Has anyone else had service issues that make your service mostly unusable?

[maxsilver]

I've traveled to Chicago IL, Ann Arbor MI, Detroit MI, Tulsa OK.  The service has ranged from almost working to unusable (Data and Voice).  

 

Dropped calls left and right all last week while I was in Michigan.

 

Anyone else have this experience?

I have (mainly data issues more than voice, but I don't use voice much). I think Michigan is sort of in a 'known bad' state at the moment.

 

You've got all the normal Network Vision issues that others have to wait through (voice/sms issues handing off between 800/1900, lots of 800 coming live in rural areas, but the cities are mostly 1900 only) and in urban areas, you've got data being slow/spotty on maxed-out LTE sectors.

 

But on top of that, we have a much-lower-than-normal site density in many areas that other markets (like Chicago) don't have to deal with, so our towers are getting overloaded a lot faster than other markets.

 

The smaller towns are doing pretty well once upgraded (Hastings, Wayland, Reed City, ect), since PCS LTE is often good enough for them, and site density is much less of an issue. (These towns might only have one to three towers, if handoffs work between them, everything else feels ok).

 

But for urban Michigan areas (Detroit, Ann Arbor, Lansing, Grand Rapids, Muskegon), things are really rough and we'll have to wait both for Network Vision to finish, and for Sprint to start and finish adding back new sites they pulled.

 

I don't expect it to get much better here until both of those complete.

 

LTE is becoming quite loaded. I had a -80dbm and only getting 5-7 down

As others have mentioned, that's not "loaded" at all. That's fantastic speeds.

 

*This* is an overloaded LTE sector in Michigan -> http://i.imgur.com/BhDJTGV.jpg

[briankwest]

It was traveling in Campbell, CA area this week and it was unusable to acceptable, then driving home I was having dropped calls and no service in defined areas..... SIGH..

 

I'll be in NYC, and Atlanta in Oct. We'll see, last year in ATL it was unusable too.

 

/b

[bucdenny]

In San Diego, no 800Mhz and we are dropping calls too when driving.  Hopefully Sprint will fix all these issues soon, opening tickets with Sprint is pointless because it ain't helping.

 

Voice service has been much better pre-NV.  Getting too many drop calls with random audio issues.  When opening tickets with Sprint, all they can say everything is working normally or something is wrong with device.  Impossible with device because we have 5 other phones having similar issues.

 

 

What can cause these drop calls and audio issues (sounds like VOIP audio with congested bandwidth)?  We are on 1900Mhz only here in San Diego...

[maxsilver]

When opening tickets with Sprint, all they can say everything is working normally or something is wrong with device.  Impossible with device because we have 5 other phones having similar issues.

To be fair, I don't think that's specific to Sprint. None of the carriers I've ever called seem to actually monitor their own towers, and none of them ever seem to know when their own network is experiencing trouble.

 

I've called AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile on towers that were 100% down for 6 to 12 hours due to power outages in the area (which isn't subjective 'service trouble' issue, but is a simple, easy thing to monitor for from the network side) and they repeated that same "no known issues" line.

 

Which would say to me that there's either no meaningful hardware/software level monitoring going on at sites. Or if it is, that (more likely) network status info is not used or communicated to anyone we're allowed to talk to via telephone.

[The Dave]

From what I understand, the system can automatically detect an issue with a site as part of the design. I imagine that when a problem occurs, it is kept within the engineering/network side of the company and they probably don't notify call centers or retail stores that deal with the customer interaction.

[newboyx]

Fortunately Indy is getting LTE 800 earlier than most markets, so it will effectively double capacity instantly at each site when it is deployed. And each LTE 2600 carrier will effectively triple capacity over each LTE 1900 carrier.

 

Robert

Did I miss a memo? Indy 800 LTE earlier than other markets? Tell me more? Why? Time frame?

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4

 

 

[S4GRU]

Did I miss a memo? Indy 800 LTE earlier than other markets? Tell me more? Why? Time frame?

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4

 

It's from the standpoint that Samsung markets are moving on LTE 800 faster than other OEM markets.

 

Robert

[newboyx]

It's from the standpoint that Samsung markets are moving on LTE 800 faster than other OEM markets.

 

Robert

Well that's less exciting. I thought I was special ;-)

I need a triband phone now. I miss driving around to sites. The thrill is gone.

Jk, getting LTE 800 sooner is great news.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4

 

 

[S4GRU]

Well that's less exciting. I thought I was special ;-)

I need a triband phone now. I miss driving around to sites. The thrill is gone.

Jk, getting LTE 800 sooner is great news.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4

 

The markets we have confirmed LTE 800 deployment is beginning in West Michigan, Ft. Wayne/South Bend, Chicago, Minnesota, Upper Central Valley, Lower Central Valley and Colorado.  Notice how they all are Samsung markets?  Additionally, there are likely more, but we haven't received info about them yet.

 

Robert

[jamesinclair]

To be fair, I don't think that's specific to Sprint. None of the carriers I've ever called seem to actually monitor their own towers, and none of them ever seem to know when their own network is experiencing trouble.

 

I've called AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile on towers that were 100% down for 6 to 12 hours due to power outages in the area (which isn't subjective 'service trouble' issue, but is a simple, easy thing to monitor for from the network side) and they repeated that same "no known issues" line.

 

 

True.

 

And at least with Verizon, tier 1 had no way of noting in the system anywhere that a problem exists, either a network one or a phone problem.

 

So if firmware goes out, and tier 1 gets 100 calls saying " this broke my phone"  all we can say is " not a known issue, maybe call back in a week when someone tells tech"

[Jaggrey]

Over the past several weeks my service has degraded tremendously.  Calls getting dropped, SMS not going thru until after multiple attempts, even not being able to place calls.  It's getting old fast.... I've had more problems the past month or so than I've had in years with Sprint.

[MacPCS]

You mentioned Tulsa... lately when trying to make a call it's taken about a minute to actually initiate the call.  This happens indoors in lower signal areas (where it didn't previously) and it even has happened outside in pretty good signal strength areas.  This and the data speeds have been wildly inconsistent.  Either half way decent, or not functional.  It's a bit of a miss mash right now.... you don't really know what to expect.  

 

I'll say that I have been on more "Extended" (roaming) coverage over the past month though in places that I go all the time.  Some work is definitely still going on.  Pardon our dust, indeed.  

[briankwest]

You mentioned Tulsa... lately when trying to make a call it's taken about a minute to actually initiate the call.  This happens indoors in lower signal areas (where it didn't previously) and it even has happened outside in pretty good signal strength areas.  This and the data speeds have been wildly inconsistent.  Either half way decent, or not functional.  It's a bit of a miss mash right now.... you don't really know what to expect.  

 

I'll say that I have been on more "Extended" (roaming) coverage over the past month though in places that I go all the time.  Some work is definitely still going on.  Pardon our dust, indeed.  

 

This is pretty much what I get no matter where I go on Sprint.  Either its ok or its just unusable. 

[jamesinclair]

You mentioned Tulsa... lately when trying to make a call it's taken about a minute to actually initiate the call.  This happens indoors in lower signal areas (where it didn't previously) and it even has happened outside in pretty good signal strength areas.  This and the data speeds have been wildly inconsistent.  Either half way decent, or not functional.  It's a bit of a miss mash right now.... you don't really know what to expect.  

 

I'll say that I have been on more "Extended" (roaming) coverage over the past month though in places that I go all the time.  Some work is definitely still going on.  Pardon our dust, indeed.  

 

Thatw as happening in Fresn too.

 

Would press send and it took 30+ seconds for the ringing to begin.

[jbhtexas]

When opening tickets with Sprint, all they can say everything is working normally or something is wrong with device.  Impossible with device because we have 5 other phones having similar issues.

 

Probably old news...but on Sprint.com, there is the "Network and Coverage" forum in the Sprint Forums.  You can post issues about specific locations, and folks who appear to be from Sprint will usually initially respond.  And they do often provide information about problems and outages with specific towers.

 

Unfortunately, this doesn't seem to help anything get resolved any faster.  I recently posted a problem there where 4G/3G/voice were all down at a particular location.  Someone from Sprint responded back that the two towers closest to that location were down and the next two nearest towers were overloaded, and that technicians were trying to fix the down towers.  One one hand, it's nice to know why I was having trouble.  On the other hand, the problem is not fixed a couple of weeks later...

[koiulpoi]

Tier 1 Tech Support and Store Reps do have access to a tool called Network Pinpoint that allows them to notate an address or cross-street as problematic. Have them use it if you're having troubles.

 

If somebody tells you there's no issues in an area you're having issues, they likely just don't know how to use the tools provided. Sprint actually has some decent automated network examination tools - but almost nobody is trained on using them, and even fewer (outside of OKCQC and Erricson) actually know how to use them at all.

 

Likely, they're just pulling up the list of open network events in your area, and if they don't see any, they just say "welp, it's totally okay" because they don't know any better. A site could be reporting a block rate of 60%+ and they'd never see it, because a ticket hadn't yet been opened.

 

Of course, this leads to customer frustration as they're told different things by different people, and don't know who to believe.