So guys, FLOW’s hot on Digicel’s trail... they’ve deployed LTE Advanced across their entire Band 4 footprint in the north coast. When I say this, I’m speaking of LTE Band 2 and Band 4 has been deployed in Montego Bay, A large portion of Trelawny’s well travelled tourist corridor.
I got these at Glistening Waters in Falmouth.
I like what I’m seeing!
Band 2 is looking to be the Rural LTE Band. It’s also being used to augment capacity as we’ve seen in urban areas. So far I’ve spotted LTE Advanced in St. James, Trelawny and St. Ann. FLOW’s still behind Digicel in coverage reach but with Max. speeds of up to 225 Mbit/s... Digicel may have a lot to worry about
Last edited by Brandysull; Jul 23, 2018 at 06:25 AM.
This is band 2 LTE only or 2CA?. I didn't know that Digicel had a larger LTE coverage area across the country, seeing that a lot of areas in ST Andrew still don't have Digicel LTE. On the other-hand Flow needs to add another layer for coverage in weak spots in Kingston and St Andrew, I get very weak band 4 LTE when Im further down in my house. Sometimes I lose LTE connection and drop down to 3G. I really hope they sort that out, and improve the call quality soon.
The screenshots are 2CA. But it looks like the North Coast rural areas will be apportioned Band 2; all the RRUs deployed are already GUL compatible. Moreover, FLOW can run Band 2 at a higher power than Band 4 and hence it provides more geographic coverage. Quite a good bit of the North Coast Highway in St. Ann is covered with LTE and soon in Trelawny. Digicel's LTE is a bit better in geographic reach but their network suffers in rural areas still. In the highlands of the North-South Highway for instance, they haven't LTE (nor does FLOW). The similarities stop there because Digicel reverts to EDGE for some weird reason and if it gets to HSPA+, it's nothing to write home about. FLOW did some tuning along the highway and users are seeing HSPA+ retention along the entire highway. It's a sight to behold actually... the gap between Digicel & FLOW has become so obvious, it's alarming.
FLOW did tell me that their focus is currently expanding the geographic coverage of their LTE network and also network density. Kingston still hasn't Band 2 but that requires far more involvement than Huawei's equipment.
Last edited by Brandysull; Jul 24, 2018 at 11:35 AM.
I'm in the St. Ann Area, band 2 comes and goes. Band 4 seems to be the primary.
Digicel's coverage is significantly better in St. Ann but is significantly slower too lol
Dude, Aren't the "good things that come to those who wait" just the leftovers from the people who got them first.
Dude, Aren't the "good things that come to those who wait" just the leftovers from the people who got them first.