Mr.Nuke

Yeah, typically a carrier will install and manage their own equipment using their own spectrum on a rack leased from a tower company. Among other problems though carriers may run into situations where build out requirements dictate equipment needing to be installed before it is financially or logistically realistic for a carrier to do so; or just in general there may be areas where you have spectrum, but based on your customer base/population it doesn’t make fiscal sense to spend your money deploying equipment there. Enter in Verizon’s LTE in Rural America program. As AJ mentioned at a minimum VZ will typically lease out upper C-Block 700 MHz spectrum to a rural operator. The rural operator builds out their own network providing tower space, equipment, and backhaul to VZ’s provided spectrum. Furthermore, the rural operators (typically service provider themselves) will sell local service within their territory*. The rural provider gets reciprocal roaming for their customers on Verizon, access to Verizon’s LTE vendors and device providers (huge for small providers). Verizon theoretically gets cheap rural buildouts that they otherwise wouldn’t have undertaken. *Other than the Maine situation this is why a lot of people are getting excessive roaming letters. Verizon shouldn’t have any customers within any of their LTE in Rural areas (Maine situation excluded). The people living in those areas need to be getting service from the Verizon partner. Not doing so is not only unfair financially unfair to the VZ partner whose network these people are actually using, but it is also a financial liability to Verizon who is racking up roaming charges on the partner network.

Correct, but that "other than" part is likely a huge wrinkle in the standard LTEiRA agreement. The typical incentives Verizon would offer to the rural operator be it: helping build out an LTE network, reciprocal roaming, device access/buying leverage, etc. are moot. And that may be the root of the issue here. Verizon's cost is more than likely higher than a typical LTEiRA partnership. What Verizon is paying to Wireless Partners, be it data charges or whatever doesn't make financial sense for them given the limited customer base. I just wanted to make it clear that this situation appears by everything I've found to be significantly different than Verizon kicking off perma-roamers that reside in territories covered by LTEiRA partners that are actively selling/providing local native service to customers.

The partner in question is Wireless Partners LLC who appear to own, build, and operate the towers Verizon is deploying their spectrum on there.

Based on their statement I don't think so although that ultimately may end up being the case if their agreement is materially altered (which by most accounts it appears it is going to be).

I'm with you, but this Maine one is a bit odd in so far that I can tell the partner doesn't provide or sell any native service of their own.

You were two days away. The system is set up to flag the MB if it hasn't connected in 10 days.

The problem with that is that if your magic boxes don't connect to the macro network within the next couple of days it is highly probable you'll be asked to return them. At that point you may figure out what the issue preventing the NC boxes from activating is, but it still likely you'll be sending it back regardless. Given there are a number of you in North Carolina with issues, if it were me, I'd be doing everything possible with Sprint to try and figure out what the issue with the macro network is. The odds of it resolving itself before Sprint send you an RMA kit and demands the box back are slim.

I did not have to sign for it.

39758 from my magic box.

Ok it isn't that then. In weak signal areas the unit is prone to drop the relay and even when it comes back up devices may not connect to it initially. On mine, the first time I left the house it took my phone hours to connect to it when I got back.

What is the relay signal strength and band coming into the box?

Why not add Apple as well?

I wouldn't call it dead on arrival yet until John Malone chimes in (if he does at all). It shouldn't be all that surprising that a company, much less one with a significantly higher market cap isn't overly keen on an initial offer to be essentially taken over. If there is any legitimacy to any of the reporting tonight, what Malone's sentiments are especially given the reported discussions between Masa and him, are arguably more important than random anonymous source citing Charter not being interested.

FWIW the "here" geolocation is working for me on both the last version and the latest one that just got pushed out today.

Sprint has lost just shy of $13 billion over the past 5 years. As long as the company is bleeding money, they will need to incur more debt or offer new equity to keep infusing cash into the company. I doubt it. For starters $10 to $20 billion isn't enough to outright buy the company or even Softbank's stake. Furthermore, Sprint as an acquisition much less an investment doesn't seemingly fit in with Buffett's investing strategy or recent (past 25 or so years) investing history. If Masa and Marcelo were talking to Buffett about Sprint, my guess is it would be something along the lines of preferred stock with common stock warrants like what he did with Bank of America and before that GE and Goldman Sachs. Buffett gets a near guaranteed return on a portion of the nearly $90 billion in cash Berkshire is sitting on and Sprint gets a cash infusion to do with as they please. I'm not really sure that Buffett is the best source of funding though as Sprint still hasn't tapped out other cheaper options i.e. the Spectrum backed vehicles.

Both of those are good on my Note 5 now.

Especially based on a single foreign article from nearly two weeks ago that had no comment from either party and was never picked up by the U.S. financial media.

Yeah the logging is fine, because the log is going off of the provider field i.e. Sprint B26 and you are still fielding the correct information from the Samsung API for that.

Yeah I posted about that this morning. Hopefully Mike's Samsung EARFCN display fix can be carried over to neighboring cells at some point.

The word LTE is back on my Note 5, but no band indication in the header.

I can confirm the missing LTE XXXX on my note 5 as well. Additionally, and it is to be somewhat expected with Samsung, the neighboring cells are all showing B1.

The notification bar and the provider information right below rsrp and snr values i.e. Sprint B26 are correct, but yeah for whatever coding reason the LTE XXXX isn't displaying (which is a nice feature as the large text is easy to take a quick glance at). Your earfcn fix with this beta is much appreciated though.

If I were you I'd check upstairs. If you can get a signal by a window, that is the optimal situation for a magic box, and knowing that information may be helpful when they call back. As of now, yes.

The unspoken requirement is they need to believe you are capable of receiving an band 41 signal through a window in the structure based on RF analysis. If you currently aren't getting band 41 at any place in your home the odds of getting a magic box for the time being aren't great.

Yeah they've got roughly half of the android market share and it is probably higher than that here where a couple of the Chinese companies aren't as prevalent.