iansltx

Aaaaaand we're at roughly 6800 members now. I bet we hit 7000 by the end of the week. The next question is when do we hit 70,000 posts. We're at 67,000 and change now.

Now that we've gotten completely far afield with this topic... Verizon and AT&T take one approach to mobile data. Sprint and T-Mobile take another (well, T-Mo's is a hybrid, but bear with me). VZW and AT&T give you a bucket of rather expensive data that you can use for whatever you want, but that data isn't unlimited. Sprint gives you unlimited data for a specific purpose (use on smartphones) and if you want a data bucket for a different purpose (non-smartphone use) you pay for it. Ting, which runs on Sprint, falls into the same category as VZW and AT&T on this one: expensive, limited data that you can use however you see fit. Sprint has run the numbers and concluded that, for a legitimate mobile user (consuming data on their 3-5" screen mobile phone), they can sell "unlimited" data and get away with it, because people will use their home connections to torrent and stream movies. As far as VoIP goes, maybe we should split off the SPC2 discussion into a different thread. That's an interesting device, for sure. Hopefully it has 1x voice fallback, since it's a lot easier to get a solid 1x voice signal than a solid, VoIP-capable EvDO signal (though the latter isn't particularly hard), particularly if the 1x signal is running on SMR and the EvDO signal is running on PCS. As far as gaming goes, LTE's latency, when the network isn't configured weirdly (as Verizon's used to be in Denver...but they fixed it), is comparable to DSL (well, interleaved DSL rather than FastPath but you get my drift). 30-50 milliseconds for the first hop with a reasonable amount of jitter, then whatever network backbone the service is traversing (Sprint has a good network backbone).With a reasonable signal, gaming and VoIP will work perfectly over LTE, though you'll want to download patches over a connection with a higher cap. As for BitTorrent, legal or not, do it on a wireline connection if you can. Not that it can't be done over LTE, but you're more or less running a server when you're doing that, and you want a reasonable amount of capacity between your server and the Internet. An LTE sector, with 35 Mbps of download capacity and 13 Mbps of upload capacity (real-world numbers, assuming everyone has reasonable signal levels) shared between everyone on the sector, is not how I define "reasonable". Then again, I can max out my home cable connection and be using less than one-third of the available bandwidth on my cable node. That said, BitTorrent doesn't really need a fast, reliable or low-latency connection anyway. It just needs a "clean" connection, where ports aren't randomly blocked and packets aren't forged...ahem, Sandvine. You could run the darned thing over dialup and it would still work. I don't think I've ever done that, but I might have.

The Running List will be getting an update soon. In the mean time, some highlights: Sprint's Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands market now has NV equipment powering over 50% of its cell sites. Most of these sites don't have LTE turned on quite yet, but the number of sites with 4G enabled is growing (one in ten NV-complete sites have LTE turned on). On the West Coast, both LA and SF markets are progressing nicely. Both completion percentages overall and the percentage of complete sites that have LTE turned on have ticked up noticeably since last week. Baltimore is now (slightly) over 50% NV complete. The (slight) majority of those towers don't have LTE turned on yet, but the number of 3G-only NV upgraded sites is shrinking week-to-week. The story in Boston is similar, albeit with more 3G-only towers and less of the market complete (36 and change percent). Atlanta is a little over 43% NV complete now. Houston, San Antonio and DFW are, respectively, a little over 38%, 37% and 27% complete. 12% of the Austin market's towers are now running on Network Vision gear. The Running List is drawn from data that is available to S4GRU Sponsors. If you want more in-depth information about what sites are online where with which technologies (for example, which sites in Baltimore have 4G turned on), sponsorship is the way to get that.

I'm going with a late-December launch for Austin. Yes, there's more and more coverage each week, and the coverage is creeping south from the north, but there are still large swaths of Austin proper that are out of range of LTE, for example nearly everything between 360 and MoPac, Hyde Park and SW Austin. That said, if Sprint got a half-dozen towers in each of those areas upgraded to NV (maybe they'd only need three in Hyde Park), they could probably launch the city. Coverage wouldn't be comprehensive, but between LTE and 3G with a reasonable amount of capacity behind it, the network would be workable while waiting for the market to pass, say, 50% completion by tower count.

Voice and SMS roaming, actually. This is one HUGE (okay, not huge but quite large) benefit compared to, say, Virgin Mobile. My mom was carrying around a Nokia Tracfone (VZW based, VZW postpaid coverage) as a backup for when her Optimus S wouldn't get service. That backup phone is now no longer necessary, saving around $7 per month (to keep the Tracfone active). TIng doesn't, however, have data roaming. Their reason: it costs something like 10x what Sprint on-net data does. Sounds reasonable enough, since data roaming would seriously muddy their straightforward rate plans/billing system.

Ting has their own official forum, but I'm curious as to how many folks on here have their service. Or am I the only one? Well, not me exactly, but two (will soon be three) members of my immediate family (mom and brothers), all using LG Marquees, one of which is running CTMod (the other two will get it eventually). What's funny is that their combined monthly bill will be less than mine. Then again, I have a high-end subsidized phone that gets used quite a bit more than theirs will be.

For everyone whining about Sprint not upgrading their market yet, by all means switch to T-Mobile or another carrier. Particularly if you have a WiMAX phone, which won't get substantially better service when NV does come. I would say switch to Verizon, who will have their 3G network overlaid with LTE in nine months or less, but then you'd come back about how Verizon is oh-so-expensive. So, what's fast data, right now, worth to you? My market should have already had most of its towers upgraded. It doesn't. But I'm sticking with Sprint because I know that their LTE network will be here soon enough, and their speeds will remain fast (due to tower density etc.), while AT&T and Verizon, depsite their expensive tiered data plans, will bog down more and more over the next several months, particularly Verizon since all their LTE devices currently available can only use one coverage-optimized band. Oh, and I'll see Sprint hitting rural Central Texas with LTE several months before Verizon or AT&T get there. T-Mobile is completely AWOL in the area, lacking even 3G service. I'm a direct beneficiary of Sprint's deployment strategy (every tower in every market, no matter where in the market), so I'm sticking around...heck, I'm converting my family from a hodgepodge of Verizon + AT&T + Sprint (Tracfone + Virgin Mobile) to Sprint-only (Ting) in the coming days/weeks.

USCC is selling Sprint PCS spectrum. Sprint's LTE phones (all of them) already support LTE in PCS blocks A-G, and the USCC spectrum all falls in that area. So no one will have to swap out equipment etc. to take advantage of the new capacity (and that's all that this is...no coverage will be added as a result of the purchase) that will be available in the above markets.

PCS is PCS. No new radios will be required to use the USCC spectrum.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizons-shammo-well-finish-lte-buildout-mid-2013/2012-11-08 The big question is whether "complete" now means something less than having LTE wherever 3G was before. Which is probably doable...all Verizon has left at this point are pretty rural areas where they'll be deploying for coverage rather than capacity (e.g. in Fredericksburg and Kerrville, TX where they have PCS spectrum and thus plenty of sites to choose from). But will VZW see enough money to be made to do it?

Wouldn't be so sure on that. If they get PCS H like they want it, they'll probably do 10x10 in G+H. Pretty sure I read that somewhere official from Sprint.

It won't speed up the deployment, no. However it will give Sprint more spectrum in those markets. Which means that their network will be stronger than it would have been otherwise. So it's a good thing.

So Chicago, Cincinnati, Cleveland and Columbus are markets that are converting from Motorola gear to Samsung. Other Motorola markets exist but they're all going to Alcatel-Lucent, which doesn't have the issues that Samsung does with handoffs.

In town or north of it? I mapped some LTE well north of town with Sensorly, but I think it would be an RF fluke if that signal made it all the way to town. Maybe Sprint is about to turn on another tower in the area though.

As an aside, from what I understand of the LTE spec, 5x5-only devices can actually still use LTE carriers with more than 300 subcarriers (5x5). THey just use a subset of what is available, at lower speed. Remember that LTE channels are a bunch of 15KHz subchannels, rather than one big one, so as long as the base station can keep track of everything (Sprint's probably can) then you don't have to, for example, deploy a 5x5 channel in PCS A-F if you want to put 10x10 in PCS G+H.

From what I've heard, Win8 performs within a frame per second of Win7 on most games. There are some compatiblity issues, but it looks like nearly every game has the same experience across both OSes. +1 for Win8 feeling odd without a touch-screen...and that's with a multitouch trackpad (albeit Apple's, so maybe the gestures aren't quite optimized yet). But I'm not going to complain too much...it takes one click to get back to my desktop, and Start8 et al are available if I want my start menu back badly enough.

I play, and have played, 99% of my games (RTS, racing) on PC. That said, I do drive a mean Kart (Wii edition). But that console isn't at my current place of residence, as I don't have a large enough monitor/TV to hook it up to.

New Running List numbers will be out soon. Some highlights: Chicago now has 70% of its sites running Network Vision equipment, including sites that are only broadcasting 3G (or 1x in SMR + 3G) right now. Removing 3G-only sites, you've still got over 40% of the market's sites that have, at the very least, LTE turned on. I'm guessing that Sprint will soft-launch Chicago proper very soon. The SF Bay market is now 16% complete. Of those sites, roughly 64% have LTE, and most of that 64% are running both 3G and 4G on Network Vision gear. LA is now over 20% complete. The number of LTE towers as a percentage of the NV complete total ticked up quite a bit this time around. In Ericsson-land, Atlanta is a hairbreadth away from being 40% NV complete. Kansas, Houston, San Antonio and DFW are, respectively, roughly 37%, 36%, 34% and 24% complete. The Austin market, including Waco, now has a bit over 10% of its cell sites broadcasting LTE off of Network Vision equipment. For detail above and beyond the Running List, donating to S4GRU will get you access to the Sponsor-only forums, including maps of Sprint sites that have been accepted by Sprint as Network Vision complete on 3G, 4G or both, and a breakdown of what sites have been accepted/updated on a week-by-week basis. For example, you can see which sites flipped from 3G-only in LA to 3G+4G.

Hey look, it's an AT&T kvetch party. My response: "Here, take the 700 lower B spectrum that you want to buy from anyone and everyone and have a nice life." AT&T is just afraid that a cash infusion from anywhere into Sprint might allow Sprint to deploy a network with the same coverage in metro areas...on LTE in PCS and maybe BRS...as AT&T has with LTE on 700MHz. This makes AT&T look bad, because AT&T's network will be slower, with not as much investment put into it (remember the signal travel differential between 700 and PCS). Oh, and they're still store about not being able to buy the smallest truly nationwide, truly competitive wireless carrier (metroPCS and CricKet don't count on this scale).