the Sears nearby). I nearly missed this antenna, it's a small white fully enclosed small sell. You have to be far from the sprint store to see it. It only has these two cells unlike the old clearwire sites.

Not the first time I've seen these EARFCNs, they seem to be used a lot in the Georgetown district.

Edit: Checking back, most of those in the Georgetown district are also small cells but at least one is on a regular tower. Not sure why the Georgetown district has so many of these.

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14 hours ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

That gives them 100-120Mhz for NR based on my estimates.


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Actually more than that since Sprint/T-Mobile controls the entire 2.5Ghz block (all 194Mhz) for the entire metro Seattle region. This allows them to use the J and K guard bands as well, since they control the blocks around them in their entirety. The K guard band (2614-2618) in particular was why the B41 20Mhz channels started at 2628MHz (until yesterday). As such, that would leave 130MHz for 5G communication if they wanted.

Relevant License Links:
B413 - TDI Acquisition Sub, LLC (shell company of Clearwire)
L000002361 - Clearwire Spectrum Holdings II (shell company of Clearwire)
L000007381 - Clearwire Spectrum Holdings III (shell company of Clearwire)
L000007382 - Clearwire Spectrum Holdings III (shell company of Clearwire)
L000007383 - Clearwire Spectrum Holdings III (shell company of Clearwire)
L000031135 - American Telecasting of Seattle - Sprint acquired this spectrum in 2018. 

The L2500 EARFCNs in the Seattle market were changed today. Before we had 40978/41176/41374; now we have 41094/41292/41490. I presume this is to make room for NR. 

On 6/2/2020 at 8:17 AM, twospirits said:

Haven't seen anything mentioned yesterday. But I'm curious about one thing though. If every device goes through the FCC, wouldn't there be a FCC document for the Sprint version. I checked and didn't see one. Unless you don't need to go through the FCC if it is just a T-Mobile V60 version with just a Sprint boot up screen logo.

I guess we'll find out June 12th.

TS out

Since the T-Mobile version already supports B25/B26/B41 as well as the usual T-Mobile bands including 5G, I imagine they didn't need to resubmit to the FCC. It wouldn't surprise me if they don't even switch out the boot screen.

8 minutes ago, clbowens said:

Is there somewhere that shows what all the antennas that T-Mobile uses looks like?

I looked through a bunch of permits and they use a variety of antennas over the years. The most common in recent years are the Commscope FFHH-65C-R3, Commscope SBNHH-1D65B, and Nokia AAFIA. Usually, the Comscope FFHH and Nokia AAFIA are used together. I included the ones I encountered in some quick searches below. I have also included links to pages or pdfs which show the antenna.

Commscope:
TMZXX-6516-A2M - 2 port: 1710-2155MHz (B2, B4, B66?)
HBXX-6517DS-A2M - 4 port: 1710-2180MHz (B2, B4, B66?)
SBNHH-1D65C - 6-port: 2x 698-896Mhz (B5, B12) and 1695-2360Mhz (B2, B4, B66)
FFHH-65C-R3 - 8-port: 4x 617-806Mhz (B12, B71) and 4x 1695-2460Mhz (B2, B4, B66)

Nokia:
AAFIA - 16T16R - B25 and B66 
 

On 5/30/2020 at 1:10 PM, jporter12 said:

Now that I've verified that the tower location was wrong, I moved it.  The coverage pattern for that tower on cellmapper makes much more sense now.

 

A quick hint, if your city has an online permit portal: If there are multiple towers in a small area, online permits are a great way to figure out exactly which tower is the for which company. I use that often to cross-check towers I believe are correct.

33 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

Hi all, I'm looking to purchase an Android for Cellmapper/logging purposes; accordingly, I was wondering if there are any cheap devices you guys recommended that work well with both SCP and Cellmapper. Thanks in advance!

You don't define cheap, but the LG v30 and v40 work well, can be rooted, and can be found for pretty cheap(<$100-150). As expected, the v30 is cheaper than the v40 and I can attest the v30 works very well. That being said, it lacks bands 28, 40, and 71 and has the drawback that Sprint never released Pie for it (the only vendor who didn't). This means some of the 9.0 bandwidth features are not available for SCP, that being said NSG is able to provide this data on 8.0. 

Sprint LG V30+ (LS998) LTE Bands:         1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 20, 25, 26, 41 

Sprint Lg V40 (LM-V405UA) LTE Bands: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 20, 25, 26, 28, 40, 41, 71

You can login to the web version and manually placed them (or move them if someone put it in the wrong place). Definitely worth doing once you're 100% certain of a site's location.

 

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You can move them in the app as by long pressing on the tower and dragging it to it's new location.

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I tooed my phone (LG V30+) this weekend and I noticed that the ##data# screen now shows "Enable All" instead of the weird letter salad which it showed previously. Not sure what this means exactly but at least now I can use NetworkSignalGuru. On that note, it confirmed what everyone else stated which was the B25 was 15x15. As for the other details, it appears to also be max  64QAMx64QAM and 2x2 MIMO which is pretty impressive because the numbers I was getting were near the theoretical limit for that combination (112.5/56.3 and I got 112/42.3).

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A couple of comments:

1. In the PNW, Sprint roaming on T-Mobile as Sprint still shows up as Clearwire B2, B4, B12

2. Not sure if you are tracking EARFCNs but  D/L EARFCN 8615 is B25 15x15 according to this post. 

30 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

That makes a lot more sense. We know that T-Mobile started activating higher order MIMO across Sprint's LTE network when they took over. 15x15 with 256/64QAM is absolutely capable of those speeds that they're seeing.

Yeah 15x15 sounds about right. 

Checking ##DATA#, my phone has 256WAM/64QAM enabled and 4x4 MIMO enable for both B25 and B41

Seems T-Mobile uncapped the u/l on B25. I have never encountered this level of u/l speeds on any band.

5Mhz B25 (256QAM, 4x4 MIMO maybe?)

D/L: EARFCN: 8615 (1987.5Mhz) - 112Mbps

U/L: EARFCN: 26615 (1907.5) - 42.3 Mbps

Previously, in this exact location, I would get

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I noticed on my phone that T-Mobile has reordered the band priority moving B41 from second to third. Previously it went B25->B41->B26; now it goes B25->B26->B41. This explains why I have been connecting to B26 a LOT more often than I used to. My guess is this is part of the preliminary steps to phase out B41. 

Mini macro:
https://imgur.com/C2ibfu6

2 hours ago, Yuhfhrh said:

Yeah. The 311 490 PLMN T-Mobile towers configured around me have opened access to all bands (some previously limited to B2 or B2/B4 only), but otherwise most T-Mobile towers are still only broadcasting 310 260 with no roaming access. Haven't seen any new 311 490.

I definitely have seen new towers.

My logs indicate four new 311 490 towers just on my 10-15 minute drive to work this morning. Considering this is a drive I do at least five days a week twice a day and all had at least one B4 sector, it is highly unlikely I just never encountered them before.

 

16 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Hurray!!!! I roamed on Band 4 today. The merger is real for me finally 😁. But then it went into Sprint 3G in the spot in the house that I had reliable if slower band 25. Maybe they are still configuring this area.

I have bounced around pretty heavily these past few days. This morning it was B4, B25, B26, and B41 all in the matter of 2 minutes while a couple days ago I even hopped on B12 and B2. 

It looks like TMobile TAC's rolled out here in the PNW or at least TMobile changed them. A local tower used to broadcast 23314, this morning it switched to 11334. This happens to be the TAC that TMobile was using for their B4 service for Sprint customers (which would show up as Clearwire B4 or Sprint B4 in SignalCheck).

6 hours ago, NEBRASKACHERS said:

This cellmapper app has a lot of issues with working then not working.

It seems they process data points in batch form. I can't imagine it is a very profitable endeavor. I upload regularly and sometimes the datapoints post after 24h and other times it can be almost a month before they post. 

They don't need a permit to swap from an 8T8R to a M-MIMO panel. That's why a lot of sites with KMW 16-port triband antennas have an inactive 8T8R next to them. 
Any chance you were able to snag some photos of the site? If not, the mast is relatively low, and you can probably get good photos from the parking lot of Cedar Park Christian School.