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Mjrtom7's profile

Explorer

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25 Messages

Wednesday, September 19th, 2012 6:57 PM

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Will Northeast MI ever receive 3G?

I've heard talk about how ATT is "working on their network coverage" and plans to provide 3G service in Northeast MI "in the coming months".  Well, now that another 2 year contract has expired, I'm seriously wondering if I would be better off jumping to Verizon.  The EDGE data network up here if virtually useless.  5 full bars, yet extremely poor data transfer.  

 

Can anyone provide an HONEST answer as to when this coverage is planned to be upgraded???  Verizon has had 3G for quite a long while up here...

Scholar

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391 Messages

11 years ago

JREwing53

 

Hmm. Looking at AT&T's map the 4G coverage is almost non existant between Cedarville and De Tour unless the tower in Goetzville was lit up for a brief time when you drove through. Or...maybe the signal is carrying better than what is depicted on the map. It was reported on HoFo that Drummond is getting a new, taller tower. Awesome! 

Scholar

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391 Messages

11 years ago

3G went live in Munising today.

Scholar

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151 Messages

11 years ago

Nice!

Scholar

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151 Messages

11 years ago

Ok, I stopped by the McFarland tower here are some pics. Saw this after I got in the driveway:

 

ground

 

 

Here is the tower:

 

tower

 

 

If you want the bigger sizes here are the direct links:

 

http://i.imgur.com/hOJbNA8.jpg

 

http://i.imgur.com/o9OVG9c.jpg

2 Attachments

Scholar

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391 Messages

11 years ago

American Ninja

 

Those orange tubes coming out of what appears to be PVC.....or conduit....are not fiber optic lines, but rather corrugated HDPE...or High Density Polyethylene which is typically placed iside of existing innerduct. This makes it very easy to run the fiber optic line through and also provides protection from crushing or binding. They've got it taped up to help prevent water from getting down inside the pipe. You can't tell from the pic if the fiber has already been ran through, but if not it's getting close. By looking at that tower, you can see that the broadband panels have not been installed yet so AT&T cannot fire up 3G/4G.  I am uploading a pic of the tower in Red Oak. When the tower looks like this....it will only be a few weeks, or less before they fire it up. 🙂

 

P1130864_Red Oak.JPG

 

 

 

 

 

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Scholar

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151 Messages

11 years ago

Yeah I noticed no panel antennas yet. I'm hoping the fiber cable has already been run but, like you said it's hard to tell. At least they have that stuff setup, hopefully it's not too long now.

Scholar

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391 Messages

11 years ago

I heard most of the towers should be upgraded by early to mid September. AT&T supposedly activated a bunch of new towers on Aug 12th. I bet your tower will be upgraded soon. Probably waiting on the tower climbers.

Scholar

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138 Messages

11 years ago

Ok I retract my earlier statement from AT&T about slower HSPA+. AT&T 4G IS HSPA+21 as confirmed on another forum. It's just my area (Metro Detroit with a urban cell site 0.5 miles from me) only delivers 3-4Mbps indoors because the network is so congested. You guys should be getting MUCH better speeds out in the rural areas. Though I don't know how many HSPA+/UMTS carriers AT&T is deploying, with 10MHz (2x5MHz UMTS) minimum. I hope it's at least 2, hoping for 3. AT&T has 5 (max allowed) in NYC and Los Angeles I've read. Each carrier is 21Mbps. 

Scholar

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391 Messages

11 years ago

I know when AT&T upgraded their towers in northern Macomb and southern Lapeer counties with true HSPA+ (fiber backhaul), I was seeing download speeds in the 12-16 Mbps range in the evenings. Now, 3-7 is average and 7-10 is about max but now the uploads are reaching 2-4 which tells me they must be throttling their downloads speeds just like Verizon. I was informed by someone that the AT&T towers in northern MI that are getting new 3G service are in fact still on T-1 backhaul. They are pushing to get all their towers upgraded by a certain target date and will be also working on fiber Ethernet backhaul. Apparently the equipment that is being used is capable of much faster speeds over copper than what was seen a few years ago.

Scholar

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173 Messages

11 years ago

Was in Saginaw today. Amazed that the 4G LTE download speeds were worse than the 3G speeds here in Pickford. Would the reason for the slow speed there be congestion on the network? I did a speed test. The upload speeds are definitely higher. I get 509-972kbps here versus 1848 in Saginaw.

2013-08-19 12.17.02.png

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