shaferz

This news makes me smile. LETS GO SPRINT.

Mine did the same thing and Sprint did the same... they replaced the entire unit. However, I actually found that the power supply itself may not have died. When my replacement MB came, I tried plugging the new power supply into the old MB, and it never did come up... even after being connected to power for a solid 2 hours. Maybe the power supply went out and also killed the original MB? Odd stuff. Good luck with the replacement!

Thats sort of my point. The control is supposed to be handled by Sprint. There has to be a reason that its not handing back to the MB correctly, but apparently nobody in MB Support is able to figure it out. *shrug* So I guess i wait.

Maybe potentially related iPhones.

Our iphones still seem to prefer to initially connect to the Macro network. If I go to my basement and cycle airplane mode with the phone in a place where it only gets weak B26, the phone will nearly immediately hop onto the MB, and stay latched on until I go out of range (almost 1/2 a block!) But unless I do that, our phones almost always stick in the macro network. :-/ Hoping that at some point, a software fix is pushed (to either the phones or on the network side) that will make connecting to the MB a bit more preferred. Example, if I am at home and connected to the MB, my phone immediately grabs the MACRO when the MB is out of range. I would have thought that upon return home (or within some reasonable about of time for scanning) the phone would get handed back off to the MB. MUCH stronger signal strength (1-2 'bars' of B25 on the Macro vs full bars of B41 on the Magic Box, ) so I'm not really sure at what point in time our phones should shift to the Magic Box. We have been through 3 of the Magic Boxes, and each one acts like this. MB Support seems to want to help at a high level, but the problem still hasnt been fixed. Just dealing with it for now and hoping a future software update fixes things.

Existing sites have all been upgraded, but the network around here was not designed to blanket LTE. I recognize that the coverage maps often indicate that coverage is acceptable, but that just isn't the case. Attaching a pic below that has a blue square. Illinois Route 47. Its not an interstate, but still a busy state highway. This is an area where placement of one additional tower would ensure contiguous LTE coverage from Dwight down through Forrest. It is equally as bad as you travel farther south on Route 47 south of Forrest. Phones hang onto LTE for dear life, but drop down to 1x and 3g as the town of Strawn is approached. From Strawn south nearly all the way to Gibson City is 3G or 1x. Site spacing is great for 1x voice coverage, but its just not there for full-time LTE coverage (no matter which band is being discussed.) Every time I'm in one of these areas, I'm reporting the issues in the Sprint Zone. At one point in time Sprint was working with Illinois Valley Cellular through the Rural Roaming Partner deal - but I have yet to see any indication of connecting to IVC Equipment. The partnership started in 2014, and it is now nearing the end of 2017, and I am fairly confident that IVC has not held up their end of the deal in moving their network to LTE. All of that being said, it is not a big deal at this moment. It will be a big deal at the point in time that a decision is made to shutter CDMA, if the holes are not fixed. edit: relevant to this thread - even a Sprint/Tmo merger would not fix this problem without filling in gaps.

I live in a market where nearly every location has 10X10 B25. Its great to have, but there are still long swaths of highway that is non-LTE. There is gonna need to be a whoooooole lotta densification before cdma can be sunset.

Cant remember if I read it here or on reddit, but someone mentioned that the wifi portion of it could be activated remotely via Sprint. I'm still not quite sure I understand the need to have a wifi module on these things. :shrug: I guess maybe if the unit is failing to connect to relay - then at least Sprint has some way to get 'into' the unit. Seems like it would have benefited them more to simply plop an ethernet jack that would allow direct access to the unit? I dunno. My head is all over the place this morning.

Seems really odd to change it up - especially if all other ratings are the same.

Well... I pulled the trigger yesterday. Walked into Target with my family and noticed an LTE Apple Watch on display. Went to the glass cabinet where they keep the Apple products under lock and key, and there was a damn 42mm Apple Watch LTE in Space Grey IN STOCK. I had originally wanted the SS version, but they seem to be out of stock until November everywhere, so I decided to go ahead with the Aluminum version. Got it all set up yesterday and have had no major issues. The sign up with Sprint (to get it added to our account) was simple, and I first tested the ‘LTE’ of the Watch this morning. It was both an odd feeling and liberating to leave the house without my phone. Haha.

My wife and I are still rocking the series 0 watches, and will for sure be going to to a S3 watch. Undecided still on whether or not to get the LTE version. :-/

FFS. Now the power supply for our MB has seemingly failed. When I first plugged it in, I thought the power supply seemed overly ‘noisy’ in that it made a constant hiss/buzz. Woke up this morning to 2 bars of 1x, and the MB indicated it needed to be plugged in. Receptacle tested fine. Power Supply no longer makes any noise and smells a little suspect so Sprint is sending a replacement.

Update... MB is still sporadic at our house. Phones connect to it occasionally. Visiting family in the Ozarks this weekend so I brought the MB along. Phones grab mostly 3G and SOME B26, but never anything else. Plugged the MB in, told it to do its setup and went down to the dock. After 5 minutes, our phones have 3-4 bars and have 10-15mbps download and 1-2mbps upload. This is amazing.

Phone had been connecting to the MB sporadically again, but it hasn’t connected to the MB once since I updated to iOS 11 today. Ugh. Anybody on the official iOS11 update... let me know if you connect to your magic box after updating please. FWIW, Carrier Bundle 29.0.1.

If it did, I have no idea where to find it. My phone has refused to connect to our Magic Box since I updated to iOS11.. ?

All done! Not sure if I just got in the queue ahead of the rush, but it took less than 90 seconds to complete the download of iOS11 onto my phone. Will be interesting to see how quick my iPad updates. Anyway, next up... watchOS4.

... holy moly. 10 seconds remaining of the download. BY FAR, the fastest downloaded update I have ever had on an iPhone.

"Download Requested"

The thought of a Sprint/Tmobile merger is enough to make me queezy.

Billy Madison

From what I understand, yes. I had heard/read somewhere that 10 days was the magic number...? I'm not clear on what you mean by 'killing your data' though. If you get better speeds and coverage on the MB, then why would you ever want to disconnect from it?

You should have had this: https://www.sprint.com/en/support/solutions/international/faqs-about-premium-international-experience.html I am in Montreal a few weeks a month for work, and I find the LTE coverage provided by Rogers is pretty impressive. I'd call into customer care and explain what happened - I'm fairly sure you should have Premium International Experience. edit: @Rawvega beat me to it.

I'd recommend trying to run setup again. I've found that the MB picks up far better B41 signal than my phone does.

Bumping again - new (replacement) MB arrived Friday. We were gone this weekend, so i just now got it set up. Achieved a 'score' of 59. MB has been configured and running now for 2 hours, and neither of our iphones will connect to it. Guess I'll let it go overnight to ensure it does its update to the latest software, etc. If we still aren't connected to it in the morning, then i guess it's a call back in to MB Support. I'm starting to wonder if it's our iPhones. Has anyone in this thread had a consistent experience in regards to iphones connecting to their Magic Boxes? Maybe iOS 11 will have a carrier settings update that helps?

B25, B26, and 3G. It was like our phones just did not recognize the B41 from the MB at times. Tech support said on their end, it looked like the MB was correctly 'tied' to the macro donor. I wondered if the macro was still the issue, but the same issues happened at the campground (which was a different donor macro.). WHEN our phones would get on the MB, the experience was great, they just wouldn't latch onto it and stay hooked to it reliably. Hopefully the replacement unit doesn't have the same issue.