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Network Vision/LTE - New York City Market


Ace41690

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Whats up with the Band priority? I was on lunch around china town and I'm stuck on a crowded B41 with speeds around 1mb/s. It's two bars but when I cycle airplane mode I latch onto a 5 bar B25 thats going a steady 9-10mb/s, but it goes right back to B41 a minute later.  iPhone 6 if that maters.

 

That would be the wonderful carrier update that is with iOS 8.4. They're aware of it, but they're acting like nothing is wrong. It will probably be fixed when iOS 9 is pushed on iPhone 6s launch day.

 

I thought the network decides which band you're on?

 

The current network load balancing software favors B41 over anything else, even if another band may actually have better performance at the time. There are tweaks and further updates coming that will address that. 

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That would be the wonderful carrier update that is with iOS 8.4. They're aware of it, but they're acting like nothing is wrong. It will probably be fixed when iOS 9 is pushed on iPhone 6s launch day.

The bad carrier bundle only really causes unnecessary drops to 3G and late (or nonexistent) hand-ups to LTE.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6 Plus

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Cue the jokes now.  Yo momma's phone is so Verizon that...

I wouldn't touch this one with a 10ft pole..

 

Yo momma's phone is so Verizon that she cannot get LTE even on top of a 10 ft pole.  "Yo momma, can you hear me now?"

 

AJ

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I can't hear your momma now because our VoLTE call dropped  ;)  

 

But you could hear yo momma's moans and sighs with me in high fidelity over that VoLTE codec -- until the call dropped.

 

AJ

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Funny how they defend it saying oh, congestion. If it was sprint it would be blamed on shitty management and a crappy network, not congestion. When it in fact, would probably be due to the exact same cause. Only difference is that sprint has a whole lot more spectrum to work with and will just activate another carrier, and another, and another, and another.....

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Funny how they defend it saying oh, congestion. If it was sprint it would be blamed on shitty management and a crappy network, not congestion. When it in fact, would probably be due to the exact same cause. Only difference is that sprint has a whole lot more spectrum to work with and will just activate another carrier, and another, and another, and another.....

What's good for the goose is good for the gander.

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Funny how they defend it saying oh, congestion. If it was sprint it would be blamed on shitty management and a crappy network, not congestion. When it in fact, would probably be due to the exact same cause. Only difference is that sprint has a whole lot more spectrum to work with and will just activate another carrier, and another, and another, and another.....

 

T-Mobile can just do no wrong in their happy land (nor Verizon for some of them, lol...)

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T-Mobile can just do no wrong in their happy land (nor Verizon for some of them, lol...)

Maybe that's true for their experience. I get that. The problem always starts when others apply their experiences to mean "this must be the case everywhere." That's why we need third party testing to take the flaws out of our own thinking. That gives clarity and scope to our thinking.

 

In the real world, the engineering problems wireless carriers are difficult to solve. That said, Verizon has NYC as their home base so of course Verizon would be good there. Same as Seattle for T-Mobile, Kansas City for Sprint, and Dallas-Fort Worth for AT&T. Only T-Mobile did not win or tie their home market in RootMetrics. In particular, Sprint came a long way in a year in their home market.

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Maybe that's true for their experience. I get that. The problem always starts when others apply their experiences to mean "this must be the case everywhere." That's why we need third party testing to take the flaws out of our own thinking. That gives clarity and scope to our thinking.

 

Well that's indeed my underlying point. It is dangerously stupid ignorance that pollutes social media for years on end until it clears up and perceptions finally start to change.

 

Everyone thinks that T-Mobile (and Verizon) are the shit because they're good in their particular town/area. But once people venture outside of concrete jungle land or once people travel throughout the country or out of their market, the true colors of those two being just as inconsistent and non-perfect as AT&T and Sprint shine right in their faces.

 

The difference is, outside of your points too, Sprint's work has been plain obvious and non-stop and they absolutely no longer suck on average or any of this crap that's been spewed on social media, and AT&T is not buckling nationwide, nor dissatisfying their many customers, like many idiots have incorrectly stated. In fact in their better markets they shine. People are free to leave any one of the 4 carriers if they have such a problem and it's common sense to choose based on your situation and needs. 

 

So, it all goes back to there being no one solid nationwide carrier. We just know the technical amount of coverage in chronological order (VZW, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile), but it doesn't mean much to anyone individually. 

 

It is and always will be area dependent. 

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I almost left sprint back in early 2013. I told myself I'll give them a year. I am now happy with sprint and glad I waited it out. People can trash sprint all they want because it's the cool thing to do. But what's fun is when my cousin on ATT can't understand why I'm gettingtwice the speed as him in nyc lol.

Edited by Palan
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Well that's indeed my underlying point. It is dangerously stupid ignorance that pollutes social media for years on end until it clears up and perceptions finally start to change.

 

Everyone thinks that T-Mobile (and Verizon) are the shit because they're good in their particular town/area. But once people venture outside of concrete jungle land or once people travel throughout the country or out of their market, the true colors of those two being just as inconsistent and non-perfect as AT&T and Sprint shine right in their faces.

 

The difference is, outside of your points too, Sprint's work has been plain obvious and non-stop and they absolutely no longer suck on average or any of this crap that's been spewed on social media, and AT&T is not buckling nationwide, nor dissatisfying their many customers, like many idiots have incorrectly stated. In fact in their better markets they shine. People are free to leave any one of the 4 carriers if they have such a problem and it's common sense to choose based on your situation and needs. 

 

So, it all goes back to there being no one solid nationwide carrier. We just know the technical amount of coverage in chronological order (VZW, AT&T, Sprint, T-Mobile), but it doesn't mean much to anyone individually. 

 

It is and always will be area dependent.

 

So I was entertaining myself the other day by debating on the comments section of a fiercewireless article with (wait for it......)...."Fabian," whatever that thing even is....and it was arguing that tmobile has a larger native footprint (nevermind LTE, we're talking total coverage of ANY kind) than Sprint. Is this true? To my limited knowledge, it is not. But I need to know...am I wrong?
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So I was entertaining myself the other day by debating on the comments section of a fiercewireless article with (wait for it......)...."Fabian," whatever that thing even is....and it was arguing that tmobile has a larger native footprint (nevermind LTE, we're talking total coverage of ANY kind) than Sprint. Is this true? To my limited knowledge, it is not. But I need to know...am I wrong?

 

It is true. T-Mobile native footprint in square miles is larger than Sprint's. This is mainly due to it's broader footprint in areas like the south and a huge coverage area in Eastern NM.

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It is true. T-Mobile native footprint in square miles is larger than Sprint's. This is mainly due to it's broader footprint in areas like the south and a huge coverage area in Eastern NM.

Interesting.  I did not know that.

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Interesting.  I did not know that.

 

But it's a little misleading, because native coverage could also include token license protection sites, and not usable coverage. It's like saying Sprint covers New Fairfield, CT, but the reality is there is a single site located on a boomer tower and coverage is barely usable outside of town.

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It is true. T-Mobile native footprint in square miles is larger than Sprint's. This is mainly due to it's broader footprint in areas like the south and a huge coverage area in Eastern NM.

But it should be added, that even though Tmo has more square miles of native coverage, a lot of that is EDGE and GPRS (<100kbps) or T1 backed WCDMA that runs at 500kbps.

 

Using Nexus 6 on Tapatalk

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It is true. T-Mobile native footprint in square miles is larger than Sprint's. This is mainly due to it's broader footprint in areas like the south and a huge coverage area in Eastern NM.

 

This is the oft cited comparison map:

 

Mosaik_Solutions_Sprint_TMobile_Coverage

 

I question its accuracy.  Mosaik Solutions is not independently measuring native footprint; it is just aggregating coverage data available online from the operators themselves.

 

Now, no doubt, T-Mobile has been more aggressive in the past decade at expanding its native footprint in places such as Oklahoma and New Mexico.  And that is because T-Mobile has anemic roaming coverage -- lots of no service.  But what I see in the map is overly conservative Sprint projection and overly optimistic T-Mobile projection.

 

Look at the Oklahoma/Texas Panhandle, for example.  See the clean, sweeping curve?  That is one PCS and/or AWS-1 site that purports to have something like a 60 mile coverage radius.  Well, that must be one boomer.  Yeah, I do not believe it.

 

AJ

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Look at the Oklahoma/Texas Panhandle, for example.  See the clean, sweeping curve?  That is one PCS and/or AWS-1 site that purports to have something like a 60 mile coverage radius.  Well, that must be one boomer.  Yeah, I do not believe it.

 

AJ

 

I can tell you based on first hand observation that the New Mexico/Texas Panhandle/Oklahoma Tmo coverage is grossly overstative.  Your conclusions are dead to rights.

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Sprint needs to do better in some rural locations. Eagle lake, PA for example has LTE on tmobile but basically unusable 3g with sprint.

 

Eagle Lake also has a population of 12 people so there's that. Additionally, it may be a GMO site since it is rural PA. It'll likely be one of the last sites to get upgraded in the U.S.

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