S4GRU

I hit over 60Mbps in a few places. Lots of fifties. But Denver has many more Band 41 sites that need to get upgraded from the WiMax backhaul than many other Spark active markets. Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

The top one kind of looks like some Nextel iDEN panels I saw that were installed very late in life as replacements or at new sites. Like post 2008. Do you see these often? Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

CSFB. Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Think about what? No one is signing a contract for life. All the risk in this deal is on Sprint. We will be free to leave if we don't like what Sprint changes. Especially as contract subsidies go away. Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I can tell you that Band 25 activations have slowed way down in this market. Only a handful since the first of the year. All the easy to upgrade sites are done. The difficult ones will happen one at time over a long period of time. If you have a Triband device, that's your best bet for cohesive LTE coverage. They already have a lot and a lot more scheduled this half of the year. Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

According to your Signal Check screen shot, your device connected to a 1x site outside the IBEZ: https://maps.google.com/maps?q=10300+Success+Avenue,+Los+Angeles,+CA&ie=UTF-8&hq=&hnear=0x80c2cbd59a45a7ed:0xd60e2ce692c6815d,10300+Success+Ave,+Los+Angeles,+CA+90002&gl=us&ei=eL3-Uvv-MLOgyQGQkoGwCQ&ved=0CCkQ8gEwAA CDMA 800 travels mega long distances. That's the key reason why the IBEZ boundary is set so far inside the international boundary. So you were not even ever connected to a 1X 800 site in your market. Robert

You are in an Alcatel Lucent market where they are replacing Motorola gear. The Alcatel Lucent gear, when fully operational supports CSFB, which your Triband LTE device needs in order to keep an LTE signal. Whereas a Uniband LTE device like the GN3 and GS3 do not need CSFB and can use Band 25 LTE always. AlcaLu is mad scrambling to get the CSFB upgrades completed and fully operational in the Norfolk market. When complete, you will have the same Band 25 signal that all Uniband LTE devices get, plus the ability to use Band 26 and Band 41 when you travel to other markets, and eventually when the other bands arrive in the Norfolk market. More info about the CSFB issue can be found here: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-357-nexus-5-and-lg-g2-experience-temporary-sprint-lte-connectivity-issues-due-to-circuit-switched-fallback-technology/ Robert

We have heard other complaints happening in other markets too occasionally. It seems that eCSFB on Samsung still has some growing pains where it goes in and out. One way to confirm is to put your device in LTE Only mode when you are in an area where you know you should be getting LTE. If you find LTE in LTE Only mode, then there is definitely a CSFB issue going on. If you don't get LTE in LTE Only mode either, then there is another problem. Perhaps even the site is completely down. Robert

The S4 that supported triband did not need a separate OTA update. It has everything it needed the day it went on the market to support Triband. Even the Mega and the GS4 Mini had their OTA the day of their launch. No Samsung Triband devices are in need of an OTA, except perhaps at initial activation if they aren't putting that build on new devices yet. It really only was the LG G2 and Nexus 5 that were waiting for Spark OTA updates. If you were honestly sold the Triband version, and you can confirm to not have the right model number, you need to go back to the store and insist on them solving the problem for you. Robert

Probably the only benefit of the goofy spinning WalMart icon...it helps us to separate the S4 Tribands from the S4 Unibands. Robert

I would say that B41 degradation is nearly impossible at this time. It is a 20MHz channel. It has multiples amount of capacity over even a 5MHz channel. And there are still very few Triband devices out there. I would be shocked if Triband adoption rate was even above 5% yet. Also, two things come to mind with the additional information you have provided. Number one, it is possible that you were on different Band 41 sites/sectors from the 20Mbps speed test you had previously and the one now. Number two, if you only were getting 20Mbps earlier when B41 had almost no one on it at all and getting something less than 50-60Mbps, then I feel like I can almost conclusively say you were not on a site with upgraded Spark backhaul (then or now). If you were indeed at an off peak time for LTE, then why would it be even slower now? I'll tell you why. Because WiMax peak time is the evening when the Home ISP customers start surfing their porn and other video streaming. If you were using WiMax backhaul, you would much more likely to feel it at night. Double entendre intended. I feel pretty comfortable ruling out a Band 41 capacity instance in your circumstance, and figuring the issue in this instance is old WiMax backhaul. When it gets upgraded, the Band 41 LTE speeds will go way up. And Band 41 capacity should never be a concern. Because capacity continues to grow exponentially with each additional site that goes live. And Sprint can add between 3 and 8 additional Band 41 carriers in each market to every single site. Way more than any other provider. So fear not. Robert

I don't know of any details. But since this is not a common trait of Sprint, in fact it seems the opposite, I would have to conclude that there must have been serious breaches of contract on the side of the MVNO. Sprint likes the MVNO business and heavily promotes it. If Sprint canceled the contract, the violations must be pretty clear cut and spelled out in the contract. We will see how far these threats of lawsuits go. Robert

Not all Band 41 sites have Spark upgraded backhaul yet. If the site you were connected to was on just the original WiMax backhaul, it may only do 6-10Mbps even with hardly anyone on the same LTE carrier/sector. Also, without LTE Engineering screens, we don't know if you had a good quality signal. You may have had a lot of interference. Additionally, we assume you verified that you were on Band 41 because you looked at your LTE Engineering screen and not merely because you saw the Spark logo. The Spark logo shows no matter which band you're on. The only way conclusively to know which band you're on is in the Engineering screen, of course. No matter what it was in your circumstances, 6-10Mbps sounds like a triumph for a busy area at a peak time. Sprint would have been a complete disaster there in the past. And 6-10Mbps is the average that most of the other providers run too. Triumph, I say! Robert

I definitely would not rule out Baja Broadband. US Cable liked to provide backhaul back in its day, so I wouldn't rule out Baja now either. Robert

No problem. I was pretty sure you didn't mean it as it sounded. But I took the opportunity to explain something I've wanted to say for awhile. No harm. Robert

You shouldn't use the word throttled in that post. Throttled means that it was artificially reduced by the Sprint network intentionally. Which is not the case. The reduction in speed tests to a point where the speed stops dropping and seems to settle at a particular spot is more of an issue with how speed tests are conducted. In the beginning, the speed may seem faster, but as more data comes in the average speed drops to what is more accurate. If there were 1,000 packets of data coming from the speed test server to your device for the test, and the first 50 were around 1Mbps, and then the half of the remaining were at 1 Mbps, but the other half were at 500kbps, your speed would finalize at a speed around 750kbps, but in the beginning it would appear as 1Mbps and dropped to around 750kbps. The 1 Mbps speed was not accurate. And neither would the 500kbps. 750kbps was the average throughput downlink speed at the time the test was taken. Because over the length of time you would be doing any real world downloading during that period, the speed that it would really be downloading over a set period of time would be around 750kbps. Or approximately 100KB every second. We tend to think of a speed test seeing how fast the car is driving down the highway this very second. When in reality, that information is not very useful. It's more like this...If I sent one million cars down the road right now, how many of those million are going to get to the destination in the next few seconds? And if I repeated that several times over the next minute, what is the average? Because once you know this, you have pretty good idea how much data you are going to get from the network on average. And the reason why averages are important, is because networks are very dynamic things. Things can tie up networks for a brief fraction of a second. Things can drop off suddenly for a few seconds. If the speed test only tested for a second, you may falsely believe your connection was running at 40Mbps, or that it was dead and not useable at all. If 200 people hit send to call up a webpage at the exact same moment, the airlink would be saturated for a second or two sending the data. If you did a short speed test at that exact moment, it would come across very slow. But if it was a minute long speed test, that very momentary drop would be averaged with all the other usage in that time providing a more accurate result. Use ebbs and flow several times a minute, per hour, and per day. Robert

If they are using the same backhaul provider, it very well could just be branched off for Sprint right at the compound. And it's possible this spur is being built for both of them, and they both already have orders in. But the person doing the work may only know of one entity involved. Did anyone find out who the AAV backhaul being installed for T-Mobile was from? Robert

I am glad that wasn't the case here where I live. I had the choice of two cable providers here at my house in South Dakota. WOW and Midcontinent. First time in my life I've ever had two cable providers available at my house. I usually only had one...and sometimes none. And the result is I was able to get 100Mbps/15Mbps cable internet for slightly less than I paid for Windstream DSL 12Mbps/768kbps back in New Mexico. And my cable internet runs 90%-100% of stated speeds always, but my old DSL was less than 50% most of the time. I also got all the install and modem fees waived when I threatened to use the other cable provider. Competition is a wonderful thing. Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Believe me, I get it. But if a site can't get AAV backhaul in 2 years, hiring a microwave specialist who can get a stubborn site done in 2-3 months makes sense. And depending what kind of MW equipment/spectrum you use, you may be able to bypass permitting from the feds and from local jurisdictions. Some MW antennas are so small, local cities won't even notice them and require permits. These would only be temporary until permanent backhaul can finally be obtained. Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

But in truth, we have no idea. Since every site is built on differing variables from all other sites, averages are more for historical interest than they are for accurate forecasting the future. The last sites in Network Vision often suffer from the most extreme deployment problems that it makes it even harder to assign any reasonable amount of time to completion. I bet the remaining sites are the bain to each of the NV Market Managers. Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

What's coiled is just conduit. Sometimes conduit gets run months in advance of the fiber being ready to be pulled through. If fiber crews showed up and the conduit wasn't ready in advance, you'd probably be asking why they just didn't do the conduit in advance. Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Neither does South Dakota. Sure made my decision to move here over Colorado a little easier. Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I had to turn down a job in your area a few years ago because the taxes are so bad that I couldn't make it work. Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

What Anthony said above is pretty much the story. LTE 1900 will be substantially complete this Summer. There will be stubborn or difficult to get backhaul to sites that will continue beyond that. I hope that Sprint just decides to use microwave as a temporary stop gap on these sites until fiber can be brought to them. But I imagine they will just count on Band 26 (LTE 800) to fill in the gaps that are caused by the few remaining difficult sites. Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

I'm not supposed to be looking at a computer screen 12 hours a day? Damn. No wonder I'm getting nearsighted. Robert via Nexus 5 using Tapatalk