aackmann

I tried out T-Mobile a few months ago and found them to be very poor speed wise both downtown (by Schlitz Brewery) and in the inner city (along Capital and also Lisbon Ave). I usually couldn't muster anything over 3-5 Mbps. There not too terrible in the suberbs though around Mayfair Mall.

I tried out T-Mobile as well earlier this year. I was actually impressed with the speeds around Greenfield, like Hwy100 and Layton, but their in-building coverage was not great. In Waukesha at my work, I had to hold my phone up in the air to send a text message. Also, T-Mobile's coverage was horrible in Muskego, it dropped to edge almost the entire time driving through or hanging out there. 

Come to my house. Full orange on the map. 2 down and .5 up. Welcome to 2006.

Dude, no cell carrier is perfect in every single spot within its coverage area. some houses and spaces are just bad for reception based on where the cell tower is located. It's not possible to show the coverage map 100% accurate down to the square foot.

Downloaded speed yesterday.......142

kbps?    

Kind of a big favor to ask......  My phone is being replaced and they don't have loaners.  Anyway I can borrow a phone from someone until Wednesday?  I will say this for customer service, they said they would call the stores in my area for me.  

I know I still have my HTC One M7... I loaned it out to someone else a while ago and I don't know where it is off hand. I'll have to look around for it when I get home from work. I'll see if I can find it.

I think B41 is pretty much everywhere around Milwaukee. There are very few sites without it, but I guess the sheer number of people at the fair still overload it. I went on a Saturday, so it was super busy. So maybe on a lighter day it might work better. 

Has anyone attended the Wisconsin state fair, I will be there this Friday and wanted to know what to expect as far as data service?

Yea, I did on Saturday I think. It was pretty bad. Data was extremely slow if it worked at all, which it usually didn't. I didn't try texting or calling though.

I really need quick help please. What kind of B41 speeds are people seeing in West Allis, Brookfield and Waukesha?

 

I was at the Sprint store last night and unplugged their repeater/booster. I was seeing 30mb downloads which blew me away. WiFi off. Saw it on a SG4 and Sg5. When I tried the managers iP6plus and Note 4 in the exact same spot I was only seeing 5mb down. This made zero sense to me. Any explanation?

 

Thanks!

There are alot of variables that go into the speed you get. If I'm near a tower, I usually see 30 - 40Mbps. I've seen as high as like 68Mbps too. It's possible their phones weren't on B41 too... Maybe once you unplugged their signal booster, their phones just hopped on regular 1900Mhz LTE, which is probably the most crowded frequency, as it was the first one Sprint deployed, and alot of their first LTE phones ONLY supported that band.

And where did you see that about the small cells?

Where is the Milwaukee market as far as size goes.  I thought it was in the top 50 before.  I'm asking because the post in the forum today that claimed Sprint is putting in 500M a year into small cells in the top 50 markets.  That would be nice because the spacing of towers around me is less than fabulous, but still is satisfactory.   

Well, I googled it and it would appear that Milwaukee is one of the top 50 according to this page...

http://navigation.sprint.com/topmarkets.html

Well it was just approved. I didn't get strong signal outside on Monday night so it may not be turned on yet.

 

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I was at Dave and Busters watching the Packer game for a bit, that's how I could tell it was active. I don't think B26 is active on there yet, so once that goes live, you should get better coverage inside the mall.

Any news?   Any estimates of where Milwaukee is going to be in the band 41 prioritization? 

I believe I read some articles recently that said the new Sprint CEO is changing the strategy and trying to focus on getting 3-4 big markets fully deployed with B41 and once those are complete, then branch out. They want to be able to market a completed super fast network in a few markets, rather than have the whole country partially completed. So it may be a while yet.

 

At the St. Fair on Sunday.. Morning.

 

The tower serving the park is still 3G only. I have patience, other customers don't. There's no excuse for at least not bringing in a temp site to a high traffic event.

 

Wonder how many S customers signed up with US Cell at their retail shop at the fair being frustrated.

 

I'm not trying to rant.. But Sprint needs to look at their image at an event like this.

 

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Yea... I just talked to a person who works at the other office for my company. I was always telling her about the network improvements and such. The situation got much better at the office after 1x800. They used to not be able to make calls inside the building, but it's way better there now (Brookfield, Capitol Dr. and Springdale Rd). She told me how she was at State Fair and basically couldn't use her phone. She said she's gonna be switching. It makes me sad that pretty much all the sites around here are upgraded, but one of the last few stragglers is right smack dab where thousands of people would notice it I wish they would have brought in a temp tower for that. 

I was at summerfest this year, and while there were still some towers around there that aren't B26 yet, my phone was still pretty usable. 

Has Sprint ever used temp sites for events in WI?  Even Iowa St. Fair has a Sprint temp site...  we can beat Iowa!

Not that I'm aware of. You'd think summerfest would be like the biggest event around here, or State Fair, but I do not believe they did anything.

Yea, for the most part, I'm pretty happy with the improvements. I generally have LTE most places I go and there are still some towers around the Milwaukee area that haven't received LTE upgrades yet. The B26 LTE really helped alot. But I never have text message issues or voice issues. Data is generally good too, keeping in mind some towers aren't broadcasting LTE at all yet, and a bunch more are still only broadcasting 1900Mhz. So once all are LTE accepted and broadcasting 800Mhz LTE, I'll be golden.

Has anyone been experiencing weird signal loss at all today around the Milwaukee area?

For those experiencing low ear piece volume while on a call, just change the angle that you hold the device. It sounds silly, but it makes a big difference. The earpiece speaker just isn't located where the speaker grill makes you think it is. It's weird.

 

Anyway, I'm also having problems with my M8. My first device worked well for about 12 days. Good LTE speeds, good call quality, it was a good device. Then it stopped doing data so I called Sprint tech support and told me towers were being optimized but it should work out fine in a couple of days. They suggested switching to CMDA only. CDMA data also started being affected, and then voice capability just died. It was a shiny pretty brick.

 

I took the M8 to a store where they refused to help me because it was past the 14-day return window and I didn't have insurance. Well, I returned home, added insurance and returned to the store 2 days later. They determined it was defective and gave me a new one (after giving me a speech how they shouldn't do that but I lucked out they didn't have refurbished M8 - seriously Sprint? I just bought a phone, it doesn't work, and you feel the need to hand out a speech when giving me a replacement?). Well, this new M8 can do voice great, but it can't do data. Whether in LTE/CDMA or CDMA only mode, it just won't stay hooked up to data. In fact, I sought out help from Sprint.com chat for that (as I lacked another phone to use to call them) and they told me to do ##SCRTN# to reset it and after that it became a full brick since the device would not connect to data to reactivate. I had to borrow a phone to call them, explained to service what happened and they made me input ##311114#. That's kind of like a manual, data-less activation. Then it worked... for voice. It's still not doing data. And because the device worked at first, I didn't return it during the 14-day window. I feel like they pulled a bait and switch on me...

I had this EXACT same thing happen to me twice now. First time I was within the 14 day window so I got it swapped at the store. Now it just happened again to me yesterday so they're shipping a new phone to the store that I can pick up on Monday. I do have the equipment protection though. I was considering getting rid of it, but with the bad luck I've had with this model phone so far, I think I'm gonna keep it. 

Where in Greenfield? I live right around 92nd and Layton. I want some band 26!

For those Premier Sponsors following this thread, please check out the new Milwaukee Market Premier thread.  

 

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/5823-milwaukee-market-including-madison-premier-thread/

 

Uecker87's been doing some good work over there already. 

Nice. I didn't "follow" the main Band 26 acceptances thread cuz it was nation-wide and I didn't really care to hear people in other states talk about their sweet sweet band 26. I always just check in to see the map every so often.

Well, I did verify the Cleveland & Calhoun tower is broadcasting LTE like the other dude said. I took Cleveland to work today and mapped some purple. 

Whoa, aackmann with the "honored premier sponsor"?  Good work! 

I just noticed that. I guess I'm kind of a big deal now. Ballin.

Update from New Berlin...  It seems as though today LTE has finally made it to the tower on Calhoun.  A very welcome improvement in my book considering I would consistently be roaming at my desk in April of last year and now i have LTE in the same spot!

Awwww Snap! Seriously?? That's awesome! That tower covers such a large area since there aren't any others near it. I was waiting for that sucker to go live! Glad to hear it! I hope they're throwing 800Mhz LTE in while they're there anyways

Just an update, the Brown Deer/I-43 tower is now broadcasting B26. Where I hardly had service before, I know have 2 bars of LTE.

Nice! I can't wait to see more of that! I also can't wait to get my hands on the new HTC One so I can actually take advantage of that sweet 800Mhz LTE.

We are greener than Colorado!!  (hah hah)

Actually.... There's a petition on change.org for Wisconsin residents to sign that could help make Wisconsin even greener! I signed it!

http://www.change.org/petitions/gov-scott-walker-support-marijuana-legalization-in-wisconsin?recruiter=14067223&utm_campaign=signature_receipt&utm_medium=email&utm_source=share_petition

The holes in coverage in Madison downtown are bad, very bad.  The key areas that I visit are without LTE yet.  As you said, in building LTE is non-existent unless you're right next to a tower.  Overall, its a night and day improvement over what WAS here, however, its still very early morning and still quite dark, in my analogy.

 

I'm pretty sure northern wisconsin has had the same winter that we have had, so that's not the reason. I'm guessing that there are less towers and less issues with backhaul (but aren't they using the same backhaul providers?), ergo, vis-a-vis, concordantly, they get the goodies first.  However, always an optimist....I mean we have to be, we're Sprint customers.....I think things are going on, just waiting on acceptances and testing.

 

My biggest issue right now is trying to decide what I want for my upgrade from the S4....I have another coming July 1, so its not the end-all-be-all decision.  If these S5-prime rumors pan out, I might have the S5 and then the S5-prime, unless HTC can woo me back, but the sting from my Evo still burns!

I'm set on the new HTC One. That 12 min video that leaked out by that stupid kid got me excited. The camera looks like it's gonna be amazing with that dual sensor setup. I have the ONE right now and while the camera is good, you can't zoom much because it's only 4MP. I think the dual sensor setup on the new HTC One keeps the "Ultrapixel" technology, but also adds another sensor for better quality and a better zoom. You can see at the end of the video the kid looks at the picture he took and zooms in super close and the quality looks damn good from what I could see....

It's pretty painful listening to this kid, but just skip to the end to see the camera stuff.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vvq4H6yI3Jk

So quiet in here.  Now that Milwaukee and Madison are "launched" (With obvious holes in coverage) how are you liking it?

 

I'm fairly happy but..  I won't be fully happy until I have an 800 LTE phone and that is available.  Not much LTE in buildings, obviously, right now

Eh, it's definitely better than it was before. 3G speeds seem decently better. But as you said, the LTE on 1900Mhz is definitely not a "complete" LTE network. I hop in and out of LTE all the time and rarely get it inside buildings. So I think all the excitement has calmed down now while we wait to to start seeing 800Mhz LTE acceptances pop up in our area. It sucks seeing 800Mhz acceptances in Northern Wisconsin and nothing down here. It also seems there is very little activity going on around here at all. I'm guessing the terrible terrible winter has a role to play in that too though. Oh well.