radem

That is only $2,160 per month for unlimited data if you pay $3 per hour.  Now granted, you may not need unlimited data more than about 8 hours a day so you might be able to chop that down to $720 per month.  

Doesn't the NV 800mhz equipment also support PCS? I can't really see a reason to do 800mhz only sites if that's the case.

It doubles the bandwidth on the microwave link for each site.  There is a cost to that although that cost may be less than having to send someone back and slap the additional card in.

I don't think there is any point in rolling out 800Mhz only though. It would be a least band 25/26.

A quick expansion of B26 800Mhz 5x5 LTE data and BC10 800Mhz 1x voice using microwave chained back-haul to locations where high bandwidth wired back-haul can be provided quickly and for less cost would be ideal in areas where there is no native LTE or partner LTE coverage.  Sprint should put a site every 20 miles or however far apart they can get the 800Mhz signal to travel with no LTE drop-offs between sites.  This expansion should occur along every road/highway that has 2 or more lanes in each direction where there is currently no LTE coverage for Sprint customers.  This would eventually pay for itself with additional customers and elimination of roaming fees in these areas.

When the expansion covers every road/highway that has 2 lanes in each direction and more money for expansion is available, Sprint should then move on to every smaller village and town starting with the largest population sizes where they they do not provide coverage along with the roads that link these smaller villages and towns.

Any 800Mhz only site that is regularly overloaded should get additional back-haul and B25 1900Mhz 5x5 or 10x10 LTE data and BC1 1900Mhz 3G voice added to it.  In any area where it is still overloaded after having both B26 and B25, should start to get filled in with B41 on the existing sites and then additional mini-sites in between. This includes any area where the population can suddenly increase such as airports, stadiums, beaches, convention centers, fair-grounds, etc.

It seems today that Sprint is focusing primarily on the B41 in-fill rather than the bigger picture.  Unfortunately they are now being portrayed in advertising by their competitors as having the smallest network which is hurting them in their attempt to gain additional customers.  I think there is room to have some focus on rural expansion while the majority of their work continues on urban/suburban in-fill.

According to the subreddit, the Note 7 currently lacks wifi calling because they're waiting for next month to launch the new IMS APN, which could mean we're getting closer to an official VoLTE launch.

 

https://www.reddit.com/r/Sprint/comments/4yr9qz/note_7_wifi_calling/?st=IS3ZH6WW&sh=97e15ef1

I would very much like to see an IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) fix.  It is a required step on the way to VOLTE for Sprint phones.

iPhones have had a SMS problem since Sprint WiFi calling came out where they cannot send or receive SMS messages while on a WiFi network without macro network coverage.  They can send/receive iMessages while on WiFi and will try to switch to the macro network to send/receive SMS/MMS messages.  This means the problem does not impact many users while on WiFi calling but it is a deal breaker for VOLTE and may be the primary reason why Sprint is the only one of the top 4 that does not offer VOLTE.  This does not appear to impact most Android phones but possibly this new Note 7 is impacted by it.

You can see the IMS problem on iPhones in Settings - General - About.  Click the Carrier line a few times until you get to get to IMS status and you will see that only voice is enabled on the Sprint network.  IMS must be enabled for voice and SMS to properly use VOLTE in the future.

Anything holding them back? Hardware issues?

If both 5x5 bandwidth slices are beside each other, Sprint combines them and makes them into a 10x10 which improves top end speed, edge of cell reception, etc.  If the 5x5's are not beside each other, they will stay as 2 separate 5x5's as Sprints equipment is not configured at this time to be able to perform CA on B25.  2 5x5's means that you get double the total shared bandwidth but not double the top end speed.

In as many cases as they can, Sprint is trading some of their bandwidth with other carriers so that both end up with more contiguous bandwidth.  Both carriers can then change to 10x10, 15x15, or 20x20.

Can anyone tell how service is at the Disney parks currently. I will be traveling down there next week on vacation just curious to know.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

Most people in the Disney World parks are are on capped data plans so they are using the free, no sign-in required, Disney WiFi which seems to run well enough to use it in most places in the parks.  It is more than fast enough to use the Disney app and whatever else you want to do on your mobile device.  That leaves all the mobile providers working quite well in the area since most everyone at the parks is off loaded to WiFi.

Updated original post to reflect plan/information changes from Karma.

You may want to update the section on Pulse to make it clear that Pulse is a monthly subscription "use it or lose it" to those data buckets.  Additional data can be purchased at $15 per 1GB if you run out of data in the pulse buckets.

Yes, no one could have seen that coming. 

I still do not understand why they did not just make slow unlimited data an extra cost add-on option to their new Pulse plans for use when the high-speed Pulse data has been used up.  Many people want their data to continue even at slow speed after they hit their cap.  That is just a way to make data caps not suck quite as much. 

Pulse is their new monthly plans where the user purchases 5GB/$40, 10GB/$75, 20GB/$140 and it renews each month. if you do not use all your high speed data, you are refunded the amount you did not use.

Be careful with the terminology, as "20x20" is accepted widely as 20 MHz FDD.  It has nothing to do with CA.  For that, something along the lines of 2x CA or 20+20 MHz TDD is more appropriate.

 

AJ

You Sir are correct.  I should have used 20+20 rather than 20x20.  Force of habit. 

I still believe that I am correct that every 20+20 CA band 41 sector can easily provide the bandwidth for a heavily used mini-macro relay and can provide the bandwidth for several lightly used mini-macro relays.  This means that we should be able to see at least 9 mini-macro relays per macro site if there are 3 sectors on that site and that site has 6 band 41 carriers per sector.

If I understand this LTE Relay mini-macro concept properly, it seems as though a single macro sector with 20x20 CA could easily support a Band 25, Band 26 and a band 41 LTE carrier with a couple voice carriers and not even be dedicated bandwidth.  All the end users on the mini-macro would see would be a limitation in upload speed. If there were 2 chains of 20x20x20 CA on the macro site for each sector it should easily be able to support 3 LTE relay mini-macros that were being moderately used and even more relays per sector if they were lightly used or if the macro bandwidth was dedicated.

That is 9 mini-macro LTE relays per macro tower with the macro tower still able to do its normal work.  That is a lot of extra coverage.

If existing cell towers remain the same, and it is about small cell deployment, then where is the 1 billion in cost saving coming from? I agree with you that whoever wrote that article is really confused.  It is almost impossible for Sprint to relocate current towers onto government properties without adversely affect service even more so than NV1.  

Cost savings could be about getting rid of some of the macro sites that only exist for capacity and switching entire areas to small cells on light poles.  If there are dense small cells blanketing much of the area the macro site covers, they may not need the macro site for capacity over the top any longer and can remove it while providing the macro overlay by tuning nearby sites.

I do not have one of these but let's think about the business model of NeverStop a little:

• Unlimited internet at 5mb/s
• 5 mb/s symmetrical is more than fast enough for most current home use other than multiple simultaneous video streams but it should work well for 1 HD stream. 
• Easy to defeat limit of 3 devices in the logon process by putting a WiFi extender in front of it and then logging in through that to provide access to all the devices in a home or business.
• Works anywhere the Sprint network reaches including places where there is no land line internet.  You do want LTE on Sprint to get the fastest speeds but it even works at a slower speed on Sprint 3G.
• Better ping time and more cost effective than Satellite internet.
• Faster upload speed and similar download speed to AT&T's fastest DSL speeds of 6mb/s down and 1 mb/s up - http://www.att.net/speedtiers

• Price point equal to about 10GB of their data which means they do not make the money they planned on if their average usage is above 10GB of data per month.

In my honest opinion, they should have made NeverStop a $20 per month add on to their refuel data packages that runs at 512kb/s whenever your refuel data runs out.  There still would be some abuse but I cannot see NeverStop being profitable for them any other way.

Look, my basic argument is this. The wireless industry, under what amounts to a pretty much net neutral conditions, seems big enough at the national level for 3 players or maybe even just two. Just look at how many years profits have been dominated by the big two. Why is that? Capex and opex cost are high, this favors scale. What is the driver of these cost, not telephony but ISP driven by the exponential growth in content demand. Given that this is a two sided market (ISP and content together and only together deliver a product which is consumable) there is a open question as to how much of those costs should be distributed where and how consumers would prefer this distribution (i.e. Would consumer prefer more ISP choices or more Netflix imitators). This is better worked out by the market.

 

If consumer prefer more wireless ISP providers the shift in profits means more national wireless carriers will be viable. If you favor net neutrality you are saying you are in favor of using the government to make sure the market supports fewer ISPs choices than consumers want. That to me doesn't makes any kind of sense.

For the past 25 years or so, internet providers have been able to make money by providing access to the internet without these gimmicks. The ones that could not were forced out of business by their owners and creditors.

There always has been a lot of wireless and wired internet providers.  There isn't some magic number of 2 or 3 who can make money in this industry.  I am not sure where you get that idea.  Where I live in the Chicago Suburbs with a quick search i found that there are 2 wired internet providers to my house, 4 fixed wireless providers (WISPs) that provide service to my house, 14 business internet providers that provide services to businesses and offices near my house, several satellite providers, 4 large mobile telephone providers, 10 or so alternate carriers that ride on one of the big 4 mobile telephone networks, and numerous other smaller internet providers.

Mobile telephone companies are now basically mobile wireless internet provider companies (WISPs) with some complex legacy equipment for voice and text messaging.  They operate on limited shared wireless bandwidth and large numbers of cell "towers".

ISPs are perfectly capable of making money the way they always have.  They can sell companies and customers a connection to the internet for a fair price that they can make money at and customers are willing to pay.  If they cannot survive in this model, they can go out of business and have their assets sold off to some other company who can run that business properly.  This is how capitalism works when operating in a regulated field.  You cannot just make up new ways of making money that violate government regulations.

Given that neither, content or ISPs can exist without each other the market is a two sided one. Which means costs and profits are most efficiently spread between the two. ISPs argue they are being stuck with most of the costs ( which increases returns to scale) and what content providers to cover some of the capital costs. Are they right? That depends on the consumer, in any case the anti-net neutrality case isn't with out its merits and I am supportive of it.

You do realize that customers pay for their bandwidth and the content providers pay for their bandwidth right?  That is already both sides paying.  I am not sure how you are arguing for content providers getting in bed with ISP's to limit customer choice while increasing ISP profit is good for the customer.  If the pricing that is already being charged to the content providers and the customers is not sufficient to cover the costs of operating their network, they can raise the price or cut their operating costs.

Violating the spirit and in some cases the letter of the law of Net Neutrality as passed by the FCC while screwing the customer certainly does not help the customer.

For iOS devices, messaging is still handled by the Nationwide Sprint Network. If you do not have coverage then messaging services are not supported. This functionality is expected to be supported over Wi-Fi in the future. iMessage on iOS is supported over Wi-Fi.

Keep in mind that IOS devices use the iMessage protocol over the data network by default so apple to apple messaging generally works fine with data over Wi-Fi, LTE, 3G, or 1X.  You only need the cell network for SMS or MMS messages to or from non-apple sources as then your IOS device will default back to standard SMS/MMS protocols.

http://www.neowin.net/news/psa-turn-off-this-ios-9-setting-if-you-dont-have-an-unlimited-data-plan

My daughter came to me yesterday asking why she was using a huge amount of LTE data since her phone was upgraded to IOS 9.0.1.  She is on a capped data plan and was concerned that she burned through 10% of her data plan in 2 days.  I checked around her phone and found a new setting under Settings - Cellular that is hidden all the way at the bottom called Wi-Fi Assist.  This setting is new in IOS 9.0.1 and defaults to on.

The description of Wi-Fi Assist is that it automatically switches you from Wi-Fi to cellular when your Wi-Fi connectivity is poor.  How this appears to work is if your Wi-Fi strength indicator gets low, it automatically switches to the cellular radio for your data.  This means that in places where you used to use Wi-Fi, your phone will now be using your cellular data.  This is certainly not something she wanted as she would have run out of her monthly data plan in 20 days.

My suggestion is to turn that setting off as soon as you can.

Where?  o.0   ;-)

 

I'm guessing something government or financial given the degree of diversity and the carriers chosen. Then again, generic enterprise makes similarly odd decisions.  ;-)

Your guess is correct and that is all I will say on it.

Would a bidirectional microwave ring design or feed from two directions be an effective alternative? 

I am not as well versed with network infrastructure as mhammett is, but I know a few things about it and have been around it for many years so I will attempt to answer this question.

In almost every network design, having at least two completely separate paths for the data to follow is considered to be better than one.  This is why nearly all major data centers are located very near an IX or have an IX inside of them.  Multiple data paths not only increase the total data throughput available but add redundancy for when a network link is cut by construction, congested, rain fade blockage or misalignment affects one of the microwave transfer paths, or for any other reason one data path is not working optimally.  It is not uncommon for important data networks to follow a ring pattern or a ring of data rings so that is there are always at least two paths for the data to follow.  Hardwired and wireless can both contribute to the redundant paths as long as they really are redundant and separate.  Redundant links for the internet and local networks were designed and implemented by the US Defense Department DARPA and research institutions well before home and business users were ever allowed on the internet.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-healing_ring for how redundant network links work.

A data center that I have worked with in the past has backbone interconnects (both fiber and microwave) for AT&T, Sprint,and Comcast, plus it has several smaller carriers on either dedicated fiber, microwave, or both.  It is used partially as a backup data center for one of the large Chicago data centers listed in the original post by mhammett.  It has multiple ways to get data to and from its primary data center.  If any data path is down (for example AT&T), the redundant nature of the networks causes it to automatically route around the problem to stay functional by possibly routing through Sprint or Comcast to a different IX and then back into AT&T's network.  See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Router_%28computing%29 for how enterprise routers work.

In my opinion, Sprint should have rapidly deployed microwave in addition to the already in place slow wired connections (multiple T-1s) for any site it was having trouble getting the enhanced wired back haul to.  Obviously this would not have worked for locations where the antenna location could not support the weight or positioning of direct line of sight microwave equipment.  This would have allowed Sprint to have the bandwidth available quickly in many more locations.  They could have then rapidly deployed Network Vision and it would have given them some connectivity redundancy.  Some effects of this additional microwave use would have been a higher installation cost, more power usage, and possibly higher lease costs due to the additional tower weight for the microwave equipment.  I believe it would have been worth it to get NV done quickly but I do not make decisions for Sprint.  It appears that Sprint went with a less expensive option that took longer, left them with no redundancy, and made it look to others that they could not execute quickly.  Marcello and Son appear to be changing this type of decision making within the senior ranks of the company.

Mr. Toad

I've read the best wireless network in Disney is AT&T, because of some special arrangement they have with the park. It sure doesn't seem fair to the other carriers, and I wonder why there isn't more of an outcry about it from them, considering their loss. Unless of course I'm not getting the whole story about it from what I read.

The best wireless network in Disney World is the Disney WIFI network.  It is available for free at all the hotels and covers nearly all of the outside area in the parks and much of the area inside the buildings.  I had Disney WIFI almost everywhere I went when I was there in April.  That left the macro networks working fine since all they have to cover is people traveling outside of the parks and hotels and the locals who live or work in the area. 

LTE usually will not be a decent competitor for corporate or venue WIFI unless they have a well built DAS at that location.  Macro networks cannot handle very large groups of people in the same place very well.  That is true for all carriers.

I have Sprint and my Wife has AT&T.  Both networks were just fine since we were on Disney WIFI nearly all the time and when we weren't on WIFI, there was plenty of capacity on the macro network.

Taking my family to Disney this week for the first time. I'm excited to see what a tri-band device can do in the Orlando market! We'll be in Miami, West Palm Beach, Orlando, and Venice on our trip - the sensorly maps had me pretty optimistic about coverage & speeds.

I was there 2 months ago.  The coverage was good but not great.  I was on a iPhone 5S however so your experience may be better than mine.  Disney's free WIFI covers all their hotels and all their parks and was slow at times but nearly always usable.  I usually found Sprint LTE to be a little slower than the Disney WIFI and just auto-connected to Disney WIFI whenever it was available.  Because of the large number of people on WIFI the macro LTE network has enough capacity available to work with those crowds.

Recommendation: Bring a external battery and charging cord to the parks.  People use mobile devices a lot when they are there.

More importantly, how big does a screen have to be before 1080p is insufficient?

http://carltonbale.com/1080p-does-matter/  Use the form under the article and above the comments to see when an average person with 20/20 vision could see all the detail on screens of different sizes at different resolutions and different distances. 

Just for fun, I plugged in a 7 inch diagonal screen which is larger than all telephones have.  7 inches is actually the size of the smaller tablets.  The form states that you need to have your screen 2 feet or closer to see all the detail at 480p resolution and 1 foot or closer to see all the detail at 1080p resolutions.  It says you have to have the screen 0 feet or closer to see the detail at 4K resolution.

I do not know how close you like to keep your telephone screen from your face but I am guessing that you keep it 1.5 to 3 feet away when looking at it when watching video on it.  This means that your eyes likely cannot see the difference between 480p and 4k resolution.  You would have an even more difficult time seeing the difference if you were on a smaller screen than 7 inches diagonal.

There were hundreds of thousands of people at the Indianapolis 500 race.  When the race was over, many thousands of people try to get for a taxi to get them out of the area.  Taxis have special road routes in and out assigned only to them as the number of cars leaving the parking areas overwhelm the Speedway road system for hours.  Many people including my party of 6 prefer getting away from there quickly and safely. The Taxi and bus routes within about 5 miles of the area are enforced by local police and barricades.

Uber was a sponsor at the race to help with the shortage of taxis for this event.  All Uber cars had a special notice in their window so that police could direct them through the taxi routes to assist with the overload of people.  When the race was over, the Speedway taxi pickup area, which was about a half a mile away from the track and outside of the range of the COWs, had an Uber booth with Uber representatives to assist people with getting rides.  Unfortunately all the providers were swamped and not working other than Sprint.  I was able to make my reservation with no issues other than a little slowness in my iPhone 5S.

The Uber table had MiFi devices from Sprint and Verizon to help people with connectivity.  Uber was recommending that if you were having trouble using the Uber app, that you connect your wifi to their MiFi device.  The only issue was the Verizon MiFi was overloaded and so was their macro network.  Verizon slowed to a crawl and was barely working.  T-Mobile essentially stopped. AT&T was overloaded and started timing out.  Sprint was very slow but worked without timeouts or any other issues.  The Uber people were directing everyone from other providers onto their Sprint MiFi and Sprint hotspot devices.  In my party, I had fairly recent devices from all 4 major providers in the area. 

People from other providers were remarking at how Sprint used to be really bad in that area and were amazed Sprint was now the best provider to use there.  Sprint will likely be getting some new customers from that experience.  Maybe Sprint got lucky and their COWs happened to cover out to there but I expect that everything was working just because of more than one band 41 carrier gave them more capacity than the other providers away from the track.  Verizon is an Indianapolis 500 sponsor.

Using 3G only mode right now at the speedway since LTE 800 and 1900 are slammed. My wife can't use data on her AT&T iPhone 5S at all so she is using my Sprint iPhone hotspot.

Sent from my iPhone 5S using Tapatalk

I've often wondered, what is the minimum upload speed to use for voice over WiFi calling?

Voice over IP (VOIP) services will work with as low a 30kbps upload and download.  VOIP sounds best with 90Kbps upload and download and requires a low ping rate to work properly.  This means your ping time must be less than 250ms (1/4 of a second).  Satellite internet does not work well because of the high ping time and the ping time must also be fairly steady.  Home broadband connections (not dial-up) are a minimum of 128Kbps upload and 512Kbps download on even the slowest plan and most have a slowest speed that is at least 4 times those speeds so almost everyone can run VOIP.

If you do not have QOS voice prioritization on your home network, VOIP will break up horribly if you are doing things like downloading large files, streaming, torrenting, or anything that maxes out either your upload or download bandwidth while talking on the telephone.  QOS fixes this problem by re-ordering your data packets so that the packets your router thinks are high priority are uploaded first.  QOS does very little on the download side but that is usually fine since upload speeds are often much slower than download speeds on home internet connections.