michael73072

I think a tower next to my house is starting to have eCSFB issues, but I will have to do some more investigating. This is around 24th SE and HWY 9.

I haven't been in Norman recently but I can tell you that in many parts of the metro I have almost seamless lte now. Band 26 has been improving rapidly. Give Ericsson some time to finish the optimization and I bet it will really knock the socks off T-Mobile coverage wise. You might want to consider upgrading to a better supported device too. It's my understanding that the nexus 5 is the red headed stepchild of triband devices.

 

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How's building penetration?

Personally, I would rather have LTE in most places I go, than get stuck on EDGE and GPRS every time I leave the city limits.  Even if that LTE was slower in urban areas.  But Tmo is counting on customers like you who can live with only good service in the city.

 

I have to ask...Why is it that Sprint who is actively deploying Spark like gangbusters needs to get its act together?  However, Tmo, which has not even started turning over any rural sites from EDGE or GPRS to LTE you say they will be in a powerful position?  You give Tmo a pass on something extremely important that will be done sometime in the future, but you are critical of Sprint for something they are doing correct and actively doing right now.

 

I hope you can appreciate why your post grates on my nerves.  

 

Robert

You raise a lot of good points, thank you for your response. It was not my intention to irritate anyone, I just wanted to share my opinion. My main grief with Sprint right now is that, in the city, I will drop to 3G when in between cell towers. (Not due to eCSFB) I just feel like this isn't acceptable to still have these coverage holes in major areas. I hope band 26 will fix this, but I think Sprint ultimately needs to add more cell sites. I do not mind Sprint's LTE speeds, but dropping to 3G is really painful. I am almost certain that this doesn't happen on the other 3 carriers.

Thank you for your hard work on the website.

Michael

I just finished my test drive with T-Mobile, and I have to say that their network is much better than Sprint's in the Norman area. I really hope this will change once we get official Sprint Spark, but as it stands now I was getting better outdoor and indoor coverage with T-Mobile. I also took a trip to Arkansas, and in between cities T-Mobile was down to EDGE and GPRS, which was pretty much unusable. I couldn't even get a speed test to run. The signal strength was great, though, so once they finish their 2G to LTE conversion I think T-Mobile will be in a very powerful position.

When in buildings, I only occasionally fell back to HSPA+, but that was still faster than Sprint LTE. I got a maximum speeds of 38 Mbps down and 20 Mbps up. Average was about 25-30 Mbps down and 15 Mbps up. I am still hoping Sprint will get it's act together, but I'm having a hard time coming up with reasons to stick with them.

If you guys have any questions, I am more than happy to answer them!

Ugggg, Things are getting worse. Even with band 26 disabled I'm now getting bumped to 3g in most of the places I frequent. Ironically the tower I connect to at home is one of the few that I can connect to both band 25 and 26, which is all good and great except for the fact that I use wifi at home. How is it that ericsson can cock things up this badly?

This is the last thing Sprint needs. Enthusiasts understand why this is happening, but the average consumer expects their phone to work without these silly issues.

Anyone else trying out the T-Mobile test drive thing?

The sad thing is that here AT&T just does not have the quality to justify their market share. Their voice quality is garbage, they are running a 5x5mhz lte deployment just like Sprint, and yet people keep flocking to them because they have "more bars". If price is no object Verizon is really the one to have here, they have 800/1900mhz CDMA 1x and evdo, 750/aws lte, and the fewest subscribers on their network of the big 4. The only downsides are the price and mediocre voice quality(it's still better than the garbage voice of at&t though).

 

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What do you think of T-Mobile? Their plan of upgrading every single EDGE tower to LTE by the end of next year sounds really good. I don't think they will be able to deploy 700Mhz LTE in the OKC market though.

Sprint needs more cell density there for band 41, even with 8T8R Nokia Networks radios that push out B41 to similar distances as PCS signals.

Wait, I was under the impression that band 41 travels a long distance but has poor material penetration. Is this incorrect?

When looking at the sponsor maps, it seems like Sprint doesn't have very many towers in the OKC metro compared to other areas like Houston or Dallas. Why is this? Are they planning on adding more sites to fill coverage gaps, or do they expect band 41 to fix this? Perhaps the sponsor maps don't show every site, but that seems unlikely.

On a more positive note, I'm running into band 26 all over Norman!

Just got band 26 at my house in southeast Norman!

The old town area has horrible coverage on any phone. The nearest tower is still legacy.

 

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What's going on then? Are there very strict building codes regarding cell towers? Thanks for confirming that I'm not going crazy. It seems weird that an important tourist area would have awful coverage.

I'm in St. Augustine for a couple days and the coverage has been abysmal in the old town area. I would either roam or get very weak 1x or 3G. Only about 10-25% of the time would be on LTE. Is this a problem with my phone, or is something else going on here? I'm using a Nexus 5.