US Cellular - Sprint LTE Roaming?

[dkyeager]

I had connected to US Cellular LTE at Black River Falls WI this summer, but did not authenticate.  (I-94 next to WI-54)

[gr8nuguy]

should sprint be able to roam on LTE from us cellular, then it will be time for me to upgrade my phone 

[bretton88]

It's entirely possible that there's no reciprocity. Sprint may have just offered the lowest cost to uscc for roaming.

 

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[bmoses]

at my work we don't have sprint LTE in my building unless we use a booster, but there is a US Celluar tower just up the road that reaches in here fine. I just did a non-scientific test of going to where i don't have sprint LTE and doing airplane mode but it would only connect to sprint 3G. i do have LTE roaming on and the non-sprint bands set to higher priority on my phone. 

[chamb]

at my work we don't have sprint LTE in my building unless we use a booster, but there is a US Celluar tower just up the road that reaches in here fine. I just did a non-scientific test of going to where i don't have sprint LTE and doing airplane mode but it would only connect to sprint 3G. i do have LTE roaming on and the non-sprint bands set to higher priority on my phone. 

I would doubt that you would connect to any LTE roaming as long as you have Sprint EVDO available. Sprint would probably not want to have you roaming at all if they have a signal available to you.  Band priority probably means nothing either.  Sprint is available and you phone will use it.

[bmoses]

yeah i didn't figure it would work, was just throwing that out there.

 

my coworker will be at his parents house this weekend in NW iowa where there is zero sprint service but plenty of USCC LTE, he has a nexus 5, i'll have him check and see if he gets any LTE while he is up there.

[Mr.Nuke]

No sounds of reciprocity, yet.

 

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Confirmed this is currently the case via Nebraska testing as of this morning.

[red_dog007]

yeah i didn't figure it would work, was just throwing that out there.

 

my coworker will be at his parents house this weekend in NW iowa where there is zero sprint service but plenty of USCC LTE, he has a nexus 5, i'll have him check and see if he gets any LTE while he is up there.

Im not sure if you can on your phone, but on my N5 I have a tool that lets me disable CDMA/EVDO completely, so I can run only LTE.  Would be a solid way to test USCC LTE access if there is no Sprint LTE at all. 

[JeffDTD]

Id guess that unless there is a reciprocity agreement that neither costs Sprint additional quarterly expenditure or reduces its roaming revenue, its just not an option in this era of cost cutting and penny pinching. Maybe when sprint has less revenue strain, but not now

 

 

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[bretton88]

Id guess that unless there is a reciprocity agreement that neither costs Sprint additional quarterly expenditure or reduces its roaming revenue, its just not an option in this era of cost cutting and penny pinching. Maybe when sprint has less revenue strain, but not now

 

 

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I'd more guess that this basically allows Sprint to roam 1x and Ev-Do for no cost on the US cellular network. So it would save Sprint some expenses.

 

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[jreuschl]

Do they have limits on roaming, or is it included with plan data allotment?

[WiWavelength]

my coworker will be at his parents house this weekend in NW iowa where there is zero sprint service but plenty of USCC LTE, he has a nexus 5, i'll have him check and see if he gets any LTE while he is up there.

 

If or when LTE roaming becomes active, Sprint may limit it to CCA/RRPP compliant handsets.  But the Nexus 5 is too old for that -- it lacks band 12.

 

AJ

[Tengen31]

For USCC Roaming onto Sprint LTE. Isnt it only band 25 USCC website shows what bands their phones have on them and, its just band 25. Accept for nexus 6 or newer and, then iphones.

[Fraydog]

http://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/3qva4p/any_bets_on_us_cellular_lte_roaming_partner_my/

 

Evan, do your victory lap on this. [emoji23][emoji23][emoji23][emoji91][emoji91][emoji91]

[jreuschl]

I'd assume that if Sprint adds USCC LTE roaming that the data cap will still be very low.  So now you can blow through the 100MB quicker!

[RAvirani]

I'm hoping they get some sort of reciprocal roaming deal and they become Roaming+ but my hopes aren't too high.

[Tengen31]

I'd assume that if Sprint adds USCC LTE roaming that the data cap will still be very low.  So now you can blow through the 100MB quicker!

sprint roaming limits will only change if they can ever drop VZW wireless for roaming. can't say 100mb on vzw but, 400mb on uscc.

[Trip]

sprint roaming limits will only change if they can ever drop VZW wireless for roaming. can't say 100mb on vzw but, 400mb on uscc.

 

If they were to do no LTE roaming on Verizon, then couldn't they say there's a lower cap on 3G roaming (where Verizon is available) and a higher cap on LTE roaming where Verizon is not available?  Or would that be too confusing?

 

- Trip

[bretton88]

If they were to do no LTE roaming on Verizon, then couldn't they say there's a lower cap on 3G roaming (where Verizon is available) and a higher cap on LTE roaming where Verizon is not available? Or would that be too confusing?

 

- Trip

I do not believe Android has a provision built in to show lte roaming versus regular roaming, I believe it's all the same triangle. So without something like signal check pro, it would be hard for the consumer to see if they're on lte or not.

 

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[Trip]

The roaming indicator appears over the signal level indicator, not over the 3G/4G icons.  There are plenty of images in the nTelos thread from before the past week showing the nTelos LTE service as LTE roaming.

 

EDIT:  Guess it depends on whether you have the spinning spark or not, but here's a picture:  http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4897-lte-ntelos-west-virginia-nw-virginia-shentel-network-vision-soon%E2%84%A2/page-74?p=443043&do=findComment&comment=443043

 

- Trip

[kojitsari]

Well with the supposed doing away of the spinning spark symbol they're going to need some way of differentiating. Perhaps a simple color change from white to red/orange for the respective symbol when you're roaming. Or if they do LTE for b25/26 and LTE + for b41 they could use LTE r for roaming.

 

However they decide to do it, I really believe it needs to be idiot proof and nigh impossible to mistake for something else. Otherwise we all know how it's going to go..

[jeffcarp]

I traveled across central Iowa yesterday north of I-80. I was on US Cellular according to SignalCheck and there was no roaming symbol. It was 3G.

[Paynefanbro]

I traveled across central Iowa yesterday north of I-80. I was on US Cellular according to SignalCheck and there was no roaming symbol. It was 3G.

 

That's very interesting. Perhaps they're making the move to pseudo native coverage.

[bretton88]

The roaming indicator appears over the signal level indicator, not over the 3G/4G icons. There are plenty of images in the nTelos thread from before the past week showing the nTelos LTE service as LTE roaming.

 

EDIT: Guess it depends on whether you have the spinning spark or not, but here's a picture: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4897-lte-ntelos-west-virginia-nw-virginia-shentel-network-vision-soon%E2%84%A2/page-74?p=443043&do=findComment&comment=443043

 

- Trip

With Sprint doing away with the spark icon, that differentiation no longer applies, unfortunately. With the move to stock Android indicators, it's just a triangle for everything. However that is proof that such a system could be implemented. Either that or have Sprint enter a deal with Mike to make his app a default pre loaded app on all Sprint phones

 

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[S4GRU]

The Spark Icon replaced the LTE icon in Android OS. Just like AT&T and VZW have custom LTE icons. That's it. Nothing there will help roaming indication. You can create a custom LTE icon anytime you want. But again, nothing there that will help differentiate types of roaming. Sprint cannot even add a LTE+ icon in Android on top of what is already there.

 

Android currently only has ONE roaming indicator. It says it is on or off, regardless of roaming type or technology used. It can be replaced, but it will replace the roaming indicator for every type of roaming to exactly the same.

 

It probably is possible that Sprint could create an Android customization that create additional types of roaming indicators into the OS. However, they would have to do that for lots of devices and have to go back and try to do them with older devices. I don't expect Sprint to do that.

 

I think the most realistic and best shot at this is for Android to create an additional roaming type, or several within Android in future releases.

 

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