iansltx

Just nabbed the two clean-ESN (well, one is definitely clean, and the other had better be, and I'm 99% sure is) Victories off of eBay.This will be my mom's and brother's third smartphones (Optimus V -> Marquee -> Victory) and their first with ICS or better...and their first with LTE. Both phones will be headed for Ting. The only thing I'm really worried about? High data usage, because both family members will be within LTE coverage 90% of the time, and even though neither device will be rooted, WiFi tethering will be available. Depending on how things go, I may end up installing Sensorly on both phones so that LTE in the Fredericksburg/Kerrville/San Antonio area gets picked up that much sooner. EDIT: Phone #1 arrived earlier this afternoon. I'm a few score miles from where it arrived so I won't be able to play with it, but it *is* now activated. Ironically, this particular phone could have been activated even prior to LTE BYOSD; it's a Ting device! Phone 2 should be coming in the next day or two, though it won't get activated as quickly since that member of the family is an hour south.

Answering the original poster's question: absolutely worth it. I found one place this morning that doesn't have 4G (but it still has usable 3G, thanks to the NV upgrades I think) but the rest of the small town that I'm in right now is now covered with 4G. Is it as fast as I've seen in Golden, CO on Verizon LTE? No. But it's close, and the end user experience is identical (if not better on Sprint). Yesterday was the day where waiting around on crappy Sprint 3G, waiting for WiMAX that never came, switching from WiMAX to 3G because a phone can't have both WiMAX and LTE built in, etc. became worth it. Because Sprint is the only carrier that has LTE here...or a nationwide network tht delivers more than 3 Mbps here at all, for that matter. And it delivers a heck of a lot more than 3 Mbps.

For those waiting, the FCC hasn't posted an OET yet. Bets on who'll catch it first, between AJ and I? Everyone should bet on me, because I'm betting on AJ.

Unfortunately, in order to get those luscious dep blacks that AMOLED provides, you have to live with PenTile or something close to it. On the plus side, the "tiles" are really, really tiny now!

It looks like Ting will be getting BYOD for LTE devices pretty soon, at which point I'll be picking up two or three of these off of eBay. My boss and his wife both have 'em and seem to be happy with them. I was going to get everyone Nexus S 4Gs, but since the family now can get LTE pretty much everywhere and BYOSLTED is coming online soon (and the Victory supports Jelly Bean), this makes a bit more sense.

I'm in a practically identical situation. I really don't want a bigger phone than the SIII is already, and this will definitely be an out-of-sequence, full-price upgrade if I get the S IV. However all that goes out the window if it supports LTE in SMR and BRS; I'll probably be buying the first phone that supports LTE in those bands, so long as it isn't a serious RF regression from my SIII.

As mentioned on a sponsor only thread, Ericsson within the last 24 hours lit at least two more sites in my parents' small town (which I called home until 2007). Verizon is still 3G-only here. Granted, this doesn't help the argument that Sprint is focusing on not-NYC at the expense of NYC, but I'd rather have relatively inexpensive wireless providers that have non-overlapping LTE coverage than have everyone focus on one place, leaving cities like Fredericksburg, TX out in the cold. My iPad gets LTE in Austin but not here. My phone gets LTE here but not in parts of Austin. My Nexus gets HSPA+ in the middle of nowhere north of Dripping Springs, TX but is GPRS-only here. But switching between cell networks si as simple as switching WiFi access points if I'm tethering, and between the three carriers I have performance and coverage that's the envy of everyone, including Verizon! More to the point, Chicago has more Sprint sites broadcasting LTE than Verizon, and I can say this without knowing directly how many sites Verizon has LTE-enabled in CHI. Thus, the "big cities don't get Sprint LTE" myth perpetuated by everyone in the media, including my semi-beloved DSLReports, is invalid.

Did you see any ads within Reader? Well, there ya go... Sad to see Reader go, but if it's losing Google money with no upside, they can't rightfully be expected to keep pushing it. Glad to see Feedly providing an alternative though.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but SoLinc could probably reband away from the 7x7 SMR swath that Sprint holds 100% of in many places, right? They'd reduce capacity by doing so, but doesn't Sprint have interleaved SMR spectrum in the southeast anyway that they could swap over to SoLinc to soften the blow a bit? I'll bet Sprint would be willing to pay all of SoLinc's rebanding costs in order to get a full 5x5 LTE channel in SoLinc areas on SMR. Now, decreasing capacity like this might pose a congestion issue. But if you're running dual-SIM phones that push everything other than voice and PTT off to HSPA, you don't have nearly the issue that Nextel had in the mid-2000s when Boost Mobile was king. It only takes 25KHz of spectrum in each direction to support three low-compression phone users or six PTT users, though frequency reuse on iDEN is a bit less than, say, CDMA 1x.

+1 for seeing Verizon's LTE speeds drop as time has gone on. What was 20-35 Mbps is now 8-15 in Austin. Still not bad, but on the other hand I can hit that with 5x5 LTE without issue. Or DC-HSPA+. Then again, DC=HSPA+ is a bit slower at peak times in certain areas of Austin as well. Which is why I wouldn't even think of getting a Chromebook Pixel if it couldn't do AWS LTE (assuming getting the LTE version)...Verizon obviously isn't cell-splitting to fix their LTE capacity problem. Don't get me wrong. I have a VZW LTE iPad because it's still the best option in many areas for connectivity. However the number of those areas is shrinking, and many LTE customers on VZW will end up feeling like they're on last-gen tech with no future when Verizon doesn't cell-split on LTE 750, abandons 3G entirely and reserves all improvements other than VoLTE for AWS. From a coverage perspective this makes sense, but I'm glad Sprint won't be having this particular issue.

Texts are nice and fast for me Sprint to Sprint. I've had issues sending to AT&T subscribers though; when my dad was using them it was taking 20 minutes to receive a text. Which isn't acceptable...but that's an issue with AT&T, not Sprint; texts to Verizon and T-Mobile subscribers work fine to my knowledge.

So, let's look at pricing. Sprint is cheaper than Verizon across the board, assuming you need as much data as Sprint wants to provide you. Or maybe a little less. Add-a-line fees are identical across the carriers, though Verizon shows data prices without the first line included, while Sprint includes line 1 in their base prices. For smartphones, $140 on Sprint buys you one line and 20GB of data. That same $140 buys you 10GB on Verizon; 20GB is another $50. $275 gets you 40GB of data on Sprint. $10 less on Verizon gets you 10GB less data. Or you can get a full 40GB for $340, $65 more than Sprint. $340 gets you 60GB on Sprint, or 40GB on Verizon. Verizon doesn't have a 60GB plan; the closest alternative is $415 and includes 50GB of data. Winner: Sprint. For data-only devices, assuming a tablet as the first line on both sides, Sprint's cheapest plan is $60 per month for 10GB. For that price, Verizon offers 8GB. 10GB is another $10 (though Verizon lets you put ten lines on its lower-end plans, while Sprint only lets you share the data with five lines). $110 on Sprint buys 20GB; again, Verizon is 2GB behind or $10 more expensive. At 40GB, both Sprint and Verizon have jumped up in per-GB pricing by a bit; Sprint's $245 is a bit cheaper than Verizon's $270 though. Again, Verizon has no 60GB plan (which Sprint sells for $320), however they do have a 50GB plan...for $345. Advantage: Sprint, though the edge is much smaller vis a vis Verizon. Depending on the plan, either Sprint or Verizon can add more lines before running into a line count cap, which effectively states that you're buying at least 2GB of data per device on Sprint's side. But Sprint emerges as a bit less expensive across the board here, though the advantage shrinks when you're dealing with data-only devices (where Verizon pretty much doesn't have roaming costs). One last comparison: if you got the maximum number of lines on the highest-end plan on both Verizon and Sprint, with smartphones on every line (giving you 2GB of data, on average, per line), you'd be paying $50.33 per line with Sprint, or $55 per line with Verizon. If you got 25 lines on both carriers, you'd be getting 2.4GB of data per line on average with Sprint, for $52.40 per line. So, at full "economy of scale", Sprint gets you a ~4.8% cost reduction and 20% more data. If you used, say, 59GB, Verizon would be adding $135 to your bill, or another $5.40 per line, increasing Sprint's cost advantage to 16.6%. Not bad.

Guess I'll throw my hat in this ring. Having a cap on wireless service, with overages above it, deters usage. Having a cap on wireless service, with throttling above it, does the same thing, to a lesser extent. When you're running a 10x10 700-upper-C LTE network with large cell sizes in urban environments, you need to deter usage. When you're running a 10x10 or 20x20 AWS LTE network (with the associated smaller cell sizes), backhauled by whoever's cheap and available, if a user can get service, you really can throw capacity at the problem and it will work. So you offer cheap plans with low-priority network access in congested areas, and more expensive plans with higher-priority network access in congested areas. Sprint's closest competitor, which is still losing subscribers, is doing exactly this. Sprint is in a different situation. Right now, they have 5x5 LTE carriers covering an area slightly larger than what T-Mo's AWS does, on average. They are more coverage focused than TMo, but less so than Verizon and AT&T. The operative word is "right now" though. Fast forward to a year from now and they'll be able to overlay, say, 15MHz of additional downstream capacity over a smaller area than an AWS site and push subs with newer phones onto that. You'll see these overlays more often than you would in a normal situation because SoftBank has a vested interest in getting TD-LTE in 2500/2600 out there. So, what does this mean for capacity now? Well, it's still somewhat limited, but not quite limited enough that you have to purposely deter usage on the consumer side. Fast-forward a year and the need for network management only arises between the time Sprint realizes it needs BRS TD-LTE on a site and the time it deploys it. Getting back to density for a moment, how many subs are on a crowded PCS sector at this point? We aren't talking about at a special event...just normal usage (at a special event you won't be streaming Pandora). Let's say there are 200. Take a worst-case scenario and have 70 of them streaming Pandora at 192 kbps. Also, take a pessimistic case of cell capacity being limited to 25 Mbps overall due to signal issues (that's two-thirds of maximum, roughly). You have 11 Mbps left over for the rest of the subscribers, assuming 70 people streaming Pandora for awhile. AJ, let me know if there are more than 200 users on a crowded, urban PCS cell at a given time, or if my other ratios seem off. Speaking of Pandora, its default is 128 kbps, and unless you pay you get that for, at most, 100 hours per month. Assuming cellular-only usage, that's 5.76GB. Just a data point here, nothing more. I would actually argue that Sprint is launching shared business plans to provide businesses with an apples-to-apples comparison of their services with that of their competitors. When you're using a phone or tablet as a business item, there are certain things that you won't do, particularly if you know your plan is capped. The fear of overages without an unlimited plan is mitigated by the fact that data usage on a business device is, more or less, a cost of doing business. And you may have an "IT guy" who tracks data usage and makes sure things are squared away in that respect; you don't really have that on the consumer side. So, while consumers want unlimited, many businesses, on a mobile connection anyway, can work around capped plans. Or they can go with unlimited plans, since Sprint still offers those.

The EBS spectrum that Clearwire has leased has little value compared with BRS. So "just sell it to Dish" doesn't really net them any big benefit. Also, a huge draw for SoftBank to Sprint is the ability to gain an economy of scale on TD-LTE in 2500/2600 spectrum. Without that, Sprint probably wouldn't be buying CLWR right now, nor would SoftBank be buying a significant chunk of Sprint. Plus, keep in mind that Sprint's spectrum issues are in a few selected urban areas. Two of those areas (Chicago and Houston) have full-blown Clear WiMAX networks. Overlay TD-LTE and your spectrum issue pretty much goes away. As far as MetroPCS goes, Sprint tried buying them. The deal fell through. As for CricKet, there would definitely be synergies with Sprint, mainly on the spectrum side (or, you know, just dump all CricKet customers onto Virgin Mobile and call it a day). However Clearwire is the more strategic purchase, since we're talking about a nationwide deep spectrum overlay rather than a bunch of markets with a smattering of PCS and AWS. If/when CricKet gets bought, Sprint would need to figure out what to do with the AWS spectrum, and T-Mobile has too much going on right now to give Sprint a good deal on a swap.