leozno1

The frequency has very, very little to do with LTE speeds. As was stated earlier, LTE is very signal strength dependent. If you are seeing a low, or noisy signal, you will not have good speeds. See this post to determine your LTE signal http://s4gru.com/ind...ignal-strength/

Well that's not entirely true since they are somewhat correlated. If LTE is deployed on a higher frequency it can affect your signal strength more than LTE deployed on a lower frequency if you go indoors or move further away from the tower. But you are definitely correct that in perfect conditions the frequency does not affect LTE speeds.

Thanks bud ! I wasnt positive that it was 1700mhz.... hence the "I believe" lol Ive been reading so much about

 

this wasnt sure if I remembered what I had read,thanks for correcting me there.The tower location according to the

 

maps provided in a previous post in this thread show that im less then a half mile from the tower,so Im sure my

 

signal isnt low.Now back to my question will these speeds improve or is this as good as it gets?

Sprint's speeds will definitely improve over time. Hagerstown is not done upgrading so there is potential that a tower will light up closer to your home and provide you with stronger signal. LTE speed is greatly dependent on signal strength so while you may see 4mbps in your home, if you stand outside and run the speed test again, in some cases you can easily get speeds that are twice as fast.

Also in regards to the rollout not being complete, next year Sprint will be rolling out LTE on Sprint's 800Mhz spectrum which will travel much farther and penetrate buildings much better than their current 1900Mhz spectrum so inside your home you will see greatly improved speeds. Sprint's LTE is definitely in its infancy and you can definitely expect many improvements over the course of the upcoming months and throughout the course of next year.

I'll give it half an hour before mods close this thread as it has been talk about before, but...

 

Sprint's primary use for Clearwire's 2500/2600 spectrum is as an offload band in high-density environments. Where capacity is an issue, TD-LTE in 2600 is lit until capacity is no longer an issue. This is done on a site-by-site basis, though Softbank's ulterior motive for getting more TD-LTE 2600 out there (economies of scale back home in Japan) may bias things toward more LTE 2600 rather than less.

 

That said, you won't see TD-LTE 2600 on every tower, unless something really crazy happens, for example someone (Sprint or some MVNO of theirs, maybe even Dish) wants to do fixed wireless using BRS/EBS spectrum, you won't see TD-LTE 2600 on every NV site. In the mobile environment, there just isn't the need for that much capacity over that small of an area (at 2500/2600 on a mobile device you're playing the odds if you try to get service more than a mile from the tower).

 

Also, Sprint doesn't own 850 MHz spectrum at all. Just SMR (aka 800), PCS (usually 30MHz of A-F, plus 10MHz of G) and now BRS, plus some leases on EBS (2500/2600 MHz). With the proper network architecture, they've got a decent amount of air link capacity to do with what they wish, though PCS H or S band...or more PCS...wouldn't hurt in the long run.

I think that was their original plan with Clearwire but I think that was only because they would still have to pay Clearwire based on usage so they only wanted to use them when necessary. But now that Sprint intends to buy them outright, Sprint no longer needs to pay Clearwire for using their spectrum and it would be Sprint's spectrum to do as they please with. Perhaps they don't do it now or next year, but I think its plausible that they can put LTE 2500 on all towers. Well in the cities at least since it doesn't really do anything to have LTE 2500 in the rural areas since those towers wont really be strained and 2500 range isn't as good as 1900 or 800.

I don't know how they decided when to announce cities, I agree that coverage hasn't changed much since they announced the Black Friday markets, perhaps they were waiting for coverage in the surrounding area, which has changed.

 

Just be happy you're in a Shentel area, AL is really moving quickly with their upgrades for that market for some reason.

Yea I'm pretty satisfied with the rate at which Shentel is moving, they are not playing around. Also Robert seems to have received a good deal of Shentel deployment information as there are a lot more sites shown on the NV Sites Complete map as well as "In Progress" Shentel sites.

The announcements, press releases, don't change anything in regards to coverage or speeds. It just means that the marketing team thinks there is enough coverage that they can officially announce it. Coverage will still grow and fill in even after official announcements.

Since following this site I've learned to accept that, although my point is that coverage hasn't grown in the actual city of York, since the mass upgrades on black friday. In that instance they should have announced York a month ago when they turned those towers on. But I am still waiting, the best way to pass the time is to not think about it and not come to this site 20 times a day.

I haven't seen coverage grow in York, PA since the Black Friday announcement. Hopefully this announcement means they turned on LTE on the tower nearest to my house today.

Yea if you look at this Pennsylvania market map, Altoona is not covered in any of these markets so that leads me to believe that Altoona is part of Shentel territory.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/705-network-vision-site-map-pennsylvania-markets/

Some LTE Showing up in Altoona. Also after work on Friday I drove up Route 94/ Carlisle Pike on the way to NYC and I had 4G from Route 30, north for about a 5 mile stretch but for some reason it didn't map properly on sensorly, but you can definitely look at the map and see the range that tower covers.

So I've noticed a pretty significant drop in battery life since doing the update. My phone has been unplugged for 4 hours and its been sitting on my desk since I got to work this morning and I haven't used it much but its down to 74% battery life where normally I used to be around 85% at this time. The "Connections Optimizer" that they added has exponentially improved the EVO's ability to connect to LTE on its own, but I'm thinking that same connections optimizer is destroying my battery life. Has anyone else noticed a difference in battery life since the update?

Guys go to your software update screen and queue this bad boy up!

http://www.theverge.com/2012/12/13/3763600/htc-evo-4g-lte-galaxy-s-iii-verizon-jelly-bean-update

Driving up to the Big Apple tomorrow evening. I'll run sensorly and get some points around the Baychester Ave, and Boston Rd

No it's not. Sprint can deploy more LTE carriers for more customer capacity. More LTE carriers in PCS. More in SMR. And ultimately, more with Clearwire and EBS/BRS. Sprint is actually in the best spectrum position of all.

 

Robert

Actually now that you mention this post. I realize the benefit of Sprints decision to deploy LTE in 5x5 configurations. It kind of serves as a sort of limiter so that no 1 user is using up a ridiculous amount of bandwidth. Would this be an accurate assumption? That kind of implies that having two separate 5x5 LTE channels can handle more connections than a single 10x10Mhz LTE channel. Or at least helps the network hold that many connections more efficiently.

That wasn't Sprints decision, that was Apple's. If you look carefully, you will notice that Apple's hd voice implementation doesn't work on any US carrier.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

And if you consider that Apple released the iPhone several months after Sprint had already outlined the idea of using HD Voice, it almost seems like they did it on purpose similar to Google's decision to not make an LTE Nexus 4. These US carriers are really starting to screw us over more than ever.

Are people really clamoring for HD Voice? Call me old fashioned, but AM radio should sound like AM radio, FM radio should sound like FM radio, and a phone call should sound like a phone call. I have no problem with that. In fact, the differences in fidelity are somewhat comforting. Sure, AT&T notoriously butchers even the sound of a basic phone call, but Sprint does not. The sound quality of an EVRC call on Sprint is typically quite fine.

 

 

 

Correct. As long as the PTSN uses µ-law PCM, then any call that is connected to a PTSN landline will subject to those limitations. Calls connected between different wireless carriers or VoIP providers might be subject to different interconnection standards, but I doubt it. As far as I know, µ-law PCM is still the lowest common denominator.

 

AJ

Now that you mention that, I've heard many people mention that they are old fashioned in regards to using their phones for the purpose it was originally intended for, and that is to make phone calls. I have heard many people get into debates and VERY non "scientific" tests (calling each other and then swapping phones and comparing audio fidelity) about who's carriers have better call quality. There are many people that use their smartphones primary as "phones" and is perhaps a feature that would incentivize many users.

A way I see Sprint making this a major selling point and getting people more excited about HD Voice is perhaps setting up a little demo area in sprint stores where people can test it out and maybe kiosks at the mall or something. Because a way of making people want something is by showing them what they're missing.

Zero. Even if they did, the benefits of HD Voice (EVRC-NW) are eliminated once the call has to be transcoded to hit the PTSN between the carriers' networks. The PTSN is still based on µ-law PCM, which has a reduced frequency range compared to that of EVRC-NW.

 

AJ

So I suppose my closing thoughts may come well into play at that point. Use HD Voice as a perk to join Sprint. Lets see if it works at all.

Also, would VoLTE not be susceptible to the same reduced frequency of the PTSN if a cross carrier call is made?

So another curiosity came up, currently Sprint's HD voice will require that the network support the capability as well as have all devices participating in the call to support the codec in order for it to work. This would mean that cross-carrier phone calls would be reduced to our standard call quality that we get now. What are the chances that other carriers will implement the same version of HD Voice as Sprint?

If it definitely won't happen, I suppose Sprint can use HD Voice as an incentive to pull subscribers from the other carriers by having vastly superior voice quality.

Just ran this speed-test....at home WITHOUT the airave.... Its a bit embarrassing....hope they do something to fix it....<br /><br /><br /><br />posted using J.A.R.V.I.S.<br /><br /><br />

What do you mean "hope they do something to fix it"? If you follow this site you obviously know they're doing something to fix it.

Remember Sprint only promeses 6-8 on the download, if the network is at peak performance that's 25 down. Basically what I am saying when a lot of people jump on 4G it will slow down. Can any tell me otherwise? Also what are Att and Verizon speeds like?

Yea it will slow down to 6-8 mpbs. And then once they launch LTE 800 it will go up. And then when they launch LTE 2500 the speeds will be much higher.

6 meg is what sprint lowered their standards to sprint.com/lte

I thought that was the range they always advertised. 6-8 mbps average.

Every one that is in NYC being impatient should think of your past post, and get some patients. To be so close to the finish line and complain is rediculous

Its all psychological. Have you ever been driving home from somewhere and you have to pee but you can def hold it, and suddenly as soon as you open the door to your house you have to run to the bathroom or else you feel like you're gonna piss yourself. That's because you know you're so close. Hence the impatience with LTE.

Apparently at&t has a plan for lte advanced middle of next year..... those 100 mbps speeds may be hard to pass up.

At 100Mbps, you could burn through a 2GB AT&T tier of data in 2 minutes and 40 seconds. You could also burn through a fully charged battery in a couple hours.

 

LTE advanced is not ready for prime time, and AT&T will not have it next year.

Definitely not. AT&T is barely starting to pick up speed on their LTE deployment now.

Yes, that is true, but you are seemingly distorting that truth to serve your argument. In its legacy network, Sprint often had insufficient backhaul per site for airlink capacity at that site. Network Vision backhaul -- even at only 300 Mbps or so -- will exceed airlink capacity essentially at every site. But there is no point in paying for backhaul capacity that would greatly exceed airlink capacity just for "specsmanship." Such would provide no benefit and would be a huge waste of money.

 

AJ

I get what you mean. In many cases it will be overkill to have so much bandwidth to 1 cell site when the tower is only capable of transmitting only a fraction of the total backhaul capacity. But in the instances where a cell site is connected via microwave link, would it make sense at that point to scale up the bandwidth of the fiber line to that specific tower since it will probably be serving the backhaul to multiple sites?

Looks like tower NY25XC331 in NYC has just had LTE turned on. Good job to the new yorkers that have been mapping on sensorly! I've been waiting for that tower to go live for months as I have family that live right off the Baychester Ave. exit.

When they say the upgrade is complete in puerto rico and nowhere you see 100-300 kbs download speeds I'll be sold.

 

Sent from my HTC One X+ using Tapatalk 2

At the rate PR is moving, it should be complete in a few months. Soo just keep your eye on this site and then you'll know.

This is what I have heard and sounds great but in my opinion att's 3g (hspa+) is in most cases more then fast enough. Sprint's 3g is in many cases so far unusable.

 

Steven

 

Sent from my HTC One X+ using Tapatalk 2

But even in areas where you aren't able to pick up Sprint LTE, their upgraded 3G should provide enough speed to do almost anything you need it to.