Alright, so j live down in southwest Florida south of ft myers. Sprint does not have the greatest signal here as compared to say Verizon, but I get by with it. My new house is in an almost dead zone, and texting while roaming down here does not seem to work down here. (I believe the tower it roams on mainly might be metropcs) I've been able to up with it si ply because sprint offered me a free airave. Anyways almost right by my house there is this monopole cell tower, with 4 carriers, I'm imagining AT&T, Verizon, metro, and I know for a fact the bottom is NEXTEL. Of course sprints not on this tower or another close by one, but starting yesterday. I noticed they had wires attached to the tower, and earlier in the day, men had been climbing up working on the tower. I'm really not sure which carrier they are doing work on, but I'm really hoping it's the NEXTEL antena. I'm not in a huge city, so I don't see AT&T or Verizon deploying 4g, and I don't believe AT&T needs to expand here, so I'm hoping they are adding sprint service! Yippee! I've seen men working as far up as near the top, but mostly near the bottom two carriers. So here's my question to everybody: how do I know which part of the tower they are doing work on and if this becomes a sprint synergy site, how long will it be before service would go live? It seems they are working on the NEXTEL panels, but I could be wrong, what does a Synergy site look like, and would the panels for sprint be placed behind the NEXTEL ones? Ill get a picture when I can. I'd really like to know thanks.
It certainly could be a Sprint overlay of CDMA to an iDEN array. If so they would be removing one iDEN panel per sector and replacing it with a CDMA panel. The CDMA panels look different than the iDEN panels so that should be an easy indicator. As for the time it takes it can be anywhere from 2 weeks to 6 months. It all depends on how easy things are for the install. I posted some examples of what a synergy site looks like here: http://gallery.wirelessadvisor.com/displayimage.php?imageid=5847&original=1&c=6 (upper array) http://gallery.wirelessadvisor.com/displayimage.php?imageid=6660&original=1&c=6 Another possibility could be a Clearwire WiMax installation.
I would highly doubt anything is a clearwire wimax install at this point since they pretty much abandoned wimax and the current network expansion
Unfortunately, I think I got a bit excited too soon. Darn. Sprint would deffinately not expand here yet anyways as for clear wire wimax. I never have really seen men do work on a tower around here before, you don't suppose they could actually leave and come back? The men had left after the third day I noticed them there. When I go by the tower again tomorrow I will check it out, although at this moment in time I have my doubts. It really frustrates me as well that even metro pcs has full reception in this area. NEXTEL has great coverage around here in Naples, and sprint could benefit from all of that. It's too hard to explain everything, so I'll see if I can get a picture tomorrow, thanks everybody, edit: would it make a big difference if this NEXTEL site only had 3 panels per sector from the start rather than 4?
Remember that eventually there will be no more iDEN so it is very likely that the coverage will soon be CDMA. Some Nextel sites only have 2 or 3 panels per sector so that's not unusual at all. Usually each Nextel site has one dummy (not being used) panel per sector and that's where they usually swap it out with a CDMA panel for a synergy site.
When is iden going to be fazed out? 2013? My coverage will be so much better when they do that. Before Verizon bought alltel I could roam just fine around here, but now I cannot send texts while roaming. Well I'll see what looks different on the tower later hopefully. Also this is about another tower, but it has three carriers, sprint top, NEXTEL, then an unknown carrier I uploaded it here a while ago: http://gallery.wirelessadvisor.com/showimage.php?i=5701&c=13 If you look carefully one of the NEXTEL panels is the exact same as the sprint panels above. Why would they do that? Lol sorry I have so many questions I'm a bit of a noob.
so i doubt its a synergy site, nextel panels look to be the same, but they added lots of wire leading up second to top panels. Reasonably im guessing this could be tmobile, not sure, whatever company it is, they must be doing a lot of work around here in naples, theres a monopole down by a firestation i pass occasionally, the put a new set of panels on the top array, along with replacing panels latcheed onto the pole to the default. They look like fat panels similar to nextel, but its only got 2 panels per sector. plus nextel wouldn't be adding towers 0.o
