Fraydog

VZW is actually the worst at this. I don't get why VZW doesn't just start showing their real LTE map. It covers a pretty nice chunk of the country without having to toss in the marketing BS.

I'd be fine with Blair Levin becoming the new FCC chair.

If you count places like Dyersburg, Tennessee, you can push up the numbers real quick.

Dang it I wasn't even aware Sensorly had an iOS app. Oh well...

Our ATT rep told us a few weeks ago that they hope to have 4g here by Christmas xD (currently edge)

It depends on what your definition of 4G is. Thanks Bill Clinton!

I'm in an area where the local telco is so useless that AT&T and Verizon are using AAV vendors to build out HSPA+ and LTE. Good thing that new government funded fiber network is here.

AT&T is upgrading Dyersburg, TN to LTE today.

That market was EDGE a year ago.

I think AT&T is finally starting to get serious about some of these rural markets they neglected.

This is a big bump, I realize, but T-Mobile is claiming 4G in Sioux Falls, SD, even though their coverage maps still say EDGE. You sure you want to go there T-Mobile? I realize that I have someone on HoFo saying that it could be available. I'm just pinging this thread to see if anyone in Sioux Falls can verify if T-Mobile upgraded anything.

http://explore.t-mobile.com/verizon-att-sprint/vs/#connect-4g

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1793800-T-Mobile-Ad-Fail?p=15087211#post15087211

Well speaking of the topic on hand. Looks like att is only focused on small towns too with the recently launched markets.

Considering how slow AT&T was in getting 3G to rural markets, it's good to see the Death Star II throwing them a bone for once.

 

Only their urban areas where they have HSPA+. Rural areas have no plans as far as I know.

I suspect T-Mobile will have to do something eventually, or start selling off rural markets. If they upgrade their whole network starting now they won't have to do that later.

There's also the matter of keeping AWS spectrum...

 

Stevens Point, WI.

 

Most of northern WI is Edge only as well, and from what I was told, work has begun on LTE for Wausau market which includes Stevens Point and the northern markets.

 

Wausau area has HSPA+, but it stops south of Knowlton and north of Merrill.

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

My guess would have been LaCrosse.

 

This is the problem with so many tech bloggers trumping up T-Mobile's DC-HSPA+ 42 network as a great fallback. Judging by the 3G/4G W-CDMA coverage area that T-Mobile has constructed over the last six years, if you find yourself in a native coverage area without LTE, you probably will not have W-CDMA either.

 

AJ

Not only that but T-Mobile has legacy equipment in these rural stations of nothingness, and no SMR like spectrum to deploy. Sure they can buy the 700 A spectrum off VZW and other partners but that's far from a clincher.

I also believe T-Mobile should consider buying some rural carriers. MTPCS, Viaero, and MobileNation (currently operating as a Sprint Rural Alliance) would all be on my hit list if I were T-Mobile. I'd also look at King Street and US Cellular spectrum. USCC has a bunch of spectrum in the Carbondale Marion BTA they never built out.

Rebrand as SoftBank.

Problem solved.

I hope Sprint does the Metro East sites first. Why? Those sites were places that never got WiMax. They should do all the Illinois sites right now. Basically go from Marissa and Breese and work west to the WiMax area.

I'm noticing a severe lack of 3G in large pockets of my commute on Highway 40 and Lindbergh. I'll either go extended or hop on Edge for a while before finding another 3G signal. It happened again today on 270... I hope this is the storm before the calm.

Technically that's 1X, not EDGE.

Not to mention their famous claim of "we cover 96% of the population". They always forget to add on, "with EDGE or GPRS". Those claims of they have HSPA+ as a fallback are bogus because of you don't have HSPA+, I am 99% sure you don't have LTE.

T-Mobile is going to modernize their whole network much like Sprint is. They just don't have to move as fast. Not many people in rural areas ever had them to start with.

I dropped AT&T after 8 years. Sprint has made massive improvements since I had them as a company phone just a few years ago.

 

I haven't dropped a single call I wasn't expecting to drop, and data compared to AT&T is fantastic.

 

For the record, I think we'll see Sprint LTE before AT&T rolls out 3g here.

 

Sent from my Galaxy Nexus using Tapatalk 2

Where are you that Sprint has LTE and AT&T doesn't even have HSPA+? I narrowed down a bunch of the country in my head.

AT&T has the best LTE speeds for now because they don't have as many devices on their network. In the places like Chicago, LA, and OKC where they're only running a single 2x5 block, HSPA+ is often faster than LTE.

I suspect AT&T is going to start having to refarm PCS in 2013.

 

T-Mobile upgraded three of our sites to HSPA+ here in the Espanola, New Mexico area. Too bad they connected them to their T1 lines. I love it when my Tmo friends brag about my them having "4G" here and laugh at me for using Sprint. I ask them to run a speed test, my Sprint 3G runs between 1-2Mbps, their Tmo 4G runs at 300k-800kbps. And then I tell them to sod off.

 

However, I don't offer the same challenge when in Santa Fe. My Sprint 3G runs at 400k, and their Tmo HSPA+ is over 20Mbps in places. <img src='http://s4gru.com/public/style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/blush.png' class='bbc_emoticon' alt='' />

 

Robert

There's fiber backhaul options now other than the local ILEC here, Frontier (ex-Verizon).

http://www.clearwave.com

So if T-Mobile upgraded their site here, I'd look into that.

If I had to guess, I'd say T-Mobile has more fiber connections than Sprint does right now.

 

I'm not familiar with VZW MSC's, but I would expect there are some varied setups and vendors with all the different companies VZW has purchased over the years. Probably an inconsistent nightmare.

 

Robert via Samsung Note II via Tapatalk

Southern Illinois always had serious issues with this, but VZW has existed here for 13 years. They came into my market after buying divestures off SBC and another failing company that was a pile of crap in SoILL, Douglas Telecommunications d/b/a Cellular One. Sprint had a similar affliction here too with affiliates. Roberts Tower Company was an affiliate in Perryville and they did an awful job at building out that area.

I wish I could be a Sprint customer, but as Chester is an area where you can technically buy service but is "limited coverage", I'm doing them a favor by not switching to them. If I would subscribe here I'd get the golden ticket roaming onto ATNI towers. 3G roaming is going to be dead here soon anyway with ATNI's sale of Alltel Southern Illinois to AT&T.

T-Mobile offers service here too but it's EDGE, and AT&T is just now upgrading Chester to Faux G after my 3 years of begging them. So that's a start.

I'm on Verizon and where I live, inter-market handoffs happen all the time.

Chester, Illinois towers are in SID 1189, which is part of the Carbondale MSC. There's another tower in Missouri which is SID 2 and feeds into the St. Louis MSC. Some places in Chester you hit the nearest VZW tower off the other bluff, which is SID 2. The results are absolutely brutal. Ironically it's a tower that was built because of weak coverage, but it created another engineering problem.

It should be on the front page of Sprint's website.

Explain the shift in technology, the rebuild of the network, and the upcoming acquisition by SoftBank.

Come think of it, I like "The New Sprint is Coming" campaign. Such an idea should be forwarded to 6600 Sprint Parkway.

Well, bless the hearts of all the AT&T wolves as they like to call themselves. AT&T should just hire all those people and get it over with. They have the money chest to do it...

Was there more than one shed?

Why wouldn't Sprint keep the sheds around?

I would think they'd use that to store equipment for NV if they had a pre-existing Nextel shed in place.