Jump to content

The Wall

  • entries
    415
  • comments
    6,282
  • views
    4,812,356

Contributors to this blog

Seattle/West Washington Network Vision/LTE Deployment schedule update


S4GRU

32,493 views

blog-0582340001341895360.jpg

by Robert Herron

Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

Wednesday, July 11, 2012 - 12:00 PM MDT

 

The next market in our Network Vision/LTE deployment schedule update series is...West Washington. The West Washington market has yet to be announced by Sprint, and may not be announced until as late as this Fall.

 

The Sprint West Washington market encompasses most of the Western Half of Washington State. This includes Seattle, Tacoma, Bellevue, Redmond, Kirkland, Everett, Kent, Renton, Federal Way, Puyallup, Issaquah, Bremerton, Olympia, Bellingham and Aberdeen/Hoquiam. Sprint's Network Vision OEM Samsung is scheduled to begin mobilizing their subcontractors around the market in October. The first completed Network Vision sites are scheduled to start coming online in November.

 

gallery_1_2_55817.jpg

Anticipated Sites Complete at Market Launch. According to the Network Vision schedules that S4GRU has reviewed, if Sprint launched the market in May, these are the anticipated sites that would likely have LTE complete at that time. This would provide fairly good LTE coverage over many parts of the market.

 

Schedule details and the bottom line

 

Sprint has not yet selected a date to formally "launch" LTE service in West Washington. It is difficult to try to pick a date now this far out, but we have attempted to do that. In looking at the schedule as of today, it would indicate a May market launch (going on a 40% - 50% completion for launch). But there is no way to know if Samsung and their subcontractors will actually hit their schedule dates before deployment in this market begins. We will be able to gauge better after a few months of production is achieved.

 

Samsung needs to hit a production rate of approximately 55 sites per month to stay on schedule. This is a normal production rate when compared to other markets. They shouldn't have any schedule issues with the appropriate amount of resources allocated.

 

S4GRU has examined the schedule in great detail in this market and sees that most of the sites will be complete by September 2013. However, there may be a few sporadic sites that will linger past the completion.

Space_Needle002.jpg

Photo of Seattle Skyline/Mt. Rainier provided courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

 

NOTE: S4GRU Sponsor Members can track regular updates of

Network Vision sites completed nationwide. Completed sites are shown in an interactive Google Maps interface. Information about sponsorship can be found here: S4GRU Sponsorship

  • Like 2

43 Comments


Recommended Comments



Thanks for the update Robert.

 

As sites come online, would they be available for use or would they actually turn them on closer to the actual market launch?

Link to comment

Thanks for the update Robert.As sites come online, would they be available for use or would they actually turn them on closer to the actual market launch?

 

I can tell you Sprint originally planned to allow LTE sites to be usable as they completed, prior to launch. But that changed around the end of April. I'm hoping this blocking complete LTE sites will stop when sites start going live this weekend. However, I don't know for sure, yet.

 

Robert

Link to comment

I was told by employees of the sprint store when I purchased my new EVO that LTE would be available sometime around the Fall in the Seattle area. I really hope that this means that sites that are already completed will not be blocked until the official market launch. It would be a bummer to have to wait till next year.

Link to comment

I was told by employees of the sprint store when I purchased my new EVO that LTE would be available sometime around the Fall in the Seattle area. I really hope that this means that sites that are already completed will not be blocked until the official market launch. It would be a bummer to have to wait till next year.

 

It's believed that Sprint will not block completed sites in the future.

 

Robert

Link to comment

So Sprint is blocking LTE connectivity until they say so but are users still able to connect to the upgraded 3G and voice network as sites come online?

Link to comment

So Sprint is blocking LTE connectivity until they say so but are users still able to connect to the upgraded 3G and voice network as sites come online?

 

Yes. It appears that the blocking has been lifted in the Kansas market yesterday. We had reports from S4GRU members all day yesterday of live LTE around the Kansas City Metroplex and even out to Manhattan, Kansas.

 

Robert

Link to comment

I'm over in Bremerton, WA. Over the last couple weeks, there have been 4 days where I'm getting no sprint signal / roaming for 2-3 hours at a time. This has been going on in the early evening at my house - where I usually get 3-4 bars. Just putting that out there.

Link to comment
I'm over in Bremerton, WA. Over the last couple weeks, there have been 4 days where I'm getting no sprint signal / roaming for 2-3 hours at a time. This has been going on in the early evening at my house - where I usually get 3-4 bars. Just putting that out there.

 

That is most likely caused by network management upgrades by Ericsson for Sprint. You can see a rolling six month schedule of that work at network.sprint.com.

 

Robert

Link to comment

This is extremely disappointing as the owner of an LTE phone. My phone will be one year old by the time LTE finally comes around here and possibly will never see an LTE signal (there's going to be better phones by then).

 

3G is dreadfully slow. Probably should have stuck with my Wimax phone until they actually provided the service. I wish sprint had put a wimax radio in these "4G" phones so people could use those until LTE shows up.

 

I hope they actually start the tower deployment by late this year instead of waiting until April/May 2013.

 

 

I was told by employees of the sprint store when I purchased my new EVO that LTE would be available sometime around the Fall in the Seattle area. I really hope that this means that sites that are already completed will not be blocked until the official market launch. It would be a bummer to have to wait till next year.

 

They didn't mention the year! They probably meant fall of 2013/2014 ;-)

Link to comment

I hope they actually start the tower deployment by late this year instead of waiting until April/May 2013.

 

I think you may have missed part of the article where it says:

 

Sprint's Network Vision OEM Samsung is scheduled to begin mobilizing their subcontractors around the market in October. The first completed Network Vision sites are scheduled to start coming online in November.

 

The deployment does start in Fall 2012.

 

Robert

Link to comment

I think you may have missed part of the article where it says:The deployment does start in Fall 2012.Robert

 

I did miss that.. Thank you Robert. I only read the "schedule details" section.

 

Hoping they'd launch in the core downtown areas first! I just need 4G when I'm out and about during the day in downtown - at home I get wifi.

  • Like 1
Link to comment

I live in North Seattle and bought the EVO 4G LTE day one. Every day since, my data stream is only 50-200 bits per second. ALWAYS. Data is 100% unusable.

 

I called in to Sprint today to cancel one of my other lines (phone was stolen) and when speaking to the Cancellation Specialist I brought up this issue and he told me his records indicate Seattle towers have been in repair for two months with new ones to go live in August and would have LTE. All should be resolved then.

 

Of course, this directly conflicts with what you have posted. I don't even care if LTE doesn't go live for a year, I just want working 3G now. We had zero issues with the original EVO 4G for the two years previously.

 

What do you think, Robert? Any validity to his statements? I feel like my only recourse is to eat two huge cancellation fees on our two EVO 4G LTEs and go to Verizon.

Link to comment

I live in North Seattle and bought the EVO 4G LTE day one. Every day since, my data stream is only 50-200 bits per second. ALWAYS. Data is 100% unusable.I called in to Sprint today to cancel one of my other lines (phone was stolen) and when speaking to the Cancellation Specialist I brought up this issue and he told me his records indicate Seattle towers have been in repair for two months with new ones to go live in August and would have LTE. All should be resolved then.Of course, this directly conflicts with what you have posted. I don't even care if LTE doesn't go live for a year, I just want working 3G now. We had zero issues with the original EVO 4G for the two years previously.What do you think, Robert? Any validity to his statements? I feel like my only recourse is to eat two huge cancellation fees on our two EVO 4G LTEs and go to Verizon.

 

Network Vision and the "tower repair" the CSR told you about are two totally different projects. This site does not contain any information on what we dubbed "band aid" fixes. That information can be found at https://network.sprint.com/

Link to comment
I live in North Seattle and bought the EVO 4G LTE day one. Every day since, my data stream is only 50-200 bits per second. ALWAYS. Data is 100% unusable.

 

I called in to Sprint today to cancel one of my other lines (phone was stolen) and when speaking to the Cancellation Specialist I brought up this issue and he told me his records indicate Seattle towers have been in repair for two months with new ones to go live in August and would have LTE. All should be resolved then.

 

Of course, this directly conflicts with what you have posted. I don't even care if LTE doesn't go live for a year, I just want working 3G now. We had zero issues with the original EVO 4G for the two years previously.

 

What do you think, Robert? Any validity to his statements? I feel like my only recourse is to eat two huge cancellation fees on our two EVO 4G LTEs and go to Verizon.

 

I would be very surprised if LTE starts to come live in the Seattle area in August. That would be 3 months ahead of schedule. It would be the first instance anywhere that Network Vision was deployed ahead of schedule. That is hard to fathom. I believe the CSR had their wires crossed between network maintenance upgrades and Network Vision.

 

Robert

  • Like 1
Link to comment

Any new updates on Seattle? The last four months felt like a year stuck on 3G :-)

 

I'm looking forward to getting speeds similar to what other people from Kansas City post on their speedtest signatures.. Heck, I'd be happy seeing 2Mbps downloads! Unfortunately the 3G speeds have gotten worse here in Washington - its about 50-200kbps these days. Can't even stream spotify on the phone.

Link to comment

Any new updates on Seattle? The last four months felt like a year stuck on 3G :-)I'm looking forward to getting speeds similar to what other people from Kansas City post on their speedtest signatures.. Heck, I'd be happy seeing 2Mbps downloads! Unfortunately the 3G speeds have gotten worse here in Washington - its about 50-200kbps these days. Can't even stream spotify on the phone.

 

Should be starting soon. We are waiting from updates from our members in the field. Keep watching the towers and report any work you see.

 

Robert

Link to comment

Just upgraded my phone and asked about NV, the rep said launch was scheduled for February (and clarified that means major areas completed, not 100% done). I thought it was later based on these estimates, he said Feb is the delayed timeframe and they were originally shooting for Dec. Thought I'd share this info and see if he knew what he was talking about.

Link to comment

The Silverdale/Bremerton announcement is welcomed news for me. I am eligible for a handset updgrade in two weeks. I have been with Sprint for about 15 years and was ready to jump ship to Verizon. Happy to be happy with Sprint once again.

Link to comment

This probably doesn't mean much regarding progress in the surrounding areas, but I've seen some LTE coverage in Kent. It popped up a couple weeks ago and I've seen the Sensorly data expand since. Happens to be exactly where a tower is listed on the Sprint deployment site so I assume it's legit. Address = 20810 125th Ave SE Kent, WA

 

photo_zps24ceda4b.jpg

Link to comment

Guest
Add a comment...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...