Softbank bands available to Sprint roamers?

[Hormel09]

I'm going to be living in Japan for awhile and will be adding that new "Roam through Japan for $5 a month" to my plan.  I talked to international care and they claimed I would be limited to 3G while I'm there.  

 

This thread was pretty informative.  A lot of people claim LTE is available. If that's truly the case, I'll probably burn my upgrade and get and S6 or S6 Edge. If it's not, I may just stick with my Note II.  According to gsm arena my Note II has HSPA  and the S6 and Edge don't.  From what I've read, Softbank uses HSPA+ so having that would be better than being stuck on GSM.

 

Here are my sources:

Softbank frequency bands

Note II

S6

S6 Edge

[lilotimz]

See: 

 

http://www.reddit.com/r/Sprint/comments/35zi0v/my_experience_with_the_5_japan_roaming_addon/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Sprint/comments/39gtsy/japan_roaming_experience_part_2_this_is_bad/

http://www.reddit.com/r/Sprint/comments/3b1ani/japan_roaming_experience_part_3_finally/

 

TLDR: Expect anywhere from a few hundred kbps to a few megs.  Nothing impressive but usable at the very minimum. 

[Thomas L.]

The issue is that Softbank uses band 41 (TD-LTE) a lot like Sprint does, it's a high capacity solution while they use THREE other LTE bands in addition(1, 3, 8), none of which Sprint phones support. In addition, at least from my experience with my internationally unlocked LG G2 in China, even if band 41 LTE is available (band 41 LTE is China's main LTE band and it's everywhere in big cities, the number of towers is incredible), the phones won't access it, even with a local SIM. I wouldn't be surprised if the TD-LTE component remains locked down in Sprint phones for use abroad. 

 

My ultimate dream is that, someday, Sprint phones will at least support band 3, as it is what LTE runs on in a huge number of countries, but GSM+CDMA+UMTS+FD+LTE+TD-LTE on proprietary frequencies seems to make this impossible, or Sprint just doesn't prioritize international compatibility like other carriers. 

[travismheim]

 

 

My ultimate dream is that, someday, Sprint phones will at least support band 3, as it is what LTE runs on in a huge number of countries, but GSM+CDMA+UMTS+FD+LTE+TD-LTE on proprietary frequencies seems to make this impossible, or Sprint just doesn't prioritize international compatibility like other carriers.

Other carriers don't prioritize international compatibility anymore than Sprint does.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[Rawvega]

The issue is that Softbank uses band 41 (TD-LTE) a lot like Sprint does, it's a high capacity solution while they use THREE other LTE bands in addition(1, 3, 8), none of which Sprint phones support.

 

The Sprint iPhone 6 and 6 Plus do.

 

http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/