Network Vision/LTE - Boston Market (all of Massachusetts)

[mikejeep]

I did turn on Sensorly and mapped around the Natick area as I drove around. Maybe I'll add something to what has already been done. How long does it take for the updates to appear on their website?

 

It is fairly fast.. almost realtime in my experience. I usually see updates within a couple of minutes. I know on a few rare occasions in the past they got overloaded and fell behind, but even in those worst-case scenarios it was updated within a few hours.

 

-Mike

[JimBob]

I will be visiting my Boston friend in two weekends. He lives in Melrose, MA.

[jack mccarthy]

It's been kind of slow here on the Lowell/Tewksbury line with maybe 2 bars of 4G LTE in my neighborhood.  I've been averaging 1-2Mbps of speed with 3.6Mbps peak at that strength.  I generally get great 3G coverage wherever I go in MA with either 3 or 4 bars averaging 600-800kbps.  I've noticed that a lot of the 4G LTE is primarily in the areas marked "best" instead of "fair".

 

Biggest issue is that 4G LTE is only broadcasting at 1900MHz and later in the year they'll be switching to Nextel's 800MHz band for better building penetration and coverage along with another leased band as part of the tri-band 4G LTE effort.

 

Now a lot of the newer 4G LTE phones support it like the Iphone 5 or Galaxy S4, but the question is will Sprint be willing to allow fairly new customers upgrade to the new tri-band 4G LTE by enabling the phone to work on that spectrum with a firmware upgrade or will we be stuck at 1900MHz??  I'm rethinking whether I should keep the phone or bail out of the 14 day trial period and wait till the end of the year since Sprint won't make any formal announcement about who can use the new tri-band 4G LTE when it becomes operational.

[moysauce]

I will be visiting my Boston friend in two weekends. He lives in Melrose, MA.

North Shore area is pretty good with LTE coverage... i'm finding that South Shore MA is good to spotty at best... 

 

Just upgraded to GS4 from EVO LTE and am now finding weak LTE coverage outside and inside of my condo in Lower mills.

[dstar2002]

I will say, its rare to get a good LTE speed in the area from New Bedford to Bourne.  You will get solid LTE, and even when sitting near a tower, you are lucky to get 3 down, but you do get 10+ up, so doesnt really equate.  I tried about 100 speed tests at various locations, and signal was decent according to signal check (definitely sub -100)

 

LTE in Springfield I often get 7 up and down, frequently even better.  I find it hard to be a load issue already, if it is, thats scary, because all my tests were pre-memorial day weekend, when the cape will start to fill with vacationers.  I live in CT, but my family has a place in Wareham we generally spend weekends and more at.

[S4GRU]

It's been kind of slow here on the Lowell/Tewksbury line with maybe 2 bars of 4G LTE in my neighborhood. I've been averaging 1-2Mbps of speed with 3.6Mbps peak at that strength. I generally get great 3G coverage wherever I go in MA with either 3 or 4 bars averaging 600-800kbps. I've noticed that a lot of the 4G LTE is primarily in the areas marked "best" instead of "fair".

 

Biggest issue is that 4G LTE is only broadcasting at 1900MHz and later in the year they'll be switching to Nextel's 800MHz band for better building penetration and coverage along with another leased band as part of the tri-band 4G LTE effort.

 

Now a lot of the newer 4G LTE phones support it like the Iphone 5 or Galaxy S4, but the question is will Sprint be willing to allow fairly new customers upgrade to the new tri-band 4G LTE by enabling the phone to work on that spectrum with a firmware upgrade or will we be stuck at 1900MHz?? I'm rethinking whether I should keep the phone or bail out of the 14 day trial period and wait till the end of the year since Sprint won't make any formal announcement about who can use the new tri-band 4G LTE when it becomes operational.

 

It is not possible to get an existing Sprint LTE 1900 phone to run on LTE 800 with a firmware upgrade. Sprint customers will have to upgrade to Tri-Band LTE devices to use LTE 800 or Clearwire LTE.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[jack mccarthy]

It is not possible to get an existing Sprint LTE 1900 phone to run on LTE 800 with a firmware upgrade. Sprint customers will have to upgrade to Tri-Band LTE devices to use LTE 800 or Clearwire LTE.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

I find that hard to believe considering the Iphone 5 for instance only comes in two models: a CDMA version and a GSM version.  Apple's specs for CDMA support the 800MHz carrier:

 

http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

 

The only difference is the software radio that's loaded onto the phone from the carrier.  There's no change in hardware, just firmware.  Once tri-band is fully available, Apple won't be making a new model for their phone, but rather Sprint will be loading new firmware to enable its operation.

Edited May 31, 2013 by jack mccarthy

[S4GRU]

 

 

 

 

It is not possible to get an existing Sprint LTE 1900 phone to run on LTE 800 with a firmware upgrade. Sprint customers will have to upgrade to Tri-Band LTE devices to use LTE 800 or Clearwire LTE.

 

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

I find that hard to believe considering the Iphone 5 for instance which only comes in two models: a CDMA version and a GSM version. Apple's specs for CDMA support the 800MHz carrier:

 

http://www.apple.com/iphone/specs.html

 

The only difference is the software radio that's loaded onto the phone from the carrier. There's no change in hardware, just firmware. Once tri-band is fully available, Apple won't be making a new model for their phone, but rather Sprint will be loading new firmware to enable its operation.

 

We hear this time and time again, every time a new band comes along. It never happens. The same was said about WiMax and LTE too. It's not going to happen.

 

The only exception is sometimes a device is built to be ready for the network, and it is intentionally deactivated. Like the T-Mobile GS4 and Nexus 4 will support Tmo LTE with a firmware upgrade. But the bands are already supported.

 

There is no Sprint device, not one, that is capable of supporting LTE 800 with just a firmware upgrade. Everyone that has a Sprint LTE 1900 device will have to upgrade to a LTE 800 device if they want to use that band. Same with TD-LTE 2600 on the Clearwire network.

 

The Sprint model of the iPhone 5 only supports CDMA on the SMR 800 band, not LTE. Even if it were possible, which it's not, but even if it were, it would be unlawful for Apple to push out this firmware upgrade. It never went through FCC certification to run LTE on the SMR band.

 

If Apple is going to go back through FCC testing and approval, they will wait for the next incremental upgrade to the iPhone (this Fall) and include LTE on Band 26 in that unit. Apple will sell more units this way. Apple would have no motivation to go back and reengineer their existing products. They will hide behind the smokescreen that it can't be done and insist you to upgrade.

 

The same talk was out about the iPhone 4, which didn't support CDMA on 800 SMR band. They said that the radio and antenna for CDMA 850 was close enough that a firmware upgrade could switch it to support CDMA 800. That never happened, either. CDMA 800 on SMR band did not occur until the iPhone 5.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[moysauce]

Noice! Solid Lte signal in Harvard Square. Sitting inside The Boathouse restaurant

 

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[S4GRU]

Three LTE sites accepted on Martha's Vineyard yesterday.  The first for the islands!  They will appear on the Sponsor maps later this evening.

 

Robert

[JimBob]

Arrived at my friend's apartment in Melrose, MA and receive LTE inside, though not super fast.

[mikejeep]

Suddenly several sites in the Andover/Tewksbury/Wilmington/Woburn area that were LTE or eHRPD are back to EV-DO or 1X.. I'm thinking its a good sign!

 

-Mike

[dmchssc]

I modified the current corporate PRL with 3G roaming to add the Utah SID Sprint hides 800 carriers on during testing and loaded it onto my Galaxy S III. It turns out that there's already quite a bit deployed in the city. I've been getting it quite a lot. Having a network practically to myself is pretty nice.

 

 

[Nrasak]

I'm in Boston. From what I noticed you need to live along highways, downtown Boston, the South End or Backbay to get good service for now. My 2 cents :ph34r: The top result is my house. Anything over 3megs is at work. Your can see the difference.

 

 

Sent from my Galaxy S4

 

Edited June 9, 2013 by Nrasak

[gzub]

Was just at Gillette Stadium yesterday and they had turned on 4G there... Mapped some of it when I noticed on sensorly...

Geoff

 

Sent from my Nexus 10 using Tapatalk HD

[dstar2002]

Did you map Tim Tebow? Ughhh. What are we doing. Coach will do something good with him....... Right?

 

Nice to see that 495 corridor becoming 4g solid from the pike to the cape, pretty good coverage now.

 

Sent from my Galaxy S3 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

 

[moysauce]

So... Getting crappy coverage in my condo in Lower Mills when I used to get full strength... Do i smell lte goodness coming soon? I hope so! Clearwire drop the ball in my area with wimax too!

 

Really hope it's not a tower outage.

 

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[steve_ward]

So still zero progress in the Springfield area. Luckily I have a work phone from VZ so I don't have to rely on Sprint during the day time. But on the weekends and after 5 I get spotty or no 4g,crap 3g and spotty voice coverage. It is looking more and more like I will be making a switch soon. I just can't see how the other 3 major cell companies as well as metro can bring LTE online in such a quick fashion and Sprint seems to take years to just do anything.

 

I don't think Sprint is very pro active with anything, very reactive after the fact and always playing catch up. Hopefully by November when my contract is up i'll see some improvement.

[mikejeep]

So still zero progress in the Springfield area. Luckily I have a work phone from VZ so I don't have to rely on Sprint during the day time. But on the weekends and after 5 I get spotty or no 4g,crap 3g and spotty voice coverage. It is looking more and more like I will be making a switch soon. I just can't see how the other 3 major cell companies as well as metro can bring LTE online in such a quick fashion and Sprint seems to take years to just do anything.

 

I don't think Sprint is very pro active with anything, very reactive after the fact and always playing catch up. Hopefully by November when my contract is up i'll see some improvement.

 

Areas very close to you received LTE before 95% of the country did, and it's a nationwide project that was scheduled to take two years.  Relax.  They are working on it.  Urban areas are typically more complicated, which could be why the suburbs were built out quicker early on, and you have seen "zero progress" since.

 

You have made a total of 11 posts here, 9 of which are just complaining about how badly you think Sprint is handling their network in your specific corner of the world.  Feel free to switch to one of the other providers that you like better whenever you like, but in the meantime, please do your whining elsewhere.  This is not the forum for that.

 

-Mike

[Nrasak]

Lynn, Ma Flac Pond

 

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

 

[cinnamngrl]

So... Getting crappy coverage in my condo in Lower Mills when I used to get full strength... Do i smell lte goodness coming soon? I hope so! Clearwire drop the ball in my area with wimax too!

 

Really hope it's not a tower outage.

 

Sent from my SPH-L720 using Tapatalk 2

I live on Popes Hill and I have been having a bad few days.  sprint said there was a bad tower in quincy (didn't sound right) but it is still not fixed.  sprint won't email me back and I wondering what others notice.  it is very small outage.  no problems in boston or cambridge.  What do you think this is?

 

also what is sensorly?

[mikejeep]

I live on Popes Hill and I have been having a bad few days.  sprint said there was a bad tower in quincy (didn't sound right) but it is still not fixed.  sprint won't email me back and I wondering what others notice.  it is very small outage.  no problems in boston or cambridge.  What do you think this is?

 

also what is sensorly?

 

There is no real way to speculate what is causing your specific connection problems, but it has been noticed that while a site is actively being updated, speeds are often slow and connections become erratic.

 

Sensorly is a mobile app that allows Android users to monitor and log their signal strengths, and the data is displayed on maps on Sensorly's servers.  For example, here is a direct link to a map of your area with the purple shading indicating Sprint LTE signals that have been recorded by Sensorly users: http://sensorly.com/map/4G/US/USA/Sprint/lte_310sprint#q=Popes Hill, MA

 

-Mike

[cinnamngrl]

The biggest problem is that when I do get 4g bars - Data is blocked.  I can make a call (mostly) and SMS but no internet.  18 months ago, the same thing happened with wimax.  But with my EVO3D I could switch 4G(wimax) off and go with 3g and 2g.  It was frustrating that sprint wouldn't acknowledge it.  They sent me to the store to get the phone checked out.  I called the store to verify my appt, the guy said "Oh we don't take appts" (even though CS sets them up) then the guy said that there was at least 50 people waiting and it was definitely an outage.  Eventually a clearwire employee at a forum said they found the problem and fixed it.  My S4 won't toggle off 4G, so i'm blocked (right now)

[ahecht]

The biggest problem is that when I do get 4g bars - Data is blocked. I can make a call (mostly) and SMS but no internet. 18 months ago, the same thing happened with wimax. But with my EVO3D I could switch 4G(wimax) off and go with 3g and 2g. It was frustrating that sprint wouldn't acknowledge it. They sent me to the store to get the phone checked out. I called the store to verify my appt, the guy said "Oh we don't take appts" (even though CS sets them up) then the guy said that there was at least 50 people waiting and it was definitely an outage. Eventually a clearwire employee at a forum said they found the problem and fixed it. My S4 won't toggle off 4G, so i'm blocked (right now)

 

Clearwire has nothing to do with the 4G on your S4. The S2 was the last Samsung WiMax phone.

[cinnamngrl]

Clearwire has nothing to do with the 4G on your S4. The S2 was the last Samsung WiMax phone.

I realize that.  my post was an example of how difficult it can be to get something fixed if has to do with the tower instead of your phone.  Also there is a similarity with the fact that my phone shows bars of service but data doesn't work.  And since it has nothing to do with Wimax, I can't reach out to that person for help.