Sprint Reportedly Bowing Out of T-Mobile Bid (was "Sprint offer" and "Iliad" threads)

[WiWavelength]

Are you kidding me? You don't even realize who you're talking to?

 

Way to go Sprintcare.

 

That is hardly customer care's fault.  That is Mike Sievert's fault for acting like an obnoxious jackass.

 

And the way that T-Mobile likes to use Manhattan, KS as some comical comparison is beyond the pale.  Besides, Sprint has had LTE in Manhattan, KS for nearly two years.  T-Mobile just added LTE to a few sites four months ago and still is not finished.

 

I am tempted to tweet at Mike Sievert and tell him to grow up and stop acting like an insufferable jerk.  But maybe it is hard for him to be serious when facing the reality that T-Mobile's network is awful across greater than 90 percent of the land area of this country.  Pathetic.

 

AJ

[dstar2002]

You won't do it. Cluck Cluck goes the chicken ????

 

Sent from my HTC M8

[WiWavelength]

You won't do it. Cluck Cluck goes the chicken

 

No, I will not do it.  I have at least a little bit of a reputation to uphold as a solid researcher and technical writer in this industry.  Telling off Mike Sievert would just make me look bad -- even though he is one who should look bad with his slanted taunts.

 

So, no, I am not chicken, and I do not appreciate the insinuation.  Rather, I am just smart.

 

AJ

[dstar2002]

I know I know, I was merely joshing at you. In my experience any form of response in the twittersphere meant to point out truth or logic tends to spiral in a negative direction, especially when the person is not going to change their statements anyway.

 

Sent from my HTC M8

[Fraydog]

http://www.mobilitytechzone.com/topics/4g-wirelessevolution/articles/2014/06/24/382182-sprint-t-mobiles-hd-voice-culture-clash.htm

 

Sprint should have spent the money and time on getting to LTE and VoLTE faster, instead of trying to dress up its CDMA network. For all the scorn I have heaped on Verizon for overhyping VoLTE and LTE, it did not go down the path of throwing good money into its CDMA legacy network.

[jgore43]

Hmm I think the hd voice is brilliant. Granted it only works with sprint customers. But it's a great app gap until volte is ready for primetime on sprint.

[Fraydog]

I think the fallacy he brings up is that EVRC-NW cost a lot more for Sprint. It didn't.

 

Would I like to see accelerated VoLTE? No doubt. Has EVRC-NW had bumps? Of course. HD Voice was hyped two years ago at the EVO 4G launch event in NYC. It took two years for Sprint to handle the issues with that.

 

HD Voice demonstration is 24 minutes in, note the warning to stop recording.

 

 

The same demonstration minus the voice of Jack Bauer, published in February 2014 by Sprint to their YouTube.

 

http://youtu.be/Y4bb3b9PiRg

 

This made me skeptical toward CDMA 1X Advanced. I am fine with Sprint providing 1X HD Voice. I just think more urgency to provide VoLTE is needed.

 

I was skeptical of VoLTE once but my experiences with FaceTime Audio has made me believe that VoLTE isn't that far off. FaceTime Audio kills VZW's old CDMA voice quality here.

[jgore43]

The same demonstration minus the voice of Jack Bauer, published in February 2014 by Sprint to their YouTube.

 

 

 

This made me skeptical toward CDMA 1X Advanced.

If I was sprint I wouldn't have started advertising hd voice until very recently.. [emoji51] but the difference is really amazing.

 

It volte will provide inter carrier hd voice then we need more voltes now!

[bigsnake49]

Is everybody that uses HD Voice under VoLTE going to be using the same codec with the same exact sample rate. Or will there be allowances for different sample rates even though we are using the same sample rate? If everybody uses the 16K sample rate, that's great. That is 4 times the Verizon 1x sample rate.

[WiWavelength]

Is everybody that uses HD Voice under VoLTE going to be using the same codec with the same exact sample rate. Or will there be allowances for different sample rates even though we are using the same sample rate? If everybody uses the 16K sample rate, that's great. That is 4 times the Verizon 1x sample rate.

 

You may be confusing sample rate and bit rate.

 

AJ

[Paynefanbro]

Since we're talking about VoLTE, I just came across this article that I thought would be cool to share.

[WiWavelength]

Since we're talking about VoLTE, I just came across this article that I thought would be cool to share.

 

Yeah, here will be the general experience of a VoLTE call...

 

"Wow, you sound so clear.  This is…" followed by a click and half second of silence, then "Hey, are you still there?  Yeah?  Okay.  But this is weird.  Now, it just sounds like a normal phone call.  Wonder what happened."

 

 

AJ

[bigsnake49]

You may be confusing sample rate and bit rate.

 

AJ

You're right, AMR-WB supports up to 15.85kbit/sec bit rate. EVRC-B is what Verizon uses at 4Kbit/sec bit rate.

Edited June 28, 2014 by bigsnake49

[Rawvega]

I think the fallacy he brings up is that EVRC-NW cost a lot more for Sprint. It didn't.

 

Right. Sprint already had a 3G CDMA network which had to be a part of their Network Vision upgrades making the cost of stepping up to 1x Advanced and HD voice incremental at most on the network side. It's not as though they're, for example, going from analog to the EVRC-NW codec. Some may claim that adding support for these technologies is costing Sprint of the handset side of things. However, Qualcomm has included support for EVRC-NW in every one of their chipsets since at least 2012 thus, if anyone can clearly support that claim with documentation, I'd certainly be eager to take a look.

 

I don't see the competition's use of VoLTE being that big of a deal unless they can show a significant quality advantage over Sprint's implementation. Until inter-carrier VoLTE calls can be established all of the carriers are stuck in the same boat i.e. HD calls can only be established if all users are on the same network. Until the time comes where inter-carrier VoLTE is up and running seamlessly, will users really care if their HD voice is courtesy or EVRC-NW or AMR-WB?

 

Given that it's been well established that an LTE signal is more fragile than a CDMA signal, Sprint's interim solution would seem to hold some advantages for its users especially until they can further densify their network with more macro and small cell sites and amplify their coverage with more low band spectrum e.g. 600MHz. 

 

The author seems like another member of the techno-razzi so eager to suckle on the Legere teat that he doesn't even bother to touch upon the biggest actual flaw of Sprint's current HD voice approach-the lack of simultaneous voice and data, at least for tri-band devices.

[milan03]

You're right, AMR-WB supports up to 15.85kbit/sec bit rate. EVRC-B is what Verizon uses at 4Kbit/sec bit rate.

AMR-WB will max out at 23.85kbps, which is what T-Mobile is using for their VoLTE. Their fallback is AMR-WB at 12.65kbps or "HD Voice" over W-CDMA. That can also scale to AMR-NB at 12.2kbps, or even half of that. It's an adaptive codec.

 

http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/issues-insights-blog/the-un-carrier-network-designed-data-strong.htm

[maxsilver]

will users really care if their HD voice is courtesy or EVRC-NW or AMR-WB?

 

(later)

 

he doesn't even bother to touch upon the biggest actual flaw of Sprint's current HD voice approach-the lack of simultaneous voice and data,

I think you just answered your own question.

 

Most users probably won't care about the backing service. But some will, when they look at their phone while calling.

 

I would expect a vocal minority to say something like: "Hey, my T-Mobile phone stays on LTE and 4G when making HD calls, and data is really fast. But my Sprint phone drops to 1G on calls and data doesn't work."

 

- - 

 

The author is ignoring all of the historical mistakes that forced Sprint into this current decision. But fundamentally, I'm not convinced he's wrong. HD over 1x does seem like another example of Sprint deploying something awkwardly different / proprietary. (Even if they were effectively forced into it, based on their history).

[WiWavelength]

The author is ignoring all of the historical mistakes that forced Sprint into this current decision. But fundamentally, I'm not convinced he's wrong. HD over 1x does seem like another example of Sprint deploying something awkwardly different / proprietary. (Even if they were effectively forced into it, based on their history).

 

What "historical mistakes"?  You had better back that up with substance.  Otherwise, you are just sniping from the peanut gallery with the perspective of hindsight.  And that does not make for actual analysis.

 

Additionally, if going down this path, should we highlight the "historical mistakes" that T-Mobile has made?

 

AJ

[Destroyallcubes]

Honestly why do we care about what a company did in the past? Don't most consumers want the now? If we went on past then would Sprint have a great rep based on when EVDO and such came out? I thought they were the fastest for a while. Anyhow I just hate all of these articles saying Sprint sucked in the past, and assume they suck now based on past, but when you tell them x company sucked in the past they say no, x company is great now. But call you a liar for saying Sprint isn't what they used to be. Just my 2 cents.

[bigsnake49]

AMR-WB will max out at 23.85kbps, which is what T-Mobile is using for their VoLTE. Their fallback is AMR-WB at 12.65kbps or "HD Voice" over W-CDMA. That can also scale to AMR-NB at 12.2kbps, or even half of that. It's an adaptive codec.

 

http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/issues-insights-blog/the-un-carrier-network-designed-data-strong.htm

I was going by memory and I only remembered Configuration B's max bit rate.

[maxsilver]

Honestly why do we care about what a company did in the past? Don't most consumers want the now?

Not trying to sound rude, but did you read the article?

 

The articles whole permise is that Sprint is struggling to offer what 'customers want now' because of what the company did in the past and/or the 'culture' from the past still holding them back.

 

The author also suggests that Sprints culture would clash with T-Mobiles (in a post merger situation), for those reasons.

 

Note: this isn't necessarily my opinion, just stating what (it seems) the authors opinion appears to be.

[Destroyallcubes]

Not trying to sound rude, but did you read the article?

The articles whole permise is that Sprint is struggling to offer what 'customers want now' because of what the company did in the past and/or the 'culture' from the past still holding them back.

The author also suggests that Sprints culture would clash with T-Mobiles (in a post merger situation), for those reasons.

Note: this isn't necessarily my opinion, just stating what (it seems) the authors opinion appears to be.

My comment was in general not in relation to a single article, but merely to the comments posted on those articles. People want now but judge their now on their carriers past and present, but people don't seem to do the same for Sprint. Most Sprint comments are along the lines Sprint sucked a few years ago, they suck now with no premise of the actual now. That is what I was trying to say.

[sbolen]

Interesting tweet from the king Magentard wrangler himself today:

Neville confirmed we hit 230M POPs of LTE! Met our goal but still going! Where you at @Sprint? I hear you’re running behind. #sprintlikehell—

John Legere (@JohnLegere) June 28, 2014

I realize buyout rumors are just that, but it's going to be increasingly harder to put the toothpaste back in the tube if/when a deal materializes, right?

[Paynefanbro]

[Ascertion]

Interesting tweet from the king Magentard wrangler himself today:

 

I realize buyout rumors are just that, but it's going to be increasingly harder to put the toothpaste back in the tube if/when a deal materializes, right?

I feel like TMUS stock per share will become much more expensive the longer Sprint waits. Not sure if that's a problem that Son can handle.

[Fraydog]

I feel like TMUS stock per share will become much more expensive the longer Sprint waits. Not sure if that's a problem that Son can handle.

TMUS has leveled out. I'm not too worried about their stock value increasing beyond SoftBank's reach.

 

Of course, Sprint as a brand? Even without a merger, I suspect that goes away. I'm prepared for rebranding.