sprinturg4

Thank you... I knew there must be a reason. I am still on Everything Data Family so that must be it.

How come you don't order through Apple? Or do you? I ordered through them before the 19th and it said 3-4 weeks; I received 64GB 6 Plus within 2 weeks of launch date. I would think that Sprint has to tack on a week or so for processing through their distribution system, or do those orders drop-ship as well?

You must be in San Antonio... and if so, you are not alone. I have the same issues everyday, as do several other people I know on Sprint in the city. I know our phones are all good. I know this because they have been checked, but also due to the fact that in the last 6 months, I tried several phones on Sprint in Minnesota, California, and New York. In all three areas, much better Sprint service and coverage -- almost night and day. Alas, not in San Antonio. It is still bad here. Maybe it will better soon. Maybe we will be one of the 3-5.

See article on CNET explaining the slow process of LTE rollout. http://news.cnet.com/8301-1035_3-57595175-94/why-sprint-is-taking-its-sweet-time-with-4g-lte/ I can attest that despite 90% of cell sites in San Antonio accepted for LTE, coverage is still hit or miss throughout the metro area,often drops down to 3G, which remains a crawl. When LTE is strong, it is nice of course.

Is it better than 3G? Yes. Is it consistent and the miracle we had hoped? Not yet. In a market with 75% of towers upgraded to LTE, I still find both covrage and speed very inconsistent, very often falling back onto 3G... at which point data crawls along slower than a snail with salt shaker chasing it. Let's hope that at 100% LTE upgrade it is good; then it will be worth it.

So under this scenario, whereas before the backhaul was blamed as the choke point, now it is not having enough spectrum allocated for data at a given cell tower? Yikes! If this were, this would be typical of Sprint. However, since they are supposedly launching LTE in markets without every single tower upgraded, I would hope that at towers already upgraded and live with 4G, they would also have upgraded the EVDO side as well and have it live. As new towers come online to finish out the 4G footprint in a market with the remaining towers, the 3G would also get finished out. If not, again Now, in spite of the above, I remember in the June update that there was a backlog of EVDO going live even at NV sites due to issues at switch center? If this is indeed still the issue, then it will be interesting to see how long before 3G gains the benefits of NV too!

So for a given NV site, if backhaul was ready, they implemented LTE and improved EVDO. If backhaul was not ready, they connected 3G to existing backhaul and left 4G off for the time being. Ok that makes sense. So if someone checks 3G at a tower where 4G is on, they should see a decent improvement in 3G as well. Thanks for the clarification.

Soooo.. in order to rush out iniital LTE markets, they did a Network Vision Lite in Ericsson areaa? Connect LTE at tower sites to backhaul, but not 3G? I thought that replacing all the equipment at a tower site would have benefits for both LTE and EVDO as that tower came online post Network Vision? Seems inefficient to have to go back and implement 3G improvements... unless all it involves is remote "software" upgrades or switching. Or did you mean that the issue is that individual towers are over capacity and the cell would have to be split?

I see the excitement and speeds that folks are seeing as LTE lights up in the initial launch markets. Since Network Vision was also supposed to have a positive effect on 3G coverage and especially speeds (due to backhaul improvements), has anyone been able to test the 3G coverage in Texas, Kansas or Georgia? I know, once you go LTE, why would you care about EVDO... but it would still be interesting to see if NV has helped the 3G issues as well.

Yeah, it is just a merge of the Sprint logo and the "mobile" part of the T-mobile logo, with the Sprint "pin drop" color changed to Magenta, and the name changed to dark grey, with the addition of the T-mobile squares. That way you could read it "Sprint Mobile" or "Sprin T-Mobile". Okay, had too much time on hands... like 10 min.

What a coincidence. July 15th is not my birthday, but they are still launching LTE in several cities! Awesome!

If they did merge, maybe this would be the new logo? Or not.

I know it. $50 for 500 min period. No contract and buy your own phone; in my case the first Samsung phone ever SPH-1900? and the Qualcomm Q-phone -- remember that? Both phones were bad...real bad!

Were you a part of Sprint when it had GSM in certain parts of the country? I though Sprint PCS did not launch until 1997. Just asking.