Fraydog

I think Sprint had a great asset in the EV-DO/CDMA era that they never really used in rural and it sure could have helped in the Forsee/Early Hesse days. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

The best quip in the call was John Legere more or less shifting the dumber slot from AT&T to Verizon. I will admit I laughed at that part. My gut instinct is that AT&T is getting smarter about competing by converging services and Verizon thinks they can compete over the top with Netflix. Good luck with that. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Neville is a huge part of that along with the rest of the team he built there. That said, there's only so much they can do to cheat physics. I'm sure some will construe my comments as taking shots at T-Mobile, but it really isn't considering I have been very complementary of their network team, heck Legere too when it comes to the operations end. That said, there's still the Germans. There have been rumblings they are happier with their investment now, but if there's the right offer on table... To be honest, now that Charter has sucked up TWC, that is a match up that could make sense. On another note, T-Mobile must be doing some sort of densification in St. Louis. I was getting in building coverage in quite a few buildings with T-Mobile with an old iPhone 5S that I had in hotspot mode that I wasn't getting with a Note 5 on Verizon that has served as my daily driver the last six months. Verizon has low band there and T-Mobile doesn't. Yet Verizon wins RootMetrics in the St. Louis testing. I wonder if Root did a lot of in building testing here.

Verizon and AT&T both have super large debts in range of $100 billion. That makes them a little more vulnerable than they would be in the past. Where in the past they could expand their networks, lower prices, and basically use all their tools to crush T-Mobile and Sprint, now they have to be more judicious and maintain profit and dividend even if it means shedding low quality customers. AT&T and Verizon could reduce the dividends but their institutional investors would punish them HARD. AT&T announces this afternoon IIRC, so it will be interesting to see what their earnings are. And here's the thing about T-Mobile's rural coverage... it isn't the highest quality on coverage but it is excellent for data hotspot. Not many customers means that coverage is usually really fast where the duopoly will usually be content with B12/B13 with some hotspots of B4/B2 tossed in. There's definitely needs that it fulfills. Cheap data for a hotspot is a need us rural folks have. People should look at T-Mobile for that, and I'd say the same for Sprint if they had more B41 in rural. To really close the gap, though, T-Mobile has to increase capital expenditures. Truth is, Neville Ray has done an excellent job on a shoestring budget. However, the gap can't really close unless capex goes way up. If capex went back up, that would eat into if not take away T-Mo's profitability. T-Mobile isn't going to be able to cut into the massive M2M and corporate contracts the duopoly has unless they really equal coverage. That's the juggling act T-Mobile faces. The ultimate solution to that is SCALE. However there isn't really a lot of options for that anymore and the FCC seems dead set on four providers. It isn't like T-Mobile is going to have the option to buy out Sprint unless the FCC has a change of heart.

Chester, IL. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

I don't see it as people always being haters just because Sprint may not work well in their hood. Sprint roams to Verizon 1X in my home town ever since the last Alltel property in Southern Illinois went over to AT&T. AT&T shut down the old CDMA network that provided out of town guests EV-DO. AT&T'S CDMA obligations ended June 30, 2015 but in a lot of places the CDMA network got thinned out and stopped working even before that. If I were just judging this based on my own perception I'd perceive Sprint to be very bad. That said, it does get tiresome to explain to the out of towners why Sprint is bad here. Everyone else, even T-Mobile, has working LTE here. If I bring up Sprint around any of my friends they look at it as substandard and the worst of the worst. It isn't like I can pull out a Sprint phone and go all Speed Test on them to prove Sprint superiority. Nor can I cite coverage. Not even AT&T had that here for a long time. In AT&T'S case it took peeling off the last of the floating Alltels out here. I imagine that if not for S4GRU I'd probably not think about Sprint that much to be honest. At least the cities are showing improvement network wise. That said I think finances, marketing, plans and customer care all need a lot of constructive feedback. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Google's activation lock is worse. I locked myself out of the Note 5 for three days because of bad fingerprint recognition and not remembering the pass code. Part of it was stupidity on my part but part of it was the dumb three day requirement Google instituted in their infinite wisdom. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Problem with this is that ignores that China has more mobile accounts than most of Europe. China Mobile alone is worth almost 800 million users alone. Let's not ignore the companies around the world that use B41 including SoftBank, Au, and most importantly the ChiComs. There's a pretty strong ecosystem for B41. The problem I see on Sprint's end is that most of the rest of the B41 crowd is on UMTS or in the case of China Mobile on their own standard so there's no handset economies of scale that can pop up yet. In the future where CDMA isn't a concern, there can be huge economies of scale pop up. Even if Sprint ceased to exist, the government would be advised to hold to spectrum usage that has these massive economies of scale and can use more data where more people use it, on downloading. There's also the matter of the educational users and ISP's still on B41, Sprint doesn't own every iota of this spectrum contrary to public belief. I imagine some of these users may not take well to a reband. Edit: China Mobile has more users right now than THE ENTIRE POPULATION OF EUROPE.

Without going too much into the technical rationale, LTE-U and LAA have forms of listen before talk to ensure no interference between WiFi and LTE exists. I suspect the FCC will mandate LBT as things stand. It's also primarily going to be used on DAS and microcell locations for VZ and T-Mobile indoors, with maybe some very specific outdoor cases off microcell layouts. Read Nokia's whitepaper on this, that outlines a lot of the technical scenarios. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

http://9to5mac.com/2016/04/19/apple-releases-new-12-inch-retina-macbook-line-new-processors-rose-gold-better-battery-life/?pushup=1 Off-topic, but Rose Gold Skylake.

Isn't WiFI itself spectrum inefficient compared to where the 5G wireless standards are going? I honestly look the state of WiFi and the honest answer is that WiFi sucks in a lot of ways, as has been exposed by the LTE-U debate. Most WiFi channels around me are 2.4 GHz that all interfere with each other. Pardon me for saying that might not be a good user experience. 5 GHz is comparatively underused, but a lot of home routers don't have the ability to beam 5 GHz through a house. Compare to an LTE small cell that can easily outgun WiFi. LTE-U can do that today. LTE might not be the most robust air interface, but based on the testing that Qualcomm has done, it is more robust than LTE is at this stage. The LTE-U debate has exposed WiFi in a lot of ways. I was cynical about LTE-U at first but the more that I saw the research and the more I seriously examined the failures of WiFi the more I became open to a different approach. As for 5G, I think that we're too early in the process to speak too definitively about it. That said, vendors like Nokia, Samsung, and Ericsson (Sprint's primary vendors with Alcatel-Lucent sucked into Nokia) are making far more headway on 5G than I suspected they would be making a year ago. It's the possibility that 5G could fracture into different technological tracks that scares the hell out of me with 5G. A common standard needs to be reached.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QP1af7ilYpM Truth is, as long as the government gets the money out of the auction, they could care less what happens afterward. By all objective measures, the Wheeler chairmanship of the FCC has been a smashing success. I'd say it's the best of my life, anyway. That said, Verizon doesn't need more low band, and they're still bidding. AT&T doesn't need more low band in 90% of the country and they're still bidding, in fact they have to bid as part of the DIRECTV acquisition. T-Mobile is closer to having low band nationally and they might be able to get it without 600 MHz if it weren't for USCC, CSpire, and a few other small regional operators using 700 MHz that are statistically insignificant. Looking at the Spectrum Gateway 700 A map for T-Mobile, that's looking more and more like a national map, and that was without the 600 MHz auction taking place. Now where I live, with USCC taking their sweet time to either protect or unload 700 A, 600 MHz would be huge for T-Mobile. Verizon and AT&T are both limited on what they can bid on in Southern Illinois given the massive spectrum hauls they have here, AT&T through ATNI and Suncom purchases, and Verizon off Cellular 1 of Southern Illinois and what they bought in the AWS auction, which is 40 MHz worth of it here IIRC. Chicago and St. Louis, obviously, would hugely benefit from T-Mobile getting low band in 600 MHz. The areas where they already have low band? I take it T-Mobile is just loading up for extra if they can get it.

Saw's latest comments don't disqualify Sprint from releasing a microcell in home. My guess would be something down the road where Nokia releases a microcell for Sprint home use. In the past I don't think it would be feasible but now that Nokia owns the old Alcatel-Lucent CDMA business, it's certainly possible. Also of note, Segan pointed out Sprint's average speed on Ookla is 15 Mbps now. That's a 5 Mbps increase over where it was a year ago. Here's more: Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

The firm that Verizon pays for their ads, RootMetrics, is based in Bellevue. Guess who else is based there? If anything that makes the beef T-Mobile has with RootMetrics funny. This is probably the kind of thing that could get resolved over lunch. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Fortunately I didn't do it. That said, it defeats one of the big wins of being on Android. If I were to switch off to the AT&T DirecTV plan, I'd go back to iOS. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

On my Note 5, attempting to root bricks the device. Thanks Samsung for mandating Knox, likely at the behest of Verizon.

The US should go to spectrum beauty contests. I suspect the Republican Congress and the duopoly would flip at this proposal, however. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Some of the comments Shentel made in their last conference call were give aways on the progress Sprint is making. https://np.reddit.com/r/Sprint/comments/4exsw4/fcc_filing_shentel_and_sprint_outline_commitments/d24eix1 Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

That's not a bad start. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Have you looked at site permits with the city of New York? That would be a good place to start. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Here's the presentation where Sprint's VP of network planning was talking. Also note Stephen Bye is now CTO of CSPIRE. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

If there weren't already some small cells in NYC, then Sprint users there wouldn't be seeing speed improvements. That said there is still a lot of work that needs to be done. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Maybe the new technical COO is finally starting to get his network plan in place? Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

I'm seeing the squared on my Verizon daily driver now. Is mikejeep using that to signify 20 MHz on Verizon? Our market went away from second carrier of AWS to a single 20x20 due to the spectrum swap they did with T-Mobile. Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk