Marcelo Claure, Town Hall Meetings, New Family Share Pack Plan, Unlimited Individual Plan, Discussion Thread

[cortney]

Anyone think this will be the quarter where T-mobile passes Sprint in subscriber numbers?

 

Think I read that Sprint expects some 200K adds while Tmobile is like 700k+. 

 

I still have the buffet on my mind 

 

Will they? Maybe. I'd guess where "de-prioritization" still remains un-popular, they could still add more e-penis wankers.

[gusherb]

AYE!

 

Now back on topic!

 

Anyone think this will be the quarter where T-mobile passes Sprint in subscriber numbers?

 

Think I read that Sprint expects some 200K adds while Tmobile is like 700k+. 

 

Might be the fire that lights Sprint up especially now that they're finally deploying 2nd B41 carriers along with carrier aggregation and LTE Advance software. 

 

I think it's possible but it may be another tie. Sprint seems to be JUST starting to get it's ass in gear to start building momentum and I feel once they do it's gonna be like T-Mobile has been the last couple of years. I feel T-Mobile has been fattened up and buttered for the sale and it's fate will greatly depend on who consumes them... 

 

For the last few weeks, every time I go past a Sprint store I see droves of people piling in the doors, which is a good sign. Unfortunately I have to wonder how they'll feel once they discover the fact that they can't hang onto LTE indoors and in between suburban cell sites.

A customer at work today was talking about her new Note 4 and I asked her how she likes Sprint and the first thing out of her mouth was "4G drops everywhere", and then I took a glance at her phone and saw it had 2 bars of 3G just like my iP6 always got in that same spot, where it should be getting 2 bars of B26 LTE (if the downtilt and power was adjusted correctly).

[derrph]

AYE!

 

Now back on topic!

 

Anyone think this will be the quarter where T-mobile passes Sprint in subscriber numbers?

 

Think I read that Sprint expects some 200K adds while Tmobile is like 700k+.

 

Might be the fire that lights Sprint up especially now that they're finally deploying 2nd B41 carriers along with carrier aggregation and LTE Advance software.

They probably will this go around and quite frankly they can have it. I just hope they thank AT&T for their LTE network.

 

But I have to wonder if it wasn't for that break up fee they got from AT&T what would their LTE coverage look like?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[shaferz]

One additional comment Arysyn - 

 

Please drop the entire health crap.  Please drop the nearly constant mentions of your mother.  

 

I'm not trying to be rude but its old, and quite frankly, we don't care.  Its not that we don't care in a personal sense.  Its that we don't care to continue to read it over, and Over, and OVER.  We all have barriers to get over and challenges to face - you are not unique.  Example - I have type 1 diabetes and am tied to an insulin pump 24 hours a day.  Have I EVER mentioned that before on this message board?  No.  Nobody cares.  This is not the place.

 

I can not speak for the rest of the members here, nor staff, but simply reading and abiding the above would earn you much more respect from the side of the computer in which I am sitting.

[Fraydog]

Look we've all had relatives die and had our own health challenges. Do we need to bring it up in every goddamn post? NO.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[maxsilver]

For the last few weeks, every time I go past a Sprint store I see droves of people piling in the doors, which is a good sign. Unfortunately I have to wonder how they'll feel once they discover the fact that they can't hang onto LTE indoors and in between suburban cell sites.

A customer at work today was talking about her new Note 4 and I asked her how she likes Sprint and the first thing out of her mouth was "4G drops everywhere", and then I took a glance at her phone and saw it had 2 bars of 3G just like my iP6 always got in that same spot, where it should be getting 2 bars of B26 LTE (if the downtilt and power was adjusted correctly).

 

Yep, this is probably the biggest issue. The densification just has to happen as soon as possible. Sprint seems to finally have people in place who have learned this.

 

But it also makes everything pretty quiet (or would be anyway, once you remove the forum drama and off-topic stuff).

 

There's really not much to talk about until that plan gets finalized and released. How they handle that (the specific sites they pick, the number, the locations, the timing) will be the biggest factor for Sprint's future, more than anything else.

[JossMan]

Wait!  But I really like Orange Chicken.  I left the crusties and extra sauce in the bottom of the serving pan.  All the rest of you can share that.  It says all I can eat, damn it!!!

 

 

 Nobody likes that fat dude that hogs all the Orange Chicken at a Chinese buffet...samething here.

[cletus]

In an effort to promote discussion:

 

Why is carrier aggregation important for Sprint? Doesn't Sprint have tons of spectrum to work with? Don't get me wrong, I am for sure excited for higher speeds as most of my usage tends to be burst downloads when i tether my laptop to my phone when I am in the field (12 GB this month!   ) so anything that saves me a few moments is just extra icing on the cake.

 

Will it help edge case issues such as dropping to 3g in a low LTE signal area/or help speeds in low LTE signal areas? When I am on the outskirts of a cell here in Austin (which has GREAT LTE coverage) I can see some very slow speeds still.

 

Or is this mainly to help the above case I described by throwing more available bandwidth at people? How does this help when for Sprint I feel that it would still be limited by backhaul in many cases?

 

Thanks ahead of time for any clarification.

[Deval]

In an effort to promote discussion:

 

Why is carrier aggregation important for Sprint? Doesn't Sprint have tons of spectrum to work with? Don't get me wrong, I am for sure excited for higher speeds as most of my usage tends to be burst downloads when i tether my laptop to my phone when I am in the field (12 GB this month!   ) so anything that saves me a few moments is just extra icing on the cake.

 

Will it help edge case issues such as dropping to 3g in a low LTE signal area/or help speeds in low LTE signal areas? When I am on the outskirts of a cell here in Austin (which has GREAT LTE coverage) I can see some very slow speeds still.

 

Or is this mainly to help the above case I described by throwing more available bandwidth at people? How does this help when for Sprint I feel that it would still be limited by backhaul in many cases?

 

Thanks ahead of time for any clarification.

 

More available bandwidth means more successful connections, and those sites which have CA are getting backhaul upgrades as well.

[always_learner]

In an effort to promote discussion:

 

Why is carrier aggregation important for Sprint? Doesn't Sprint have tons of spectrum to work with? Don't get me wrong, I am for sure excited for higher speeds as most of my usage tends to be burst downloads when i tether my laptop to my phone when I am in the field (12 GB this month!   ) so anything that saves me a few moments is just extra icing on the cake.

 

Will it help edge case issues such as dropping to 3g in a low LTE signal area/or help speeds in low LTE signal areas? When I am on the outskirts of a cell here in Austin (which has GREAT LTE coverage) I can see some very slow speeds still.

 

Or is this mainly to help the above case I described by throwing more available bandwidth at people? How does this help when for Sprint I feel that it would still be limited by backhaul in many cases?

 

Thanks ahead of time for any clarification.

This has also been one of my misunderstandings.  I'm not sure why CA on band 41 would help Sprint.  80+ Mb/s speeds look nice for marketing purposes, but hardly make any difference compared to a reliable 5 Mb/s connection.  I guess aggregating fringe b41 signal may have some use, but isn't band 41 pretty hard to congest (especially here in Chicago with 3 other carriers already active).

 

Why would Sprint not put more efforts on optimization of its three bands rather than carrier aggregation on band 41?

[kg4icg]

~

I guess you aren't aware or realize that Carrier Aggregation is optimizing the network.

This has also been one of my misunderstandings.  I'm not sure why CA on band 41 would help Sprint.  80+ Mb/s speeds look nice for marketing purposes, but hardly make any difference compared to a reliable 5 Mb/s connection.  I guess aggregating fringe b41 signal may have some use, but isn't band 41 pretty hard to congest (especially here in Chicago with 3 other carriers already active).

 

Why would Sprint not put more efforts on optimization of its three bands rather than carrier aggregation on band 41?

 

 

 

 

[joshuam]

This has also been one of my misunderstandings.  I'm not sure why CA on band 41 would help Sprint.  80+ Mb/s speeds look nice for marketing purposes, but hardly make any difference compared to a reliable 5 Mb/s connection.  I guess aggregating fringe b41 signal may have some use, but isn't band 41 pretty hard to congest (especially here in Chicago with 3 other carriers already active).

 

Why would Sprint not put more efforts on optimization of its three bands rather than carrier aggregation on band 41?

 

Why? Because slow data speeds are the biggest reason Sprint "appears" in last place on Root Metrics. While they have won A LOT of awards for reliability and call/texting, their data speeds often are holding them down. They are in last place on NetIndex for speeds in many areas. CA is going to help Sprint market their brand better. Yes, 120Mbps on a cell phone is kind of dumb, especially when most people have home wired broadband that is much slower...it is just something Sprint can use to sell their services. Plus it helps with capacity.

[always_learner]

~

I guess you aren't aware or realize that Carrier Aggregation is optimizing the network.

You are right.  I was not aware that CA fell strictly under optimization.

 

Nevertheless, my point was about optimizing software on the network and on phones especially (e.g. b26).  I thought that the biggest hurdle of CA was more related to hardware expansion (back-haul? is that the right term?) and making sure phone manufacturers put the extra hardware to be able to use CA

[always_learner]

Why? Because slow data speeds are the biggest reason Sprint "appears" in last place on Root Metrics. While they have won A LOT of awards for reliability and call/texting, their data speeds often are holding them down. They are in last place on NetIndex for speeds in many areas. CA is going to help Sprint market their brand better. Yes, 120Mbps on a cell phone is kind of dumb, especially when most people have home wired broadband that is much slower...it is just something Sprint can use to sell their services. Plus it helps with capacity.

I could definitely see how it would help with the marketing (especially on rootmetrics like you said).

 

How about the capacity you mentioned?  How is that improved?  The capacity of the network changes when you add CA?  Thanks.

[bigsnake49]

Oh, I realize that CDMA on PCS won't be going away until the 2020s. But it's nice to think that we will be getting an improvement in cell edge performance, speed, and capacity once that happens.

They can always add a second RRU and antenna per sector right now without waiting for CDMA shutdown.

[greenbastard]

One additional comment Arysyn -

 

Please drop the entire health crap. Please drop the nearly constant mentions of your mother.

 

I'm not trying to be rude but its old, and quite frankly, we don't care. Its not that we don't care in a personal sense. Its that we don't care to continue to read it over, and Over, and OVER. We all have barriers to get over and challenges to face - you are not unique. Example - I have type 1 diabetes and am tied to an insulin pump 24 hours a day. Have I EVER mentioned that before on this message board? No. Nobody cares. This is not the place.

 

I can not speak for the rest of the members here, nor staff, but simply reading and abiding the above would earn you much more respect from the side of the computer in which I am sitting.

Just drop it, no need to continue an argument.

[Fraydog]

Carrier aggregation can definitely help with both capacity and the race to sleep. Race to sleep is important because the faster something can download, the less battery life is consumed.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[greenbastard]

In an effort to promote discussion:

 

Why is carrier aggregation important for Sprint? Doesn't Sprint have tons of spectrum to work with? Don't get me wrong, I am for sure excited for higher speeds as most of my usage tends to be burst downloads when i tether my laptop to my phone when I am in the field (12 GB this month! ) so anything that saves me a few moments is just extra icing on the cake.

 

Will it help edge case issues such as dropping to 3g in a low LTE signal area/or help speeds in low LTE signal areas? When I am on the outskirts of a cell here in Austin (which has GREAT LTE coverage) I can see some very slow speeds still.

 

Or is this mainly to help the above case I described by throwing more available bandwidth at people? How does this help when for Sprint I feel that it would still be limited by backhaul in many cases?

 

Thanks ahead of time for any clarification.

Austin? If I'm not mistaking, most, if not all, B41 LTE is from Clearwire equipment. There's no way you'll see 8t8r radios and CA until after Wimax is shut down.

[lilotimz]

Austin? If I'm not mistaking, most, if not all, B41 LTE is from Clearwire equipment. There's no way you'll see 8t8r radios and CA until after Wimax is shut down.

 

There are Nokia 8T8R equipment all over the place in most ERC / Nokia markets. 

[JonnygATL]

There are Nokia 8T8R equipment all over the place in most ERC / Nokia markets.

 

Atlanta would be a prime example of this.

[S4GRU]

You are right.  I was not aware that CA fell strictly under optimization.

 

Nevertheless, my point was about optimizing software on the network and on phones especially (e.g. b26).  I thought that the biggest hurdle of CA was more related to hardware expansion (back-haul? is that the right term?) and making sure phone manufacturers put the extra hardware to be able to use CA

 

The backhaul needed for two carriers of B41 is the same as it is for two carriers aggregated together (2xCA).  And Sprint needs backhaul upgrades everywhere, that has to happen regardless of doing CA or not.  Sprint needs a lot more backhaul to compete and run all these Triband carriers.  Because more B41 is needed in some places.  PCS is bringing on second carrier and B26 is still being deployed.

 

To think of it in rudimentary terms, CA is just a software upgrade.  Mega high speed backhaul is needed to make it as fast as it can be.  But CA is useful even when not at maximum speed.  It allows a doubling of your current speed.  So if you are in a place with a weak signal and only getting 1-2Mbps, CA would allow you to get 2-4Mbps.  That, in itself is useful.  CA is much more than just the bragging rights of maximum throughput in ideal conditions.

 

And since the backhaul is needed anyway, why not CA?  Sprint is still working on optimizations and other things as well.  But if a site has two B41 carriers running already, why on earth would you not employ CA?  You'd be crazy not to.

 

And then there is the marketing advantage.  Sprint always being labeled the slowest hurts their image terribly.  No one ever says that even though they may be the slowest, it's fast enough.  Other than maybe us.  If Sprint could be consistently #1 or #2 in most markets (and they can because of their spectrum holdings) and they offered a good value and expanding coverage, that's the kind of momentum that can build a brand image and start growth.  Tmo had a pretty crummy reputation when Legere came on board.  He focused on image and network quality perception.

 

You may disagree with most Americans and the Tech Media for focusing on the wrong things when it comes to wireless service, and you may even be right.  But those are the people Sprint has to impress to get over their hurdle.  They will have to be viewed as having a fast network.  As fast or faster than the others.  All while still optimizing, improving coverage, expanding to new markets, improving roaming experiences with RRPP members, etc.  All of it.  They have to do it all.

 

We want to get myopic and tell Sprint to focus on one thing.  Don't do anything but this one thing that WE think is the most important.  But it doesn't work that way.  This business is extremely dynamic and fluidly changing.  You have to do it all, or at least as many as possible.  And you have to adapt.  For the first time, we are seeing Sprint adapt on the fly.  And they are doing a pretty good job of it compared to the past, because it is getting better and better.  And the future looks even more promising.

[nexgencpu]

Carrier aggregation can definitely help with both capacity and the race to sleep. Race to sleep is important because the faster something can download, the less battery life is consumed.

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I'd replace the word "sleep" with idle. But I agree 100%.

 

The more idle your phone is, the better battery life and the smoother your device will run.

[NYC126]

I think ads and TV commercials with the slogan "The faster LTE network in America " will help the company image and will start to add a lot of postpaid handsets.

[greenbastard]

There are Nokia 8T8R equipment all over the place in most ERC / Nokia markets.

It's been a while since I've been to Austin, but it was all Clearwire LTE in the parts of Austin I visited last time.

 

If Nokia got Austin covered with 8T8R equipment as of recrntly, then I guess that makes Houston the black sheep. Mostly Clearwire LTE for me in this area.

[greenbastard]

I'd replace the word "sleep" with idle. But I agree 100%.

 

The more idle your phone is, the better battery life and the smoother your device will run.

Don't forget, the faster you download something, the sooner you are off of the network and free up more bandwidth to be used around.