mozamcrew

Unless you are running Signal Check, your phone won't tell you you are on 800Mhz now. It will still just say 1x. You might notice improved signal inside buildings though. I don't think they have any LTE on that site yet.

From what what others have said on here, Swiftel hasn't even released any kind of future PLAN for doing any kind of Network Vision type upgrade. Even N-Telos has finally gotten in the game now. Pretty much every US carrier at least has some 4G migration plan in the works (or intends to get bought/sell their assets). Since Swiftel hasn't made any moves in this area, AFAIK, that leads me to believe that they WANT to get out of the business. Given Sprint's current situation, I don't expect any moves on Swiftel in the next year. Once you start seeing NV 2.0 rolling out in full force, and some of G block license protection built out in the Dakotas and Montana, I think they will be forced to rationalize their relationship with Swiftel in some way. Maybe Swiftel will just allow Sprint to buy their spectrum back, or maybe Swiftel's affiliate agreement will expire? Of course I could be wrong. Maybe you know something I don't AJ.

I'm getting 1x800 finally!! See pictures 3 and 4. https://plus.google.com/photos/102694651519037470193/albums/5910613820264209793

My guess is Sprint will simply not renew their affiliate agreement with Swiftel when it expires. They will either built out the area themselves, or else reach some kind of agreement with James Valley Telecom (which covers the Aberdeen SD market) to expand into Swiftel's area. Or maybe some combination of the two where Sprint builds the cities along the I90 cooridor and they split the I29 coordor with Sprint taking the southern part and JVT taking the northern part near its existing service territory.

I see new NV antennas and RRUs!!

Acutally I was able to use it both Wed and Thursday night. Both nights it came back on about 8pm. It just wasn't up during the day.

My understanding is that Verizon's roaming rates are much higher/less favorable compared to other CDMA regional carriers like USCC or Cellcom. For that reason, Sprint only allows Verizon EV-DO roaming on corporate lines.

Well I don't have any signal from it now, so I hope so. I keep bouncing between the one north of town, roaming, and occasionally 1x800 from Underwood. Does anyone know who the NV backhaul vendor is for that tower? If it's Century link, why not just move the whole thing to the empty site in the CenturyLink parking lot!

I called today as well and was told they were doing some kind of tower upgrade here and would be done tomorrow. There are at least 4 of them down though. At least there were last night.

I just got home tonight. From what I can tell, all three around Fergus plus the one to the east in Underwood is out. The site by Battle Lake was still up though, as was the one up I94 between Fergus and Rothsay. I'm curious as well.

Given the position of TMUS and this Rural roaming hub WRT the 700Mhz A block spectrum, maybe Son isn't worried about 600Mhz in the event of a merger because he won't need it. If the merger isn't approved, then TMUS and Sprint will get more favorable auction terms, so it's good either way?

I thought one of the NV OEMs was doing plain CSFB. I know Samsung was doing eCSFB, but IIRC either E or AcLu was doing CSFB.

I think they can challenge, because ownership over a certain percentage triggers the review. You don't have to own 100% of something for the DOJ to come after you. Softbank doesn't own 100% of Sprint, just a majority stake (about 80% IIRC).

I am assuming that eventually all of the USCC Spectrum would be used for LTE incrementally, and that as CDMA traffic declined they would simply sell off block E. Continuity is good though. Frankly, if Sprint needed money for low band spectrum, I could see them pairing down to about 30Mhz of PCS across the country (10Mhz for CDMA and a pair of 5x5 LTE channels), once they get a solid band 41 LTE network built up. With the new gear, the band 41 coverage is almost as good as the Band 25 coverage. Band 25 will mostly be for non-spark devices (old Sprint devices or roaming traffic).

Do you think Sprint might eventually sell its E block PCS license in Chicago?

For those of you that have used both an Evo 4G LTE and the new M8, how you you compare their reception, both for band 25 LTE signal and 1x over PCS and 800? Everyone says that the reception on band 25 is better, I'm curious how large the difference is on both for band 25 LTE and 1x800.

According to the logic you are employing, BOTH parties in a peering agreement are somehow victims of the other. I mean each ISP is sending and receiving packets to the other ISP's customers and they aren't paying the other ISP any money. Netflix isn't getting its CDN for "free". It's attempting what business folks like to call a win-win. Netflix thinks it can build its CDN for less than what it costs to pay a third party CDN/ISP. It didn't have to "strong-arm" the ISPs to install Open Connect because it was a benefit both for Netflix and the ISP. Netflix pays for the hardware and the ISP hooks it up to its own data centers. If it is cheeper for Netflix and other ISPs to build this CDN, rather than using Cogent/CDNs, That's too bad for Cogent and the other CDNs that Netflix was paying, but I don't see how Netflix is strong-arming anyone. I would prefer the FCC simply classify ISPs as common carriers and end this charade. When the infrastructure can support multiple services, we really shouldn't allow the company providing the infrastructure to be in the service business as well. I understand why we keep electrical utilities vertically integrated in many states, but that model makes less sense for ISPs.

You have it sort of correct, but you left out a detail. In most cases, Netflix solves this peering traffic imbalance by placing a Netflix "node" INSIDE the network of most of the major ISPs. This vastly reduced the amount of traffic flowing from Cogent to the ISP. Almost all of the other ISPs thought this was a fair solution because Netflix provides this hardware for free and it frees up their peering links for other traffic. Comcast didn't want to alleviate the traffic and bring its peering arrangement into balance, what it wanted was to turn Netflix into a customer and charge it for more bandwidth. If Netflix/Cogent were smart, it would get into the cloud backup business to help balance out the traffic.

I have complaints about the way the NFL is run. But I do think they have one thing right. They realize that though teams are owned by individual owners, the teams are only valuable in the context of a competitive league. Incidentally, the reason that the NFL doesn't pay any income taxes is because it's considered a non-profit association/rules body. All the money it collects beyond its overhead goes the the owners of the individual teams and is considered income for each individual franchise.

Almost makes you want to wait for the wave of new phones NEXT spring....almost

What tower are you talking about?

Samsung is the OEM, but Ericsson is the manager of Sprint's entire network, they aren't just an equipment vendor. Here's hoping Sprint will bring network management in house once the contract is up.

That would be the real reason to setup wifi calling, it both expands coverage and reduced the need for Sprint to use airraves.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/3856-network-visionlte-dakotas-market-including-fargo-grand-forks-alexandria-mn/page-10 The way I read it, and this isn't solid so that's why I say rumor, is that they are going for solid coverage along I29 in ND and SD, along I94 across ND into MT, plus coverage running north from Bismarck to Minot (US83) and from Dickinson up to Williston (US85). But they aren't going to go west along US2 very far from Grand Forks. My guess is that lack of buildout along US 2 is because it would simply duplicate SRT's coverage area. Here is the SRT coverage map. http://www.srt.com/onlinestore/do/content/coverageMap You can see SRT has very solid coverage of the area along US2 from Rugby ND to Dodson MT, and north to the border. That's why I say Sprint SHOULD build from east to west along the southern edge of their coverage.

Looking at the coverage area for SRT, I can understand why the rumor is that Sprint will build out in ND along I94 to the west, but not really expand in the north, by going west down HWY 2. SRT has solid coverage in the north starting near Rugby ND going west all the way into western MT before it stops. If I were Sprint, I would only try to build out in ND and MT to areas that SRT isn't already covering. If you have a partner willing to provide native type coverage, then best to target your expansion to areas where you both are relying on VZW for roaming.