Three mast upgrade 4G

[kommando828]

The local Three 4G mast has been under maintenance and upgrade notices for most of the last fortnight working only overnight. Have been relying on my Voda router for this period of time so having 2 4G routers feeding a dual wan router has worked as planned. At 20mb down 20mb up the Voda has coped with all that was needed if large downloads were scheduled for overnight.

Starting on Friday after 6 pm the Three mast finally came back on line, status is still showing as taking load from other local masts that are down but I thought I would try and see what has changed using the B715 Cat9 router and LTE Monitor.

Well the downloads are vastly improved from 50mb to 130mb when I select Band 3 and Band 32, I also get 70mb when I select Band 3 and Band 1. When I select Band 3, 20 and 32 I get 130mb but no 4G++ only 4G+ and 70mb for Band 1, 3 and 20 with 4g+ again.

So it looks like the mast is now got 4 bands but still only 2CA enabled, but that will be fine as the only option that would make 3CA give better speeds would be Band 1,3 and 32 which the B715 does not cover.

So its looks like the mast now if configured as 2CA 2x2 MIMO

LTE Band Channel Width Status

B1 (2100 MHz) 10 MHz Active

B3 (1800 MHz) 15 MHz Active

B20 (800 MHz) 5 MHz Active

B32 (1500 MHz Suppl. Dl only) 20 MHz Active

will see if on Monday the mast goes down again for more work. The band 32 is a game changer, anything else is just a cherry on top. I am 7km away and in a rural area with no FTTP currently, the alternative is ADSL2 at rain dependant 10mb or FTTC at 2mb (why bother even offering this ?)

With the dual wan in operation my top speed over the weekend was 155mb down 30mb up, that's Three and Voda in line balance.

 

[GavinAshford]

Nice!
B32 is definitely a highlight - while the number of devices that can utilise bit are low that is - I've seen people get 99% of the B32 capacity allocated to them so the uplift is high. When there are more devices out there that can utilise it, I'd expect some depression of those speeds though.

I would think that the mast is 3CA enabled and I think your post highlights it: 3+1=70, 3+1+20=90?

As for MIMO, it's virtually impossible to say without seeing NSG info and/or photos of the panels and their connections - at your distance though I doubt Rank 3 or 4 would be possible anyway (so Rank 2 could perhaps be the max you'd get)

Edit: can you share the eNB ID/CellID?

 

[kommando828]

My mistake on the 90mb, forgot to take the 20mb voda off, have edited the post. Mast is eNB ID 8032 lte at Mauchline.

 

[GavinAshford]

Having just looked it up - I didn't realise the B715 can only do 2x2 MIMO. So the site upgrade could have introduced 4x4 but the router can't make use of it anyway.

The router is also not 256QAM DL or 64 QAM UL capable either, both of which are likely to have been added/enabled with the upgrade works.

You could well find there is more capacity on the table which you're not able to tap into with your B715.

 

[kommando828]

My spec sheet has the B715 as 4x4 mimo, but whatever it is it's staying as I get FTTP in a year so no point in upgrading.

Huawei B715s-23c spec Archives – 4G LTE Mall

 

[GavinAshford]

My spec sheet has the B715 as 4x4 mimo, but whatever it is it's staying as I get FTTP in a year so no point in upgrading.

Huawei B715s-23c spec Archives – 4G LTE Mall

LTE mall has been known to be wrong before, and I think it is here too.

Cacombos (who usually extract the data direct from the device, to get what the hardware is capable of, and don't trust spec sheets) suggests it's not.

Huawei B715-23C (B715-23C) | 4G/5G Bands & Combos

4G & 5G Bands, Carrier Aggregation and Dual Connectivity Combinations for Huawei B715-23C (B715-23C)

cacombos.com

 

[kommando828]

Looks like the chip is 4x4 capable as one of the modems it's used in does 4x4 but that modem only does 2CA, so maybe in the B715 it sacrifices 4x4 to be able to do 3CA which needs 2x2x2.

 

[SmartyBroadband]

Nice!
B32 is definitely a highlight - while the number of devices that can utilise bit are low that is - I've seen people get 99% of the B32 capacity allocated to them so the uplift is high. When there are more devices out there that can utilise it, I'd expect some depression of those speeds though.

From what it sounds like (not being an expert), NSA '5G' is basically SDL anyway!?

So getting an extra 20Mhz carrier of capacity from an SDL would probably give as much uplift as so called '5G' in many cases I would think.

 

[kommando828]

No Band 32 this morning

Its a shared EE/Three mast, EE have texted a 15 hr outage, so work is ongoing. Although Three report normal service when EE report an outage the Three service suffers.

 

[GavinAshford]

From what it sounds like (not being an expert), NSA '5G' is basically SDL anyway!?

So getting an extra 20Mhz carrier of capacity from an SDL would probably give as much uplift as so called '5G' in many cases I would think.

NSA can be thought of as an additional bearer used for Carrier Aggregation, with 4G being the anchor, however as data can be uploaded over the NSA 5G bearer it can't really be thought of as an SDL band.

 

[Buggerlugz]

Can you use band 32 on 4G if your router supports it?

 

[GavinAshford]

Yes, though it depends what CA combinations are developed in the hardware. Commonly it's B20+32 (as the B535 has) as they are both low frequency bands and therefore easier (read: cheaper) to design/develop into the hardware, however that won't be great for upload speeds with Three since it'll be limited to the B20 upload capacity (12.5Mbps)

 

[kommando828]

Band 32 is back after the mast signal was off for 4 mins just after noon. Just hope the engineers have really finished this time and leave

 

[kommando828]

Been testing for a week now, the bright sunny weather ending plus the under maintenance neighbouring masts all being turned back on hit the SNIR and the RSRP back to winter values from Tuesday onwards. The only way to get Band 3 and band 32 4G+ was to reset the radio using LTE Monitor, leave it 5 mins and it was stuck on 4G, swapping to Band 1 instead of 32 was worse with its signal not travelling so far. What has worked in doing Band 20 and Band 32, the signal figures are much improved and download speeds are like Band 3 and Band 1 back before the signal figures dropped. So better than Band 3 alone once the 4G+ kicks in and more stable as band 20 is much better at long ranges.

 

[IgNG]

Three's 'soon' is still yet to happen on my local mast for 5G upgrade, not that anybody but me is bothered. Like to know how you find out about what aerial config a phone has, 2+2, 4+4 etc. On GSMA the OnePlus 8 Pro can do 7.5Gbps yet the Xiaomi 10T Pro can only do 2+Gbps, must be the arials? Lastly, can a phone be changed from NSA to SA by a software update?

 

[IgNG]

Another trip to the 3 shop this afto, see if I get a different shelf stacker. Still no 5G here, but the Xiaomi 11 (plain) looks interesting but it's £750, gulp.

Edit, 3 shop dead loss as expected. Not allowed to touch phones so can't switch them on to see display etc. Used to get advanced info for new masts etc but not now. Might as well close 3 shops down.