Greetings from VA

[MikeG]

Greetings. I'm a 2 year iPhone 4S user planning to jumping over to Android very soon on the wings of the new LG G2. I understand Sprint needs another year or two to finish deploying Network Vision. And thanks to s4gru.com, I know about the issues early tri-band phone adopters will face until CSFB is available. What the heck, my 4S can only access 3G anyway lol.

 

Looking forward to learning more about the status of upgrades in my area and riding the bleeding edge all the way up to the full Sprint Spark experience with VoLTE at some point.  

[Nickel]

Greetings. I'm a 2 year iPhone 4S user planning to jumping over to Android very soon on the wings of the new LG G2. I understand Sprint needs another year or two to finish deploying Network Vision. And thanks to s4gru.com, I know about the issues early tri-band phone adopters will face until CSFB is available. What the heck, my 4S can only access 3G anyway lol.

 

Looking forward to learning more about the status of upgrades in my area and riding the bleeding edge all the way up to the full Sprint Spark experience with VoLTE at some point.  

First of all, welcome to S4GRU! Second of all, It's going to be a while until you see VoLTE.

 

[MikeG]

Thanks for the welcome. Yes, I read here on sgru.com that VoLTE probably won't be available for a year or so.

[Dkoellerwx]

Greetings. I'm a 2 year iPhone 4S user planning to jumping over to Android very soon on the wings of the new LG G2. I understand Sprint needs another year or two to finish deploying Network Vision. And thanks to s4gru.com, I know about the issues early tri-band phone adopters will face until CSFB is available. What the heck, my 4S can only access 3G anyway lol.

 

Looking forward to learning more about the status of upgrades in my area and riding the bleeding edge all the way up to the full Sprint Spark experience with VoLTE at some point.

On mobile I can't see your location (if you listed it) but depending on where you are, you might not have to worry about the eCSFB issue at all.

 

Ohh, and Welcome!

 

 

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[MikeG]

Thanks. Looks like a great community. I spend most of my time in the Alexandria, VA, DC, Rockville, MD region. I think tri-band phones are currently experiencing the eCSFB issue and falling back to 3G around here. Is that your understanding? 

 

I'm gradually finding all the good info here in s4gru.com. So far, I see the legacy and NV vendor in this area is Alcatel-Lucent; NV sites are roughly 75% accepted and LTE sites are something like 35% accepted. I don't understand that last metric since NV/Spark will provide LTE on all three bands (25, 26 and 41). Does that mean towers get accepted for LTE first and then gradually get the full Spark/NV upgrade?

[Dkoellerwx]

Thanks. Looks like a great community. I spend most of my time in the Alexandria, VA, DC, Rockville, MD region. I think tri-band phones are currently experiencing the eCSFB issue and falling back to 3G around here. Is that your understanding? 

 

I'm gradually finding all the good info here in s4gru.com. So far, I see the legacy and NV vendor in this area is Alcatel-Lucent; NV sites are roughly 75% accepted and LTE sites are something like 35% accepted. I don't understand that last metric since NV/Spark will provide LTE on all three bands (25, 26 and 41). Does that mean towers get accepted for LTE first and then gradually get the full Spark/NV upgrade?

 

Actually your market should be good to go as far as the eCSFB issue goes. The legacy and NV vendor is the same, and most sites were NV 3G before they had LTE go live, which means the proper equipment was in place to begin with.

 

Spark....

 

Spark refers to Band 41 only. Which is the TD-LTE rollout by Clear/Sprint. At this point in time, it is unrelated to the PCS LTE rollout. Clear/Sprint is currently overlaying Band 41 TD-LTE on top of the existing WiMax networks, and won't begin adding additional sites until mid-next year sometime. 

 

Unfortunately, Sprint isn't defining Spark very well, so most people assume it means PCS (Band 25), SMR (Band 26) and EBS/BRS (Band 41) all at the same time.

 

SMR LTE won't be widespread until next year. We've yet to see the first SMR LTE activation. We expect to see that happen late this month or in December, with roughly 3-5,000 sites online by the end of the year if all goes well.

[MikeG]

Okay, I can live with band 25 (1.9 GHz) and switching between voice and data for a year or so. Wow, learning a lot already. I know band 41 (800 MHz) should have better building penetration over shorter distances when it comes, but I did think (erroneously I guess) that Spark and NV were synonymous. Doesn't NV at least imply all 3 bands? Sorry if my intro thread is getting long, but that'll be less questions from me later lol.

[Dkoellerwx]

Okay, I can live with band 25 (1.9 GHz) and switching between voice and data for a year or so. Wow, learning a lot already. I know band 41 (800 MHz) should have better building penetration over shorter distances when it comes, but I did think (erroneously I guess) that Spark and NV were synonymous. Doesn't NV at least imply all 3 bands? Sorry if my intro thread is getting long, but that'll be less questions from me later lol.

NV was initially just PCS (1900, Band 25).

 

SMR (800, Band 26 - not 41) was added as a kind of NV 2.0. Band 26 has the better coverage and in-building characteristics.

 

Band 41 (TD-LTE, 2500-2600MHz) was going to be a sort of hotspot function for high traffic areas to relive congestion. Since the investment by Softbank, the plans for Band 41 have expanded significantly. Band 41 is the carrier that has the ability to deliver speeds on the order of 50-70Mbps.

 

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[Dkoellerwx]

Okay, I can live with band 25 (1.9 GHz) and switching between voice and data for a year or so. Wow, learning a lot already. I know band 41 (800 MHz) should have better building penetration over shorter distances when it comes, but I did think (erroneously I guess) that Spark and NV were synonymous. Doesn't NV at least imply all 3 bands? Sorry if my intro thread is getting long, but that'll be less questions from me later lol.

What do you mean by switching between voice and data for a year or so?

 

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[MikeG]

My understanding is the tri-band capable phones are not dual-channel SVLTE capable and VoLTE won't be available for quite some time. In the meantime, they'll use eCSFB to switch between 3G for calls/texting and LTE for data, but can't do both at the same time.

[Dkoellerwx]

My understanding is the tri-band capable phones are not dual-channel SVLTE capable and VoLTE won't be available for quite some time. In the meantime, they'll use eCSFB to switch between 3G for calls/texting and LTE for data, but can't do both at the same time.

That's true. Tri-band devices are not SvLTE capable. But neither is the iPhone on any carrier. So it shouldn't be that big of a difference. The lack of SvDO on my HTC ONE (my area has been mainly 3G only until a month or two ago) hasn't bothered me at all. So the lack of SvLTE doesn't bother me either.

 

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