cletus

In the Game of Loans, you accept the Sprint offer or go bankrupt trying.

http://www.foxbusiness.com/technology/2013/05/17/report-sprint-deal-unlikely-to-get-past-clearwire-shareholders/ Meanwhile Clearwire doesn't have the financing to continue it's network upgrades

I am not sure how I feel about this. On the one hand it is great that Sprint has expanded business partnerships beyond the normal MVNOs but I am concerned about all the new users bogging the network down. AT&T stopped offering straight talk sims for reasons unknown but I bet it had to do with the impact these lower revenue users were having on it's network. I wonder what consequences there will be in adding these subs do to the 3g side of the network that is currently in shambles on non NV sites (and even some NV sites here in Austin do not seem to really be much faster).

Sigh. I actually typed that in thinking there was a tmo4gru.com. I saw a truck coming South on I-35 today with about 12 T-Mobile LTE antennas. I've been shocked how much faster T-Mobile is rolling out LTE in Austin than Sprint. They have absolutely surpassed Sprint here in S. Austin even though Sensorly does not show it. I've been really impressed by T-Mobile's progress so far.

Would this mean quad or penta-band phones? I really don't see what the gain is here for Sprint as it has so much spectrum when Clearwire is included.. I would rather they take those $$Billions$$ and use it to have a fully functioning network that can finally compare to AT&T and Verizon. If anything, T-Mobile needs the spectrum the most by far.

I've had good experience going through Costco. Free shipping, usually with a goodie bag of accessories and always no activation cost. Plus, it is Costco and they are awesome at making things right with customers.

One thing people don't seem to understand is that the $30 T-Mobile plan is NATIVE COVERAGE ONLY. I've had two friends get mad at having ZERO service (as in no voice OR data) when leaving a metro area because of this. I can't say I am shocked as they are both pretty dimwitted but for my own personal use I could never consider how the $30 plan due to how often I leave normal metro areas here in Texas. I tried out T-Mobile here and while the speeds were great I simply can't deal with edge when I am barely on the city limits here. I can see how people who don't leave town would love it though.

Will there be any way for us to tell the upcoming bands apart from one another? It would be very interesting to be able to map 800/1900/2600 and have a mapping function with the bands combined and separate. Also, I cannot seem to get the speedtest function to report to sensorly. I can run speedtests and they complete but my contribution lists 1 Billion measurements and 0 speedtests no matter what I try in terms of uploading the data.

"Samsung Electronics said it has successfully tested the platform using the 28 Gigahertz (GHz) waveband to transmit data at a speed of 1 Gbps, which earlier had been considered as a conundrum by global industry players." Great news everyone! They finally met the 4G specifications for speed which are "Have peak data rates of up to approximately 100 Mbit/s for high mobility such as mobile access and up to approximately 1 Gbit/s for low mobility such as nomadic/local wireless access."

How about some taglines: Do you S4GRU? S4GRU: Penetration vs Bandwidth S4GRU: How fast can YOU Sprint?

On the other hand there have been price increases for all people who get an employer discount on family plans at Sprint as they now apply the employer discount only to the first line. This did raise my monthly rate about 6%.

Oh cool, my stuff finally showed up!

I regularly get 10/1 in the Austin area with some locations dipping down to about 3/1 or 4/1. WiMax is actually fairly fast here.

This is my experience as well for the last month or so. I have a WiMax phone so for fun I went around mapping because the map here is really low for actual WiMax coverage. Plus, I figured it may give people an idea of where the future Clearwire LTE bands could reach. Part of my job is driving around meeting suppliers so why not? Unfortunately all that was for naught as the maps still haven't updated my results and I am pretty much done bothering with it.

My wife doesn't use much data so I am considering moving to Ting from Sprint after Sprint changed the way employer discounts are handled (To the discounted employee line ONLY rather than all lines). That change bumped my bill up enough to annoy me. I have a small ETF still but I am leaning heavily to going to Ting when my contract ends in June rather than re-upping with Sprint. Maybe I will reconsider Sprint when triband phones come out and the network here shows improvement.

It isn't just you. Two of my friends in the Austin market said the same thing earlier this week but reported less than 10 down where it used to be much higher. It would be a real shame if after network vision we are left with barely acceptable 3g speeds and slow 4g speeds. I understand the target for Sprint was something like 6-8 down average though which is arguably slower than many Wimax spots here.

Ah well that is good in my case (low sprint 3g signal at my apartment but decent 4g coverage oddly enough. The sad thing is that WiMax is often faster than Sprint LTE here in Austin and as more people transition off the service my speeds just keep going up. 10 down 1 up in a few places now.

Right but they also said they had completed 1300 sites already. Does that mean 1300 of the current WiMax sites (actually this would be great for where I am) or what? Otherwise happens to the WiMax towers under this plan? Kept up until 2015 and then not used at all?

It also remains possible that paypal will accept bitcoin in the near future. http://thenextweb.com/insider/2013/04/24/paypal-president-is-fascinated-by-bitcoin-says-company-is-thinking-about-including-the-virtual-currency/ "I think that for us at PayPal, it’s just a question whether Bitcoin will make its way to PayPal’s funding instrument or not. We’re kinda thinking about it."

How is the LTE performance coming from other Sprint LTE devices?

Last question to anyone in the know: I will be upgrading to an S4 or HTC One. I saw WiWavelength's article on the One and how it was tuned/tweaked for Sprint's network. Does this mean it will be a better performing phone in terms of RF capabilities than the S4? I understand that all phones are different but the EVO LTE problems people have had has made me leery of buying a new phone without a little more research. So far I am leaning towards the S4

Are there any RF differences between the HTC One and the S4? For example, according the the S4gru.com article, "if the HTC One is world roaming capable, it will most likely be limited to GSM 900/1800 and band 1 W-CDMA 2100+1900" Any information about the S4 like this?

So LTE 800 is better at penetrating buildings correct? Wouldn't that make it more valuable to someone in a more urban area? Maybe I am just overthinking things because you are correct that WiMax is not meeting my needs right now partially due to coverage but also partially due to battery drain inherent in the radio design. I feel like I am off an upgrade cycle with Sprint though as I am on the last WiMax phone and missed the first LTE phone and now I am possibly getting on an LTE 1900 phone while missing the first LTE 800/LTE1900 phones and that irks me a bit.

Robert, Thanks for the reply and that helps clarify a lot of things for me. I had assumed that Sprint was holding off on authorizing devices for these bands rather than having to deal with getting phone manufacturers on board. My followup is similar to JonnygATL: I live in an area with decent wimax coverage (Austin, TX) so should I consider holding off my upgrade? The alternative would be to go to T-Mobile (HSPA+/LTE here) until these devices are released. 3G/4G on Sprint is extremely slow in Austin. Actually it is the slowest network here even behind Cricket wireless!

Here is the deal: I am up for an upgrade now and my contract ends in 2 months. I currently have an EVO3D (wimax) phone. Why is it that Sprint can't seem to offer phones that won't quickly be outdated as future bands roll out? It seems to me that anyone buying a new phone now on contract is going to be only able to access a third of the potential LTE network that Sprint will offer. Can someone explain why this is so difficult for Sprint?