Greatly Reduced 5GUW (C band)

[JoeNobodyX2019]

I just returned from a week of being out of state on vacation. Upon returning, I have noticed that the 5GUW indicator doesn’t appear on my phone anywhere remotely close to the way it did before I left. It used to be on in my area way more often than not. Now it is in way more not than often. I especially see this on CarPlay when driving around. Most of the time now, it just shows just regular 5G or LTE, whereas 5GUW was consistent before I left (and the area I traveled to is LTE only, so I can’t pinpoint an exact date on when this began).

I am in one of the counties in the Indianapolis market, where C band was enabled back in January. In my area, that is the only form of ultra wideband available.

The only thing that has changed in that time is that there are suddenly a lot more leaves on the trees. Can that cause greatly reduced coverage. My iPhone 12 is set to “5G on” and I have reset and rebooted with no improvements.

Thoughts on this one? Thanks everyone!

[Hotmama2078]

I just returned from a week of being out of state on vacation. Upon returning, I have noticed that the 5GUW indicator doesn’t appear on my phone anywhere remotely close to the way it did before I left. It used to be on in my area way more often than not. Now it is in way more not than often. I especially see this on CarPlay when driving around. Most of the time now, it just shows just regular 5G or LTE, whereas 5GUW was consistent before I left (and the area I traveled to is LTE only, so I can’t pinpoint an exact date on when this began).

I am in one of the counties in the Indianapolis market, where C band was enabled back in January. In my area, that is the only form of ultra wideband available.

The only thing that has changed in that time is that there are suddenly a lot more leaves on the trees. Can that cause greatly reduced coverage. My iPhone 12 is set to “5G on” and I have reset and rebooted with no improvements.

Thoughts on this one? Thanks everyone!

Have you tried any troubleshooting steps like reset network settings etc?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[bcltoys]

I have had LTE home service for over a year now April 14 2021 we first got service as of May 1 2022 my service has become very choppy, unreliable having to restart unit 4 to 10 times a day speeds all over the place anywhere from 50mps down to less then 1 kbps it's starting to piss me off. Xfinity can't come fast enough.

[clonehappy]

The only thing that has changed in that time is that there are suddenly a lot more leaves on the trees. Can that cause greatly reduced coverage.

Yes.

I live in a heavily wooded area and during the summer months all you can pick up in my subdivision are low band signals from the carriers. Data service slows to a crawl for months until the leaves drop since everyone gets dropped down to B13 or B5.

Things then get OK for a few months as you can occasionally find B4 or B2 until we start the cycle over again. Higher frequencies are blocked by foliage easier than lower ones, and C-Band is well above any of the other bands at 3.7GHz.

It’s the same on all the carriers. Although AT&T has a site closer to the area and can punch a B2 signal through during most of the year outdoors. Just the laws of physics at work.


Sent from my iPhone using HoFo

[JoeNobodyX2019]

"Have you tried any troubleshooting steps like reset network settings etc?"

I have. That was the very first thing I did, aside from a simple reboot.

[JoeNobodyX2019]

I have had LTE home service for over a year now April 14 2021 we first got service as of May 1 2022 my service has become very choppy, unreliable having to restart unit 4 to 10 times a day speeds all over the place anywhere from 50mps down to less then 1 kbps it's starting to piss me off. Xfinity can't come fast enough.

Mine hasn't gone that far yet. The whole reason for my switching to Verizon 5G Home was to both consolidate/bundle and get away from AT&T (who I had for my home Internet) and Xfinity, who I once had years ago and swore that I would never go back to ever again, as well as to slash my monthly bills.

[JoeNobodyX2019]

Yes.

I live in a heavily wooded area and during the summer months all you can pick up in my subdivision are low band signals from the carriers. Data service slows to a crawl for months until the leaves drop since everyone gets dropped down to B13 or B5.

Things then get OK for a few months as you can occasionally find B4 or B2 until we start the cycle over again. Higher frequencies are blocked by foliage easier than lower ones, and C-Band is well above any of the other bands at 3.7GHz.

It’s the same on all the carriers. Although AT&T has a site closer to the area and can punch a B2 signal through during most of the year outdoors. Just the laws of physics at work.


Sent from my iPhone using HoFo

That doesn't sound encouraging! I was hoping that as they densify towers with 5GUW and (if I understood correctly), turned power up on existing locations this summer, that it might improve things... but what you mentioned also makes a lot of sense.

[brad15]

That doesn't sound encouraging! I was hoping that as they densify towers with 5GUW and (if I understood correctly), turned power up on existing locations this summer, that it might improve things... but what you mentioned also makes a lot of sense.

It could be they're simply prepping to bring more sites online and adjusting the current ones as well.

The service is steady in my neighborhood now, but there are weeks where I can tell they're adjusting power levels and bringing new sites online as it's just wonk and not showing up for a day here and there, then speeds tend to improve.

Give it a few days, as they're likely just tinkering.

[clonehappy]

That doesn't sound encouraging! I was hoping that as they densify towers with 5GUW and (if I understood correctly), turned power up on existing locations this summer, that it might improve things... but what you mentioned also makes a lot of sense.

Keep us posted, it will be nice to have more data points of the real world performance of C-Band. Hopefully it’s something just temporary and goes back to normal soon.

I don’t think it’s up on all sites in my area, and expect coverage to grow as time goes on.


Sent from my iPhone using HoFo

[techguru30]

5GUW C Band is very spotty and unreliable. I expect it will take a year or two before any noticeable improvements will happen in handoff and connection reliability.

[VVivian]

5GUW C Band is very spotty and unreliable. I expect it will take a year or two before any noticeable improvements will happen in handoff and connection reliability.

Yeah that's been my experience too, but I don't mind yet because my data service has remained usable even when 5G UW drops, presumably due to 5G UW boosting capacity near the site + the LTE bands getting extra backhaul and updated equipment.

I reiterate my view that the primary role of early mid/highband 5G is opportunistic offload. It's good enough for those frequency bands to grab as much traffic as they can for now. Eventually they will need to be ubiquitous because more advanced use cases require too much bandwidth to be feasible on anything less, but we aren't there yet.

[Checker79]

It could be they're simply prepping to bring more sites online and adjusting the current ones as well.

The service is steady in my neighborhood now, but there are weeks where I can tell they're adjusting power levels and bringing new sites online as it's just wonk and not showing up for a day here and there, then speeds tend to improve.

Give it a few days, as they're likely just tinkering.

This. The c band sites around me have been better optimized over the last few weeks . However there are some that they’ve been messing with the power due to other sites being worked on. Just growing pains of a new network

[VVivian]

How customizable is the beamforming of these n77 panels? I'm wondering whether the Verizon network engineers have also been having to manually tweak the beamforming settings to bring the propagation distance of 64T64R 3.7 GHz into parity with that of 4T4R 2.1 GHz.

[JSchnee21]

I just returned from a week of being out of state on vacation. Upon returning, I have noticed that the 5GUW indicator doesn’t appear on my phone anywhere remotely close to the way it did before I left. It used to be on in my area way more often than not. Now it is in way more not than often. I especially see this on CarPlay when driving around. Most of the time now, it just shows just regular 5G or LTE, whereas 5GUW was consistent before I left (and the area I traveled to is LTE only, so I can’t pinpoint an exact date on when this began).

I am in one of the counties in the Indianapolis market, where C band was enabled back in January. In my area, that is the only form of ultra wideband available.

The only thing that has changed in that time is that there are suddenly a lot more leaves on the trees. Can that cause greatly reduced coverage. My iPhone 12 is set to “5G on” and I have reset and rebooted with no improvements.

Thoughts on this one? Thanks everyone!

Did you upgrade to iOS 15.5? Since I did, I find my 13PM displays 5GUW less often unless I’m running a speed test, downloading, etc.

Probably a new power saving “feature.”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[brad15]

Did you upgrade to iOS 15.5? Since I did, I find my 13PM displays 5GUW less often unless I’m running a speed test, downloading, etc.

Probably a new power saving “feature.”


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

That's in Settings > Cellular

5G On will leave it connected, even if you're not doing data intensive tasks (more battery use)

5G Auto will disconnect mid-band 5G unless you actually need it.