tmiw

Many places that my S7 could not hold on weak B25 5mhz, is now holding on B25 10mhz and usable. Some improvements, seeing much less 3G past few weeks. Hopefully full steam B41 on all sites and small cells fill in.

 

Yesterday @ Gaslamp Downtown for lunch, Tmobile pushing 100mbps, VZ pushing 50Mbps, Sprint unusable 2CA on B41. We need small cells asap.

We'll see. I almost feel like Softbank's throwing in the towel in light of the T-Mobile merger rumors resurfacing.

I suppose one benefit of a T-Mobile merger is that unrestricted LTE roaming between the two would likely be turned on immediately after the deal closed so legacy Sprint customers would be able to take advantage of T-Mobile towers and vice versa. Whether that'll make up for increased prices and ultimately less competition is another question.

 

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Probably a misidentification as mentioned above.

Too bad they can't CA B25 and B41 together. That'd be awesome.

They for sure do...sadly, at this rate, the 600mhz spectrum might be clear for use before SMR. Lol

The huge delays, while not really Sprint's fault, is partly why I think not participating in the 600MHz auction in at least a limited manner will be considered a mistake long-term. Unfortunately I don't think they could even if they wanted to, either.

Things seemed to have slowed down in expansion generally speaking on Sprint, and actually on T-Mobile too, T4GRU is a ghost town. Sprint drastically reduced CapEx for 2016, and any expansion they do will likely be pushed back to 2017 - right now it's holding pattern style. T-Mobile is still expanding a large amount, but just minimally to get LTE upgrades done and establish minimum service it seems - they're holding on to their money for the 600mhz auction. 

Actually, I recently started getting B12 at my house. The tower itself also gives about 2x in speed tests when close to it compared to before.

Upgraded to LG G5 from G3. Now able to get B41 x2 inside my home. Not all the time. But looking good.

 

On another note, not very many postings on this site lately. Everybody happy or things have slowed down in improvements? Everyone waiting for LTE 800?

 

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That's the case for me anyway. When my parents (who are still on Sprint) last came over around a month ago, my dad got very weak B25 on his Samsung phone while my mom's iPhone 6 was stuck on 3G, so there's still improvement that needs to happen there. I get the feeling that it'll take a while, unfortunately.

I'm curious--do the other carriers have nearly as many problems getting sites/upgrades approved too? 

But is it low coverage LTE ? My iPhone prefers 3G if its in a low coverage LTE area

"Low coverage"?

For what it's worth the Samsung was showing something like -115 to -120ish dBm of B25 in SignalCheck and also bounced between both B25 carriers pretty often.

Debateable bro, I live on the outter skirts of Diego and go into town every weekend. Your experience doesn't equate to everyone's.

 

 

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It depends on the phone too. For instance, my dad's Samsung phone actually gets LTE in my apartment, whereas the iPhones in my family do not.

As for B26, I wonder if Sprint should just give up on it ever coming to SD in a reasonable timeframe and accelerate small cell deployment instead. The occasional FCC reports about 800MHz don't seem to have changed much over the last 6-12mos for the southern IBEZ anyway.

Anything new in San Diego?

The latest iOS update brought with it v23.1 of the Sprint carrier settings and a new PRL. Those combined seemed to give me 1-2 bars of B25 LTE in my living room for a few minutes after updating last night but I can't seem to duplicate it now. 

The latest public 800TA report seems to indicate that most San Diego County licensees still haven't cleared out of their old frequencies. I'm thinking that the sighting above is a test for now. February is the month when they're all supposed to be moved though.

Perhaps my comparatively better experience has to do with working pretty much across the street from a Sprint tower? (Sorrento Valley area.) Even when I'm not there I seem to get LTE the majority of the time when I'm outside. Not so much inside though.

What's bothersome is that the stuff they put on the towers only supports B25 and B41, not B26. Even if all of the IBEZ and other issues with B26 are taken care of Sprint would need to go back and install B26 supporting stuff. It could be years before that's fully usable. What they really should do is look at the customers who spend the most time on 3G and prioritize the areas that have the highest concentrations of such customers for densification. Ideally there'd be close enough small cell and macro cell spacing such that devices never drop to 3G even when indoors.

Anyway, I also think foregoing the 600MHz auction is a mistake (in large part due to SD not being a strong market) but we'll see.

Any of you experiencing a lot of 3G service at LTE sites? I've been noticing a lot of this all throughout North County all week.

Nope. If anything, I think I was getting LTE more often than I remember getting.

It just sucks that San Bernardino County can apparently prevent San Diego from getting B26 even though the IBEZ issues with the Mexican government have been presumably? resolved and the former is fairly far of a drive from the latter. On a recent trip to the Bay Area I almost never dropped down to 3G or 1X (the latter happening in one possibly shielded room in an office building), whereas drops to 3G happen extremely often here in SD.   Hopefully the densification effort will help.

I just came back from a business trip to the Bay Area and I was amazed at how well Sprint actually performs up there. I was on LTE (B41 most of the time, even) the vast majority of the time. The only issue I has was inside one particular conference room at the office I was visiting, where my iPhone dropped to 1x on SMR; the phone seemed to be on B26 the rest of the time in that building.

Too bad there's still hoops to jump through before San Diego County gets B26.   Even though I get B41 at work if I'm near the outer walls, I still drop back to 3G if I go deep inside the building.

Because the market seems to be saying it only wants three carriers.

 

 

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Sprint still has 50ish million subscribers (and going up slowly after years of decline) so there is room for a fourth contender. A rebranding will likely be necessary at some point though because the Sprint name has significant baggage.

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Wall-Street-Thinks-Sprint-is-Just-Drunk-and-Confused-135370

May have already been posted somewhere,but still interesting.

The number of commenters who think the US can only support three carriers is pretty surprising to me.

I think the 600mhz spectrum would be great for wisps, due to its long range and building penetration. I support the creation of wisps wherever there are not any reasonably priced satellite or land based options, and should be regulated, in exchange for affordable spectrum and build out support from the government, the wisps ensure fair equivalent or better pricing than the options not available in the areas the wisps serve.

Eh, I'd broaden that to just land based options. Satellite is basically available everywhere and is almost never a good option unless your only other choice is dialup simply because of the latency and very low data caps.

At some point, though, we can't afford to run fiber to every rural location. People are just going to have to move from completely rural locales to in small towns where this country can afford to run fiber. This gives more bandwidth for those who use mobile in rural areas. 

Kinda ironic considering we were able to run electricity to every single household in the US back in the day. There were more people living in rural areas then though.

But, if Sprint used Band 26 to quickly and cheaply expand coverage in rural areas that wouldn't necessarily offer a very good ROI, and it started to become congested because of more users signing up in those areas, then it would eventually make financial sense to add more towers to better serve those customers. If Band 26 got THAT congested, then it means you have customers in that area, and that means that there is money to be made.

 

-Anthony

True. At the same time, there are always going to be areas where adding more towers is extremely problematic (such as national parks), so 600MHz would provide extended reach and a bit more capacity for those areas.

Is it worth it to get 600MHz just for that though? Especially since new phones would have to have support a band that most people will never use? Probably not unless a case can be made for a nationwide allocation.

While densification will help with Sprint's existing footprint, 600MHz would be nice for quickly expanding rural coverage with little effort/cost in the way of towers (and would help in urban areas with onerous permitting processes too). There would also be decent speeds due to low population density, especially if 10x10 was used. 800MHz/B26 would be almost as effective but would become congested more quickly especially if it spurs more people in the middle of the country to sign up for Sprint.

The downside, as others have mentioned, is that it would take years before Sprint could take full advantage. Whereas B26 can be used right now*.

*offer void in Southern California

IIRC Sprint doesn't exactly have enough spectrum for 5x5 LTE in the IBEZ either. Wouldn't it make sense to at bid on 600MHz to at least have low band spectrum in those areas? I feel like it's a mistake not to bid at all unless it's a means to get the auction cancelled as others have mentioned.

Had lunch in Sorrento Valley and B41 was really slow today; only got 4-5 megabits on speedtest and everything else seemed to be lagging pretty hard. Maybe it's time for Sprint to turn on another carrier if one's not there already? (My phone doesn't support CA on B41 so no way to test.)

I think heavily prioritizing small cell placement in Southern California would be a good stopgap for indoor coverage issues. My service in San Diego is great at work (B41 all the time except deep inside the huge building I work in), but I only get 3G at home even though the nearby towers all have B25. I wonder how many would be needed to provide near-constant B41 or at least B25 even indoors.

3G isn't as bad as it used to be in any case.

FWIW my iPhone's field engineering screen seems to indicate that it's using n.ispsn too, but there's still only an IPv4 address.