bruce

yeah the towers around my house got updated to nv last year in january. And still no lte upgrade

 

Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk

I know that it has been mentioned too many times about backhaul being the main culprit in holding things up. It seems like something that should shift the blame away from sprint onto the backhaul provider, but after a year who is to blame? 

In my area, optimum is the provider. At&t uses them too and every site of theirs has lte with a speed capability of more than 50mbps. 

Most cell sites in my area are on top of buildings that have multiple carriers. So if a roof that has Verizon At&t and Sprint sites, why would optimum put backhaul for one and not the other? It just seems so backward...if Sprint wants to be competitive and gain customers, they should make sure to persist with the backhaul to get out there and just do it. There should be no reason to have 3g sites sit dormant.

I don't understand why you would say that considering you are a Sponsor and can see the maps. LI has gotten updates on a regular basis from the day the first site was installed.

Very True. There are updates happening every month, but some sites are just sitting on 3g, one for more than a year now. He was probably just trying to give me insight as to why sites are sitting and by the time May rolls around, he hopes it will be 4glte

Where are the NYC updates. They've been lacking. A bunch of permits got approved pretty recently so I'm sure we'll see a bunch of 3G upgraded sites soon enough.

I have noticed in my area that there have not been updates for a while. I spoke to a sprint business manager that supposedly sits in on meetings with management and he told me not to expect anymore updates in Long Island until May. 

Should I believe him?

Nowhere is this article did it say Sprint came out on top. It said At&t and Verizon had more coverage than Sprint most of the time. Sprint's LTE was non existent most of the trip and Sprint had the most bars when it came to 3G which is no surprise there since EVDO is not as fragile. Post needs a more accurate title.

I agree, the article also said that coverage was non existent for a large part of the trip.

There will ALWAYS be complaints of patchy calls and dropped calls. Part of that is due to people being inside of a structure, part of that being due to service outages, and sometimes even the phones. We should absolutely see a giant decrease in complaints though with the addition of 800 on voice, and LTE. Sprint reps say what they are allowed to say. If they went around making promises saying that tower will be done by january 21st, and it wasn't done by then? Well then, you've just increased complaints by X, multiplied how many people saw the post and then add another 2 people on top of that lol. It's better to provide a 90 day time frame, which in reality is a good guestimation. 

 

One thing is for sure. Service (both voice and data). absolutely 100% will improve. It would be impossible for it not too improve with all of upgrades. 

Thank you for replying to my post. The thing is, when I tried out sprint last month, I had many issues with dropped calls. I kept on telling my friends that its going to get better in the future. I asked someone on sprint how often he drops a call and he said when he drives, he drops one every other day. My friends said to me that is not how phones are supposed to work, esp in our day and age. Many people have grown to live with it and think its normal, but coming from verizon, it was something I have not experienced ever. 

If you say that there will always be complaints of patchy calls, I have not made one call to verizon in 13 years about a downed tower. But in my first week with sprint I filed 2 network tickets. Is it possible that it has to do with the amounts of sites verizon has vs the amount sprint has?

You need to put this into perspective. It wouldn't be slow. Sprint will have Band 25/26 LTE over its entire network this year, and Band 41 complete over the Clearwire network in the Top 25 markets and Band 41 underway with weekly acceptances on NV sites in the Top 100. So this year, Sprint will surpass Tmo on POPs covered. Soon Sprint will be able to claim more POPs and way, way more square mileage of LTE. Tmo is getting near the end of their LTE deployment plan. It stops at just what it has covered with WCDMA. So not only will Sprint have LTE on its whole network, where Tmo doesn't (and ATT too), but it will also have LTE on low frequency spectrum. And even though Band 41 speeds will not be consistent across any market this year, Tmo LTE speeds are not consistent throughout any of their markets either. Legere quotes top theoretical speeds, and the tech media gives him a pass as if network will perform that way in real world conditions. Sprint will be competitive this year, even if it takes two years for a 100% build out of Band 41 in the Top 100 markets. Don't forget, Sprint has committed to adding Band 41 sites to make a denser network. This is the biggest factor in the completion date being two years out. Not the speed of conversion. Band 41 conversion of Clearwire sites and Band 41 being added to NV sites is going to be relatively quick. And Sprint is prioritizing the order for Band 41 conversions to the busiest sites first and working its way down. Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Does this mean that in a year from now, there will be no complaints anywhere about dropped calls and patchy lte? Everyday there are new posts on the sprint community website about service issues and obviously we all know the standard response from the social care. Should we expect that in a year, that website will no longer be full of complaints? 

I want to switch back, but if a year from now they still say generic lines like "90 days" or "within 6 months"   its going to be hard to believe.

Here's the issue. No one can really respond. I have had messages truncated before on all carriers. I've also had messages come out of order before on all carriers. We don't all experience the problem you mention you're having on Sprint. So, really, we cannot help you. It is a common and not unique problem to only the Sprint network.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Thank you for your replies.

Hello!

I wish I could believe this. My gf lives in Long Island and with my iPhone 4S (just got a 5S), I had abysmal service. 

 

I tried to do some research about this and found this:

http://www.rootmetrics.com/compare-carriers/united-states/new-york/new-york-city-and-tri-state-area-november-2013/

 

We have the lowest data speeds, network reliability, call, and text reliability  in the whole tri-state region. 

I just said that a few days ago. I wish it was true, but I think Verizon has the best site spacing. Bars don't really matter, because with Verizon on 1 bar you could do more than with a lot of Sprint sites on 5 bars. Add the fact that verizon is building platforms and new sites every week ( I know the person that builds most of the platforms for the Long Island and Manhattan areas)

I tried sprint and it did not work out. Hopefully it will work in the future. 

 

Why are you paying for international text when you can use an app like group me. All my friends use it, we have a chat where we all shoot the shit and make fun of each other.

 

Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk

 

The phone in question is a basic phone, so no apps

If it was a smartphone then  whatsapp is what I would use. I don't want to be like a troll, but my questions was skimmed over. The main point was not the out of orderness, but rather the time delay of minutes to hours, vs the seconds it took on verizon.

True...Messages sent within the US from Verizon to Verizon will come in as one unbroken message. From Verizon to other carriers, its broken up but sent right away so the messages are put in order. Also, from Verizon to Canada its one long message.

From Sprint to Canada they were broken up and out of order and delayed to many minutes apart.

I wonder if anyone has insight into this one.

I have verizon and tried out sprint for a bit last month. With verizon I am able to text friends in Canada and we both receive the messages instantly with no problems. When I was using sprint, my friend told me that the messages were coming in, but in block form like 160 characters and then another 160 characters. The messages were broken up and also coming in 1 minute, sometimes 5 minute intervals, so and not in order. So it was hard for the recipient to tell the order that the message was supposed to be in.

On my end, I was getting the messages in minute intervals and sometimes a few hours later. Messages coming locally had no issues, and I am in an upgraded area as well, so this does not seem like an issue that playing the waiting game will fix. Why is their such a difference in the way verizon processes international text versus Sprint?

Question with this student plan. There does not seem to be any information regarding rules with this plan besides for the fine print. 

Best buy is now offering the kyocera kona for 49.99.     You can go and get that for for that price, and technically get 1 year of free service (plus tax)

Can you go ahead and switch the kona for a phone that you currently own or bought at ebay? Because then you theoretically have a year of free service for 49.99

The one thing that I can think that prevents this is the basic phones activate on a plan that has unlimited talk and text, with no data. If you try to activate the other phone, will it change to the other free plan with 1gb of data, or completely kick you off to the fully paid plan?

and bryce, thank you for taking the time to reply to my question, I really appreciate it

Verizon and AT&T are their own backhaul providers. T-Mobile had enhanced backhaul for a few years now, so that comparison is definitely not fair. In my testing, Sprint maintained at least 3 bats while travelling throughout Long Island. My mother's phone of Verizon dropped to 1 bar several times. Ultimately your signal inside your home is variable to different things including distance from the cell tower and where your nearest tower is. You should know upgrades are moving as fast as they can and ultimately those fast speeds are left to backhaul and whether the ISP can get it to the site in a timely matter, which it hasn't done as of yet.

 

We all wish it'd be going faster but for a project of this size, it doesn't go Mich faster than this. In a few years when those other 3 carriers find themselves having to upgrade their network, they'll sew how hard it is to redo their whole network.

I hope you are right about that. 

I have not seen any plans of sprint expanding coverage to the size that verizon has...will this likely happen?

Also, the question about the ability of verizon to build new sites with the new platforms in a matter of a week has still yet to be answered. Verizon also puts generators on every new build, does sprint do that?

NYC is covered insanely well by T-Mobile. However, Sprint has been right on their tail with site spacing.

 

In the city itself it is probably T-Mobile, Sprint, Verizon, AT&T. In the metropolitan area (Long Island, a bit of Upstate New York and parts of New Jersey and Connecticut) it goes, Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile.

I would love to believe this but I currently have verizon and tried sprint for a week and a half this past month. I am in the Long Island area and had many dropped calls, something that I have never experienced with Verizon. A lot of times the phone went to 1x and roaming when inside a house. I understand that upgrades are happening, but its a very slow process, at least that is what I have learned from asking around.

Not to sound like a troll (because I do want sprint to get better) why does it take so long to change over equipment, get from 3g to 4g accepted? There is a site that has been 3g accepted for a year and people say its permit issue or backhaul issue, thats why its not lte accepted yet. But that is not true because every other carrier is on that same roof and they all have lte with no backhaul issue. 

Another thing is I have a friend who I see every week. He is in the steel business and he builds platforms for cell sites. Every week he tells me he put up a new platform for verizon. He must have put in at least 3 platforms a month for the past year, all for verizon. Why does verizon not seem to have the same issues as sprint (permits, equipment, wire, backhaul)

Thanks for the reply. Another note is that sprint was roaming in those places so other carriers had good service. I know that verizon had almost full bars. I do not know if they had small cell's

Question- Maybe some people here have experience with this.

I was in a shopping mall where the site is a legacy site, not touched by NV at all. Inside the mall there was 3g, not even this site would load, and then in many stores it was 1x and some stores it dropped to roaming. Question is, once NV is performed to this site, should there be issues like these in those stores? Will 800mhz fix this?

One more thing. Does sprint plan on bringing native coverage to places that it has roaming? I am talking about upstate NY, but in general, do you think coverage will be expanded?

Without question, what you experienced was due to upgrades being in progress, not due to a lack of coverage. Meaning that probably very very soon that would have changed dramatically. If your talking about long island, it has been very very active lately(upgrading), and would definitely explain your dropped calls. Now, if your talking about the financial district, that's another story all together, but I can tell you without a doubt, my voice quality is quite great after the upgrades (and some calls in HD Voice!) and haven't dropped a call in ages where I go (all over downtown, midtown, uptown and the bronx) all post NV. 

We kept 2 lines active on sprint for the family members that do not mind dropped calls, so I can monitor the progress through their phones. 

Why do people say the financial district is a mess? I have heard people say its because of what sandy did, but I can say that I have no issues there with verizon, and I did not have enough time with sprint to see what its like over there.

So after taking a trial on sprint (from verizon) I decided to cancel with sprint and go back to verizon. Its really a shame because I got a pretty good deal on sprint for a lot of lines. I have been with verizon for 13 years and don't remember dropping calls ever, and as soon as I got on with sprint, I must have dropped at least 24 calls in one week.

I have been keeping my eye on sprint and its progress for the past year and a half, and pulled the trigger when they upgraded the tower right next to my house. The data speeds were excellent but even though it was upgraded, the voice was not good, and I had many issues with dropped calls. 

I would see how they are in about half a year, but it was so bad, that I would not let myself be locked into a contract with the service I was experiencing. 

Does anyone think that eventually sprint will be a true rival to verizon? Its hard to believe, because a year and a half ago, I told myself that I would check sprint out in a year and still its pretty bad.

I want to stick around. The phone that was experiencing voice calls with bad quality was actually a basic phone, not a smartphone. And the texts coming in late happened when the phones were connected to a tower that had been upgraded already.

I still have a few days to walk away before I am locked into a contract. I recently switched from verizon to sprint, and personally I am doing pretty well with it. But, I have been getting complaints from family members, about calls that do not sound clear and test messages coming in late. 

I know that sprint is redoing everything from the ground up, including ripping out old equipment and replacing it with new. The part that concerns me is that the calls that sound bad are being made from a block away from the sprint site. I saw them redo the entire site, with the new NV cabinets and the whole deal. I know that the phones are connected to this site, but still the call quality is not good. 

Does anyone have any insight into the issue? The late text messages are probably going to be a deal breaker.

I'm not going to make that work-around change to mine.  From what I wiki'd about it, that is a variable voice codec.  I'm not so sure it's such a good idea to mess around with that.  I was going to order a N5, but now the latest update for the N5 took away the fantastic RF qualities that it had - at least from what I have read.  I guess I'll just hold on to this G2 until something better comes along with great sound and great RF.  The G2 call quality is disappointing at best.  My other phone (a Verizon Droid Bionic), sounds so good it's just like being on a landline.  The bionic has a really rich warm sounding earpiece. The G2 isn't anywhere close to that, it's very tinny. 

Very Tinny. This was the first phone I activated on sprint. I am coming from verizon and was testing mine before porting the rest over. I almost sent every phone back, but I activated an iphone to test and the iphone sounds very good. I want to hold onto this because its the only spark phone that I like. Hopefully the new HTC one will come out soon and I will sell this and buy the HTC. The g2 should not depreciate that much for resale value.

Yup, I got the update (I think) on Friday. I manually checked and it was there. Around 110 mb uodate. I have not noticed an improvement. I was thinking of should I go back to that menu and renable what I disabled? (the workaround that was posted a bit ago)

I have the G2 and its a great phone. I have noticed along with many people that the call quality is very lacking compared to any other phone. It has hissing and crackling. Next to a sprint iphone, the iphone sounds much better. I also have some issues with the signal bars fluctuating a lot. I dropped 2 calls and I was right next to the tower that is broadcasting upgraded 3g and 4g lte. I have not had any issues with the iphone. 

In my opinion, the HTC ONE is the nicest phone, and its speakers are amazing (lg g2 speakers are low). I want to get the next version of the HTC one when it comes out, so I think I will hold onto the G2 because it will have the highest resale value when the time comes around.

Does anyone have any experience with the g2 and its call quality? A workaround was posted to disable something in a menu, but even after that, it has not helped 100 percent. It made it better, but when I have it on speaker in the car I can not hear it clearly. Its a shame, and why has sprint not made any announcement about the issue?

I would say to give it another year... that's when Sprint might be ready for prime time. Not yet however. You will be disappointed if you came from Verizon or AT&T.

Thats what makes me nervous. I just came from Verizon and I can count on one hand the amount of dropped calls in the past 12 years. 

I am not worried so much about data speed for now, I just want to know if call and text will be solid in the financial district. Does anyone have any information about that?