ingenium

I think any address that shows B41 coverage on their map qualifies. I put in my address in Berkeley (a block from a B41 site with excellent coverage throughout the house) and it qualifies. I think they're doing this because they can't predict indoor coverage, so they're assuming if you're asking for a MB, you prob need one.

 

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Would it be best on the 2nd floor coverage wise?

 

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Depends on your layout. My house long (townhouse) and is 4 stories, and I have my 540 on the 3rd floor in the back (macro is maybe 0.4 miles away, line of sight minus a brick wall, but between sectors). MB relay signal is -94. It reaches all but the far corner of the basement. I expect the 545 to reach there. I get about 15 mbps per carrier down (2xCA = 30 Mbps, it just takes a second for the relay to engage it). Upload is 15-17 Mbps ish.

 

If it's in a room, I suggest trying to aim it so it points out the door towards the main part of the house. Mine is aimed to go down the hallway, which I'm sure helps.

 

Also curious, what software version is it running? It may take 24+ hours to update to the newest version.

 

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The screen is like a kindle paper

 

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There's no backlight? And not color? The screen on the 540 is very poor with regards to touch sensitivity. And it's pretty bright and always on.

 

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Interesting. The exterior design is noticeably different from the 540 model. Vents moved to the bottom. Looks a bit thinner too. Still using the same pink foam for packaging lol.

 

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I have seen nTelos airaves in Jackson Ohio, so I would expect they will have them.

Which brings up an interesting point, what is the MNC/MCC in such a case? Will the MB broadcast multiple providers? Will it be random based on which one the MB decides to use (assuming the donor broadcasts multiple)?

 

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Anyone know if magic boxes can Daisy chain?

No they cannot. They require a macro class donor.

 

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And this too

 

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Those errors are from enabling the root earfcn method in SCP I believe. They're unrelated to calling plus.

 

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while i got the call that i was approved awhile back, i did not get the call to confirm my shipping address. Did everyone get that confirmation call that also got the above email?

I did. It seems they were batch sent at 1:15pm eastern time.

 

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I don't use Tasker and rarely get any feedback on it (besides from you), so it slipped through the cracks.. my bad! I went back and found what I wrote up (and poorly publicized) about them:

 

 

Is that what you were trying? If so, I'll go back through the code and figure out what broke. I remember having a heck of a time trying to get a shutdown intent to work, so I'll see what I can do about that. I'll also try to figure out how to prevent it from resetting services to false if they are not specifically included.

 

-Mike

Actually I just tried using them and it seems to work now! Maybe there was some other reason I had to stop using them... I had the tasks built, but had commented out using the intents in favor of using the manual root method, so there must have been a reason... I'll switch back and see if I can figure out what it is. I'm trying to reduce my reliance on needing root for things, and this is a step in the right direction.

 

Too bad there's not a way that I'm aware of to query the current status of the Background Service option without root (necessary for a simple toggle switch). You could probably respond with an intent upon receiving a query intent http://tasker.dinglisch.net/userguide/en/intents.html though I know that's probably a lot of work for a feature few would use.

 

If I wrote the code to handle this and respond to it and debug it, would you consider trying to add it to see if it works? I wrote a Tasker plugin a few years ago that acted as a middle man, relaying intents between Tasker and another app (that app required a certain permission to use its intents, which Tasker didn't request. My plugin requested them and proxied the intents). So I could probably pull a lot of the code from there.

 

 

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This actually begs a question, and probably stupid, but....if/when you get a MB, can you actually set it up initially (or reset/set it up again after initial setup) in a different location? Or in other words, are there some internal pre-ship setup done that the end recipient can't access such that its somehow tied to a specific macro site they determine based on your home location?

 

Reason I ask - if I were somehow approved (which I don't expect personally), I would be very sorely tempted to set it up in the office I occupy at work even moreso than at home. Signal drops in and out all day here.

Yes it should work. It's not tied to any specific site, just basically factory reset it and go through the config process in the new location if you move it.

 

The MB I currently have previously belonged to a Sprint RF engineer in Texas. It integrated into the network in Pittsburgh just fine using the correct EARFCN. That being said, there is still some kind of flag on my MB that is allowing it to get beta software updates. I'm currently on 15.15.10.113 (pushed early this month), while the latest official build is 15.15.10.63. I previously was updated to 15.15.10.93 the day after I set it up in May, so the flag is definitely still present.

 

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While you're doing updates, if you have any time can you take a look at the intents you added for me for Tasker? They never quite worked right, so I've still been using my root method to edit SCP's config file each time and force kill it.

 

If I remember correctly you have intents to enable and disable logging and location, and something else? Ideally I'd like one to enable/disable the background service, and one to gracefully exit. I keep the background service off unless I'm driving/traveling, so having these two would make it easier to automate.

 

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Just got the call approving me for a MB. They approved it for the address on the account rather than the address I applied with. The account address barely gets B26 and 1x800, not even B25, yet it somehow qualified [emoji23]. Had them update it to the address where I'll actually be using it.

 

I had the same issue the first time they opened applications; they only saw the account address not the application address. So for anyone getting denied, make sure you verify that they're using the right one.

 

Estimated delivery is "6 weeks to fall, based on how early you applied", and they'll send an email before shipping it.

 

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Anyone else find Shentel B25 CA yet?

 

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TM-4, that's interesting. I don't think Sprint uses that, or at least I've never seen it.

 

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Here are the SCP screenshots for the LTE roaming I found.

 

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Hmm the B25 one must be stale data, since it's using the G block. Sprint has that nationwide.

 

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FYI for those interested.. I was in Kentucky last week, and roamed on a couple of different ATT LTE bands with my 5X while I was there. I'll have to check my screen shots, and hopefully SCP logs to confirm, but I think it was bands 2 and 17. Edit: looks like 2 and 25.. didn't realize they had LTE on band 25.. also found Bluegrass Cellular band 12.

B25 is a superset of B2, the only difference I believe being B25 adds the PCS G block. I think SCP just identifies it based on earfcn or gci, so it's likely a bug. Unless ATT started advertising their B2 as B25.

 

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My case for hpue was note 5 usable at -122 signal compare to s8 .i got 14mbps download at -122 before I'm s8 . The 30 percent in coverage is total bs my s8 always drop band 41 in same area as my note 5.i also notice when I show 3 carriers band 41 in engineering but not on signal pro check only shows 2 carriers. Speeds very slow still.

SCP does not show CA status at all. It shows which carrier is the PCC only. For 3xCA you have the PCC (primary carrier, which is used for upload) and 2 SCCs. The PCC is essentially random to load balance between them.

 

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Your experience does not seem to be the norm but, rather, a very unfortunate aberration; an outlier situation.

 

Unfortunately Sprint just doesn't have the required density yet for VoLTE in most areas and won't for some time.

 

Of course the most obvious way to get around this is by using Wi-Fi. With Wi-Fi, we can all have simultaneous voice and data. It has always been thus.

 

The only time you find yourself generally always without Wi-Fi is when in your car. But, so long as you're not a passenger, the last thing you need when driving is the ability to both surf the web AND be on the phone. To me that sounds like a recipe ripe for suicide.

Nexus / Pixel devices don't have wifi calling. So it's not an option. In many cities the density is fine for VoLTE. I'll go months without dropping LTE. It would be nice to at least have the option.

 

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Sprint arguably has the best voice experience of any carrier, something we've seen borne out again and again through myriad industry tests. CDMA is aging, yes, but is still an excellent technology.

People keep saying this, but in my experience it's horrendous. It's been the case for years, Galaxy S4 (1x800 only when that was prioritized in the PRL, 1x1900 was fine), Nexus 6, 6P, and Pixel XL. It seems to be I'm mostly in congested areas, in more rural areas or at night it's usually fine. I think CDMA carriers are overloaded with voice calls, and quality goes to shit to handle more calls. With the refarming it's just gotten worse to the point I use Hangouts for calls now. I can't understand a word the other person says during peak usage, it's all garbled.

 

For this reason I can't wait for VoLTE. Their CDMA network is useless to me for voice calls in its current state.

 

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First of all let's distinguish between bandwidth consumed or consumption rate which is measured in MB/sec and and monthly data consumption. Pretty much every wireless technology has a fairness algorithm that does not allow one user to consume all the bandwidth to the expense of all other users. So even at the peak of bandwidth demand one user does not hog the bandwidth. On the other hand you have total data consumed in a month. Putting a limit on total monthly consumption is ineffective way to battle congestion at peak times. I personally think that the carriers should go back to differentiating between on peak/off peak data consumption because who really cares if you're watching a movie on your iPhone at 3am. Nobody else is on the network.

Some carriers in other countries do it. I was just in Indonesia and had a SIM with Telkomsel. They have a different data bucket for midnight-7am (and different ones for LTE vs non-LTE) to encourage bulk usage in off-peak times. It's a new policy, because 2 years ago they didn't do this (nor did they really have much LTE deployed... whereas now it's solid coverage). Was perfect for me to do Google Photos picture and video backups.

 

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Possible bug, this is showing as 10x10 second carrier, and I think it's just first carrier based on the earfcn.

Also, it looks like second B25 carrier is showing in Pittsburgh with 08 GCI ending. It's not 10x10 though, only the first carrier is. I couldn't get a screenshot with valid earfcn data though, it kept kicking me off as soon as I connected.

 

EDIT: Actually, I just realized the GCI is the same for each of these... but TAC and PCIs differ. And the GCI isn't in Pittsburgh's range. Could be a weird issue of persistent bad data...

LTE wasn't unusable - there was something specifically wonky/wrong with the B41 carrier. Everything else was fine.

Probably not load balancing correctly off of B41. They don't anticipate B41 being over capacity I don't think. And even so, B25/26 probably wouldn't last very long if they were actively moving people to it because B41 was overloaded.

 

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Thanks to scp I saw I connected to a MB today in sf! Woohoo!

 

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Where at? Was it near a Sprint store? The one in Berkeley has a MB. And I saw one in NYC also with a MB.

 

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Roaming in Indonesia is now XL (Excelcom), HSPA+ max (ie no LTE). Surprising since XL is apparently a primarily LTE network from the quick research I did.

 

My bf's phone (Nexus 6P, with Open World, profile update done 2 weeks ago before leaving) will not roam here though. It just says emergency calls only. XL does not show up in the network list, just the MNC MCC combination for it. When I select it, it gives an error about the SIM being incapable of registering on the network. It's possible it requires a newer SIM than the one Sprint uses for the 6P? My Pixel is using the BYOD SIM and works fine.

 

EDIT: Screenshot showing the 6P refusing to connect to all networks Sprint roams with, Indosat and 510 11 (XL)

Any speed test by chance?

No, since it's pay per MB I didn't do any speed tests. It was quick though. The airport has a DAS, and I was just there for a layover, so I can't speak to coverage and speed outside of there.

 

Also LTE roaming in Singapore (screenshot below) and Cambodia.

 

 

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Open World roams on T-Mobile LTE in Germany.

 

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