S4GRU

WiMax is very popular here in New Mexico with rural governments, especially the Pueblos (Indian Reservations). Up the road here in Taos is a local utility company that offers WiMax to its customers. It is very popular with rural customers who cannot get DSL. Also, the Santa Clara Pueblo and San Illdefonso Pueblo offer WiMax to its tribal members, almost like a wireless DSL utility. In these applications, WiMax is great. You can reach lots of rural customers with a last mile alternative that is much less expensive than traditional DSL. And these customer are ecstatic...getting 8MB to 12MB download speeds. Often faster than people a few miles away who can get DSL from Windstream. But as a Nationwide Wireless network, I think WiMax is dead. I can't see it being in smartphones and tablets again.

I wish the government agency I worked for would do away with Blackberrys. This thing is cramping my style!!!

I think I said this in another thread, but Ericsson will likely have more cities than the other NV partners in the first round. They have been managing Sprint's network for a few years now and know the ins and out of their customer very well now. They also were a big part of the planning of NV early on. So my guess is Ericsson will have double the cities in the first round. However, by the second half of the year, I bet Samsung and A/L get up to speed really quickly and meet Ericsson deployment speeds. In a lot of ways, this going to be a competition. It was a very good move to have three firms handling deployment. Breaking it into 4, would have been even better. But I don't think Sprint could handle Network Vision being deployed any faster than it already is. It would be a major cash flow crunch and very difficult to fund.

I usually find that on a smartphone, it takes aboutt 600k to have decent experience on streaming video. Like Netflix. 1 MB is even better (virtually no buffering). Any faster than 1MB, you don't notice a performance difference. But faster speeds are needed for higher resolution tablets, though.

morning sunrise

I'm a bureaucrat, too. Shhh!

I really like the Mobile site. I can read our articles on that, whereas news articles aren't available on Tapatalk or Forum Runner.

I agree this is an issue. I went through all the settings for the last 20 minutes, and couldn't find anything to change it. It will take some hard code revisions. The site is done in CSS (which I am ignorant in). I only know HTML. So I will keep this on my to do list and will get it changed in the long term. Thanks for suggesting it.

LOL

If I come across this setting on IP Board, I will activate it just for you!

I'm definitely not a government control kind of guy...but I believe when it comes to spectrum, the government needs to set the rules in a way that the big two cannot just sweep in and dominate. It would be devastating to American consumers. In the interest of competitions and fair markets, we need to prevent a big winner takes all scenario. Auctions to the highest bidder is not the right solution, , as it would guarantee the two biggest coffers would win all the spectrum. I think if they do persist with uncontrolled auction scenarios, they then need to make some strong minimum coverage standards, especially with high standards for tertiary and rural markets. Because AT&T is sitting on gobs of unused secondary, tertiary and rural spectrum. They really just want to buy all this spectrum nationwide and deploy it only where and as needed in the Top 100 markets. It's nearly criminal. And I'm getting sick of it. Almost to the point I want to become a lobbyist for our cause!

For people who live in WiMax markets, or happy with their 3G performance and don't care about LTE, then this is a good deal. All things considered.

Great post! Thanks for posting this! I have seen upgrades much cheaper, but since it's only at corporate stores...well that's a bummer for getting a really good discount. I hope they open it up to other Sprint device sellers, like Amazon Wireless and Radio Shack, etc. I think you're right. This is a way to try to clear out old WiMax inventory before LTE hits the streets. I think the big news in all this is now we have a good idea when LTE devices will hit the market. And this is exciting, because this would be ahead of schedule. Originally, LTE devices were slated for mid year. For Sprint to beat a schedule related to LTE and NV would be a great shot in the arm for boosting consumer confidence.

The SIM card aspect is not one I even ever thought about.

It's the million dollar question. I've asked some inside Sprint sources, they all say they don't know either. I find that hard to believe. So I'm left to think the worst. Although, I have two new leads I'm chasing down. I'm hoping that one of them will lead me to the pot of gold!

I'm actively using both Tapatalk and Forum Runner now. To keep track of any issues or bugs. I have a S4GRU app on my to do list. But I don't think I am going to get to it until at least April.

power save S4GRU is now Mobile...sent from Tapatalk App

Ed...thanks for joining the S4GRU page!

OK...I've got PayPal donate up! Just need to do some format tweaking.

You gotta like 3G speeds like that!

I need to work on that, still. It's on my To Do List. You think it would be priority Number One, right?