supert0nes

If I was sprint I would be starting roll out in smaller cities in order to test the system. Chaska/Chan would be a great place to start considering its a growing market.

I think, instead, they are rolling out 4g only in the first batch of towers, so as not to affect the existing network.

Airrave has to authorize and meet Sprint standards.. It might even have to pass speed/latency tests and have a ec/lo ratio. Also, when you leave wifi and go into the carrier network is it a seamless voice transition?

Sprint, as a national carrier, will take years to vet any technology that allows you to make calls outside of their network. They don't like losing control in any way and wifi calling takes the control out of their hands when making calls. One reason is actually quality. They don't want to have to diagnose a dropped phone call because you were torrenting Game of Thrones. It's an unknown and national carriers are very hesitant to jump in and support it. T-Mobile is the first because they have the least coverage and customers and will do a lot more to make their customers happy than other carriers.

WIFI calling is actually a pretty standardized technology. It's just that the carriers still have enough spectrum that they see it as a last resort.

I've been using grooveip lite+ google voice. Works fantastic so far.

What I said was they Sprint could lose all Nextel subs tomorrow and be fine. I stand by that.

"Love or hate the old Nextel subs, they're needed on board." I'm pretty sure Sprint already decided that any Nextel subs left aren't needed at all.

PTT is gimmick compared to getting 800 for CDMA/LTE. Nationwide 800 leapfrogs Sprint's network over At&t's and makes it essentially competitive with Verizon spectrum wise. It allows for Sprint to add new rural towers at a much more cost effective spacing. It finally gives Sprint fantastic in building coverage. The list goes on and is extensively covered on this site.

Lol I have been with sprint for about 12 years now I think. I have been more than patient for the money I have put in Like I said as well, the real frustrating part is going from having 4g to only getting poor 3g and no LTE.

Sprint still has Wimax, so I see no issue from them there. You have an airrave and I would suggest using your wifi when at home, so no problem there, and again, they only made like 1-5 towers accessible yesterday because they started work like 3 weeks ago. Progress seems to really be picking up in this market and there's really no need for this thread to go to hate on Sprint mode already.

Cheer up Zach! They just started haha. We can't get too mad when they only turned on the first 4g accessibility yesterday. It's going to take a little patience!

Hopefully they Sensorly or it didn't happen

Oh and I saw 2 network vision panels pointed at the freeway, but none pointed back at the burbs. Could have been dark and an oversight by me though. There was probably 1 more pointed back away from the freeway.

Stopped by the tower on 694 in Brooklyn Center tonight that was on the completed list. Looked like NV+ oldequipment to me. Sprint was the only carrier on the monopole. I took pictures but the OG EVO failed hard in the dark. It was like 5:10pm too, wtf winter. Ran a speed test. and probably no 3g up and running yet. getting like 50k's a second. It was a good test because 694 was crazy backed up right then.

Pretty awesome to see the equipment finally in person though! I'm going to more towers this weekend and probably back to that one to get good pictures.

Their poor parents, always driving them to odd locations in the country like New Mexico for a tournament, just so the darn kids can can lose in the first round.

So wait a second now, are you saying that you have gotten active Sprint LTE here in the North Metro of the Twin Cities?

Sounds like that is what you are saying. I sure hope so. This would be great news!

There's certain towers in the north metro that may or may not have LTE turning on already. I don't have an LTE phone yet, so I can't test. More information about which towers can be found in the sponsors section.

So the towers upgraded across the north metro can pretty much allow me to have LTE at home and work, or at least close. Now how am I going to hold off on an LTE phone?!? That was a really awesome update today, but I don't dare say it around others who are mad about <10 sites last week.

Damn I gotta wait for mine...I failed pretty hard on order day. Meetings + giving up on the play store before going into an f5 rage. Looks like I should have f5 raged a little earlier. Oh well I'm still excited for the phone, and T-Mob has quite a good network here.

I think it would be very difficult to start a new nationwide wireless network unless it is hosted by T-Mobile or Sprint equipment. Most of the towers I drive by these days are pretty full already.

I don't see the current top of the line handsets as cheap. Even at somebody like Voyager Mobile, the GS III costs $549, which is not exactly cheap. Unlocked iPhone is $649. So, I don't know where you're drawing the line between cheap and expensive.

I guess I don't believe that Google is really selling the Nexus 4 at a loss. Take the new Samsung Chromebook for instance. It has a better processor than any phone on the market and is being sold at $250. It's only a matter of time before other manufacturers will have to bring their prices closer to their manufacturing costs. The sum of the parts in our phones just isn't that expensive.

http://www.isuppli.com/Teardowns/News/Pages/iPhone5-Carries-$199-BOM-Virtual-Teardown-Reveals.aspx

Phones are getting cheaper because technology advances and competition. While our phones are impressive, they aren't that expensive to manufacture.

I can see both Google and Apple eventually becoming wireless MVNO's. At some point, the traditional carriers will not be able to subsidize handsets to the degree that they are now and the handset manufacturers will have to earn their money some other way. While Google has ads/search, Apple does not.

Phones get cheaper all the time. Soon we won't need to subsidize any smartphone.

Whew got it ordered by DDoSing google. I'm not proud of my actions

GAH I have a meeting at exactly 11! I really want this phone and can live on T-Mo $30 for a few months while Sprint catches up in my area.

Any new news for the MN market..

There have been members in southern Minnesota and St. Cloud that have seen work going on on towers. In the next few weeks/month MN should start having completed sites. We are definitely behind schedule, but there is work being done.

Thanks a bunch for this information! This is pretty much exactly what I was trying to figure out. Rochester and Barat/King Street wireless holdings had me stumped. Like how do they even make money off this spectrum currently? I can't believe there are that many Verizon's out there that will spend many millions/billions on spectrum and just sit on it!

I view it as necessary. I don't think I'm alone, and obviously Sprint thinks it is necessary too. It was nice to see the article point out that a lot of the subscriber growth was from Nextel adds. This is how you support subscriber growth on the legacy system, unfortunately. Should be a lot easier after NV.

A little off topic, but one only has to look at reasonably recent articles like this one just after the AWS auction to see how much things change! It was a really good read, and the fact that fact that small companies could buy AWS at 75% really looks like a terrible idea in retrospect. I also like how they talk about deploying VoIP on EVDO Rev. A to avoid having to deploy 1x. My how fast things change! These carriers weren't thinking at all about 4g when they bought up AWS. Heck I didn't know Sprint was a founder of Spectrumco until just after this auction.

Oh and Verizon still hasn't deployed anything on AWS and has no phones. Crazy they were allowed to do that for so long!

http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=99&p=1496

ps. I found this trying to learn more about Barat/King Street Wireless.