Sick of only having EDGE

**TWX** · 04-25-2012, 08:42 AM

Originally Posted by justinkk2005

That's exactly how it happened to us, man. I would say summer just like with us. The first day of summer is when it went live a little bit after lunch time. I remember being on safari and my page loaded instantly, I was like... wait? What? Another page loaded instantly.. I looked up and there it was.

When it does go live, you'll be satisfied. It's really quick and reliable. I've not had a problem out of it in the year they've had it here. We don't have enhanced backhaul or anything as they call it, but it's decent speeds.

They told us September 30th after they missed the May deadline and then it went live in June, I wouldn't bank on that July date.

I hope so. I haven't been seeing any work done to any of the AT&T cell sites around here (which needs to be done, all the old legacy Cellular One sites have OLD GSM antennas). They need to be switched out for UMTS/HSPA+ antennas. You'd think if they were going to turn 3G on by June or July, I'd see work being done to some of the cell sites right now.

**TWX** · 04-25-2012, 07:49 PM

Well EDGE data hasn't even worked at home for the past 3 days now. Speed tests won't even load now and web pages just time out. I also cannot send MMS messages anymore either.

**wilbou** · 05-04-2012, 10:09 AM

I go to school in Galesburg, Illinois at Knox College. Galesburg has around 35,000 people and has two exits off of I74. I'm originally from Chicagoland and the faux-g is stellar on my atrix 2 when I'm home, but I'm stuck on edge here. It's sandwiched between the Quad Cities 3G and Peoria's 4G. My phone reads 4G literally 20-30 minutes in either direction on I74. I commiserate with everyone else stuck on edge too. It's a damn shame to see a nice phone stunted.

I've scoured howardforums and general google searches in hopes of finding an upgrade timeline but to no avail. So I called CS today and they said there will be three new towers in my area come 2013. Should I believe them? And why do you guys think west-central Illinois has been so neglected service wise? US Cellular just announced 4G LTE by the end of the year here and both Verizon and Sprint have 3G. T-Mobile and ATT are just left looking like fools. Oh well.

**Jordan T** · 05-04-2012, 01:55 PM

Originally Posted by TWX

I hope so. I haven't been seeing any work done to any of the AT&T cell sites around here (which needs to be done, all the old legacy Cellular One sites have OLD GSM antennas). They need to be switched out for UMTS/HSPA+ antennas. You'd think if they were going to turn 3G on by June or July, I'd see work being done to some of the cell sites right now.

There's no such thing, the antennas don't know what technology is on them. No work needs to be done to the antennas to upgrade the technology.

**TWX** · 05-04-2012, 02:09 PM

Originally Posted by Mark Uhde

There's no such thing, the antennas don't know what technology is on them. No work needs to be done to the antennas to upgrade the technology.

Correct, but around my area AT&T has many omni/bogner style antenna sites and the AT&T tower tech said that those will be replaced before 3G goes live here. So far, none of those have been replaced with a sectorized array.

**ggore** · 05-04-2012, 02:44 PM

AT&T put up a set of those bogner-style antennas on their tower 12 miles from here 3 years ago. I don't know if they can be used for 3G/UMTS or not, maybe someone can enlighten me. I was hoping they were getting close to upgrading to 3G when they put them up since that's a 500 ft tower that has been around since the days of analog cellphones, but nothing has changed since then, despite all the promises.

**TWX** · 05-04-2012, 03:55 PM

Originally Posted by ggore

AT&T put up a set of those bogner-style antennas on their tower 12 miles from here 3 years ago. I don't know if they can be used for 3G/UMTS or not, maybe someone can enlighten me. I was hoping they were getting close to upgrading to 3G when they put them up since that's a 500 ft tower that has been around since the days of analog cellphones, but nothing has changed since then, despite all the promises.

I think they want to use sectorized setups around here because they work better than omni's if the network gets loaded. All the omni EDGE sites around here have terrible EDGE speeds, like between 10Kpbs to 30 Kpbs down and 1Kbps to 30 Kpbs up. I get those speeds even when I do test around 11PM through 2AM. The sectorized sites always get better speeds for some reason.

**wilbou** · 05-04-2012, 04:39 PM

Please excuse the uniformed nature of this question, but does anyone know if they've ever set a date (year?) to move off of edge completely and totally? I know i'm beating a dead house, but its awful...

**Jordan T** · 05-04-2012, 04:41 PM

ggore, yes, they can be, the thing is sector antennas have better range (higher gain) AND, more importantly, divide the cell site on to three separate radios (which vastly increases capacity - though doesn't triple capacity since the sectors do overlap and in a soft-handoff environment, if you're visible in two sectors you're using capacity in both)

**ggore** · 05-04-2012, 09:09 PM

Cool, thanks for the info. Those antennas are on a lot of AT&T's sites around here, and most are fairly new, 2-4 years old.

**Wireless Junkie** · 05-04-2012, 09:58 PM

Originally Posted by Mark Uhde

ggore, yes, they can be, the thing is sector antennas have better range (higher gain) AND, more importantly, divide the cell site on to three separate radios (which vastly increases capacity - though doesn't triple capacity since the sectors do overlap and in a soft-handoff environment, if you're visible in two sectors you're using capacity in both)

Omni's have a bigger potential for well omnidirectional coverage, especially in rural area's vs. their sectored counterparts which is why they are used in rural area's more often than urban.

**Wireless Junkie** · 05-04-2012, 09:59 PM

Originally Posted by Mark Uhde

There's no such thing, the antennas don't know what technology is on them. No work needs to be done to the antennas to upgrade the technology.

Newer Antenna's know have the capability of working for a specific technology, especially with MIMO and beam forming smart antenna's.

**Jordan T** · 05-04-2012, 10:23 PM

Person of many names:

1. MIMO antennas (dual-stream) STILL aren't tech specific, the same antennas apply regardless of what the MIMO technology is. Determined only by number of radio chains.

2. Sectors will always have better coverage, due to the higher gain. You're using three radios instead of one. However, an omni will have a more even footprint (three sectors will have peaks and nulls). Usually that's a who cares deal. Heck, that's why so many towers have TWO 120 degree sectors, aimed up and down the highway. the sides don't matter at all.

**Wireless Junkie** · 05-04-2012, 10:45 PM

Originally Posted by Mark Uhde

Person of many names:

1. MIMO antennas (dual-stream) STILL aren't tech specific, the same antennas apply regardless of what the MIMO technology is. Determined only by number of radio chains.

2. Sectors will always have better coverage, due to the higher gain. You're using three radios instead of one. However, an omni will have a more even footprint (three sectors will have peaks and nulls). Usually that's a who cares deal. Heck, that's why so many towers have TWO 120 degree sectors, aimed up and down the highway. the sides don't matter at all.

Person of so much knowledge

:

There ARE antenna's that exist that are specifically for a certain technology....

And Omni's do cover a larger area, higher gain means nothing if you have consistent gaps across the coverage footprint of that cell site. With Omni's, there are significant tradeoffs in capacity for coverage.

**Jordan T** · 05-04-2012, 11:45 PM

1. Show me one. Please. Just one. Antennas are just that, antennas, they don't know what the radio signal going through them is. Even antenna arrays for MIMO aren't tech specific really. For example, an AWS MIMO antenna array could be used for T-Mobile HSPA+ 84 or for AT&T LTE. Heck, it COULD even be used for non-MIMO (using just one antenna in it). Even beam-forming "smart" antennas, while they may be a unit designed for a specific technology, the antenna elements are, in fact, not. They're all just radio waves.

2. Gain means a LOT. A 3-sector site will cover more area than an omni. Plain and simple. The question is - WHAT area is covered? A high gain omni will have a fairly even flat "pancake" of coverage. Sectors shoot off something more like a cone shape of coverage - that includes more power getting lost to the sky and the ground. The coverage, all else being equal (same transmit power, receive sensitivity, etc - i.e. same radios turned up all the way) will be the same from EACH of the three sectors as from the single omni, just spread out differently. Now, accounting for overlap, and more signal lost to the ground and sky, the omni may well cover a larger TOTAL *land area* than the sectorized site. BUT - the pattern will be very different. Two sectors shooting up and down the road are much more useful than an omni throwing a ton of power off to the unpopulated sides of the mountain/valley/abandoned flatlands.

That's why you don't see omni's very often. They're not that useful. The flat round pancake of coverage wastes power covering places that don't need it in rural environments, and lower power, smaller sectors provide maximum capacity in urban environments.

The benefit to a single omni is one radio on the site. Dirt cheap. Poor capacity, poor coverage, but cheap.