Category: Uncategorized

For various reasons that you can probably imagine, I usually don’t like to connect Android devices to Google accounts. Unfortunately, Google requires a login for the Play store. In most cases that is not a problem because I use the F-Droid store for most of my apps. However, some apps I (unfortunately) need on some devices are not available there because they are closed source. One way around this is to install ‘Yalp’ from the F-Droid store which can access the Play store without an account. Unfortunately this approach is a bit slow and unreliable so I had to look for an alternative.

Continue reading Installing Android Apps Without A Google Account

As indicated in the previous part on this topic I wanted to take a look at a second LTE network north of Chicago to see how networks are deployed and operated on this side of the Atlantic. I found this network to be a bit faster for me with data rates between 15 and 20 Mbit/s. Still comparatively slow but I’m hampered by the same issue as in the other network, i.e., my top of the line European smartphone does not indicate a single carrier aggregation combination for US bands. I really have to follow this up, as the spectrum landscape is so fractured in the US and networks are loaded quite a bit, so carrier aggregation is no longer only a ‘nice thing to have’.

Continue reading A Look At LTE Deployment North of Chicago – Part 2

A few weeks ago, two US network operators have launched 5G in the Chicago area, just when I happened to be there for a week. While I don’t have a 5G device that supports US deployments yet, I expected that, perhaps as a side effect, there would also be a significant LTE deployment. However, I was rather underwhelmed about the data rates I got. While I staid in Evanston, about 15 km North of Chicago, I could only get 5-15 Mbit/s from one network operator in most places I measured while I could at least get 10-25 Mbit/s from another network operator in that city. As that is very little compared to data rates I get when I travel to other parts of the world I started to investigate a bit.

Continue reading A Look At LTE Deployment North of Chicago – Part 1

There’s quite a bit of a gap between this and the previous book review mainly due to the 50th anniversary of Apollo 11 in July that has kept me busy with re-reading a number of books I’ve had for many years and spending many hours with ApolloInRealtime. Anyway, the book review today, is a follow-up to this activity. Neil Armstrong certainly was an interesting and deeply inspiring person, so after watching the move ‘First Man’ on a plane to Chicago, I decided to pick up the book of the same title by James R. Hanson on which the movie was based.

Continue reading Book Review – First Man

Sprint has recently deployed 5G in the Chicago area and has put an impressive coverage map online. Needless to say that I had to go to a Sprint store to see if I could get a demo of their 5G network. My expectations where high because they did advertise 5G in their windows.

Continue reading Some Notes on Sprint’s 5G Network in Evanston

When I was recently asked what the power consumption of a typical cell site is I had general idea but decided to find out some more details and to set things into perspective. According to sources here and here, a typical 3 sector base station site with several LTE carriers on air draws anywhere between 2.5 to 10 kW of power. The main difference stems from whether the site is actively or passively cooled and how many carriers are used at the base station site. The higher number would also include sites with new 5G radios and activate antennas. So is this a lot or not?

Continue reading Cell Site Power Consumption

I really like 3GPP and standards. It’s a great thing and it has brought us devices that can communicate anywhere around the globe where a network is available. Unfortunately standardization of important features doesn’t work all the time. Take the ‘In Case of Emergency’ (ICE) functionality I wrote about 10 years ago as a prime example of industry failure to implement. In essence, 3GPP specified at the time, how emergency contact information should be stored in a mobile device, and in extension, the SIM card and they standardized how the retrieve the information. At the time I was a strong supporter of ICE as a recent personal experience has shown me the value of this.

Continue reading In Case Of Emergency – 10 Years Later

I think one of the biggest breakthroughs in wireless connectivity was, when looking at it from a smartphone point of view, when Android pioneered tethering, i.e. the possibility to share a cellular connection with other devices over Wifi. However, one thing that didn’t happen over the years was that a smartphone can be connected to a Wifi hotspot as a client, e.g. at a hotel, and then share this connection over Wifi with other devices instead of the cellular connection. By accident I found out that one of my devices is now actually able to do just that!

Continue reading A Smartphone That Simultaneously Acts as Wifi Hotspot and Client

Two years ago I tested Collabora’s Libreoffice Online for the first time. While it looked promising, a number of important features I required were still missing such as spell checking, style modification, selection of modified text and style handling of foot notes. Recently I came back to see what progress they have made and came away quite impressed!

Continue reading Diving into Libreoffice Online – Thanks to Collabora

For some time I’ve been seriously considering to come up with some sort of filter that would just hide news articles with ‘5G’ in the title. The vast majority just talk about myths not founded in this reality or were just pure marketing hype for some esoteric function. It seems I am not the only one who’s getting tired of it. Fierce Wireless recently had an interesting post on the ‘4 myths that will hinder 5G growth‘. Have a look on their site for details, I totally agree with their points. Also interesting in their post are two links to first speed test reports.

Continue reading 5G Myths And First Speed Test Results From the US