It’s not a stupid move at all. Verizon is also losing it’s hold as the most
reliable network. It definitely was in 2013 when I helped design the next
phase of their network but T-Mobile has been spending money like a drunken
sailor on their expansion. The 700 MHZ band 12 and up coming 600 MHZ spectrum
+ the carrier aggregation they are activating is absolutely kick ass and rock
solid reliable. The new iPhone 6S and 6S+ on their network is just unreal and
when it comes to speed T-Mobile crushes verizon. That’s kind of sad for me
because I helped VZW deploy parts of the XLTE deployment which gave them the
speed edge for a while but T-Mobile combining the higher frequencies with the
lower band and carrier aggregation just rocks. We’re talking 100 megabits
reliably and not just in the city centers any more. It not only rocks but it’s
business grade with the meshing they are doing. So verizon and AT&T are under
assault now by T-Mobile who surpassed Sprint last year. You can also thank
T-Mo for a lot of the downward pricing pressure across all the carriers.
As far as Micro cells go and them being stupid, it’s actually a brilliant move
and it’s 1 all 4 carriers are undertaking on both the consumer and business
level.
If you do any reading about the path to 5G you’ll see other’s a lot
mentioned about small cells used to provide faster service and larger cell
sites providing slower but wider area signals. T-Mobile has a very good idea
here to start down this path.
First, people in low signal areas will buy these units. They default
to being open (they can be locked down) but out of the box they will provide
service to anyone with a T-Mobile phone with in 3000 feet or so of the unit
depending of course on geography, building materials and all the usual factors
that effect microwaves and lower ultra high frequency bands. So let’s imagine
you ship a bunch of these. They start activating in not only rural areas but
apartments, subdivisions, small businesses, restaurants, anywhere there’s a low
signal and you start to get the point. A practical example of this is Sprint
back in the 1XRTT days. Both Sprint and Verizon offered 2G models that
supplied voice only. Sprint used these heavily to augment their network and
like T-Mobile would give you one for free. Sprint has since lost the network
race and has a failed migration to early 4G under it’s belt as well as a
current bad strategy but at one point they really had a good thing going and
they used devices like this to augment.
All 4 carriers do this now but you’re right the only LTE device I’ve
seen so far is the T-Mobile version available to consumers. Verizon has one in
the works, I configured the routers for the femtocell head end back in 2013 so
I would expect to see this offered probably next year. AT&t has had one in the
works but I am not familiar with their product release scheduling or where they
are in testing.
Add to this larger in building systems you see in cities. My building
has one because there are over 10,000 employees in a single building and it
makes sense for the carrier or carriers to pull fiber right to the building and
put the traffic right on their network instead of having an extra 10K subs on
the public towers out on the street. Another good example of t his is the
antenna array at AT&T park in San Francisco. AT&T had WiFi access points on
each isle of seating, antenna arrays on the score board and micro cells all
over the park. I have seen network stats that have showed over 400,000 phones
registered to that facility at one time during a busy period like rush hour
when a game is in town and a large convention. During the world series in 2010
I recorded over 1.1 million phones registered to the head end that covered that
area. That’s all traffic that’s not switched on the public network. T-Mobile
has lit up most of the stadiums and has peppered places like New York City with
only slightly larger versions of these devices. In a city like New York
imagine a huge high rise apartment complex with a few of these on each floor
that folks like you and I install. They locate each other as well as
surrounding towers and create a mesh that will service near by phones. It’s
good performance for all and it’s very distributed.
I hope that clears up a bit more about why these are valuable devices.
> On Nov 6, 2015, at 7:47 PM, Daniel Miller <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> You know, I was thinking that same thing. It was a stupid move for them to
> launch such a device IMO if people have wifi, not to mention that device
> probably needs a wifi network to function anyway.
> AT&T has a similar product, but there’s is stuck in the early 2000s, with
> only 3G support and not LTE. I’m so glad I switched to Verizon, even without
> wifi calling they’re a much better network IMO.
>
>> On Nov 6, 2015, at 6:25 PM, gs <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> I just switched to TMobile last weekend. I don't understand why this makes
>> such a difference if you have Wifi. Doesn't the TMobile Wifi calling kind
>> ofput an end for such a need for cell service? I understand that it would be
>> only for those who have good Internet service. But what am I missing?
>>
>> On Nov 2, 2015, at 11:29 AM, Dan <[email protected]> wrote:
>>
>> Hello,
>> We got this cel booster about 2 months ago and We love it. We have 3 phones
>> on our account and we get usually around -69 DB or around 4 Bars, if you
>> will. Between the devices, the coverage is fantastic.
>> So you have 2 units. 1 unit goes near a window where the best available
>> signal is found and the other unit is placed somewhere in your home to get
>> complete coverage.
>> The only thing is that you need a sighted person to read the displays to
>> determine where the best placement is.
>> But once you have them in place, that's the end of it and you don't ever
>> need to be concerned any more about how the units are working.
>> The units are identical in looks so you have to make sure that the units are
>> placed accordingly.
>>
>> Dan
>>
>>> On Nov 2, 2015, at 8:21 AM, Scott Granados <[email protected]> wrote:
>>>
>>> T-Mobile finally offers a micro cell tower that you can attach to your home
>>> network. Unlike other carriers this supports the full 4G LTE feature set
>>> and is free to customers. Read more here.
>>>
>>> http://9to5mac.com/2015/11/02/t-mobile-4g-lte-cellspot/rf
>>>
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