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Sprint Explains Spotty LTE


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I think they would actually have less complaints if they address the disconnect/reconnect issues. Like I have said many times before there is nothing between me and the lte tower that is only 1000 feet from my house but my evo disconnects randomly all the time while my gnex stays connected no matter what.

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LOL..agreed. Forever the underdog, it seems. I've been with them for 11 or 12 years now but they do have a tendency to shoot themselves in the foot at nearly every turn with one PR mess or another. But, then again, I'm a bit of a mess myself..hence my love for the Now Network! I'll never leave!

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Articles like this out there in the blogosphere are dangerous for Sprint. Karl usually skews positively towards Verizon, but statements like these: "Last week we noted that Sprint's LTE launch left a little something to be desired, with the company saying they'd launched in fifteen markets -- but users who live in those markets being hard pressed to find any actual LTE signal. .." are borderline irresponsible imho. I think it would have been just as easy and likely more accurate to simply state that SOME users have been having trouble connecting to Sprint's nascent LTE network. I suppose that's not sensationalist enough though...I'm surprised that he didn't throw in his opinion that Sprint will soon be ending unlimited data as that's been his personal crusade lately whenever he runs any kind of story about Sprint.

 

And look at the comments. The Romney sycophant is already talking about Sprint's LTE network is just like WiMAX even though, as everyone here already knows, that's wholly inaccurate as the two networks use disparate spectrum. That's the beauty of the internet though; everyone is allowed to express an opinion no matter how uneducated it is. Though thankfully iansltx corrected him, blog pieces like this just foster more and more of these types of opinions. For some reason when it comes to Sprint so many seem to want the underdog to fail which is counterintuitive to me. Some might say that the US wireless market is a de facto duopoly. Inexplicably, it seems like some want that to turn into an ACTUAL duopoly. Madness...

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I think they would actually have less complaints if they address the disconnect/reconnect issues. Like I have said many times before there is nothing between me and the lte tower that is only 1000 feet from my house but my evo disconnects randomly all the time while my gnex stays connected no matter what.

 

I don't know why sprint can't communicate these issues to customers. I am pretty sure you are only one of a handful of people that gets LTE and has both phones - nobody else knows.

 

The other issue seems to be Sprint's own LTE coverage maps - they don't seem to be that accurate (3G likely overpowering 4G, which Robert did a great job covering).

 

In the grand scheme of things, they should have soft launched the markets, figure out the bugs, and then hard launch so regular folks wouldn't be so confused.

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Articles like this out there in the blogosphere are dangerous for Sprint. Karl usually skews positively towards Verizon, but statements like these: "Last week we noted that Sprint's LTE launch left a little something to be desired, with the company saying they'd launched in fifteen markets -- but users who live in those markets being hard pressed to find any actual LTE signal. .." are borderline irresponsible imho. I think it would have been just as easy and likely more accurate to simply state that SOME users have been having trouble connecting to Sprint's nascent LTE network. I suppose that's not sensationalist enough though...I'm surprised that he didn't throw in his opinion that Sprint will soon be ending unlimited data as that's been his personal crusade lately whenever he runs any kind of story about Sprint.

 

And look at the comments. The Romney sycophant is already talking about Sprint's LTE network is just like WiMAX even though, as everyone here already knows, that's wholly inaccurate as the two networks use disparate spectrum. That's the beauty of the internet though; everyone is allowed to express an opinion no matter how uneducated it is. Though thankfully iansltx corrected him, blog pieces like this just foster more and more of these types of opinions. For some reason when it comes to Sprint so many seem to want the underdog to fail which is counterintuitive to me. Some might say that the US wireless market is a de facto duopoly. Inexplicably, it seems like some want that to turn into an ACTUAL duopoly. Madness...

 

Hi

 

I actually wrote the original article that Karl linked to. I had been seeing chatter on various forums about not getting connected and had the opportunity to get Sprint on the record about any issues:

 

http://www.lightreading.com/document.asp?doc_id=223114&

 

I didn't really editorialize in my piece since people can read it and judge for themselves. Sprint's Bob Azzi did tell me that he plans to quickly fill in the gaps in launched markets. "They'll find the LTE coverage in more and more places over the next several months," he said.

 

I did find it interesting that all the initial sites are Ericsson builds...

 

Nice job on this site/forum by the way,

 

Dan Jones

Editor, LR Mobile

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I don't know why sprint can't communicate these issues to customers. I am pretty sure you are only one of a handful of people that gets LTE and has both phones - nobody else knows.

 

The other issue seems to be Sprint's own LTE coverage maps - they don't seem to be that accurate (3G likely overpowering 4G, which Robert did a great job covering).

 

In the grand scheme of things, they should have soft launched the markets, figure out the bugs, and then hard launch so regular folks wouldn't be so confused.

 

Sprin/HTC need to address the issues with the evo and lte connectivity and whats really bothering me is the fact that this was a known issue before the phone was released. I am not as frustrated as many others being that I have a gnex to compensate for my evo issues but I really believe that people would see way better coverage if they fix the issues with the evo(but of course we all know this already). Me and my girl just got back to the house from running a few errands around town. About 90% of the time in various areas around the south side of atlanta my gnex had an lte signal where as my evo didn't pick up an lte signal at all until I got back home.

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Sprin/HTC need to address the issues with the evo and lte connectivity and whats really bothering me is the fact that this was a known issue before the phone was released. I am not as frustrated as many others being that I have a gnex to compensate for my evo issues but I really believe that people would see way better coverage if they fix the issues with the evo(but of course we all know this already). Me and my girl just got back to the house from running a few errands around town. About 90% of the time in various areas around the south side of atlanta my gnex had an lte signal where as my evo didn't pick up an lte signal at all until I got back home.

 

as a solid HTC guy, it's things like this that give me headaches and push me towards the SGS3 ... this, plus the HTC response to the multitasking issue and it just seems like a bit of a money-grab to push out a device before it's really ready. The OneX doesn't seem to have the same number of reported problems so WTH Sprint?

 

BTW - slightly off topic but last two weeks I've had a big increase in dropped calls, no service inside buildings (a local Target for example) and even ROAMING while I'm in a parking lot next to a known WIMAX area.

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A lot of people don't realize that the EVO LTE connectivity issues are due to either a manufacturer or OS defect, and are not Sprints fault.

 

BTW - slightly off topic but last two weeks I've had a big increase in dropped calls, no service inside buildings (a local Target for example) and even ROAMING while I'm in a parking lot next to a known WIMAX area.

Less than 40% of Sprint and Clear sites are co-located, so areas that have good WiMAX coverage may not have good Sprint coverage. Check out network.sprint.com and see if any network upgrades are taking place in your area.

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In other words, Sprint wanted the PR benefit of announcing a fifteen market launch without waiting until those markets were more saturated with signal ..

 

We kinda have it, but you might not get LTE in your aread ...

 

We kinda have it, but ...

 

Kinda .. bad PR

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Hi

 

I actually wrote the original article that Karl linked to. I had been seeing chatter on various forums about not getting connected and had the opportunity to get Sprint on the record about any issues:

 

http://www.lightread...?doc_id=223114

 

I didn't really editorialize in my piece since people can read it and judge for themselves. Sprint's Bob Azzi did tell me that he plans to quickly fill in the gaps in launched markets. "They'll find the LTE coverage in more and more places over the next several months," he said.

 

I did find it interesting that all the initial sites are Ericsson builds...

 

Nice job on this site/forum by the way,

 

Dan Jones

Editor, LR Mobile

 

Dan, can you ask Sprint about LTE connectivity issues that the HTC EVO 4G LTE has been having? themuffinman's experience is well outlined below:

 

Sprin/HTC need to address the issues with the evo and lte connectivity and whats really bothering me is the fact that this was a known issue before the phone was released. I am not as frustrated as many others being that I have a gnex to compensate for my evo issues but I really believe that people would see way better coverage if they fix the issues with the evo(but of course we all know this already). Me and my girl just got back to the house from running a few errands around town. About 90% of the time in various areas around the south side of atlanta my gnex had an lte signal where as my evo didn't pick up an lte signal at all until I got back home.

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Hi

 

I actually wrote the original article that Karl linked to. I had been seeing chatter on various forums about not getting connected and had the opportunity to get Sprint on the record about any issues:

 

http://www.lightread...?doc_id=223114

 

I didn't really editorialize in my piece since people can read it and judge for themselves. Sprint's Bob Azzi did tell me that he plans to quickly fill in the gaps in launched markets. "They'll find the LTE coverage in more and more places over the next several months," he said.

 

I did find it interesting that all the initial sites are Ericsson builds...

 

Nice job on this site/forum by the way,

 

Dan Jones

Editor, LR Mobile

 

Dan, I really like that article. As you said, you put the facts out there and let others judge for themselves. Just another reason why I really enjoy reading articles on light reading. You know you aren't reading someone's bias, usually only facts.

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What a crazy day. So my girlfriends evo has been tripping out since the ota was released. Its been rebooting randomly for absolutely no apparent reason and she insisted I take it to sprint to which I replied that they are probably gonna just hard reset the phone and send me on my way. So while I was there, just by some extreme coincidence, there was an htc rep that was about to leave so I asked if he had a few minutes to see if I could ask some questions. Not sure about the accuracy of what I was told but I took it upon myself to ask a series of questions in regards to the lte connection issues with the htc evo and he told me that they are fully aware of the situation(we already know that of course) and that there is a fix that is currently in testing that should be released fairly shortly. Now there is an update for the gs3 that went out today to fix "Optimized LTE system selection" among other issues so hopefully the evo will have a similar fix released shortly like what the htc rep said.

 

http://support.sprin...TNAV=SU:DP:HDIA

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What a crazy day. So my girlfriends evo has been tripping out since the ota was released. Its been rebooting randomly for absolutely no apparent reason and she insisted I take it to sprint to which I replied that they are probably gonna just hard reset the phone and send me on my way. So while I was there, just by some extreme coincidence, there was an htc rep that was about to leave so I asked if he had a few minutes to see if I could ask some questions. Not sure about the accuracy of what I was told but I took it upon myself to ask a series of questions in regards to the lte connection issues with the htc evo and he told me that they are fully aware of the situation(we already know that of course) and that there is a fix that is currently in testing that should be released fairly shortly. Now there is an update for the gs3 that went out today to fix "Optimized LTE system selection" among other issues so hopefully the evo will have a similar fix released shortly like what the htc rep said.

 

http://support.sprin...TNAV=SU:DP:HDIA

 

Where else are you getting this kind of grassroots investigative journalism? No where else, that's where! S4GRU-skis rule!

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Where else are you getting this kind of grassroots investigative journalism? No where else, that's where! S4GRU-skis rule!

 

I am as skeptical as they come and I usually take anything I hear with a grain of salt but this guy seemed ok and wasn't feeding me the usual BS stuff so I figure I would just post what he said. If a sprint employee told me this then it would be different, I wouldn't have posted anything at all.

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A lot of people don't realize that the EVO LTE connectivity issues are due to either a manufacturer or OS defect, and are not Sprints fault.

 

How's the SGS3 connectivity? As good as the Nexus?

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