The Dave

It's the NSA. When you hear the beeps and tones, just say "hi" to Agent Smith.

Luckily I've never encountered problems like this. Throughout most of the city, even if speeds are 300 Kbps, latency is at 120ms or below. On average, my EVDO ping is at ~80ms and speeds are just over 1 Mbps. That's enough to watch an HQ or 480p video on YouTube. With almost no buffering or stuttering.

I agree, after NV my 3G rarely went over 90 ms with speeds between 700 kbps-2.5 mbps. It was really usable and for most tasks, I doubt anyone would feel the difference in browsing Web pages or pulling up email between 3G and 4G.

I never would have guessed, but that is interesting. Looks like Sprint had better get us our Spark. We are officially the most needy tech obsessed city in the country.

When I woke up this morning at 4:45 am I had no LTE connection and all through my morning shift I couldn't pick up LTE until about 8:15 am. I was literally across the street from 3 different towers that normally give me a strong -70 dBm signal, too. I wonder if something was getting updated or if there was a weird mini outage.

Judging from that speed, you are probably on band 26 or slow band 41 (I say slow 41 because it will go as high as 50+ in band 41). On your phone dialer do ##DEBUG# and look in the LTE Engineering screen for band number when you are connected in that location again.

 

Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk

I see 25-34 mbps quite often here on band 25. Especially in the mornings up until noon. It usually see around 15-18 mbps during the day and speeds up to 20-25 in the evening.

oh and as i understand it....youa re on spark....see that nifty icon on the top...

The only thing that icon means is that you are on LTE. I wish the Spark icon only showed up for band 41 and the regular LTE icon for band 25/26. I think that would make a lot more sense and help people know when they are in fact on Spark. A blogger who likes to bash Sprint would easily see a Spark icon, get a low speed test on a loaded band 25 connection and simply declare Spark to be a fizzle and further proof of Sprint "lying".

i was going to say, that icon is just an icon, doesnt mean band 26 or band 41, just connected to LTE. Ive seen band 25 connections of 35-37mbps before. (albeit on an unloaded site)

Exactly.

I heard about this on the radio this morning too. The last thing we need is Comcast to get bigger and more powerful. I am pretty sure my cable bill will be even higher by April. I feel that Comcast and TWC merging would be akin to Verizon and AT&T merging. Two of the largest, most dominant providers merging together into a powerful and abusive force in the industry.

Kevin,

I appreciate your stance. I enjoy reading your articles, and I don't have a problem with criticism as long as it is unbiased. As we all know, there are many articles and many comments that take on an extreme "Sprint is so horrible it may just kill your baby" tone. However, unbiased criticism helps keep companies honest and keep things progressing. That, I appreciate.

I've always been impressed with Sprint voice quality since I got my first cellphone on my own on Sprint's "new" PCS Vision network. I have used 6 different Sprint phones since then and until I got the G2, I haven't heard voice like I do now. I realize they have used noise cancelation for a long time, but the clarity I hear now whenever I talk to my wife or my coworker who has a Note 3 is way different than the normal clarity I have always enjoyed. I just think that either HD voice is partially active or the encoder is almost HD.

Overall, not bad numbers. Sprint is slowly righting the ship. This should be a good year.

Since I got the update my battery life had not been so good. I don't have LTE available that works with my LG G2 in my area. I can get a day, but I used to get a day and a half :-(

 

Sent from my LG-LS980 using Tapatalk

Unfortunately, since you are scanning for 3 different LTE bands instead of just one, you are going to see a hit to battery life until LTE is in your area. The only way I can think of to work around it is to either disable the bands or switch to CDMA only for now.

What is band 27? Did I miss something? I knew I shouldn't have gone to bed last night..

We have a lot of DD(Dunkin Donut)-LTE here in Ericsson country.

I'm hoping to beat att distance so I can rub it in the face of the att lovers that go far on the water but not good on land

If you are already getting PCS service upwards of 7-8 miles off the coast, it'd be a good bet that you would see a nice and sizeable increase. It sounds like Sprint purposely set the towers up to give service out there.

Jeeeeez 37 hours. I am lucky to get a whole day out of my 5S. Probably has to do with not having a signal half the time, but 37 hours is still impressive.

This is just normal for the G2. Between having good LTE signal, being a eCSFB/single radio path device and the great hardware, I normally see this.

has anybody been having battery drainage issues after the update? I'm wondering if it's because lte hasn't been o officially launched here in Denver. I keep losing my signal and dropping calls as well, which before the update it never happened.

Right after the update, the first time I recharged my battery, it drained really fast. When I checked the battery menu, it showed "Android System" used 79% of the total battery use and had 13 hours of use time. Since then, it has sorted out. Yesterday I logged 37 hours before I plugged it in before bed.

If you get HD voice, you will definitely know it. Whenever I call my wife, the ability to hear each other, even while I am in the car driving, is amazing. We both have G2s in an Ericsson market. One of the biggest benefits is the ability to hear the other caller through background noise. Whenever I've called people while driving, no one can tell I am in the car.

Where is EBS for fixed broadband when you need it?

I remember about 5 years ago when Clearwire first "came to the area" and had signs all over the roads, sidewalk, stapled to the light poles, etc. I excitedly went to the website, ordered a hotspot and eagerly installed it days later. No connection. The website showed my house covered by "excellent" WiMAX with the promise of unlimited 4G internet, but unless I went outside and about 1/4 mile down the road, I got no signal. I was stuck on AT&T dial up for about 2 years before Comcast "blessed" us with $80 broadband with a "small" $7 modem rental fee and a " blazing" 10 Mbps peek speed. Fortunately, after numerous complaints to the Department of Consumer affairs, I was allowed to buy a modem from eBay for $39 and waive the rental fee and the speeds are now closer to 20 Mbps (when it works). Unfortunately, it is expensive and anytime it gets windy, rainy, too many people are online or if the cows all line up parallel to the equator it seems that the cable goes down. It sure beats dial up, but I won't lie that I do often take my phone off wifi and use my LTE connection. Sprint is rock solid for me, so I am glad to be a Sprint customer.

This is my neighborhood. There is a vast number of houses, businesses, the World Golf Village and attractions here. Yes, St Augustine isn't a city. But, it is a tourist destination and it is a 12k population only 20 minutes from Jacksonville, the largest spread of a city metro area in the nation. But, we cannot get DSL, we cannot get U Verse, we only get Comcast and satellite for broadband and both options are terrible for service and price since there is no competition.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/lp98jws4ino1pyx/image.jpg

To me, even a 1 Mbps sustained speed is more than enough for any Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, email, MMS, pulling up ESPN, etc. This is also looking at the fact that it is just one 5x5 band and not including band 26 and band 41. Having a 97% call connection rate is ridiculously great, too. This Super Bowl has been regarded as the largest test of the cell networks to date. Sprint isn't halfway complete with their LTE upgrades and they put on a great showing. Just think what next February will bring. I hate to be a blogger come next year. How the heck can you spin it so that Sprint still looks bad when Sprint may very well crush all the other networks next year on both voice and data.

This is why I am so into using Sensorly, Root Metrics and now the FCC app. I figured the least I can do is keep mapping out the true status of Sprint's network from my perspective. According to Sensorly and Root Metrics, there is zero TMobile 4G presence in St Augustine, yet Sprint is strong. My average speed for FCC over the course of 2 months is 26 Mbps down and about 6 up.

I wonder how Sprint would be if WiMAX had taken off. Or if Light squared went down. Or if they went after Alltel. Or if the Nextel merger never went down or was handled more aggressively. Or if the government never allowed the duopoly to control the country. Or...

If these rumors are true, I want a Ninja Turtles theme. With integrated pencil holder.

I am also surprised at the strength of band 41. It blows away all of the negative impressions that I had of the frequency from the WiMAX days. Jacksonville is pretty well covered in band 41 and hopefully later this year it is going to really be a game changer. This summer is going to be awesome for Triband device owners.

I have also noticed that the dial code menus randomly give you "not responding" errors and the engineering menu randomly gives you "not available" errors after the Spark update. Usually going back and re-entering the menus results in them working. It doesn't seem to affect anything on a functional basis at least.

Band 41 is set up as a priority on many devices. It seems like there are some inconsistencies going on where for some people it's last. But it doesn't matter, because lots of people who have devices set as Band 41 as the lowest are still getting put on 41 because the 25 is over capacity anyway.

 

I also wouldn't be surprised if Sprint is trying to set priorities by region on these devices. And that may explain why we are seeing inconsistencies. Also, I wouldn't rule out an OEM fubar. And last, they may not be setting any scan priorities now at all until the device is farther along.

 

Where you enter the LTE network is just not a very big deal all things considered. However, if you don't move around and your channel is under capacity, you'll likely stay there a long time.

 

I would put Band 41 first on all devices by default if I was Sprint. And lots of people are able to stay on Band 41 as their top priority. I don't think the network is overriding your device band priority selection. I think that is your device. Something is wrong. Are you using a custom ROM or something?

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

My device is stock. I guess it is a G2/LG specific thing. I have looked at a few different G2 phones both mine and my wife's and also my co-worker's wife has a G2 and it seems band 41 is purposely low priority. Perhaps it is a test. Perhaps it is market based. At least, as soon as I change the priority back it goes to band 41 instantly and stays there without problems, so it isn't a limitation with the hardware to hold band 41. It just struck me as odd because my personal impression of the Softbank vision of the new Sprint is a band 41 carrier with band 25 simply an alternate and band 26 a backup.