techwrench

Robert,

I have a suggestion for Sprint that would help them resolve issues a lot faster than their current method.

In the automotive industry, which is very similar to the wireless industry in implementation, a lot of engineering is done "on the fly" so that sales help fund development. A lot of time the engineers are not given enough testing time to find these issues before hand or the issues just don't show up until used in the "real" world. The leaders in automotive technology realize this is an issue and have figured out a way to combat this at a minimal cost. They identify entities that have the ability to get them lots of feedback quickly....people and businesses that are going to use this equipment more intensively than the average consumer!!

These people get equipment early on with lots of perks to entice them to perform the additional tasks necessary to provide the feedback that the manufacturers need. These perks are equipment at no or low costs, updates free or before everyone else and direct access to advanced support levels allowing the engineers to work directly with the field.

I think that Sprint (and most wireless carriers) could benefit from this type of relationship. What I am seeing right now is that they need a quick way to find issues so they can be resolved quickly without hurting their reputation in the consumers eyes. Which is going to be better for them - having a working agreement with someone who uses a phone 5,000 + minutes a month or listening and trying to decipher 400 support calls from people who use the phone 200 minutes a month. Which way makes the Company look bad in the consumers eyes? Which one is more likely to generate negative comments?

A good example would be my Tri-band modem. I have given them several tips and work arounds to help with some of the issues. I have the 5th unit sold to consumers and first cradle ever sold. I use the unit nonstop 10 hours a day in the worst environment for electronics in the nation. High temps and high humidity!! Just having acces to my GPS and signal strengths would allow them to find issues in half the time since I drive as much as 1,000 miles a week mainly in the LTE areas ni the Houston area. When i call support and lose time on an issue the first things i hear out of the support personnel's mouth are solutions or workarounds that I provided them in prior phone conversations with little or no new solutions.

I bet right now they could find 10 people just like me in every area that are willing to work with Sprint to improve equipment and services. I think network vision could be greatly improved with a little Support Vision!!

There is FAR more than this going on.. 3/4 of what you plotted as live in Houston is NOT live at all.same for Sprints maps..the ONLY place in Houston I have been able to find a LTE signal is up in Copperfield and it works perfectly.. moves in and out of service and connects to it as primary.anywhere else and it's completely dead.Ive been up and down I-10 all the way from katy to downtown and into the galleria.. all these areas are shown as massive coverage.. and yet we got none..I'm pretty miffed about this rollout so far.. My GF has the ATT S3 and I'm flat embarrased to even use mine as half the time my data connection is worse than my GS2 was. at least it had full wimax coverage down here.the truth is most of the towers flagged as being active just arnt broadcasting LTE.

I have a little bit different take on the situation here in Houston as I use the coverage over most of Houston with the Tri-band modem. The service is almost everywhere I go. I was on LTE yesterday afternoon in Cut and Shoot, Texas!!

First I don't think that they have all the elements adjusted correctly on the towers. I am seeing gaps between the antennas on the same towers.

Second Erricson seems to scrambling madly with issues which I suspect is due to the unusually heavy rain we have had for the last week plus tweaking the towers coverage footprint. I have caught them yanking LTE in and out of service on several towers. I suspect they are trying to get the elements aligned right to fix the coverage gaps.

North Houston is now live with 4G LTE. They were having problems caused by the flooding from the last week of rain according to my sources. My home tower is at 57 ms ping with 31mb down and 18mb up on testing in the best signal area.

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As close as I can figure the cradle boosts the signal strength in marginal areas about 7 to 10 percent. I tried it in an area that shows a 10% signal and with the cradle it shows 20%. It really helps the transmit because without at 10% it misses data occasionally but with the cradle it is a good usable signal. The cradle was $54.00.

Great review Rick but you need a better camera. I would definitely recommend this review to anyone wanting this device who works in the field. What do you do BTW Rick?

Sorry my good camera was in the van with the broke transmission. I am a automotive diagnostic consultant that helps repair shops with diagnostic issues and reprogramming vehicle computers. All of the reprogramming for cars is internet based.

Something is wonky with the 22.1 Mbps LTE uplink speed test. I do not believe that >18 Mbps is realistically possible in a 5 MHz uplink bandwidth with a single spatial channel.AJ

I thought it was out of whack when I was testing as well but I was able to do two speed tests that were very close. It is possible that I was so close to the tower that it was inaccurate. I was sitting on a hill in the middle of the highest strength LTE I could find. It was line of sight with no obstructions and my rangefinder showed 482 feet to the element. I was amazed by the ping times as well on this test test as all other areas I tested were 55ms or higher. This test had a ping of 37 ms. The other test showed a 20.7 upload speed. All other tests I performed in other areas with 100% were in the 12 - 19 mb range on upload.