Network Vision/LTE - Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands Market

[themuffinman]

Thank you for the info. Hopefully we get LTE, Sprint 3G isn't good enough. Speeds at 1 - 3.5Mbs at night/early morning, and 0.30Mbs every other time isn't good enough. I thought the word "sprint" meant going fast...

 

As you can see from all the road work being done all over the island, the islands overall internet infrastructure is getting overhauled. I am sure this is what will tie in to sprints lte plans to get us the speeds that lte is capable of. As far as the 3g speeds, I think this will somewhat continue to be an issue. The thing is, the number of towers we have on the island is more than sufficient to deal with the island's population but when you add the countless tourists that come off of the cruiseships and their crew members you could easily be looking at an additional 20,000 to 30,000 people on any given day during this time of year not to mention the thousands that fly here on vacation on a weekly basis. Also keep in mind that all of these cruises originate from a US port but they travel to all foreign ports throughout the caribbean and mexico which means lots and lots of international roaming, so many of them make most of their calls when they get to st. thomas because its not international anymore. This kind of sudden onslaught of traffic is kinda like a special event in the states where they have to bring in mobile cell trucks to deal with the exta traffic, unfortunately there won't be that option in the VI any time soon if ever.

[Austrie]

All I want is at least 1Mbs at all hours of the day, I won't even rush sprint for LTE at all till summer(that's when I upgrade my phone). 1Mbs is livable enough to watch videos, but when my speeds drop to 0.15Mbs that's just sad. Hopefully I'll be moving back to Houston, TX soon, l have to look up LTE coverage for over there.

[megabytepr]

Robert

 

Do you have any info on the towns of Fajardo,Rio Grande, Luquillo or Canovanas? It seems there has been no progress there with LTE. Only one antenna over 6 weeks ago and nothing else.

[S4GRU]

Robert

 

Do you have any info on the towns of Fajardo,Rio Grande, Luquillo or Canovanas? It seems there has been no progress there with LTE. Only one antenna over 6 weeks ago and nothing else.

 

They ran into San Juan to get things up and running to launch. They'll probably get back to the NE Coast in a few weeks. They may finish the market in the next month.

 

Robert via LG Optimus G using Tapatalk

 

 

[megabytepr]

 

 

They ran into San Juan to get things up and running to launch. They'll probably get back to the NE Coast in a few weeks. They may finish the market in the next month.

 

Robert via LG Optimus G using Tapatalk

 

So we may have 100% LTE by the end of April?

[Luispr]

No Lte in Manati <img src='http://s4gru.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/sad.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

[S4GRU]

 

So we may have 100% LTE by the end of April?

 

Yep. I'm thinking so.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

[S4GRU]

Robert

 

Do you have any info on the towns of Fajardo,Rio Grande, Luquillo or Canovanas? It seems there has been no progress there with LTE. Only one antenna over 6 weeks ago and nothing else.

 

Actually, the second Fajardo area site had LTE accepted yesterday. The one on the island.

 

Robert

[themuffinman]

Yep. I'm thinking so.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

 

You think the Virgin Islands will be apart of that 100% by next month?

[S4GRU]

 

You think the Virgin Islands will be apart of that 100% by next month?

 

If the backhaul is lined up for completion, it definitely should. And it seems that one site where you encountered fast 3G has already had it's backhaul upgraded. Most likely, all the backhaul in the USVI, or at least St. Thomas, is probably the same backhaul vendor. So I have to believe they are working on all the sites right now.

 

Robert

[Sam]

Sprint spectrum is horrible in buildings. Sorry but this is true. I enter today to a meeting in the Business Administration Faculty room and my phone go to roaming. I exit the room and wait few seconds and get full signal in my phone. Again, enter to the meeting room and wait a while and its roaming again. 800mhz is highly desirable and will help with the signal problem very much. I read that they will start deploying LTE in this band in 2014. But In Puerto Rico 800mhz LTE will start running in 2021 hahaha. Joking about this, but, you know, hahaha. Claro and AT&T have a very better coverage in Puerto Rico but Sprint service and plans are better. For know I will give Sprint time to finish their upgrades. And let me tell you again, SPRINT LTE IS AWESOME!!!!

 

Drop calls is a really BIG PROBLEM hahaha. Is a very bad publicity for Sprint when we need to tell everybody, "my call will drop for sure and if thats happen I will call you again, sorry I have Sprint!" Bad Publicity!!!

[megabytepr]

AT&T's coverage is good in the center of the island (sort of), I carry two phones daily one AT&T and the other Sprint and I must tell you I mostly forward my calls to the sprint phone. AT&T's LTE in some areas is starting to be completely useless. I was in a meeting in Caguas the other day and AT&T LTE got me 0.87 (full bars) Mbps where Sprint in the same area had full bars 3G and 1 bar LTE and got 4mbps.

[Gab2012]

Actually, the second Fajardo area site had LTE accepted yesterday. The one on the island.

 

Robert

 

If its the one on the little island its called Isleta Marina

 

Coverage related, I've been getting a TON of dropped calls every day in the following areas:

Costco near UPRB

Barrio Palmas in catano(right in front of the Palma's Station site) had to redial 10 times that day

Guaynabo near the Martinez Nadal train station

Plaza del Sol at the West Main Ave.

 

This should be a sign that work is underway and will be completed soon.

[miguelfp1]

there's still gaps and unusable spots all over the Metro area, but it's definitely better than it was 3 or 4 months ago....

 

btw, I think the Los Filtros Costco doesn't actually get served by the UPRB site, that one's got upgraded 3G since about December, whereas in Costco data and voice service has been almost non-existent since about September or October.

[gustavo_pr]

There are 18 sites waiting to receive 3G NV Complete status. One on Levittown, the rest on San Juan. Still haven't counted those waiting for LTE Complete status. Would be interesting to see how much time goes from 3G NV Complete to LTE Complete. Definitely the PR/VI Market will be the first to hit 100% Complete.

[Gab2012]

Just confirmed. the plaza rio hondo site in bayamon has WORKING LTE.

22-25mbps while standing outside of BestBuy right in front of it.

[egonadrian]

Wow I feel so blessed to be in the first market to be completed. You guys have no idea how lucky we are, there are a lot of markets and we get to be the first one to be 100% complete! I think it is because there is a lot more competition here than any other market. I remember PR was one of the first markets where AT&T launched with LTE, and Tmobile also launched 42mbps HSPA+ here. Now we also have Sprint LTE, Claro LTE and Open Mobile LTE. That is a lot of competition for a small island. A lot of places in the US still do not have LTE, let alone Sprints LTE. We are truly blessed to live here. Proud to be Puerto Rican

 

This is also going to be great for tourists that come to Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands since they will always be connected with blazing fast UNLIMITED speeds wherever they are on vacation.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[miguelfp1]

nah, we're gonna be the first 100% market 'cause it's a tiny market with less than 250 sites

 

but yeah, extremely lucky to be so ahead in the rollout

[S4GRU]

nah, we're gonna be the first 100% market 'cause it's a tiny market with less than 250 sites

 

but yeah, extremely lucky to be so ahead in the rollout

 

I live in a pretty small market too, but they haven't really even started here. You are indeed lucky and blessed.

 

Robert via LG Optimus G using Tapatalk

 

 

[egonadrian]

nah, we're gonna be the first 100% market 'cause it's a tiny market with less than 250 sites

 

but yeah, extremely lucky to be so ahead in the rollout

 

It is a small market with a high population density and a lot of competition. I think those are big factors as to why we have LTE from most cell phone carriers.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[megabytepr]

nah, we're gonna be the first 100% market 'cause it's a tiny market with less than 250 sites

 

but yeah, extremely lucky to be so ahead in the rollout

 

266 to be exact!

 

[miguelfp1]

266 to be exact!

 

dang, I was close! If I recall correctly 242 for PR, 14 for USVI?

 

nonetheless, we sure are blessed with the progress, and with good weather that didn't slow down work. I suppose the market's density played a big part in the priority Sprint put on it, and I really feel for those that right now are going through the exact same thing we did not so long ago: unusable data and poor voice reliability.

 

Spring time's coming up, hopefully sparking faster progress in rolling out Network Vision to the rest of the US, and LTE in Robert's area in New Mexico!!

[Razpr]

There is a huge dead spot at rio piedras from san patricio to upr barbosa ave. call drops no data... and phone takes for ever to switch to roaming. sg-s3.

 

check the dead spot in center of 00927 the main zip for the area.

 

https://network.spri...m/search/00927/

 

I called Sprint and asked to be forwarded to Tech Support and i spoke with one of the representatives over there and asked her about this area in 00927. basically i told her there is a huge gap between San patricio plaza, Plaza las Americas and University of Puerto Rico, including La Piñero and La barbosa ave....

 

She told me San Juan's rollouts were mostly complete and there were no "plans" of putting new towers in this area anytime soon. She also said Sprint will finish the LTE rollout updates to ALL states and countries by the end of 2013 if there are no delays (we all know what this means).

Im pretty much dissapointed, i told her since there was a news post on the sprint website announcing the LTE rollout in the San Juan Area i actually LOST LTE in Cupey because 3 antennaes went down and prior when it was in testing phase i had 4g LTE.

 

Im kinda shocked because that area is HUGE around plaza las americas, plaza del sol and la barbosa and piñero ave... why would they not put any new towers in this area? I pretty much get 4g in Business and Law schools in UPR where youre really close to the corner of the campus and some LTE sneaks in and also in a corner of General Studies and Natural Sciences schools which probably comes from another slightly far tower. The rest of the campus gets no 4g, and just 1x speeds with no calls coming in. My friend has sprint and were always trying to meet up and we just resort to 30 minute late voice mails and text messages.

[Impulse]

I really wouldn't expect tech support to know much of anything about network updates to be honest...

 

Overall I'm sure Puerto Rico's super dense population (way higher than many of the bigger US cities in phase 1 or 2) and lackluster broadband options have played a role in all the wireless companies investing early here (I've noticed a lot of people forsaking cable/DSL lately and just paying for wireless modems/mifi's/hotspot devices), PR's varied landscape also makes a good testing ground for them.

 

Unfortunately I really haven't enjoyed much of Sprint's LTE so far since it's pretty scarce in the metro area where I live, work, and study, and the LTE speeds I've seen for AT&T are usually pretty good around the same spots (5-10Mb even in semi crowded areas, haven't run a test on an AT&T phone in an absolutely packed spot like a bar or whatever tho)... I'm still optimistic judging by the progress Sprint has made elsewhere in the island tho.

 

I used to be with AT&T, I'm in no hurry to deal with their awful service and even more awful policies again. Sprint would have to screw up their rollout in a big way thru the rest of the year for me to even think about it, and even then I'd probably look at T-Mobile first. Haven't had a big issue with dropped calls myself either but I barely talk on the phone (they could take mobile to mobile away and I'd survive, on their lowest tier plan).

[S4GRU]

Every single existing Sprint site in Puerto Rico will get LTE. And they should be complete in the next 30-45 days. There will not be any new Sprint sites being added, just converted existing sites.

 

Robert via LG Optimus G using Tapatalk