Mr.Nuke

I'm hearing a lot of similar reports from people in Lincoln with the same symptoms and complaining about voice issues all of the sudden. Many of them wouldn't be able to tell me if they were on 1x800 or not, but given what has transpired there recently, odds are fairly good they were.

They've been doing NV related work in that area recently that probably contributed to your issues. There is great news for Lincoln on the sponsor side of the site.

There has been enough 1x800 in the Quad Cities to blanket the cities for several weeks. The maps of site locations and site status for specific sites is available in my signature for sponsors of the site.

Yep that is what we want, and I updated said sponsor thread spreadsheet/map based on what you posted there. Thanks!

As a sponsor you may want to check out this thread. A map of the sites in Iowa City and their progress can be found there.

The source is us. You have access to the very detailed maps for all of Nebraska and Iowa. East Iowa is done as far as this issue is concerned. 1/4 of Lincoln Nebraska got the fix today. We've found probably 15 sites new sites in Omaha over the past 2-3 weeks. Central Iowa is getting down to a limited number of sites. Samsung knows they need to get legacy sites converted to NV status ASAP. 90 days is very likely and it may be on the conservative side.

At current pace though Lincoln could realistically be out of "problem" status by the end of the month.

More LTE acceptances in the Quad Cities today. Precise information is available to sponsors.

First off welcome. I'd wait it out if it were me. You have a top of the line phone that has a temporary issue (and it could be argued it is more of a network issue than the phone issue). Having a tri-band device sets you up well for the future. Sprint knows of the issue and Samsung (the sprint NV contractor in Iowa and Nebraska) is aggressively getting sites NV accepted in clusters to fix it. It is hard to put an actual timeline on this, but we already know the majority of the Central Iowa sites are in progress. East Iowa is by-and-large done. Lincoln Nebraska just had a cluster of sites accepted today, etc. They're working hard on it. The other aspect of this and bmoses may disagree with my interpretation of what we are seeing a bit here , is we have seen the priority shift to getting sites NV 3G accepted. If that holds, there are only a limited number of sites broadcasting LTE in the Des Moines metro and it may stay that way until the market is completely NV 3G accepted.* I know it is frustrating to see your wife's phone connect to LTE and yours not (you could force it to by going to LTE only mode) but unless you live or work near one of the LTE accepted sites you aren't missing a heck of a lot right now. *At that point they'll come back and fire off LTE for the sites that have backhaul shortly thereafter. This has ranged from a day to a couple of weeks in other markets.

Are you running a custom PRL that has 1x800 has a higher priority?

The issue isn't being on the verge of having a lot of 4G online in a matter of months or not. Rather it is an issue of who did the legacy equipment versus the NV equipment. The bad news is all of Iowa and Nebraska is on the wrong side of this right now. Based on that post, any tri-band device is going to have issues connecting to LTE here. The good news is that East Iowa is largely NV accepted on some level and Central Iowa (including Des Moines) and West/Iowa Nebraska are well on the road to NV acceptances for the entire markets. We've been discussing paces on the sponsor side lately, but suffice to say I think this is more of a short-term blip than a long term problem here. And it certainly explains the pattern we've observed where acceptance reports have dried up, but we've been seeing mass acceptances all at once in certain markets i.e. the Quad Cities. It isn't so much a winter push rather it is a general push market by market to alleviate this issue,

You can already sort of tell based off of the list. I oversee the local maps for Iowa and Nebraska and we've seen a huge uptick of activity over the past month on sites in progress. East Iowa had a mass acceptance that basically made the entire market NV 3G accepted. Other non-incumbent markets on the the list like Milwaukee, Idaho, etc. have also seen mass acceptances recently.

Welcome to the board. I can't believe a longtime loyal customer would be upset about a $36 activation fee. Activation fees are a part of the U.S. wireless industry. The carrier may or may not waive them. If you switch carriers there is a pretty good chance you are going to pay an activation fee to them as well.

So far we haven't encountered backhaul issues that we know of in Iowa and Nebraska. As bmoses mentioned it is the norm for backhaul to be one of the first signs of progress in our markets. There was a site in Omaha that had backhaul two months before the tower crew installing equipment on the roof of the building. Like he mentioned at this point we are waiting for the final sites to get NV equipment before a presumed mass sweep through Des Moines to accept everything at once. This was observed in the Quad Cities recently as well as other places nationally over the past several weeks.

Not really sure what is "bull" about it. Presumably this new method allows them to get more work done in a shorter period of time (before bad winter weather causes delays). That is a good thing. Beyond that, I'm not sure there is an optimal strategy. You bring everything online at once, it is perceived to take longer and people complain about the wait. You bring a tower on one at a time and people complain about a slow rollout, patchy LTE, etc. You also run the risk of handoff issues, dropped calls, and other issues that have been observed in other markets at times between NV and legacy equipment. There isn't a winning solution to make everyone happy here.

No they didn't. They announced this: http://newsroom.sprint.com/presskits/sprint-spark.htm They also announced at the same time, phones will be updated to access bands other than 25 in early 2014...

Android central thinks the speaker issue may be software rather than hardware. http://www.androidcentral.com/nexus-5-speaker-yes-there-s-only-one-and-software-may-be-hurting-what-you-hear

In Bondurant it isn't really going to matter right now. Enjoy the band 25 from the accepted site. I'd be tempted to set band 26 as highest temporarily on the extremely off chance you pick up an 800 signal.

Bmoses hit on this, but net/net there is no delay. If it takes (made up numbers to follow) 180 days to install equipment on 70 sites you can reach that goal either by turning sites on individually or turning them on all at once.

I'm not going to say too much as this is information at the premier sponsor level, but I have a feeling there are quite a bit more than 2 band 41 sites right now in Minneapolis.

They are two different ways of telling what LTE sector you are connected to. By documenting all of the numbers we can tell where any given LTE connection is coming from.

First of all welcome. Secondly sorry for the slow response. I saw this yesterday, but was in Lincoln at the game and spent the rest of the evening "recovering." I think the other guys gave you pretty solid advice. If voice is the primary concern, Sprint already has a pretty good voice network in Omaha. I honestly can't remember the last time I had a dropped call. I'll only roam on voice deep inside certain buildings and have always found I typically will have a good enough signal in those instances as well. This will be helped by 1X800 which Dkoellerwx alludes to, which will give Sprint a tremendous voice network. Verizon still has Sprint firmly beat in Omaha for data services, but we'll see how that changes over the coming months/years. If you have any more questions don't hesitate to ask. I saw you lurking on the sponsor map thread last night and obviously that is an awsome resource to know where Sprint sites/towers are located and what phase they are at for Network Vision (Sprint's 4G transition program).

We are still very interested where Sprint NV equipment is installed.

It will be updated by Sprint at a later date a la the G2.

Des Moines has 3 Clearwire Wi-Max protection sites. The protection designation comes from the spectrum being awarded on a use it or lose it basis. Thus in markets like Omaha and Des Moines, Clear did a bare bones rollout to say hey we are broadcasting on the spectrum in Des Moines. The bad news is we don't know for certain what is happening with these protection sites. Right now in markets that had a full wimax rollout sites are being converted to 2500/2600 LTE. But with the protection markets, as Clearwire was a separate company, their sites weren't always co-located with Sprint equipment. In Des Moines one of the 3 sites is pretty much across the street from a Sprint site. The second is co-located with Sprint. The last is almost dead center between two Sprint sites. So right now it is hard to tell what is going to happen there. Now for the the really really good new.... Virtually every Sprint site in every Sprint market is getting band 41. Most Clearwire sites are getting Band 41 as well (with some getting a full NV Sprint rollout too!). In addition, Sprint is going to be adding additional infill sites in markets (we don't know where) to provide further 41 coverage yet. Thus my comment about having 3 separate bands nearly everywhere to offload capacity.