chamb

One thing for sure, Shentel management is not stupid. I do worry that all the issues within nTelos may not be very easy to see from the outside. Anybody that jsut takes a drive through the nTelos area will see all the roaming and poor service. nTelos just does not have their act together and it may be hard to jump into the mess and get things working right.

I would not rule this out, but it is still just a rumor. I hope Shentel would not pay too much for nTelos. nTelos appears to be in poor shape. Would take a bunch of work to fix the issues.

Even before I had the new router, I set up Wi-Fi calling for myself. I had issues getting it to accept my address. I was at a totally allowed address for the service. I rebooted the phone, tried Caps on the first character of the street and city, etc. Noting wanted to work but suddenly it did work. I have no idea why it did not want to work originally or why it suddenly did work. It appears to be a touchy item. I SUSPECT the GPS was giving them one address and I was giving them another address since I was physically within 15 feet of my property line.

I use the Wi-Fi analyzer app too. Great app. Every techie should have it. The Sprint Asus router placed me on Channel 1 by default. My nearest neighbor was on channel 1. I had several other "G" channels that worked much better. It did the same thing with the "N' band too. Two nearby neighbors were on Channel 149 and I was placed there too. Channel 157 was unused, so I moved there.

Do not have this issue at all. I have a strong signal all over my home and it stays connected all day. Wi-Fi calling has been working great so far. I have a Samsung Galaxy s-5

Yes, if a local site is off-line for any reason, your phone will find and use any weaker signal that may be around.

That is strange. I just got one from a UPS driver and did not sign anything. I have the router working and made a few Wi-Fi calls. They were perfect. I will wait a few days until I say this is the answer to the Wi-Fi calling issues however.

SID 22447 was used in the Richmond, Va area in the past. I am not sure it still is. It could be a "testing" SID too. A -101 level on the 800 band tells me that the site is fairly far away.

If you have a phone that is capable of WI-FI calling, you can turn it on yourself, at least on Android. You will need to get into settings, turn it on and get your address set up for 911 calls. Make a call .It will use Wi-Fi for the call and place a new ICON on the top bar. If your current phone is not a Wi-Fi calling capable phone, you can not do it. You do not need the router if you are not using Wi-Fi calling. You do not need the router if you have a super fast internet connection that never gets overloaded. You only need the router if excessive traffic on your internet connection disrupts the smooth flow of the voice call. On my Galaxy S-5, turning on Wi-Fi calling completely turns of the cellular radios. Everything flows through your Wi-Fi. And, I DO mean EVERYTHING.

I wonder if they will just hire somebody barely competent to deliver a phone or if they will try to hire somebody bright enough to turn on the phone and show somebody how to use it.

When the average person is looking to buy a new phone, if the S-6 has less bars than any other phone in the Sprint Store, they will not buy the S-6. Sadly, most of the people buying phones are not as aware of this issue as the users on S4GRU are. We know the phone will work fine. But nobody else does. How stupid is this that the issue exists on phones a year old and still exists on the new S-6. Somehow this needs to be fixed and quickly. Since the phones are on LTE almost all day, the bars should accurately reflect the strength of the LTE signal. Make the bars at the top of the phone satisfy the general public and you will sell more phones. Don't make me and everybody else depend on Signal Check Pro to know the real strength of the LTE signal in the area. While Sprint is doing many things very well, this is one area where they have completely failed and the longer they allow it to continue, the worse they look.

Correct. On a Galaxy S-5 with Lollipop, If I have a -100 LTE signal on either band, I have one little tiny stinking bar. I personally know this is not a bad signal and the LTE will be fine. HOWEVER, to the uninformed, it appears that the Sprint service is horrible. A -100 signal SHOULD be about 3 bars like it is on other carriers. Somebody at Sprint or Samsung needs to grow a pair of Gonads and step up and fix this. I never designed a Cell phone in my life, but I really believe that a software update could fix this. Since most of the population is severely uninformed, this defect is costing Sprint & Samsung quite a few lost sales and is destroying their reputation. Who would think a phone was ok if you are running around most of the day with only one bar showing for signal strength? Even though I know the phone and service is fine, I have steered quite a few people away from a Samsung Galaxy S-5 even though they seen mine and wanted one for themselves. I did not want a friend that was uninformed to see a one bar signal level and not be happy.

I have seen this reported here and I THINK I have seen it too, but I am not ready to declare it as a fact. I have seen Signal check Pro show a call originate on 1900 but switch to 800 before the called party can answer. It happened fast. I am not sure if I saw a transfer of an established call or maybe a transfer as the call was setting up and then a slow update of the displayed data. My 1900 1x is so good that I find it very hard to get into a situation that will cause the loss of a 1900 1X signal thanks to Shentel's great work. As I get some free time someday, I am going to work on this and try to prove if it does or does not transfer a working call from 1900 1x to 800 without a drop.

Yes AJ, I can verify what you said by actual usage. I can work with LTE at a -115 level but the download speed will be significantly slower than with a stronger signal. As I go below -115, the speed gets even slower and I find that most often, it is the transmit from the phone that can not be received at the cell site. Between -115 and 120, if the phone can successfully transmit a strong enough signal toward the cell site, you can still receive data from the cell site.

I do not have the answer to your question, but I am in Shentel Territory almost all the time. I have a Galaxy S-5. It has always tended to hang onto 800, both 1X and LTE most of the time even when it might not have been needed. It would go over to 1900 at times, but it was sort of rare. But in the last month, I seem to be finding myself to be on 1900 quite often. I believe that a change has been made, but it is only a good guess. I still go onto 800 when it is appropriate, but it seems that something is determining that I would be ok on 1900 and places me on 1900 sometimes. I find that I might be on 1900 LTE and when I drop to a level around -113, it is very likely that I am going to be switched to 800 LTE. I have not been able to determine what causes me to be switched back to 1900 LTE. I have not been able to determine a pattern to this.

Mike, I am on Lollipop with an S-5 and I do see the line with GCI, PCI TAC. All the info is there.

I find that if you go into an area with weak service, you will connect to LTE 800 as you should. But when you exit the poor area, quite often you will remain on 800 LTE for a long time. This does not always work that way, but it is quite common for me. I would assume that the system does not see any compelling reason to shift me to 1900 LTE. However, I also will sometimes get kicked off 800 LTE quickly. I have to assume that Sprint is looking at load on each of the carriers, signal strength and maybe something else. I also notice that it will resist switching bands if you are using any data. Steaming music or video will tend to keep you on the carrier until it absolutely has to switch bands for some reason.

EVERYBODY needs to visit Shady Maple at least once in their life. If your do, you will be interested in something else other than B-41. http://www.shady-maple.com/smorgasbord/

Maybe you do not live close enough to experience the Ntelos disaster. If you had to use and deal with the poor service, you might not be so quick to say you would buy it. Maybe I am also not the proper person to judge as I do not live in nTelos territory. I have Shentel service and when I venture across the border to nTelos, It is a very shocking experience. I go from perfect service to a disaster. Fixing the disaster would be a massive undertaking.

I think, and this is just my observation, the phones tend to go back where they were after any kind of restart. Toggling Airplane mode will sometimes place you on the other carrier, but it seems to be sort of rare to see that happening.

Good point. But, anybody that would by nTelos is sure going to have a major problem to sort out. Who needs the headaches.

Shentel surely did the right thing when adding the second 1900 LTE carrier at some of their sites. It was needed. It is totally amazing at how the public will use the capacity if it is there. You can even see the usage climbing and speeds slowing slightly on the sites with the second 1900 carrier. B-41 will be arriving just in time. We need some explanation of the issue with load balancing preventing some deployment. The only thing I see is that my Galaxy S-5's are not hanging onto band 26 as tightly as they did a month ago. They seem to transfer to band 25 more easily than they once did. Maybe the band 26 is getting more congested and the extra band 25 carrier at some spots looks better to any load balancing software.

This makes we wonder if people now on the fringe of band 41 reception and seeing unresponsiveness because the band 41 uplink just can not communicate reliably to the cell site. Could we be getting locked onto band 41 but be having a bad experience somewhere? Could we have people getting on band 41 and not be able to get off of it while having issues with the uplink.

Another question, Can it be done on a phone with only one radio active?

If my S5 is sitting on Band 26 LTE and a voice call arrives, it probably will be on 1X-800. Strange how my S5 will camp on Band 26 LTE when the band 25 LTE is capable of faster download speed. It is actually very difficult for me to get on Band 25 even when the signal level is decent. I can drive right by several sites with great band 25 and the phone sticks to band 26 most of the time even though the band 26 is starting to get congested. I am in an area with completed band 25 & 26. Great coverage but no band 41 yet. I am really surprised how two band 25 carriers and a band 26 carrier are all slowing down when I am not in a high density area. This proves that if you provide good service, people will eat it up. I travel mostly in Shentel Territory.