halcyoncmdr

I'm just curious because I have 30/30 now I believe, and my Xbox experience is still the same. I just question at what point does speed become a marketing tool?

 

Check that, it already is.

Most online games use very little bandwidth honestly. Constant connection of 500kbps is usually all that's needed for smooth gameplay. As has been stated numerous times around here ane elsewhere on the net, latency is what people think of when they think of "feeling" the speed. How long it takes from when you click something until it gets to the server and back to you. This is also "lag" in video games. The raw speed means next to nothing with gaming. Games are highly optimized so that even crap connections won't hinder gameplay very much. Latency however is very important for gaming and the feel of speed.

Hm... I've had the iPhone 5 for a few months now, and occasionally it switches between 3G and o. Toggling airplane mode or waiting for half a minute fixes it but it gets annoying as it will do this randomly and sometimes in the middle of some work, timing everything out. I can connect and work on LTE, 3G, and 1x just fine, and I'm jailbroken. Do you think I have this AN_AAA issue? I would rather not want to replace my iphone as 6.1.4 can't be jailbroken.... PM me please?

No, the AN_AAA issue manifests with an inability for ANY mobile data to work. It's visual indicator is a constant switching between o and 3G every 10 or so seconds.

I really hope your right about Yuma being 75% complete by the end of June. I just recently moved back into town. I live by Fry's on 24th st. and sprint's network is almost non-existent. I hope they can get the upgrades done soon

Yuma itself doesn't have a ton of sites. It should be rather quick in comparison to Tucson. I'd say Yuma/Willcox/Bisbee/etc. will be announced before Tucson simply because the towers will be up and running. Why not announce 4-5 new cities with 4G LTE when you can instead of waiting to announce then with Tucson?

Not sure I quite understand why the "overhead" is so unsustainable. If there are WiMax phones that are generating positive cashflow - revenue minus expenses > 0 - then what's the problem?

 

Also, isn't WiMax tower spacing tighter than LTE 1900? So they can't simply move all WiMax equipment to nearest Sprint tower because then you won't have coverage.

Using that same logic then iDEN shouldn't have been an issue. Nextel had the highest ARPU (Average Revenue Per User) of all the carriers in the country, yet they were looking at a merger... And they chose Sprint... Why would that be? Everyone was touting Sprint/Nextel as the greatest merger in wireless history (slight hyperbole but not by much).

After the merger was completed however, the truth came to light. Nextel was failing, they were utilizing an outdated technology that only a handful of companies used in the world. This mean economy of scale was not on their side. Since Motorola had created iDEN, they controlled all licensing for the technology, and priced all of their competitors out of the market with that advantage. Only a handful of iDEN devices were ever made by companies other than Motorola, Blackberry and I believe Sanyo had one or two, but I could be wrong on that one.

The iDEN network had plenty of cash flowing in from it's operation, and the highest customer satisfaction rating in the country, but the company wasn't doing good. Cash and CSAT are only part of it. My assumption is that despite having the highest ARPU, Nextel also had the highest outlay for network maintenance, partially because the equipment was only made and licensed by and to Motorola, seeing a pattern here?

<snipped>

That was exactly what I was searching Google for. I went searching for like 5 minutes before I gave up.

1900 LTE is going on just about every tower nationwide. 800 CDMA and 800 LTE are a different story.

The southern end of Tucson is within that international boundary and may end up without any of the 800mhz enhancements for quite some time unfortunately. I believe the boundary was set at 110km (68 miles) if I remember correctly. and Tucson proper is located about 60 miles from the border. So by my mental acuity... that means downtown and south of it are within that zone.

Ah yes... http://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-announces-two-spectrum-sharing-agreements-mexico

oh man! i cant wait. i know ppl will compare big reds LTE getting 30mbps but 14mbps is amazing to me and what do i even need speeds that fast for, that awesome i cant wait,

my home internet is 25 down and i dont even need that

This is what a lot of people don't seem to get. They just see bigger numbers and think it's better. That doesn't necessarily mean it is more stable, more consistent, etc. It's all about e-peen size when it comes to speed tests.

The average user doesn't need much more than 1Mbps on 3G, and 5Mbps on 4G for what they expect as far as speed is concerned. These numbers are probably high even, for most users. Latency is what you actually think of when you think speed. How long it takes to load after you click a link. You can have a 30Mbps connection but a 500ms latency and your connection will feel extremely slow, because it literally is taking half a second before your click even registers anything due to that latency.

One of Network Vision's requirements is sub-100ms latency on all upgraded towers. For reference, 100ms is roughly where a person can start to detect the lag, hence why anything less than 100ms is good for gaming for instance, the lower the better. Even with a slower connection, it will feel much faster if the latency is lower.

Clearwire already committed to maintaining the current WiMax network through 2015, that won't change. After that, my guess would be the towers going offline almost immediately, saving overhead costs associated with operating two separate networks. Sprint knows the hassle two separate networks creates (iDEN/CDMA). One of the fundamental advantages Network Vision brings is a single unified network with nearly identical hardware nationwide.

Sprint has been hamstrung operating two entirely separate networks including overhead such as power, maintenance, leasing, etc. while getting very little in return from that second network that the first couldn't already provide.

I also saw online "our entire 3G footprint will be upgraded to Network vision" or some thing in that direct vein of thought. So sitting in my car in my work parking lot I have 3 bars of 3G service, does that statement above mean I will have 3 bars of LTE in the same spot I sit in now? Or does it mean by the end of NV 1.0, I will have at least increased 3G speeds if its not LTE. Just trying to cater my expectations to what there plans are, so I don't assume and get my hopes up.

There is a difference in the reception between LTE and CDMA just because of technological differences. Most phones only show "bars" for 1X voice coverage, EVDO and LTE coverage are not shown. From what I remember you're looking at about a 2dBm dofference 1xRTT > EvDO, and 7 dBm from 1xRTT > LTE. The LTE airlink is more fragile than either 1xRTT or EvDO and as such will fail on the fringe of service more quickly. That difference may be enough to have fewer bars, but even bars aren't standardized across all manufacturers, that's why they are a terrible indicator of true coverage quality. They just give a general idea. For instance, a 0-bar voice signal will still have enough reception for a perfect quality voice call until it drops entirely (go CDMA voice quality, GSM is terrible even with higher reception).

They likely will

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

I hope so, that's where I'm at. :-P

Biased title is biased. They easily could have used " Sprint cites vendor execution for Network Vision delays" instead of the sensationalist one they did. Pet peeve about "journalistic integrity", something sorely lacking in every "news" site in the US, or that focuses on US news. It may work on the uninformed that watch mainstream media, but I'd like to think the more technically apt among us aren't swayed by sensationalism.

That being said, it doesn't surprise me at all that the backhaul vendors are likely the cause for many of the delays. Inclement weather probably wasn't helping either, especially hurricanes and tornadoes.

Using that logic, why update the current CDMA Rev. A base stations?

That's actually a side effect. Network Vision is upgrading all of the infrastructure (including new modular cards at the base station). However, EVDO Rev. A cards are cheap compared to Rev. B. Rev. B is outdated (compared to LTE/LTE-Advanced), unused by just about anyone worldwide, and would be a complete waste of time and money to upgrade everything to. Why upgrade the legacy network to a technology there is absolutely no plan to support and require FURTHER individual requirements by manufacturers for devices. The fragmentation in phone versions from one carrier to another is already bbad enough. Don't add another technology to the mix.

The difference between the GS2 and an old model washer is that Sprint has many phones it can sell for "free" that are comparable to the GS2 but without the problems.

The latest Jelly Bean update pretty much fixes ALL of the issues that Ice Cream Sandwich brought to the GS2. Gingerbread was awesome. ICS was horrible. JB brings it back where it should be. And the fact it's not OTA just means the likelihood of a corrupted flash is nearly non-existent so all the random bullshit issues associated with bad flashes or updated system files won't be distributed as issues with the update itself.

Fun fact working as a retail store tech, 80% of issues we see are either user issues, or issues arising from a bad update or application and a hard reset fixes them. Yes, all hardware issues fall within that remaining 20% of devices we see. I work at a top 100 store, so we aren't slow either.

I'm asking Tuscon people if it's really that bad. Brian Klug is a writer for Anandtech. He does some of the best write-ups in the industry on mobile devices. So I don't get the hate...

He does some of the best write-ups for Anandtech. However, I've seen him completely miss important information before, and when he talks about Sprint it's obvious he hasn't done any research on the future plans, and acts like any other ignorant customer who complains but doesn't do anything proactive about it (like educating himself despite the knowledge and experience to do so more than adequately).

But, maybe that's just me.

Activated our store's demo today. Pretty sweet phone, and very nice to look at. Slick lines and good feel in the hand. The camera is pretty awesome too.

The tragedy was blaming Sprint for wimax, that was out of their control.

Yeah Clearwire kinda screwed over all of the companies that invested in WiMax. Sprint is just the biggest one that people think about. Time Warner, Comcast, Intel, Bright House and Google all own or previously owned parts of Clearwire, and they all sunk money into the company to deploy the WiMax network..

Sprint just happens to own the majority (50.8%), but does not have voting majority. Sprint can't unilaterally decide the direction of the company regardless of their majority stake.

I notice at my house, sensorly's detail tab shows me switching between eHRPD and 1x. What does that mean in a nutshell?

You keep dropping from 3G (EVDO) to 1xRTT instead. eHRPD is the 3G EVDO software layer that takes your EVDO and transmits it through the 4G core instead to maintain your IP as you switch between the 3G and 4G networks, among other things. This way as you switch between networks, your data session doesn't stop and need to be established again, it will simply continue on at a faster or lower speed depending what network switch you made.

Not sure where you're looking, I can't find any 4G LTE coverage on the official coverage map anywhere along I-10 in AZ. Not to mention no towers have started 4G conversions yet either, so it's sort of impossible.

Unless you're talking about the color used for the Interstates happening to be a similar color as the one used for 4G LTE coverage... which is obviously not the case as signal propagation does not work that way and to assume that a signal would be exactly the same width as the interstate the entire length and follow the same exact path... just no.

Probably a roaming agreement expired (possible Strategic Roaming Alliance partner?) and Sprint and the roaming partner couldn't come to another agreement. There are areas of roaming that act as normal coverage due to an agreement.

May have been an agreement with a provider that was later swallowed up by the likes of Verizon and the agreement has expired, thus standard roaming now.

 

 

I see. Sorry to ask but do you have an estimate or prediction of when they will finish and start working on the 4g part? Also do they do any work involving 4g when they upgrade the 3g equipment or do they just work on 3g only. I ask because it would make sense to just get a start on 4g so they can get through the 4g quicker.

 

Alcatel Lucent seems to do LTE 60-90 days after. Most of the equipment is the same, panels are already up since the same panel is used for both, but 4G RRUs usually have to be installed still and upgraded backhaul as well.

 

 

Thats about what i have been getting (the 1Mbps speed). Hell of alot better then the 0.25-0.05 Mbps i have been getting since i got sprint. So do they have to upgrade every tower with 3g before they even start 4g?

 

They don't have to, but that's what Alcatel Lucent does. 3G first then 4G later.

Yuma only has a handful of towers in comparison. Tucson has the bulk of the towers in all of southern AZ.

Yuma and the freeway leading towards Casa Grande only have about 18 towers total, 1/3 of which are in the Interstate, so that leaves only about a dozen in Yuma and the surrounding area. Tucson metro has about 130 or so, I'm too lazy to count them all myself.

There are 15 currently open Network Vision tickets in the event board for the Tucson metro area, and that doesn't even match up with some of the info S4GRU has gotten about towers being worked on currently (other info I have access to does match up with S4GRU so it is legit, just the NEB doesn't). There are more towers being actively worked on than open Network Tickets for the average minimum-wage Care rep to look through.

Considering work only just started a couple weeks ago, they're averaging about 1 tower a day in Tucson and the surrounding area. Keep in mind, this is 1900 CDMA only. Which is ok, a stable 3G network to fallback on while testing 4G is better than an unstable 3G to fallback on and testing 4G. For the average person, stable 1+ Mbps 3G with a low ping is all they need.

And now of course I'm getting multiple camera fails on the new refurbished unit. Oy vey.

 

Sent from my cm_tenderloin using Tapatalk HD

The camera is easily replaceable on the S3. A Service and Repair store should be able to swap that out no problem.

QUESTION! if yuma and tucson are obviously having work done why doesnt sprint officially say that 4g will be here soon like it does other cities

Because Sprint has a set timeframe for when it is announcing new cities in groups. Otherwise they would be announcing new cities that are coming soon every few days.

When your phone breaks due to no fault of your own, I think the last thing you want to point out is that the competitors have an easier warranty program in place.

For 99.9% of customers, warranty policies aren't even a consideration. I'd put money on MAYBE 1 In 10,000 customers having an issue. In 5 years I've had no customers complain about warranty and exchange policies in store, if it were a big issue I think I would have seen at least one by now.

Id just like the point out that one reason Walmart is such a successful business is because they have what is probably the most flexible return policy in the industry. Does it cost them? Yup, probably hundreds of millions - but they make it back in customer loyalty.

No, Wal-Mart is just cheaper. There is no real brand loyalty to them, they just undercut everyone else in the area and once competition is gone they bring prices back to normal.

Their policy is flexible because they sell everything and even if they didn't sell it, the number of warranty returns to vendors are just a drop in the bucket compared to their overall business.

You are comparing a multinational retail conglomerate that treats their employees like complete shit (I have numerous friends that have worked for them over the years), to a phone carrier. There is no comparison.