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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

10 years ago

From what I heard the end of this month is the target date for all the towers in Michigan to have 3G overlay, with the exception of some towers that will take longer because of various issues. If the tower in Rockland has broadband antennas on it.....it will be very soon. Still waiting for the updated coverage map.

Scholar

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151 Messages

10 years ago

I dont know if this is related to the Lathrop tower or not but, along M-35 between Rock and Perkins there are little orange and yellow flags on the side of the road, and some wording written on the ground with orange spray paint. Could they be getting ready to lay fiber?

Scholar

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391 Messages

10 years ago

It is hard to say but with it being this late in the season there is a very good chance that is the case. In northern lower MI they marked along M-33 the same way from M-55 through Mio when they layed new fiber. If that's what they are going to do there, they will be hitting it hard before the deep freeze so you should start seeing trenchers and small back hoes and of course.....big beautiful rolls of orange fiber!:)

Scholar

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151 Messages

10 years ago

Looks like they are laying fiber! Just drove by and saw a big roll of orange!

Scholar

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136 Messages

10 years ago

Those orange rolls are underground conduit, not the actual fiber optic cabling. Nonetheless, if you see that, it's a good sign. Keep in mind that there is a ton of underground contractors finishing up on last mile work for the Reach-3MC Merit Fiber Project. There was a ton of that orange conduit all over the place in Presque Isle county in the past month, but it was all last mile work for Merit.

 

AT&T has historically used Frontier in all of NE MI for backhaul. If they have one or multiple T1's at a site, it probably feeds off a nearby fiber distribution line  (usually within 2-3 miles). In this case, they already ran conduit for the T1's. All the sites in PI county and Cheboygan didn't require Frontier to trench any new fiber. They just blew it through the existing conduit. I talked with the Frontier crew that blew the fiber backhaul for AT&T sites in PI county and they just finished doing Cheboygan in June. He said 95% of all the sites didn't need trenching at all. So some of those AT&T sites could already have fiber backhaul in place. The crew near Rogers City pulled fiber out to the Moltke site from the CO in downtown RC (6 miles away) in about 2 hours. Keep in mind this Moltke site is in the middle of no-where and had conduit already ran to it from years before. Once that was done, it was virtually undetectable that any new work had been done, unless you had inside info. 

Scholar

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391 Messages

10 years ago

There are two towers near my house in close proximity to M-53 that had new fiber ran to them back in the spring of 2011 prior to Verizon's LTE expansion and when AT&T fired up HSPA+. For what ever reason, they trenched a new  line to the towers rather than running them through the existing conduit. Maybe the original conduit was too small ??

 

Drove by the one tower today on 34 Mile road and M-53 and was delightfully surprised to see activity. The top set of panels are Verizon and the bottom set clearly shows AT&T has installed new, longer LTE panels (possibly AWS?).

 

Screenshot_2013-10-10-16-09-50.png

 

Picture was taken through the windshield doing 45 MPH so its not very clear. 

1 Attachment

Scholar

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151 Messages

10 years ago

Oh ok, I guess I was mistaken then.

Scholar

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391 Messages

10 years ago

Hi American Ninja

 

Have you had a chance to see if AT&T has done any work on the Lathrop tower or progress along 35?  It should be anytime now for the new panels and hardware installation at the site:):) 

Scholar

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151 Messages

10 years ago

I havent checked but, my friend drove by a couple weeks ago and took a picture. There was no change then.

Scholar

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151 Messages

10 years ago

My friend knows the guy who has the tower on his property in Lathrop, and he said no activity on the tower yet but he has saw them running cable to the tower.

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