boomerbubba

The way I read the Completed map, there is a 3G/4G tower about 2.7 miles N-NW of that intersection, which would be a good guess. And on the August schedule map there is another LTE tower that is much closer, so that might be live today. (BTW, now that you are a sponsor, it might be easier to discuss map details in the sponsor forums.) Your screenshot from Netmonitor shows CDMA sector IDs, which would not necessarily be the same as the LTE tower you were connected to. Unfortunately Netmonitor's screen display is misleading.

Hmm. Life is making you pessimistic. IIRC, you once said -100 dBm or stronger.

There is a place on the Sprint public forums where people report gripes about network problems, but that does not mean anything happens with the gripes. It's just a forum for users to publish issues. I have seen Sprint reps reply to a few posts there, but about operational outages. Your problem sounds like a permanent dead zone that is inherent in the network coverage design. So you can report your issue there, and to Sprint customer service as suggested. They might actually open a ticket. That does not mean the ticket ever gets assigned for action.

The press release was about a deal, but was petty silent about the timing of actual installation projects. Which I take to mean this wouldn't happen for a while. Good news, though.

Sprint and HTC haven't yet pushed out an OTA to fix threshold problems on the EVO 4G LTE, have they? I don't think those signal levels are so low. When I tested in Waco recently on my GS3, which did have its recent threshold fix installed, I looked for edge conditions where it would downshift to 3G. That device held LTE connection at least until -114 or -118 in respective samples.

That is probably a more reliable guess.

That's hard to say. I just applied the update three days ago when I was out of town. A day later I did see some faster EVDO connections, but that might have been coincidental because of all the NV reconstruction going on in my area. But I don't know of any reason why the handset update, by itself, would be expected to improve 3G data speeds. It's really an LTE optimization thing, and there is no LTE in Austin yet.

Netmonitor does not show what "4G tower" you are connected to. It only maps CDMA sectors (which may or may not be tower locations, and if so may or may not be the same tower where your 4G signal was coming from.

Sensorly doesn't purport to "map" towers, but rather the signal strength recorded at the crowdsourced users own locations. These tend to be highways and arterials because that's where the crowds are. Too bad about no local logging. If they had that feature I would be more inclined to use the app, especially since the Sensorly developers say they have had some success teasing LTE signal strength out of the hidden APIs on at least some Android models. I could have really used a feature the other day, when I was testing LTE in Waco, that at least would have logged my time, handset lat/lon, LTE signal strength as RSRP and quality as RSRQ, and whether the LTE connection was live or not. A bonus would be speed test results. To make Sensorly work, the app has to at least be capturing signal strength and lat/lon.

What does your phone say for Baseband version under Settings -> About device? The update now being rolled out is L710VPLG8.

Well, there couldn't be any decent LTE coverage map yet because it is too new. It would take some time to collect the crowd-sourced data. And right now, many of the handsets out there -- until they get remedial OTA updates like the recent LG8 version for the GS3 -- are not even equipped to harvest Sprint LTE connection data properly. So give it time. I do note that Sensorly's Play Store site says this: From my own research, the Android API doesn't provide much detail about LTE connections, and what it does provide is not standardized. That is the reason for the "workarounds" mentioned in Sensorly's documentation above. I haven't tried the Sensorly app yet. Do you know if it provides the user a local copy of the logged data it uploads to the mothership? That might be interesting. I have tried OpenSignal Maps for the purpose of logging LTE connections, but I thought its logged data was junk.

I doubt that Sprint would abandon unlimited anytime in the foreseeable future. The feature is Sprint's most distinguishing advantage on the demand side. On the supply side, unless there is rampant abuse there is really no threat to Sprint's overall bandwidth. There is some abuse today by unauthorized tethering, obviously. I would not be at all surprised to see Sprint crack down on that.

I just looked at the Sensorly map website. There now are two selections under the drop-down menu, both labeled "Sprint 4G." They need to change those labels to distinguish between Wimax and LTE. I tried them both. One had data mapped, which I presume to be Wimax. The other had none, which I presume to be LTE.

Yes, you do reach that under the EVO's "LTE Record" menu. But note that the top of the screen still says "CDMA List." I suspect it is tracking the CDMA sectors the phone happens to be connected to while it is also connected to an LTE signal somewhere. I don't know of anything that identifies the LTE site itself.

More properly, those are CDMA sector IDs, not LTE. Your LTE connections may or may not have been at the same towers that your CDMA connections were.

This happened to me in Austin today. The eHPRD connections that worked yesterday now fail to pass data from remote servers, not matter which app I try. I think it is because the NV network is under construction in our market. When I changed my phone to CDMA only under Settings -> More settings -> Mobile networks -> Network mode, the problem went away. My EVDO data speeds also improved many fold. I like to hope this is because the new NV backhaul is being installed.

Yep. I agree. These speeds are also quite consistent with testing I did in and around Waco yesterday. I posted another thread reviewing that, but in the Sponsor Forum so I could plot the samples along with the S4GRU tower maps.

I don't think you can really know this for sure, because there is no way with current tools to tell for sure which LTE tower you connected to and where.

I don't think we have seen any evidence in Austin, aside from some eHRPD connections logged in the wild. No LTE yet. And Austin was conspicuously absent from the "end of August" list announced in conjunction with Sprint's recent earnings call and report.

Great. FYI, CDMA Field Test will produce a handy log with each record listing connection type, signal strength, BSIDs, etc. You have to actually export the log to see all that detail chronologically.

Verizon must have seen this coming. IIRC, when they revamped their family plans recently to share capped data, they made free tethering a "feature" of these shared plans.

What makes you think you know what LTE tower you are connecting to, and where? There is no tool known that empirically maps LTE towers on the fly. Are you referring to a tower site mapped on the S4GRU's own maps? Post the location and Sprint ID of that tower, but not in this particular forum. (Non-sponsors could not understand such a comment because they lack access to the interactive S4GRU maps.)

Thx. I bypassed the dialer and launched from a shortcut to the hidden menu, using the Quick Shortcut Maker app.

From what I understand, the OTA rollouts are random. I have seen reports from users on other forums who got the LG8 but are not in a launched LTE market. The update does include other stuff besides the "optimized LTE system selection." BTW, I have finally joined the ranks of GS3 owners waiting for LTE. I received and activated my 32GB model last night. It updated OTA in two cycles, bringing the version up to LG2. If I get the LG8 update pushed to me in the next couple of days I will refuse it because I already have the update.zip downloaded and prefer to apply it manually. My plan is to do that at the beginning of my field trip to Waco, because I want to see a before-and-after on the signal-strength reporting between LG2 and LG8 when I first get into LTE territory. Then I will update to LG8 for the main body of testing. Robert, is the screen you call the "LTE engineering screen" to show LTE signal strength just the Settings -> About Device -> Status screen, or is there another path to the screen you have described? EDIT: Never mind. I just found it under the DATA menu tree..

My question was actually directed to Robert. I just want to make sure that the screen (pre-LG8 update) that he calls the "LTE Engineering screen" is the same screen I was referring to when any end user follows these menus: Settings -> About Device -> Status. The screen he described reported signal strength (without an LTE signal) as "0 dBm RSRP." How is that same screen's signal strength formatted on your GS3 after the LG8 update? If it no longer says "RSRP," that is a clue that something significant changed in the signal strength reporting. From your description, I am also curious about what the LG8 update did. Your numbers do seem rather anomalous. BTW, I also use Quick Shortcut Maker on my Epic 4G, and will probably try it on my new GS3 when it arrives next week to explore those hidden menus.