iansltx

Guess I'll be going back to Pixel-land for my next phone: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-24/andy-rubin-s-phone-maker-essential-is-said-to-consider-sale

Feels kinda silly. This really reads like "Boost founder wants to buy back his company at a discount, which would conveniently happen if Sprint were forced to divest". What *would* be useful as a merger condition is a lock on all MVNO pricing, such that e.g. Ting could keep getting the deal they do right now on each of Sprint and T-Mo once the two merge, valid for, say, five years. Same with Google Fi.

It's not, though. They may not have as much rural 2.5/2.6 due to other small providers having EBS (or, to a smaller extent, BRS), but they have enough out west of here to run 3xCA B41.

At the risk of mentioning something that's been brought up in the previous 46 pages, there's exactly one merger condition I care about...albeit a bit of a stretch: deploy B41 on any macro site that has mid-band LTE on it (AWS or PCS) and is in an area with >= 60 MHz of Sprint-owned BRS + EBS, and serve fixed wireless with the following specs over said network: 25/3 or better with a 160GB or higher cap and $10/50GB or better for overages, using equipment available with both indoor and outdoor variants Given how rich T-Mobile's backhaul network is, how much airlink capacity is available on B41 (particularly with massive MIMO and 5G), this is a softball requirement, and one that Charter is basically already investigating using CBRS and mmWave. I've probably said it before, but if you had to pick a band to dedicate to fixed wireless, BRS/EBS is ideal for that. Local wireless ISPs would kill for the spectrum Sprint uses for B41. Granted, without T-Mo's deep mid-band holdings, Sprint can't really afford to go fixed-only (or fixed-primary) on B41. With the combined portfolios, they absolutely can, given the sheer volume of PCS A-G alone (a few years back one of the staff here added up PCS spectrum availability between Sprint and T-Mobile). Not counting AWS. Not even touching low-band, where T-Mobile is well-positioned of late. Legere and Claure are talking a big game about wireless broadband with their merger announcement, particularly when mentioning cablecos as competitors. Fine; put your network where y'all's mouths are, because large swaths of the US could do with a second (or first) last-mile option that meets the FCC broadband definition without bouncing to a satellite and back. And yes, if I had to, I'd give up the B41 network around here, even though it's actually pretty widely available now and downright speedy (but so is T-Mobile's CA network...50M down and 30M up even when hairpinning through Seattle has me duly impressed).

Going along US-79 between Austin and Longview is a nice test of Sprint's roaming ability. As I type this, I'm on EvDO roaming with VZW; if I had to guess, it's an old Alltel site. Earlier, I was on AT&T LTE (B4 or B17) with VZW or Sprint 1x. The T-Mobile SIM in my tablet is pulling native LTE pretty consistently, bouncing between various bands and CA. Unfortunately this is the last time I'll be doing this trip for quite awhile, so I won't be able to confirm when roaming goes live on that corridor. It'll also be interesting to see what happens in the reverse direction. Though realistically the only roaming available in the other direction for me will be on PCS A-F, assuming the network is set up to properly broadcast Band 2 when the frequencies line up. For high end phones that just so happen to have a single variant cross-carrier B26 should be a nice boost in those places where TMobile hasn't built out yet and Sprint has. EDIT: By the time I finished this message I was split between AT&T LTE and VZW 1x again.

Another 8.1 update came out yesterday. More modem fixes, BT 5.0, and some other stuff. Things do seem to be a bit better than I recall previously. Downtown you can hit either Sprint or Clearwire B41 and usually Clearwire is nigh useless anywhere near peak times, but tonight it was serviceable. I'll post another update the next time I'm in a CLWR-B41 area for an extended period, but it seems like Essential is finally actually getting stuff fixed (though upload speeds are still crap on B41 with lowish signals, rather than falling back to B25 or whatnot).

Playground, the VC that's funding Essential, had a startup showcase here in town for SXSW (they rented out a bar on Rainey Street for today and tomorrow). I swung by and handed my contact info to one of the folks there re: the CLWR B41 issues (the 8.1 beta, which I have installed, doesn't seem to fully fix 'em). I will absolutely install a debug build on my phone if that helps Essential figure out what the heck is wrong with their ability to talk to Clearwire towers, to the point that, if I'm having data issues, chances are I'm on a Clearwire site. Which, if I'm downtown, at one of the meetups I go to, or at a coffee shop I go to often, I am. Apparently they were selling phones there, and you got their $99 headset if you bought one on the spot. Or, turns out, if you show up and already have the phone :D. Double win for me, as my new laptop has a couple Thunderbolt 3 ports, which do double duty as USB-C. The USB-C-to-3.5mm adapter worked perfectly with the laptop under Linux, and the headset does as well, at least for audio out. As an aside, I would've absolutely paid extra at the time for a matte-back phone. I knew it before handling a phone with that color/material scheme, but seeing one in real life confirmed this. Not trading in my current phone though