Can LG G4 (from vz) work on ATT?

[mama23dogs]

With any luck, your problem can be fixed.  fingers crossed for you.

AS for the phone working on ATT, yes, BUT, it will not get LTE because it lacks all the bands, especially band 17.

It would get 3G and HSPA, which is almost 4G

[Mike2401]

Thank you @mama23dogs .  Although I'm HSPA/3G would be faster than what I'm getting on Verizon right now, if I have to switch I'll buy proper ATT phones.

The only problem is I don't think it's ethical to sell my LG G4's on craigslist to some unsuspecting sap.  So, if Verizon can't solve it, I'll insist they give me different phones and sell those, then switch. 

However, if the PRL defines preferred frequencies/bands, then I hope they can bump band-2 to the bottom of the list and maybe it's as simple as that?

Thanks for the reply,
Mike

[smith6612 · Accepted solution]

A hybrid PRL may or may not help. It all depends on the contents of the file Verizon plans to load to your device. In some cases one would have to disable individual LTE bands from some hidden menu in the phone, often locked down, and not permanent without voiding the device's warranty by rooting. Forget about doing this on iPhone. Typically these can be changed by the carrier or OEM through a software update, but since Verizon is adding Band 2 as an XLTE high density band, it's likely not going to be undone.

Instead, what Verizon may do, as they continue to fine tune the network and band 2 is still new, is steer devices towards Band 2 or Band 4 where appropriate and according to load. For example, make Band 2 have less power but more gain so devices truly near the tower latch on, but then turn up the power (license / FCC permitting) / gain on Band 4 to help perfect the coverage a bit more. That in addition to collaboration with handset manufacturers to adjust the radio profiles on each phone, can help to optimize the network. Verizon can also ensure back-haul on the same towers remains adequate, and if Verizon holds enough of a license, to increase the bandwidth of Band 2 to 10, 15, or 20Mhz, which will deliver some awesome speeds, especially if using carrier aggregation with Band 4 and Band 2 working together (10x10x10x10 and 4T4R could achieve in theory around 400Mbps down,80Mbps up). Otherwise, microcells with just Band 2 and Band 4 on them, which is another goal of Verizon in order to add to network capacity, using only Band 13 to keep coverage.

You'll generally find that support tailors towards the common denominator, and usually the second denominator. Advanced troubleshooting such as correlating the speeds to bands, or doing cell handover/signal to reporting engineering-grade data like leakage, noise, and reflection values from a spectrum analyzer, is generally left to the engineering and network department. This department is rather hard to get a hold of directly unless you are a large government or enterprise customer with such contacts at hand. The most front line support can do is drop in tickets, which may or may not be addressed. Verizon has to subcontract a good amount of work out, which takes planning to do, if something cannot be fixed or addressed remotely. The same goes for any other company out there.

An example of how long it can take to get a network issue fixed: In September, I submitted a Network Repair ticket with Verizon, reporting the Avionics beacon on one of their towers was malfunctioning and damaged, and getting worse with the impending cold weather. I verified the tower was indeed a Verizon Wireless owned tower by looking up the Tower registration against the FCC, and validating the ownership. In the past few weeks when our temperatures tanked, the Avionics beacon failed, and no progress has been seen to repair the device at the top of the tower. The tower sits on the edge of a hill, fortunately in a low air-traffic area, and still has a working beacon, however it needs to be repaired despite the backup as there are regulations as to how bright those beacons can be at night. eg: You can't have the main strobe flashing all day, all night for weeks on end. Unsurprisingly, the tower gained Band 2 LTE broadcast just a few weeks ago, so that was added before the beacon was replaced...

[smith6612]

I did hit the edit timeout on my previous post. Just another note on signals.

You'll find that as you go from signal levels such as -60dBm to -110dBm, speeds will typically fall linearly to exponentially based on the tower load. Once you get to the -105dB range, many phones will start to fail over to other, lower frequency bands (Band 2 being the highest frequency) as at -105dB you begin to near the noise floor. In some areas -105dB would be unusable due to the noise floor. This is all something an RF Engineer will need to discover.

If you can find a place with a stronger signal from Band 2, you'll likely see it providing closer to 13-20Mbps down, and around 1-4Mbps up. So with that said you could be dealing with both a shoddy signal, and/or your typical neighborhood wireless congestion. It's ultimately up to Verizon to figure these ones out, but if they can send your phone to the slightly longer extending Band 4 for a short while, that should ease the pain.

[smith6612]

Here is a good testing spot for you, if you want to play with Band 2 some more to take more measurements.

The nearest Verizon Wireless registered antenna I can see to that location is at N 21st Street and Hamilton Street, specifically sitting on top of 2000 Hamilton Street. If you test at the Rodin Museum or in front of Miga Korean BBQ, you should find a strong Band 2 signal to play with.

Otherwise, whatever signal you're getting on Band 2 is likely a big reflection off buildings and will deliver garbage speeds as a result . The nearest officially registered tower for Verizon I see is on top of Spring Gardens Towers off of N 19th Street and Spring Gardens St. Or it could be possible Verizon has antennas on a site AT&T and Sprint currently share space on, located at N 22nd Street and Spring Gardens St.

Have fun!

[Mike2401]

OMG @smith6612 , are you:

1. A rocket scientist,

2. A cellular engineer, or

3. The nicest stranger on a tech forum ever?

All this info is helpful and interesting!  Wow!

BTW, I though Verizon didn't broadcast tower locations?

Is there a database I could access which shows verizon tower locations?

BTW, I'm driving to long island today for dinner with family so I"ll have an opportunity to see how VZ works outside Philly.  I'll be doing plenty of speed tests and screen shots of LTE bands.

Lastly, any thoughts on AT&T?  My buddy came over to my apt with his ATT&T iphone 6s Plus and got 15 megs down with only 2 bars of strength.  We configured his phone to my wifi to see if wifi calling kicked in (which only happens when the ATT LTE is too bad).  It did not.  And my apt is concrete! 

Thanks again for all this info!

Mike

[Mike2401]

or 4. A verizon employee?

smith6612: do you work for verizon?

[Mike2401]

Still at home (6:45am Thanksgiving day) , here's a fresh data point:

Signal bouncing around from -99 db to -106db

Band 2

4.18 megs down, 0.21 megs up , 29 ms ping

Everyone should be sleeping or cooking so it should be very busy.

-Mike

[smith6612]

Concrete explains part of the issue. Concrete is a nice insulator of wireless signal. If the building also has metal supports such as steel, this can also further degrade the signal as steel is both an insulator and a ground of signal.

There is an AT&T tower a few blocks from the location you provided above, although I did not check the AT&T spectrum holdings in that area, nor did we find out what band AT&T was on. Otherwise I have little experience with AT&T service-wise besides the horrors of their attempts to throttle unlimited data users. That didn't bode well in my book. They also still seem to lack IPV6 support for whatever reason, even though I've seen it appear on some of the devices I support for a short while. APN settings are correct too.

I don't work for Verizon unfortunately. Just a customer of theirs. The cell tower and spectrum databases can all be found on the FCC Website. It's all public record. In finding equipment I make some assumptions based on the signal being received, and nearby cell sites. Cities are a bit tricky to estimate, whereas rural areas are a breeze. If I can find antennas using Google Earth, crowd sourced map data like CellMapper, or by looking at a tower, all the better.

So given those speeds, it's about expected to see those with that kind of signal strength. If you're indoors when taking that test, that explains the low upload speed you got.

Happy Thanksgiving. Enjoy your time with family

[smith6612]

In case you're interested, here's my signal situation at home. My signal is all from multipath and reflection, being that I am in a rural area, live on top of a farm field, but between me and the small towers near me Verizon's gear lIves on, are forests and trees.

Here are three results, walking 10 feet from each other, that I receive outside on my lawn. My house is newer construction so it does not interfere with wireless. I started these tests with the best line of sight I could get.

Test 1

Test 2 (I walked 10 feet west on my lawn)

Test 3 (I walked another 10 feet West)

Wireless is sure fun, isn't it?