iansltx

This is an actual, Verizon wireline analog POTS line, served over 20,610 feet of toll-grade copper, with the last few feet of the connection being over the US flavor of DECT. No EVRC-NW on that side of the conneciton

Just completed an EVRC-NW call in PCS on my Nexus 5 here in Austin. The other end of the connection was a landline, and I could definitely tell the quality difference from the get-go, mainly from the background noise while the call was ringing. Of course, the actual voice part of the call was nice and clear too, through my headset. Not completely sure when this enhancement happened, partially because I don't call non-cell phones much and as such the receiving end of the call is generally the limiting factor, but I like the quality increase. Need to find someone with an HD voice enabled Sprint phone to test that part of the conversation against.

I still hold out hope. Remember that the Nexus 4 wasn't FCC cert'd for LTE in band 4 either (then again, it never got re-cert'd).

VZW and AT&T won't block it. Their subs are on limited data plans, so as long as their S5 variants make clear that you'll be using mobile data with Download Booster active they'll be happy to take your money.

So basically we're looking at a 4.5db gain difference on B41, 6db on B25 and 3db on B26. Plus slightly more Tx power on lower bands. Nothing phenomenally impressive, but enough to bump modulation up a tier in middling reception areas, and definitely the difference between zero service and passable (but not great) in fringe areas, at least for B25 and B41. One thing that these specs don't show offhand is the receive sensitivity for a given modulation type for the devices. Having more room to work with in the desktop router could allow for more sensitive electronics, holding onto a better modulation at a given RSRP. This is independent of the antenna gain difference that I just mentioned. Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but hopefully Sprint increases the data allotments on its $50 and $80 tiers as they get more B41 coverage. Compared to VZW HomeFusion, (which works on 700MHz so it's not like they have tons of spectrum to play with) Sprint's 30GB plan is $10 cheaper per month for the same data allotment. But its other plans are $10 cheaper for 40% less data. Granted, Sprint isn't differentiating price-wise between the home router and its mobile hotspots with these plans right now, so that's part of it, but they probably should. If they're holding out for a T-Mobile merger to become competitive here (if the home router silently packs AWS LTE I wouldn't be that taken aback) then that's kind of a shame...unless they're going to really leave VZW and AT&T's LTE home broadband products in the dust with newer plans (remember that Sprint + T-Mobile would be able to drop 10x10 LTE on PCS in a fair number of places, in addition to 5x5 in PCS G and H+/CDMA...that's why I didn't say B4-only or B41-only). At the risk of going to far afield, unlimited home LTE service isn't out of the question in areas where wireline isn't available. It'd have to be speed-capped of course...my parents' latest ISP sells 4M down, 1M up...but that ISP has made the conscious decision to not use LTE in their 700-lower-B (5x5) license for mobile traffic, and as a result they can keep everyone at a better link budget and have closer to the theoretical capacity on the cell. Which lets them offer unlimited LTE with not much spectrum. *shrugs*

Too bad...the S4 mini seemed like a nice step-up successor to the Galaxy Victory, particularly for folks who don't want a large phone (which the S4 and the S5 qualify as).

Re: NSN equipment, as long as that equipment support eCSFB, it could stick around. Remember that Sprint has LTE-only sites out there right now (ex-CLWR) so adding another bunch of effectively LTE-only sites (PCS A-F, per T-Mobile's announcement today) isn't that big of a leap, at least as a stopgap prior to eliminating redundant sites. Or, hey, Sprintgenta could use that new beam-forming tech that requires tons of cell sites.

I saw 1x on 800 with my Nexus 5 west of Fredericksburg, TX on Tuesday...around nine miles west! Probably a good six or seven miles from the (tall) tower service probably originated from. Voice calls were fine, data existed but was slow, and an area that normally has slim to zero cell reception had reception

In my Monahans, TX example, T-Mobile would either need to buy backhaul from AT&T in town or run a two or three hop microwave chain to Midland, where more bandwidth providers are available. Maybe they'll do it. I'm doubtful.

That's my assessment of the situation as well. My guess is that 5x5 or 10x10 of LTE will show up, spectrum permitting (TMo will have to leave a bit of spectrum for GSM/GPRS for awhile yet, even if they shut down EDGE), in areas that already have H+ and/or LTE in one of their other bands. This will result in a modest coverage increase for LTE in areas that don't have 700A, and a bit more capacity near the cell center for areas that do have 700A. But my bet is that T-Mobile won't be upgrading EDGE or GPRS only towers to LTE (or even H+) nearly as quickly as the PR spin-masters would have you think. And yes, GPRS-only sites are still a painful reality. I swapped my TMo SIM into my Nexus 5 on Monday and got full bars of GPRS in Monahans, TX. There was a H+ site up the road a bit but it felt like my phone was having serious problems getting RF to traverse enough of the desert to get a reliable data connection. In this case, Sprint wasn't much better...NV equipment broadcasting a congested 3G signal...but T-Mobile data was nearly unusable.

VZW uses microwave backhaul for a number of their rural sites, with some pretty long chains in some areas. Not saying that other carriers can't do the same thing. But not all VZW sites are fiber fed.

25+26 CA would be useful in more rural areas where B41 doesn't make sense quite yet, partially due to lack of density (which beamforming probably won't resolve). There will be plenty of areas within range of a single B25 carrier and a single B26 carrier, so CA would be quite handy, particularly with the new Netgear router that Sprint's launching now (assuming it supports CA). Gives the same effective 10x10 of spectrum that VZW uses for HomeFusion, so Sprint won't lag speed-wise in areas where B41 won't be for awhile. As probably noted already, the AT&T Unite hotspot supports CA. So that's where Big Blue is starting in Chi-town.

Consider my interest piqued. This sounds like something that's best suited to really dense deployments...due to the number of base stations required unless I'm mistaken (and I probably am)...so it's something that operators would use in place of a DAS. For office buildings, malls, hotels, airports and maybe even large apartment complexes this steps up the capacity game when spectrum would otherwise be the limiting factor. That's pretty cool. But if you have lots of spectrum already, you can keep speeds higher for longer as the network gets loaded. So Sprint is in a nice position here. As for this competing with wireline broadband access, I doubt it. The density of backhaul connectivity required to pull this off probably means that those same backhaul providers could just run a wire to the end user. Unless they're using 60GHz or some other wireless backhaul medium, or pWave ends up being a substitute for home WiFi (which could happen...that'd be interesting, though speeds would be lower than 802.11ac can provide).

Ooh, Riot... (full disclosure: I spend too much time playing their game). Anyway... I got my BS in CompSci in December 2010. Got a Master's in what can best be described as an MBA for engineers a year later. Could've gone for the MS in CompSci but the areas of interest at my alma mater for higher level studies didn't match mine, and the business strategy/optimization modeling stuff was more fun. Starting the summer before I got my MS, I worked with a small dev firm on a range of client projects. All web apps, mostly PHP (though the first one was in Prel...yuck). I'm currently working with that firm's successor: six or so people, all but one contractors (myself included), doing web application and website dev for a handful of clients ranging from small sites to startups that are headed for their third funding round. I can take off to see family/friends in a different state more or less whenever, but at this point my work goes with me and I'm generally on call in case something big breaks (though that's happening less lately). But I don't really mind that aspect, the work is generally interesting (I generally leave user experience work to others but sometimes I'll do that stuff too...I like making things run fast and return the right data better) and the pay is quite good, though if I wanted to trade in my hourly for a salary at a startup or established tech company I could probably make a bit more. Now, what does all that have to do with school? First, I'd throw work in the direction of someone who has already dabbled/done work in the systems that we work with before (or similar ones...a programming language is a programming language) I'd throw it at someone fresh out of school with a degree of any sort and little/no appropriate experience. A Master's may be useful but the market is hot enough that a Bachelor's is probably the sweet spot right now, at least from where I sit. But extracurricular coding, whether for coding contests, odd jobs or personal stuff, is going to be just as important as knowing object oriented principles, algorithms, and good software engineering practices from a textbook, even when you're just starting out. As fair warning, keeping up with the tech world is basically running on an intellectual treadmill. You'll have to pick a specialty at some level or you'll fall behind knowledge-wise. Keep up with the treadmill and learn to write better code and you'll do well for yourself, though this tech bubble won't go on forever (though by the time it pops the folks who are good at what they do will probably still have jobs anyway). At the end of the day, I like solving problems by writing code...or rewriting it...or setting up servers...or benchmarking applications...or collecting requirements from clients and building specifications. What I do certainly isn't building bridges or cars, but the engineering aspect is still there, and that's the run part. And it's why I spent the time I did (only 4.5 years) getting my BS and MS to put some more tools in my toolbox for solving these problems (and it does help!).

I have the 295. No uploads over 11 Mbps though. And I saw my fastest VZW LTE speeds in the Austin airport today: ~55 Mbps down and above 10 Mbps up. On my 700MHz-only iPad.

I've had my modem for awhile but can't seem t find a way to tell what band I'm using. My Nexus 5 says there's Verizon LTE around here in AWS, but I don't notice a huge speed boost like I think I should be seeing. Unless upload speeds in excess of 10 Mbps are a sure sign that I'm on AWS LTE a few minutes from the Atlanta airport.

The chop-busting was warranted. Just this once As for the SIM-free ability to scan networks, note that network selection won't show up even after a reboot if you keep the phone in LTE only mode if you go SIM-less. You have to switch to LTE + GSM mode, then wait a little, then back to LTE only, to both get the selection screen and ensure that you're looking only at LTE networks (vs. LTE + GSM + WCDMA). Of course, if you hadn't messed with *#*#4636#*#* you may not have this problem...and here I am derailing my own dang thread.