10Mhz should only support 50 RBs per carrier, and AFAIK the S7 has an obnoxious way of displaying only the RB counts from one carrier, not both
@Bob Sitting on top of a tower isn't the best place, because it's also the one place you'll be receiving the most interference from the other sectors on the same tower.
Right in the crossover between two sectors is also a pretty bad place
The only time I've seen SINR's below 10dB is a) in the sector crossover areas, and b) in mast crossover areas. Particularly areas surrounded by five masts on every side, but the one right in the middle isn't 4G enabled yet
(Oh back to the point of the Cat 4 TP-Stink device and LTE-A: While CA is the headline feature of LTE-A, you can technically get LTE-A devices that use other LTE-A functions aside from CA. Bit like 802.11n devices that don't always implement 40Mhz or dual band or MIMO, but are still 802.11n protocol compliant)
You'd be surprised how un-permeable regular glass windows are to RF :-P
Based on your limited info I suspect your poor SNR is part of what gives the crappy speeds
CA in itself doesn't add speed, but it makes it easier to balance capacity across bands.
On a congested network with an ideally balanced network it wouldn't actually make any difference. But in practice, it's impossible to ideally balance non-CA devices across multiple bands.
That's one problem with my other network, O2. They got the least LTE bandwidth in the spectrum auctions, only 10Mhz in total, while every other network got at least 20-60
So they've turned off 2G1800 and used the 5Mhz of bandwidth they had there for 4G instead. But you can't move phones from the 10Mhz band to the 5Mhz band, so only CA devices are able to make use of that additional 5Mhz
(Whereas the other networks that have 2x20Mhz, can allocate non-CA devices to either band, according to load, O2 has to put everyone on the 10Mhz regardless of how much spare capacity there is on the 5Mhz)
> Telstra indicates it will roll-out out 900MHz LTE in mid 2013 to increase coverage depth. This will be a re-farm of 2G 900 spectrum. A 5MHz bandwidth LTE carrier is the most likely solution. Ref. It will deploy 900/1800 carrier aggregation.
> In September 2014, Telstra dropped 900MHz LTE for carrier aggregation. Telstra is planning instead to use 700MHz LTE in order to provide higher data rates (up to 300 Mbps). Ref.
Yeah, we have two networks with 5Mhz LTE800 used primarily for extended coverage and VoLTE. Phones are kept on the primary 15/20Mhz LTE1800 bands, and only switch to 800 when coverage runs out.
@oldmud0 You (http://superuser.com/users/102283/jared) have 71 reputation, earned 0 rep today, asked 2 questions, gave 0 answers, for a q:a ratio of TO͇̹̺ͅƝ̴ȳ̳ TH̘Ë͖́̉ ͠P̯͍̭O̚N̐Y̡. avg. rep/post: 35.5. Badges: 0g 0s 3b
> The 2300 MHz Band 40 Optus spectrum was obtained courtesy of the Vivid Wireless acquisition. It provides up to 98MHz bandwidth in Perth, Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra and Adelaide. Canberra may be one of the first 2300 4G locales with a 3 x 20Mhz channel roll-out, sometime in 2013. It is called 4G Plus by Optus.
> The Vodafone 1800MHz FDD-LTE service currently supports up to 20MHz of duplex bandwidth.
The Vodafone 850MHz FDD-LTE service currently supports up to 10MHz of duplex bandwidth. Vodafone is also refarming 2100MHz at some sites for use with LTE.
That's the one I was testing just then on my phone.
I was getting a 10MHz band on B3 and another on B5
T-Mobile is perhaps the most ambitious of the carriers but you need a modern device to take full advantage of it. They're shaking off their reputation for poor coverage, but you will still get subpar coverage unless your device is certified to use Band 12. Where you can get service, T-Mobile tends to be the fastest of the networks.
Verizon has the best coverage overall but is expensive. Verizon also has had congestion issues in densely populated areas like Manhattan.
AT&T is a compromise between the two. A bit cheaper than Verizon with solid coverage and good speeds all around.
@Bob: Except in dodgy overlap areas all my SINR readings are above 10, mostly 15-25, so your crappy performance seems likely to be down to the very poor SINR in your area
Either you're right in the middle of two masts, or two sectors, or your operator is just really really shitty at spectrum management
> Supporting LTE Category 12 download speeds of up to 600 Mbps, and LTE Category 13 uplink speeds of up to 150 Mbps, the Snapdragon 820 processor with X12 LTE supports 33% faster peak download speeds, and triple the peak upload speeds of Snapdragon 810 processor with X10 LTE.
Your RSSI shows that you're basically right in the middle of two or more masts (or two sectors on the same mast, considering the crap SNR on the other bands too).
With -97dB RSRP your RSSI should be about -72 to -77dB if that mast was the only one being received. Anything above that is interference from neighbouring cells
In your case, -62dB means over 90% of the received signal is noise/interference. No wonder your speeds are shit
Also I wonder what your timing advance is, any idea what your distance is to your nearest mast?
(You can read that off the S7 as well, with a third-party app, first phone I've had that shows it!)
Right, so there's node 26435, showing the fairly obvious 3x120 sector configuration and the fairly obvious purple lines showing the boundary/switchover angles
Now if I switch it to show RSRQ (decent proxy for SINR, because the SINR colours on that webapp are useless), you can see the yellow/orange areas (bad) vs. the green areas (good)
And you can see that right between where the sectors cross over is where you get really shitty signal quality.
Suppose it helps if the legend is actually visible
Also note how the SINR is above 10 just about everywhere, except right up close next to the mast, and dips below 10 just a tiny bit where the sectors cross
It's actually 20-27 in most places. I have no idea why the scale splits at 5/10/45, since most phones find it impossible to measure above 30.
From first principles, the RSRP is the measurement of signal power received on each pilot/carrier signal.
With 100 subcarriers and like, 2 pilot signals (wild guesses, those are the numbers in princple though) the ratio of pilot signal to all signals across 20Mhz is something like 26dB
@Bob Yeah those crowdsourced mast databases can be wildly inaccurate. I'd like to see what your phone reports as actual round trip time, that's accurate to a few metres or so.
It's a bit sloppy and bloated but it's the least sloppy and bloated of the ones I've tried
The "Raw" tab should give you your serving cell TA readings
P.S. If you really want to dive into detail you could do a circle around where you think the mast is with a network logger on, so you can draw up maps like the ones in my pictures.
Basically the feedback metric the phone uses to tell the transmitter how good the signal is its receiving, so the transmitter can adjust the transmission rate and MCS appropriately
I like to know for sure though, hence I map out all the masts myself, and cross-correlate with the government mast databases and operator's own databases :-P
@Dog (cc @Bob): I have nothing against you and I am very sorry for having persecuted you (yes, I admit wrongdoing). I am actively shifting towards a lighter approach to moderation which should mean that this will never happen again.
I'll admit I'm not too familiar with the CQI/MCS/coding rate allocation side of things, but from those two tables I'd guess a CQI of 2 means you'll get at most 1/8th of the maximum speeds compared to ideal conditions
Ah nice, equivalent of the official government/regulator database we have here (Sitefinder) that I've used. Except our Sitefinder DB hasn't been updated in six years
> OzTowers data indicates that tower X has Y but my phone suggests it clearly does not. Why?
This data may never have been intended for public use and should only be used as a guide. Anything that was recently activated may not yet be available to the general public and may still be in a testing phase. It does however give you a good indication of what should be available in the very near future. For specific questions on towers, please contact your local representative for the respective provider.
@Dog: You've stated that I'm ignored for a reason. Can you please tell me what that reason is? I wouldn't be able to address it without knowing what's wrong.
okay. Perhaps we can set up a private chat room where we can safely discuss any points in dispute between @Dog and me? Perhaps the ROs here could act as arbitrators... (@JourneymanGeek)
@Bob I tend to find any network that makes such claims have to do so because many people find their coverage and speed to be appalling when actually needed.
Our "Biggest and fastest 4G+ network" can hit 150Mbps when out on the motorway but whenever I'm actually trying to use it getting more than 10Mbps is a chore.
I still need to learn to relax and take it easy. I don't have a definite timeline for when I can roll out the entire fix (if you know what I mean), but it's a constant work in progress.