shaferz

Thanks - that gives me some hope.

I'm waiting on a new shipping label to send ours back. We are iPhone users here and did not have a consistent experience with our MB. Still waiting on an update on a replacement unit.

I'm an apple guy, but I would have to guess that SC = small cell? @mikejeep ?

Iphone 7+'s here and ours will sporadically connect and then disconnect and reconnect. Would be awesome if they would stay connected all the time. Sending this MB back for a replacement. Just waiting on the return label.

Our MB continues to be sporadic. 70% of the time, our phones connect fine and the MB works great. The other 30%, our phones will not connect to it. MB has not moved or been reset in a few days now. Sent an email last night and they are sending a return label and instructions and then will be sending a replacement out. For now, we'll hang onto this one and use it whenever it wants to work fine I guess. With as much hype as there was around these, I'd have to think that the intended operation was for it to work like ours does right now. Hopefully the replacement works more consistently than this one.

Last two mornings I have woke up at the campground, my phone is off the MB. :/ Wife's phone, of course, seems to stay connected to it all the time now. Haha. Will let the thing (and my phone) do some 'learning' over the next couple of days and will see what happens I guess. :shrug:

For anyone following my story... I pulled our camper to the campground today and brought the magic box along. As soon as I got camp set up, I plugged the MB in next to a wall that is east facing since that is the closest macro. Went back outside to finish setting all of our stuff up and about 20 minutes later, checked the MB. It was connected to the macro with B25 as the relay (where our phones always bounced between 3G and B26!) - at this point, my phone was still not connected to the MB. Left the campsite for about 2 hours to go home and get my family and our golf cart. Upon return, my phone latched to the MB before I got out of the truck. . Wife's phone still wouldn't connect. Logged onto our sprint account and removed "wifi calling for iCloud device' from my wife's phone (support dude today said that might have been an issue with mine??). Waited 10 minutes and did a ##UPDATE# on her phone and then after another 45 minutes or so, she says "wow.. I have full signal!" Not sure if it just took time or if the wifi calling on our lines had anything to do with it, but it seems to be working great for now! Previously would get speeds of 1-4Mbps down/ .5-1Mbps up on B26, and 3G was essentially useless for anything but text messaging. Now sitting in the camper with full B41 signal from the MB and getting speeds of 22-26Mbps down and 4-8Mbps up. Unreal. Crossing my fingers that this thing is through with its 'growing pains' and is now ready to keep on kicking butt!

Yes - I did that based off of a post I saw on reddit (i think?) It didn't make any difference. And now an hour and 30 minutes after I hung up with the support guy, my phone is now connected to the MB again. I have noticed, however, that the field test screen on my iphone (which is know is poor) seems to indicate that when I am connected to the MB, under Neighbor Measurements > Neighbor Cells List > 0 > there is nothing that populates there. However, when I am connected to the macro, values populate. Will be interesting to see if they populate over the next few days. Ah well. I must be patient.

Per this site, the 'PRL' should have nothing to do with LTE. But to be safe, I have done a total of about 15 ##UPDATE# 's over the past 3 days.

Thanks lilotimz. Just had another call with the support folks, and their indication was that the phone should grab back onto the MB pretty quickly. He did notice that on my phone line, wifi-calling was still turned on (even though its off on my phone,) so he turned it off on their end as well to see if that made a difference. Has now been 20 minutes since I got off the phone with him and I am still not connected to the MB. The MB tech's are supposed to call me back now within 24 hours. :shrug: The support guys I have spoken with so far all seem to think that there may still be something wrong, but they just aren't seeing any errors indicating anything is wrong. Maybe there isn't actually anything 'wrong' with my unit, but they all still seem to think that my phone should grab onto the thing nearly immediately.

Thanks for the added color. I can at least chew on that as a possible issue. My phone did connect to the MB at some point this morning. Was out working on our camper and noticed on my phone that I had 5 'bars' (-82 B41) signal out in my yard. I placed a quick phone call, then hung up. My phone is now latched back onto the macro tower and not my MB. Really really confused as to how this thing/network/phone is programmed. I assumed that if I was connected to the magic box, then place a phone call/reboot/cycle airplane mode, the phone would first scan for the last connected system (in this case, the magic box.) That is apparently wrong. In this case, for whatever reason, the phone connects to LTE from the macro tower. I still do not understand at what point my phone decided to switch over to the magic box. I had already tried a phone reboot as well as cycling airplane mode which I thought would force it to 're-scan' and then grab the Magic Box, but it never grabbed onto it, and still hasn't 30 minutes later. Makes zero sense to me. Is anyone with a fully functional magic box able to test the above instance and see what happens? Ensure you are connected to the Magic Box, then place a phone call, then after the phone call, see how long your phone takes to reconnect to the magic box. Just wondering if this is common.

Yeah - that is what is so frustrating. Signal levels are all solid. Guess time will tell what they want to do. We are leaving home later today to take a long camping trip - a trip in which I intend to take the Magic Box along because it is also in a fringe B25 area on our phones. Guess this is a good way to test to see if this is somehow caused by the macro donor site. MB always seems to connect to GPS and Relay super quick, but seems to take a while for 'LTE' to connect on it. The support dude didn't act like that was out of the ordinary, but I would honestly think that both the GPS and Relay signals would take the longest. :shrug:

In its current location: RSRP: -108 dBm CINR: 15.7 dB Frequency: 2648000 Band: 41 High Status: Connected

Something is still amiss with my Magic Box. When I woke up this morning, my phone was connected to it. I power cycled my phone and now it will not connect to the magic box. Wife's phone has not ever connected to it. I got an email last night from Sprint asking if I could verify that it is working correctly, and I replied saying that something was still amiss. I spent probably over 3 hours trying to troubleshoot this thing with the guy I was working with and it still isnt working correctly, so I rather bluntly just asked if it makes sense at this point to try replacing the unit. I can not imagine that Sprint's intention was to have these things sporadically working. Just frustrating. :-/ I've seen it work long enough on my phone that I REALLY want it to work all the time now.

Are you literally warning against something that science FICTION movies warn against?

I spoke too soon. I ran speed tests and watched videos all morning without issue. The same support guy called me back this morning as he said he would, and I happily reported that everything seemed to be working fine now. Then I hung up, and now my phone is refusing to connect to the Magic Box again. GRRRRRR.

An update for anyone who cares. I made one minor complaint via twitter, and almost immediately had a DM from @sprintcare. Went back and forth with them for a bit with messages, which then turned into them wanting to start a 'SecureMessage' session. In that session they asked for the Serial Number and MAC ID. I provided it, and within about 60 minutes, I had a phone call and voicemail from the IBS team with a ticket number as well as them indicating they were researching and would call back within 4 hours. After 45 minutes, I got a call from a guy named John who went through a plethora of troubleshooting and reset procedures both from my end as well as their end. He was able to see if/when any phones were connected to the MB, what my relay strength was, etc. He was also able to remotely reset the MB. Anyway - spent a total of probably 90 minutes working with him and testing and retesting and rebooting and removing power multiple times. He even did some reprovisioning which seemed to cause my MB to ONLY grab B25 as the relay - nothing seemed to work. Magic Box was reporting no issues, but none of our phones would connect. It was getting late in the day and his shift was over, so he suggested leaving it overnight and he was to call me back this morning. Late last night, we had a power outage at home that lasted for about 3 hours. I woke up this morning to my phone still not connected to the MB, so I ran the MB setup again, and guess what - now it is working great. Entire house is blanketed in 4-5 bars of B41 now. And now we get this: http://imgur.com/a/UK9N2 So thats fun.

Left home for the weekend and returned to find that none of our phones are connecting to our magic box now. :thumbsdownfartnoise: Rebooted the thing twice and still not connecting to it.

Got shipment notification last night - our MB will be here tomorrow via UPS. FWIW, our local tower about a mile away (line of sight through some trees) is a B41(2xca), b25 (10X10 + 5x5)), and B26 tower. If I am in my garage, I can sometimes grab onto B41. If I am in the house, B41 drops and my phone goes to B25 (usually the 10x10), and I rarely see B26. If I go to the basement, phone holds on to LTE for dear life, but normally drops down to 3G, which seems to have gotten slower and slower over the past year. I have great in-home wifi, but there are a few houses on our block that are Sprint customers, and our block happens to fall smack dab in between two sectors. I plan to put our magic box in a 2nd floor window that faces the local tower. Will be interesting to see if it is able to grab a solid B41 link from there. Also something that I got via email from someone within Sprint: "A window facing this address will be best suited for the Magic Box & please know speeds will be higher greater than 10 feet away from the box." Interesting tidbit for anyone running speed tests right next to the MB.

I'd say they are probably testing frantically - especially with the reports that Apple will be releasing a new Apple Watch with LTE.

Wife got a voicemail saying they did not expect inventory for 8-12 weeks and that they would email or call again before shipping to confirm we still wanted it.

*raises hand* agree. Any merger talk should be all held in a separate thread.

Simple math - per google, a tower is $200-250k to build. 8 Billion divided by $250k = 32,000 ( ) towers (assuming the cost to build is really $250k each)

Just landed in Canada for the first time in 3 weeks. For the past year, I have been coming to Montreal, on average, every other week. Each time, my phone connected to Rogers 3G and stayed there. Today upon landing, I am connected to Rogers LTE. I am sure the speed is still limited, but it sure is nice to see it say "LTE" instead of "3G" ! For reference, ED1500 plan with Sprint Open World.

Does it include 10gb hotspot?