Should I bank on LTE rollout claims?

[nahum365]

I have to make calls in the daytime and only have 500 minutes, also some members of the family are paranoid that cell phones cause cancer and only use them when they have to, not to mention sprint's building penetration is not very good unless I'm near a window and even then it's only 1-2 bars in the best conditions (i.e. stationary, no storms) I'm hoping this improves when LTE/NV goes live in Jan.

 

 

 

 

Nah, I'm not paying anywhere near $500, just pointing out that even people who are paying a premium cost are getting poor service.

 

Thanks for the info, I was actually considering going to AT&T data-only plan recently when my sprint data bottomed out at 200-300kbps (it's gone back up to ~700kbps now, which is useable) now I know that really is an option if I have to take that rout at some point

 

Yeah, I'm not sure what the distance is, I was told I'm <500' from the road but the ISP says I'm not so *shrug* I have the same problem with Cable, they said I'm too far out to get service

 

There are people in my neighborhood about a mile from the main road with both cable and FiOS fiber optics. Granted, I'm about 10 miles from a city.

[4GHoward]

I have to make calls in the daytime and only have 500 minutes, also some members of the family are paranoid that cell phones cause cancer and only use them when they have to, not to mention sprint's building penetration is not very good unless I'm near a window and even then it's only 1-2 bars in the best conditions (i.e. stationary, no storms) I'm hoping this improves when LTE/NV goes live in Jan.

Granted you're in an area of native sprint service, sprint's "home phone connect" is $20 a month, would have an assigned number, and is truly unlimited long distance calling.

 

Just a thought ....

 

And Verizon and AT&T also offers similar Wireless Home Phone Services if you don't receive good Sprint Coverage at your service address.

[EliBohnert]

And Verizon and AT&T also offers similar Wireless Home Phone Services if you don't receive good Sprint Coverage at your service address.

Straight Talk has one for $15 a month unlimited calling, it runs off Verizons network.

[lynyrd65]

I've heard those things don't work all that well.

[MacinJosh]

I've heard those things don't work all that well.

 

My Sprint one works great at my house in Pahrump, and most of the time, I have a weak 1x signal in the house, and still have great voice quality.

[lynyrd65]

My Sprint one works great at my house in Pahrump, and most of the time, I have a weak 1x signal in the house, and still have great voice quality.

 

That's good to hear. I just saw negative reviews online. I was actually considering getting something like this for our family cabin. Maybe I'll have to look into it again.

[MacinJosh]

That's good to hear. I just saw negative reviews online. I was actually considering getting something like this for our family cabin. Maybe I'll have to look into it again.

 

The Sprint Phone Connect 2, which replaced the model I have, has had great reviews so far, and even uses EVDO. How they are using it for voice is beyond me, as I thought EVDO was data only, but it still won't work for faxing.

[WiWavelength]

The Sprint Phone Connect 2, which replaced the model I have, has had great reviews so far, and even uses EVDO. How they are using it for voice is beyond me, as I thought EVDO was data only, but it still won't work for faxing.

 

It uses VoIP with EV-DO as the Internet connection. Any Internet connection with high enough throughput and low enough latency can be used for VoIP.

 

AJ

[MacinJosh]

It uses VoIP with EV-DO as the Internet connection. Any Internet connection with high enough throughput and low enough latency can be used for VoIP.

 

AJ

 

That leaves me out of ever getting one, lol. I have horrendous EVDO throughput and latency.

[JeffDTD]

I would want to see the hpc2 in action before concluding it wont work because your data connection is slow.

[MacinJosh]

I would want to see the hpc2 in action before concluding it wont work because your data connection is slow.

 

Try the data connection on my phones has never been higher than 300k on a stable day for EVDO.

[WiWavelength]

Try the data connection on my phones has never been higher than 300k on a stable day for EVDO.

 

Josh, VoIP is not a 320 kbps MP3, not even close.

 

AJ

[MacinJosh]

 

Josh' date=' VoIP is not a 320 kbps MP3, not even close.

 

AJ[/quote']

 

What kind of bandwidth is best for VoIP then?

 

Sent from my LG-LS840 Viper 4G LTE using Forum Runner

[gusherb]

It uses VoIP with EV-DO as the Internet connection. Any Internet connection with high enough throughput and low enough latency can be used for VoIP.

 

AJ

 

How do you know that the Home Phone Connect 2 uses VOIP? is that fact or an assumption? I looked around trying to see if I could find any info about that and couldn't come up with anything, just says it uses 3G which to me is rather vague. It would probably be really cool if it does! I'd expect much higher VQ then 1X in that case.

[gusherb]

What kind of bandwidth is best for VoIP then?

 

Sent from my LG-LS840 Viper 4G LTE using Forum Runner

 

The standard codec used in most VOIP applications is G.711 and runs at 64 kbps. Some other codecs used in VOIP can use up to 128 kbps I believe, which would be more like HD voice.

[MacinJosh]

 

How do you know that the Home Phone Connect 2 uses VOIP? is that fact or an assumption? I looked around trying to see if I could find any info about that and couldn't come up with anything' date=' just says it uses 3G which to me is rather vague. It would probably be really cool if it does! I'd expect much higher VQ then 1X in that case.[/quote']

 

EVDO is data service. I have never seen voice on EVDO, just 1x. It makes sense for Sprint to start using VoIP on the SPC2 because when NV is complete, data speeds will support stable VoIP calling on EVDO. And if this wasn't the case, why would it have EVDO? It doesn't support data services like alarms, IBEX, or faxing.

 

Sent from my LG-LS840 Viper 4G LTE using Forum Runner

[halcyoncmdr]

The Phone Connect 2 is a rebranded Huawei LinkBox F253.

 

I can't find a whole lot of real information about it (surprise surprise from a Chinese company, but I digress). Everything I can find does show it is a VoIP solution, which should just get better after NV upgrades are complete and data speeds are back up where they should be.

[gusherb]

The Phone Connect 2 is a rebranded Huawei LinkBox F253.

 

I can't find a whole lot of real information about it (surprise surprise from a Chinese company, but I digress). Everything I can find does show it is a VoIP solution, which should just get better after NV upgrades are complete and data speeds are back up where they should be.

 

This sounds awesome. Makes me even more interested in home phone connect should I ever need such a thing. Wonder how it performs over crappy evdo speeds, I also wonder if it does 1x fall back (it must). I almost want one just to play with! But I'm not giving up our trusty AT&T POTS line until they shut the network down or we move hahaha.

[halcyoncmdr]

Well from my experience in the store, we haven't seen any issues with the SPC2. The first SPC we saw all of the time with weird issues. Usually reflashing the software to it fixed the thing (I'm a fan of the nuke it from orbit approach). Granted, the SPC2 hasn't been out very long so we'll have to see in the long run. So far compared to the same amount of time since release, the SPC2 seems to be doing better than the first.

[MacinJosh]

Really? I've never had any issues with my SPC. You know, except of course, the bad reception I have at home at times.

[JeffDTD]

What kind of fringe signal do you experience? My family has been using the original since it was launched in an area that averages about -95 to -99dbm on a smartphone with no known or noticed issues with missed or dropped calls. I disabled voicemail though ( to allow an answering machine to be used) so a failed inbound call wouldnt be confirmed by sprint voicemail picking up

 

I scratch my head as to why sprint isnt mass advertising these things

[MacinJosh]

What kind of fringe signal do you experience? My family has been using the original since it was launched in an area that averages about -95 to -99dbm on a smartphone with no known or noticed issues with missed or dropped calls. I disabled voicemail though ( to allow an answering machine to be used) so a failed inbound call wouldnt be confirmed by sprint voicemail picking up

 

I scratch my head as to why sprint isnt mass advertising these things

 

I get about the same signal as your family has, and my SPC has great service in my home. I wish they would mass advertise these things. They are a great technology.

[koiulpoi]

I get about the same signal as your family has, and my SPC has great service in my home. I wish they would mass advertise these things. They are a great technology.

We ask everyone who comes through the door about them. Most people with home phones are paying a lot more than $19.99 a month, and those without often see the advantage of one. Get a phone for the kids that's not an easily-broken cell phone, for example...

 

That, and, $100 off a smartphone.

[iansltx]

Now that we've gotten completely far afield with this topic...

 

Verizon and AT&T take one approach to mobile data. Sprint and T-Mobile take another (well, T-Mo's is a hybrid, but bear with me). VZW and AT&T give you a bucket of rather expensive data that you can use for whatever you want, but that data isn't unlimited. Sprint gives you unlimited data for a specific purpose (use on smartphones) and if you want a data bucket for a different purpose (non-smartphone use) you pay for it. Ting, which runs on Sprint, falls into the same category as VZW and AT&T on this one: expensive, limited data that you can use however you see fit. Sprint has run the numbers and concluded that, for a legitimate mobile user (consuming data on their 3-5" screen mobile phone), they can sell "unlimited" data and get away with it, because people will use their home connections to torrent and stream movies.

 

As far as VoIP goes, maybe we should split off the SPC2 discussion into a different thread. That's an interesting device, for sure. Hopefully it has 1x voice fallback, since it's a lot easier to get a solid 1x voice signal than a solid, VoIP-capable EvDO signal (though the latter isn't particularly hard), particularly if the 1x signal is running on SMR and the EvDO signal is running on PCS.

 

As far as gaming goes, LTE's latency, when the network isn't configured weirdly (as Verizon's used to be in Denver...but they fixed it), is comparable to DSL (well, interleaved DSL rather than FastPath but you get my drift). 30-50 milliseconds for the first hop with a reasonable amount of jitter, then whatever network backbone the service is traversing (Sprint has a good network backbone).With a reasonable signal, gaming and VoIP will work perfectly over LTE, though you'll want to download patches over a connection with a higher cap.

 

As for BitTorrent, legal or not, do it on a wireline connection if you can. Not that it can't be done over LTE, but you're more or less running a server when you're doing that, and you want a reasonable amount of capacity between your server and the Internet. An LTE sector, with 35 Mbps of download capacity and 13 Mbps of upload capacity (real-world numbers, assuming everyone has reasonable signal levels) shared between everyone on the sector, is not how I define "reasonable". Then again, I can max out my home cable connection and be using less than one-third of the available bandwidth on my cable node.

 

That said, BitTorrent doesn't really need a fast, reliable or low-latency connection anyway. It just needs a "clean" connection, where ports aren't randomly blocked and packets aren't forged...ahem, Sandvine. You could run the darned thing over dialup and it would still work. I don't think I've ever done that, but I might have.

[koiulpoi]

As for BitTorrent, legal or not, do it on a wireline connection if you can. Not that it can't be done over LTE, but you're more or less running a server when you're doing that,

Very true. And, not just "if you can", hosting a server of any kind, or running "computer applications or other systems that drive continuous, heavy traffic or data sessions" (which both describe BitTorrent perfectly), well, that's against the Terms & Conditions. So not only should you not do it, you're violating your agreement with Sprint if you do it.