irev210

No way I would buy a ZTE or Wowiee phone.

WiMAX is 10MHz TDD, not 5x5 FDD.

Since when did Sprint start adding 2.5GHz antenna? Assuming this is a typo?

How do you not have a green egg? http://www.biggreenegg.com Or http://primogrill.com/primo-grills/ which is a version made in usa

It's like so many other deals and discounts. You do not want to take away from customers that are willing to pay full price. This is similar to Sprint's old SERO program that targeted customers who were looking for a lot of value. If a customer isn't looking for value, sell them on your standard plan. Many customers just don't care. Spectrum, sure, capacity? Not really. I don't know about other parts but in urban Boston, T-Mobile has trouble keeping up just like the rest of the carriers. Technically, their 5GB plan is "unlimited" just throttled after 5GB. It's something that makes sense given the prepaid model. For 99% of customers, 5GB is essentially "unlimited". I mean, LTE for them is not a network overhaul, just another incremental upgrade. I think T-Mobile's biggest issue is coverage in rural areas - that's what is preventing them from charging more. I can't believe you would compare centurylink's CEO to t-mobile's. And yes, EVERY company is out to profit. The reason why they offer 100 minutes is because it offers them the opportunity to target customers who really don't use minutes to get a better deal on data. It doesn't take away from higher revenue plans, attracts a new type of customer, and T-mobile doesn't have to pay exchange fees. I don't get why you think customers WANT more than 100 minutes. Frankly, I would take the plan with zero minutes and I would still think it's a great deal. You are comparing apples to oranges.

Having used both phones, I have to say I like the One more. Better camera, display, build quality. The only thing that the GS4 has on the HTC One is reception. Looking at both debug screens at the same time, the GS4 was just able to do better by a few dB.

I tried the DROID DNA and I really liked the phone. The 5" display was really the sweet spot for me. I hope Sprint will carry it!

I am mainly talking the other way around (GSM/UMTS support). The first will be the GS4 which is sim unlocked and supports LTE on AWS. Basically, you can be a Verizon customer, buy a GS4 on Verizon, leave Verizon, pop a T-Mobile or other prepaid SIM in your Verizon GS4 and be up and running on T-Mobile LTE. Sadly, you can't do that on Sprint (even though Sprint phones like the GS4 and HTC One support GSM/UMTS). Verizon's unlock policies (thanks FCC!) are very consumer friendly.

From a consumer standpoint, more handsets are "out of the box" unlocked on Verizon than any other carrier in the US (that I am aware of). Walled garden? That's like saying Sprint's M2M business is also a walled garden. Sprint has this: collaborationcenter.sprint.com/

I always prefer a choice. I educate myself on the options and pick the option that best fits my needs. It's a complex discussion. For the most part, the biggest issue with products made in USA isn't the cost/quality, it's finding that they exist. For example, I recently went on a hunt for measuring cups - it's hard to find a set made in USA, but I found them (cost was roughly the same for a set made elsewhere).

Anyone else excited that it is "Assembled in USA"? I am not sure how many people on this forum are aware where the items they purchase are made - it's a big deal for me.

I am starting to wonder if it is related to google's new music streaming service (which is quite good). Overtaxed google pipes serving up a lot of new music I/O.

You can always downgrade back to your old handset. I just did this with the GS4. Made a nice tidy little profit.

Just remember, every month you go without upgrading, you have to wait another month to get the next one. I always upgrade the second I can If you don't want the phone, sell it.

I only see the opex as an issue on post-NV sites that have enhanced backhaul. I am curious how much telcos will charge when they want to go from 100-300mbps of service to 1gbps of service. The telcos that are providing access are probably drooling at the opportunity to charge more since it's essentially pure profit for them.

So Sprint shouldn't communicate to its customers (and others)? That's what marketing does. In essence, in one sentence you are saying Sprint's marketing is nothing more than psychology and in the next you market S4GRU (I agree, S4GRU does a much better job of marketing than Sprint does, no question there). I read it as you will not engage in Sprint's marketing, but you will engage in (and market) the way you see things. At the end of the day, the average Sprint customer is going to engage in what Sprint markets and sells them, and what the customer experiences. Customers don't care about the technical mumbojumbo - they care about the experience that they're sold and promised. We can evaluate customer satisfaction and interest in the marketing message by looking at churn and net adds. I don't follow every thread but I track LTE in Boston pretty close and it's alarming how quickly Sprint's LTE speeds are degrading. These are based off my observations - observations I feel are worth sharing and discussing. While you may disagree with what some of us are seeing, I don't think it is foolish to write them off. Shouldn't we be asking why speeds are slowing down faster than Sprint can build out sites? Shouldn't we be discussing if data consumption is going to grow faster than Sprint can keep up? Is this a reminder of when Sprint failed to add capacity to keep up with data growth in 2008? Is the savior tri-band? I personally view Sprint's initial 5x5 carrier on PCS as insufficient in urban areas; I feel that data consumption will grow at a pace faster than sprint can keep up upgrading new sites (I think suburban locations, for the most part, will be in good shape, relative to urban sites). It should be a more engaging discussion on why customers are seeing what they are seeing and what Sprint could do to improve the customer experience - I thought that was the mission of S4GRU. While we typically tend to disagree on a couple of key things, we used to have much more interesting discussions (with my historically learning a lot more in the process); maybe as a result of S4GRU growing you don't have the time/patience, which I get, but it's sort of saddening to see you take a much more confrontational stand as of late, especially given the wealth of knowledge that you bring to the table.

Your argument is flawed - there is no reason why Sprint needed to keep LTE under wraps in each market until it was almost fully deployed - let people use it. The problem here is Sprint's marketing department, which sets the expectation, not the reality. I'll say it again - "launching" a major city with 10-15% of sites broadcasting LTE is a mistake and I don't know why you won't hold them accountable for it. Sprint can easily say "we are quickly building out our network, as we progress, customers will be pleased that speeds and coverage will continue to improve". I don't really get how you feel customers should be "thankful" that they are able to use a service that is likely being advertised to them by multiple providers (Sprint included). At the end of the day, look at Sprint's churn - compare it to Verizon and AT&T. I think everyone here wants Sprint to be a strong world class competitor but the way they are doing things, it's not really working for them at the moment. I believe it will get MUCH better but for right now, launched markets (in my opinion) are not as competitive as they should be. You can't hold each carrier to a different standard. Once a carrier launches a market, it's only to be expected that you are going to be compared to other carriers who are offering a service called "4G". You can't let them have it both ways - if they want the credit for launching the market, they should be held accountable for how the launched market performs. Also, construction won't end - you know this better than anyone. After LTE on PCS comes LTE on ESMR followed by EBS/BRS... when do you finally say "they are done"? The question isn't "does sprint have enough spectrum?" The question is "will Sprint add enough capacity to keep up with the services they are offering?" I think Softbank is the answer to allowing Sprint to keep pace with data demands, but that's just my humble opinion. Look at Verizon's churn and net postpaid adds - for whatever reasons, customers are gaga for big red. If Sprint was doing as well, I wouldn't be talking up how I think their marketing team is botching their LTE launch. It's interesting that Verizon's marketing team nowadays touts coverage, not speed. AT&T has been marketing "faster" as of late. You often rag on the way Verizon built out LTE as an overlay, but sometimes the best approach is the least sophisticated one. The proof, again, is in their net adds and churn (particularly at their ARPU levels). It's hard to say, from any angle other than "least technically sophisticated" that Verizon didn't nail their 4G LTE deployment. Now, the next question is going to be "how the heck are they going to keep data speeds up?" and I think that will be VERY interesting to watch. The next two years watching LTE fully evolve should be interesting.

As you can see by the upload speed, the signal is very solid (-91 to -95 RSRP) What fun would that be? I am a Sprint enthusiast. Considering, as of late, I've been using less than 200MB of data a month and I enjoy monitoring the sprint network performance in the Boston area... why would I stop?

Carrying capacity of highways and cell networks are ALWAYS under construction. We saw the same thing with Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. Nobody launches with every tower converted (as my T-Mobile HSPA+ on PCS experiment clearly showed). But by the time they add LTE to the rest of the sites in the area, those too will become overburdened. We see this in highway construction; by the time people plan, design, build, the expansion is already at capacity. Instead of adding one lane at a time, they need to add 6 lanes (aka clearwire's spectrum).

Saying that "Are the current G Block LTE carriers anywhere near capacity? Nope, no need for additional carriers until the existing carrier is filled up." is a bit misleading - that's my only point. If you want to talk about premature... we can talk about how many live LTE sites sprint had in Boston before the marketing team launched the market. If I recall correctly, I want to say about 12 out of about 100. Now THAT is premature.

Really? Sure about that?

Sprint realized it had no choice but to boost its price, said Roger Entner, an analyst at Recon Analytics. “It was a game of chicken and they blinked,” said Entner, That was my line, Mr Entner...

The whole thing is a giant game of chicken. Sprint loses a bunch of equity as well if Clearwire goes into BK. It's a lose/lose if the result is BK. The bigger question is - who has more to lose? Sprint or the minority equity holders? At this point, even Verizon has suggested, by making an offer on some clearwire spectrum, that in BK situation they would bid on assets.

You didn't see the press release? It's going to be renamed to "T-Metro".

It's a tough climb for t-mobile. Once Sprint fires up LTE on ESMR and adds capacity with clearwire's spectrum, T-Mobile won't have much to fight back with. Sprint will have the user experience of verizon with the pricing of T-Mobile. To me, that sounds competitive - if they can execute. T-Mobile doesn't really have the growth options like Sprint does... they'll remain a solid urban carrier.