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tmiw

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Everything posted by tmiw

  1. tmiw
    We'll see. I almost feel like Softbank's throwing in the towel in light of the T-Mobile merger rumors resurfacing. I suppose one benefit of a T-Mobile merger is that unrestricted LTE roaming between the two would likely be turned on immediately after the deal closed so legacy Sprint customers would be able to take advantage of T-Mobile towers and vice versa. Whether that'll make up for increased prices and ultimately less competition is another question.
  2. tmiw
    Probably a misidentification as mentioned above.
  3. tmiw
    Too bad they can't CA B25 and B41 together. That'd be awesome.
  4. tmiw
    The huge delays, while not really Sprint's fault, is partly why I think not participating in the 600MHz auction in at least a limited manner will be considered a mistake long-term. Unfortunately I don't think they could even if they wanted to, either.
  5. tmiw
    Actually, I recently started getting B12 at my house. The tower itself also gives about 2x in speed tests when close to it compared to before.
  6. tmiw
    That's the case for me anyway. When my parents (who are still on Sprint) last came over around a month ago, my dad got very weak B25 on his Samsung phone while my mom's iPhone 6 was stuck on 3G, so there's still improvement that needs to happen there. I get the feeling that it'll take a while, unfortunately.
  7. tmiw
    I'm curious--do the other carriers have nearly as many problems getting sites/upgrades approved too?
  8. tmiw
    "Low coverage"? For what it's worth the Samsung was showing something like -115 to -120ish dBm of B25 in SignalCheck and also bounced between both B25 carriers pretty often.
  9. tmiw
    It depends on the phone too. For instance, my dad's Samsung phone actually gets LTE in my apartment, whereas the iPhones in my family do not. As for B26, I wonder if Sprint should just give up on it ever coming to SD in a reasonable timeframe and accelerate small cell deployment instead. The occasional FCC reports about 800MHz don't seem to have changed much over the last 6-12mos for the southern IBEZ anyway.
  10. tmiw
    The latest iOS update brought with it v23.1 of the Sprint carrier settings and a new PRL. Those combined seemed to give me 1-2 bars of B25 LTE in my living room for a few minutes after updating last night but I can't seem to duplicate it now.
  11. tmiw
    The latest public 800TA report seems to indicate that most San Diego County licensees still haven't cleared out of their old frequencies. I'm thinking that the sighting above is a test for now. February is the month when they're all supposed to be moved though.
  12. tmiw
    Perhaps my comparatively better experience has to do with working pretty much across the street from a Sprint tower? (Sorrento Valley area.) Even when I'm not there I seem to get LTE the majority of the time when I'm outside. Not so much inside though. What's bothersome is that the stuff they put on the towers only supports B25 and B41, not B26. Even if all of the IBEZ and other issues with B26 are taken care of Sprint would need to go back and install B26 supporting stuff. It could be years before that's fully usable. What they really should do is look at the customers who spend the most time on 3G and prioritize the areas that have the highest concentrations of such customers for densification. Ideally there'd be close enough small cell and macro cell spacing such that devices never drop to 3G even when indoors. Anyway, I also think foregoing the 600MHz auction is a mistake (in large part due to SD not being a strong market) but we'll see.
  13. tmiw
    Nope. If anything, I think I was getting LTE more often than I remember getting.
  14. tmiw
    It just sucks that San Bernardino County can apparently prevent San Diego from getting B26 even though the IBEZ issues with the Mexican government have been presumably? resolved and the former is fairly far of a drive from the latter. On a recent trip to the Bay Area I almost never dropped down to 3G or 1X (the latter happening in one possibly shielded room in an office building), whereas drops to 3G happen extremely often here in SD. Hopefully the densification effort will help.
  15. tmiw
    I just came back from a business trip to the Bay Area and I was amazed at how well Sprint actually performs up there. I was on LTE (B41 most of the time, even) the vast majority of the time. The only issue I has was inside one particular conference room at the office I was visiting, where my iPhone dropped to 1x on SMR; the phone seemed to be on B26 the rest of the time in that building. Too bad there's still hoops to jump through before San Diego County gets B26. Even though I get B41 at work if I'm near the outer walls, I still drop back to 3G if I go deep inside the building.
  16. tmiw
    Sprint still has 50ish million subscribers (and going up slowly after years of decline) so there is room for a fourth contender. A rebranding will likely be necessary at some point though because the Sprint name has significant baggage.
  17. tmiw
    The number of commenters who think the US can only support three carriers is pretty surprising to me.
  18. tmiw
    Eh, I'd broaden that to just land based options. Satellite is basically available everywhere and is almost never a good option unless your only other choice is dialup simply because of the latency and very low data caps.
  19. tmiw
    Kinda ironic considering we were able to run electricity to every single household in the US back in the day. There were more people living in rural areas then though.
  20. tmiw
    True. At the same time, there are always going to be areas where adding more towers is extremely problematic (such as national parks), so 600MHz would provide extended reach and a bit more capacity for those areas. Is it worth it to get 600MHz just for that though? Especially since new phones would have to have support a band that most people will never use? Probably not unless a case can be made for a nationwide allocation.
  21. tmiw
    While densification will help with Sprint's existing footprint, 600MHz would be nice for quickly expanding rural coverage with little effort/cost in the way of towers (and would help in urban areas with onerous permitting processes too). There would also be decent speeds due to low population density, especially if 10x10 was used. 800MHz/B26 would be almost as effective but would become congested more quickly especially if it spurs more people in the middle of the country to sign up for Sprint. The downside, as others have mentioned, is that it would take years before Sprint could take full advantage. Whereas B26 can be used right now*. *offer void in Southern California
  22. tmiw
    IIRC Sprint doesn't exactly have enough spectrum for 5x5 LTE in the IBEZ either. Wouldn't it make sense to at bid on 600MHz to at least have low band spectrum in those areas? I feel like it's a mistake not to bid at all unless it's a means to get the auction cancelled as others have mentioned.
  23. tmiw
    Had lunch in Sorrento Valley and B41 was really slow today; only got 4-5 megabits on speedtest and everything else seemed to be lagging pretty hard. Maybe it's time for Sprint to turn on another carrier if one's not there already? (My phone doesn't support CA on B41 so no way to test.)
  24. tmiw
    I think heavily prioritizing small cell placement in Southern California would be a good stopgap for indoor coverage issues. My service in San Diego is great at work (B41 all the time except deep inside the huge building I work in), but I only get 3G at home even though the nearby towers all have B25. I wonder how many would be needed to provide near-constant B41 or at least B25 even indoors. 3G isn't as bad as it used to be in any case.
  25. tmiw
    FWIW my iPhone's field engineering screen seems to indicate that it's using n.ispsn too, but there's still only an IPv4 address.
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