TMO planned UMTS 1700 network shut-downs
- Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston among major T-Mobile markets having their AWS 3G/4G networks shut down this summer � TmoNews
BBOS phone owners are going to need to upgrade because BB phones of that era didn't come with the UMTS 1900 band (nor LTE bands.) Apparently Chicago, Louisville, and Indianapolis have already had their UMTS 1700 networks shut down.
Edit--forgot to highlight:
On the plus side, if you are impacted by this network shutdown, T-Mobile is offering you the chance to upgrade to a compatible phone for free.[...]If you have a BlackBerry, T-Mobile will let you upgrade to a BlackBerry Classic for free.
[EDIT - It's worth noting that the BlackBerry Classic is only available as an upgrade for business (T-Mobile @Work) customers.Last edited by raino; 06-20-15 at 09:57 PM.
06-19-15 05:13 PMLike 2 - Raino, So only LTE in AWS from now on? I thought that AWS was only LTE.
Los Angeles, Chicago and Houston among major T-Mobile markets having their AWS 3G/4G networks shut down this summer � TmoNews
BBOS phone owners are going to need to upgrade because BB phones of that era didn't come with the UMTS 1900 band (nor LTE bands.) Apparently Chicago, Louisville, and Indianapolis have already had their UMTS 1700 networks shut down.06-19-15 06:58 PMLike 0 - In these places, yeah.
Oh no. They still have a lot of UMTS points of presence (PoPs) out there: 230 million+ as of last year, if Wikipedia is to be believed. Ultimately, it's all going to LTE though.06-19-15 08:00 PMLike 0 - Wow, looks like the end of usage coming sooner than expected for my BB9900. Ug. My three BB9900's will soon be relegated to alarm activities and wifi only calls using a voip program called "Vmobile".
Oh well. My Classic will soon have the ultimate daily driver responsibilities job.06-20-15 12:34 PMLike 0 - I was wondering about that. What will happen when T-Mob shuts down all UMTS? Right now, when I make a phone call, it drops to 4G or sometimes to GSM during the call. After the call, then it goes back to LTE. Its obvious T-Mobile is not allowing me to do voLTE. All the phones in our account are BB10 phones (passports, Z30's, Leaps) and even one iphone 5 and none have voLTE.
raino likes this.06-20-15 01:01 PMLike 1 - Wow, looks like the end of usage coming sooner than expected for my BB9900. Ug. My three BB9900's will soon be relegated to alarm activities and wifi only calls using a voip program called "Vmobile".
Oh well. My Classic will soon have the ultimate daily driver responsibilities job.
Are you in one of the markets listed in that TMONews article? If so, you could score a free Classic by trading in your 9900.
How nice of you TMO to not run another one of your BB defec(a)tion drives. "Trade in a 9900 for a newer BB10 phone." Was that really so hard?
I was wondering about that. What will happen when T-Mob shuts down all UMTS? Right now, when I make a phone call, it drops to 4G or sometimes to GSM during the call. After the call, then it goes back to LTE. Its obvious T-Mobile is not allowing me to do voLTE. All the phones in our account are BB10 phones (passports, Z30's, Leaps) and even one iphone 5 and none have voLTE.
But in terms of the bigger picture, in places they have a 2G network, they will refarm to LTE but can also apportion some spectrum to 2G or--as I've learned here on CB--actually run 2G and LTE off the same towers. And that's actual 2G--not that throttled down crap they put you on when you go over limited data; that's still LTE, just slowed down to a crawl. So for anyone who can't do voLTE: people who don't have LTE phones, or people who don't necessarily have TMO-specific LTE bands in their phones (like international visitors,) or TMO-approved voLTE handsets--they will at least have the ability to make calls/send texts. GSM 1900 is pretty much a universal band now. LTE b2, b4 are not.
But I also expect them to do more of these "get a new, compatible handset for low/no cost" drives. All carriers do them when people are being affected by refarms. TMO's done it with Metro's CDMA customers, Sprint with Nextel's iDen customers, etc.
I'm not sure what they're going to do in refarmed UMTS 1900 markets--keep those towers HSPA+, HSPA+ and LTE, or 2G and LTE (essentially reversing the HSPA+ refarm.) Maybe low band spectrum will help make the decisions easy. UMTS 1900 is a pretty ubiquitous band as well--Q10 onwards, all models of all BB10 phones have had this band.06-20-15 03:05 PMLike 0 - I was wondering about that. What will happen when T-Mob shuts down all UMTS? Right now, when I make a phone call, it drops to 4G or sometimes to GSM during the call. After the call, then it goes back to LTE. Its obvious T-Mobile is not allowing me to do voLTE. All the phones in our account are BB10 phones (passports, Z30's, Leaps) and even one iphone 5 and none have voLTE.
I know the iphone 6 is supposed to have VoLTE. The iphone 5 doesn't even have HD voice because Apple doesn't feel like enabling it.
Posted via CB1006-20-15 05:03 PMLike 0 - Wow, that's pretty generous! When Cingular shut down whatever band my little Nokia 8290 was using, ages ago, they were only willing to replace it with a large candy bar phone worth about $30!06-20-15 05:34 PMLike 0
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But it is pretty generous on TMO's part, especially given how tight they are on device pricing. That Alcatel phone they're giving everyone else is ~$150, but the Classic is easily twice as much. I'm sure some of these costs are built into network shutdowns, but a $300 phone for free is a generous offer.06-20-15 05:57 PMLike 0 - 06-20-15 06:23 PMLike 0
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Meanwhile the AWS Club keeps shrinking. Cincinnati Bell sold their mobile business to Verizon a couple of years ago, and now this.06-20-15 06:46 PMLike 0 - No statement really, just that nobody who has tried (in confirmed voLTE markets) has succeeded in placing a call over LTE (see your thread from last year.) VoLTE was enabled after the last update (10.2.1) from TMO was released.
So do we now think the other party doesn't have to have a VoLTE capable phone for a VoLTE call to go through?
Posted via CB1006-20-15 08:11 PMLike 0 -
Here are a couple of unofficial lists of sightings: (1),(2)
Correct. TMO's implementation doesn't require this. Verizon's does, and I think AT&T's does as well.06-20-15 09:17 PMLike 0 -
I'm not sure how AT&T and VZW could require the target to be IMS-based (ie: VoLTE or VoIP) for the originating handset to connect a call over LTE service. If that's the case then their upcoming VoWiFi service will be unnecessarily handicapped and require some rather intelligent packets to poll the target, request the target type (analog or digital), then relay this to the handset so it can decide whether or not to connect (in the case of wifi calling) or drop to legacy service to make the call (when calling off a tower) -- all of which would be presumably done before the first ring.
This would also make it impossible to shift away from legacy GSM since VoLTE for voice and LTE for data are the future path.
Somehow I don't see carriers requiring 100% digital for a handset to call over VoLTE. Of course, I could be way off here.
[CB10 / Q10]06-21-15 12:53 AMLike 0 - Is there some statement from Tmo about not allowing VoLTE on a Z10? Or better yet, had anyone with a Z10 claimed to have done a VoLTE call on Tmob?
I know the iphone 6 is supposed to have VoLTE. The iphone 5 doesn't even have HD voice because Apple doesn't feel like enabling it.
Posted via CB1006-21-15 08:30 AMLike 0 - voLTE, specifically. I think I was wrong about AT&T, but not Verizon: Verizon starts rolling out VoLTE, but on only 2 phones to start - FierceWireless
Regarding HDV, I recall reading that Verizon had bundled its roll out with voLTE...which means it's IMS based? Is TMO's too? The feature on TMO seems to be a lot more device-ambivalent--something like tower provisioning, versus device (correct me if I'm wrong.)06-21-15 09:34 AMLike 0 - It's quite a big shift, if you think about it. Pre-BB10, there used to be two sets of phones made: one for the AWS carriers, and one for the non-AWS carriers (most of the world, including AT&T and Rogers/Bell/Telus.) TMO was the AWS flag-bearer, and with the AWS network being refarmed now, it's essentially switching sides.
Meanwhile the AWS Club keeps shrinking. Cincinnati Bell sold their mobile business to Verizon a couple of years ago, and now this.06-21-15 11:39 AMLike 0 -
Posted via CB1006-21-15 12:54 PMLike 0 - voLTE, specifically. I think I was wrong about AT&T, but not Verizon: Verizon starts rolling out VoLTE, but on only 2 phones to start - FierceWireless
In a broader context it's not supposed to be handset-to-handset. IMS connections (ie: VoLTE and VoWiFi) are intended to talk to analog devices over the PSTN. How and why any carrier would restrict this to 100% IMS to IMS (or even IMS to/from VoIP) is an unknown. Doing so would be handicapping a rather robust feature. That's what's strange.raino likes this.06-21-15 01:48 PMLike 1
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