richy

Poor, hard done by Verizon!! You wouldn't think they managed to make $2 1/4 Bn in q3 2013  given their wailing. 

Yes there probably should be some accounting for all spectrum, but it should be proportionate to its propagation (frequency and possibly max transmit power?). So every 500MHz up the dial you go the spectrum is 'worth' say 50% less. Verizon could have gone after the spectrum sprint got, they could have traded for it, they had enough money and the ability to borrow $130bn, so playing the victim is pathetic. If the current situation blind sided them then they don't deserve to be in business, who do they think they are? AT&T?

Unless I am completely misunderstanding the situation (which is highly likely) can you not drop the transmit power of a site and build more sites around it (or split into more segments, or change downtilt?) to better utilize existing spectrum? albeit at extra cost. But you cannot ramp up the transmit power past an allowed maximum  (plus return path power would be a limiting factor) for your license to cover more area, so higher frequency spectrum is intrinsically less versatile?

At this point in the game, I'd imagine Samsung would be better off concentrating on Triband in the Note 4 rather than yet another re-release of a previous model.

Especially as there isn't much on the hardware front to differentiate the note 4. We knew a year in advance about the snapdragon 800 chip, a note 4 is likely to be an 805 or the 805 with a mild clock boost (maybe an izgo 2.5k screen, still 3gb ram, still 32gb storage etc). Not a bad thing at all, but saving triband on sprint makes sense, especially given the cost of pushing a note 3.5 through certification. The s4 is a few months away and will almost certainly be triband (for it not to be would be rather silly). I could certainly be wrong, but it seems a little much, especially with the ability to flip phones frequently now. The s5 is 2 months away and if you have to have a note the note 4 is maybe 7-8 months away? Get the s5 and flip it for a note 4 6 months later.

The rep was probably just confusing the s5 which will likely be announced at mwc.

"Once upon a time when cell phones looked this..."

Meh you're kidding right That's just the handset! Wait till you see the battery.

Can you imagine the Zerolemon for that? It would need to come with wheels. 

Please, Daddy. Do tell us another bedtime story. But please leave out the Boogieman. Hearing of his glowing magenta eyes and greasy hair scare me ever so. Or, tell us the one where the Japanese Samaurai comes and slays the Boogieman! I like that one, Daddy! Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

hahah thats so close it hurts. We should give away a prize to the person who can find a picture of him smiling in a normal manner. I keep looking for fish hooks in the corners of his mouth holding the smile in place. At least he has a future career on Walking Dead. 

Thanks I cannot wait also.

Re 'poor people' etc. When I worked for a cableco we used to factor in iphone release months into our late payment numbers \ credit control staffing. it took a while to figure it out and quite a bit of evidence before the correlation was accepted, but there's a genuine bump in late payment within certain demographics after the release of an iphone. It stuffed our debt scoring for a while as it isn't entirely income based so much as age & income related.

As for bringing people back, honestly in 18 months I see them flooding back. In some areas tmo has surplus capacity, but like any network they also have plenty of areas where they are already at capacity with no real plans for more capacity in the near future. They can attract all the subs they want but they then have to keep them. All those families with 4 iphones and unlimited data are going to just turn right back round and head to Sprint when they find tmo not only has coverage issues but capacity issues. Plus whilst tmo is doign a fine job of shaking up the industry and prompting some new ways of pricing, moving away from ETF's hurts them as well. Sprint can make it attractive to switch back, pay off phone credit charges with tmo & a 30 day free trial to prove NV is as good as they say and they will come back as quickly as they left. Word of mouth is powerful, as soon as it gets around that Sprint has changed, that personal experience will work and bring people back. I'm not with Tmo because they are great, they just made the most sense short term until Sprint gets NV rolled out fully here (probably another 12-24 months depending on what you view as fully rolled out, too many sites without even a permit application in) once NV is done Sprint makes the most sense by far.   

I don't disagree with that assessment to some extent. However, it is also up to Son-san to make the choices needed to put Sprint on a path to growth. That will require taking a hard look at Sprint's leadership and where Sprint plans to go and reworking them as necessary.

It's tough to blame it on management without knowing exactly where the issue with the rollout lies, there are third party companies involved with the physical work and some of the backhaul supply so in theory problems could have arisen elsewhere. They could also have come from the top. My personal worry is that there is a merger with tmo and Son decides that Legere did a better job and puts him in as CEO.

Whilst Legere hasn't so much polished the proverbial turd so much as rolled it in glitter, his actual achievements have been mostly marketing based and short term. One very telling metric would be the ARPU : avg data use, We know Sprints subs pay more on average (not a bash, just comparing ARPU) but I bet Tmo subs use far more data. Long term that spells far more issues than some temporary bleed of subs attracted by shiny & cheap. People attracted by shiny & cheap will come running back when they have a few months experience of tmo and by definition are people who can easily be lured back with a special offer. I am lucky that the two tmo towers I use most aren't overloaded and both have LTE. Take a drive and the tmo story quickly turns to congested LTE \ faux G or frequently less bars than a mormon church. ARPU alone suggested that whilst they may target similar demographics Sprint either gets the 'better' subs or tmo is useless at getting money out of them. 

Sprint has the money to keep going with NV. Personally I think they rushed the Spark brand out a little early and risked confusing people and havign them associate unSparky experiences with the new brand but thats just me but otherwise all is going well with Sprint, just slowly based upon our perspective but darn fast if you look at historically what it takes to rebuild an entire nationwide network. I know another pinkish cellco which still hasn't managed a nationwide network. It is easy to lose sight of what the two companies are doing, one is rebuilding a nationwide network then rolling out LTE on two more bands, the other is rolling out LTE. They both have capacity issues, one has too much the other not enough, I know which I would rather be! 

Hawaiian time for the permits.  None of the permits that is approved by the county is being worked on.  You can tell by no inspection date or start or completion time for the permits.  Only 3 permits approved by the county so far.  Permits are moving faster on the Maui, Kauai, and Big Island.  I is funny the permit approved for Maui county is for Molokai and not schedule to be complete for 30 years. (permit have the date 2043 year for completion) .  Now that is Hawaiian Time.

You know they approve they double digit pay rises quickly enough! Tmo just got a minor permit approved (upgrade to mi mo) and it took well over a year (entered 8-29-12). Permit fees are pretty low though,  perhaps charging more would give them more resources since they got slashed in 2007/ 8 .

Isn't most sales now from online?

Probably,  but they are likely still a few freaks like me who want to play with the phones and compare. Before I got the note 3 I went into a few stores and played with all the options and checked out size (the note 2 was likely to be a very similar size),  screen type (I heard a lot of bad things about samoled screens) and resolution etc.  I freely admit I'm probably in a very small minority but I appreciate the flexibility. I also wouldn't buy from a carrier that didn't have a store I could go into and discuss a problem.  Sometime you can only explain a problem by demonstrating it,  Sprints staff have always been extremely helpful in that respect. Can you pre order new phones via instore reps and pickup on the day of release with sprint? That would be killer!

 

 

Can you use video (MHL/HDMI) and USB (OTG) simultaneously?

 

Meaning you can only put a sd card in once, and then the slot gets destroyed so you can never use it again?

 

Yes yu can use both hdmi and usb simultaneously with a decent power source. You cannot use the sd card and usb port simultaneously but you can switch between them.

So I have had a chance to play with the zerolemon 10k battery and the adapter. 

The ZL battery is pretty good. It delivers pretty much triple the playtime which is awesome. The case is fairly robust but is the main drawback. It has a screen protector which is frankly useless, scratches very easily. The USB port is also very recessed so anything that is thick will have trouble fitting, I have to remove the case to use the dock. Also wireless charging requires some serious surgery. It would have been great if they could have gone a bit farther with the case and used a better screen protector and incorporated a wireless charging coil (I understand this would have cost more but I would have been willing to pay it). An 11 pin usb extension cable would solve the other issue but I cannot find one anywhere It is the best case you can get for an extended battery though. 

The dock is ok, it requires a 2 amp charger to do video and usb. Using the sd card slot seems to kill the sd card slot which is a shame. It works well with my wireless keyboard and dongle. For the money it's a fairly decent replacement for the samsung dock which is about $70 but it seems to be more quirky. 

 

 

He's waiting for you!

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I thought this was their icon?

Question for the reps or others in the know... I know that there is overage charges if you go over the 1gb and not throttling (unfortunate) -- but is there a way to block overage charges AKA shut off the data when the 1gb has been reached?  I am thinking of trying to talk the MIL out of her expensive Verizon plan (with myself and her on it) and onto my family's plan (5 of us) for a total of the 7 needed for the $25/pp framily (and getting Nexus 5's when needed)... 1 gb each phone should be more than enough but I fear her or my sister (mostly them two) running up several GBs and ending up with a several hundred dollar bill or something... 

Isn't it possible on the phone (at least some phones)? I think I saw a set mobile data limit option under data usage on my phone. 

This is true. 

Its also true for any carrier. TMO's n3 also had issues Phones are getting more complicated, consumers are pushing for faster release scheudles, greater jumps between generations, honestly given the complexity of something like a note 3 it isn't too shocking to find bugs when it is released. How quickly carriers, google  and samsung respond is most definately fair game though!

Is it possible for sensorly to lay in an additional layer of filtering for bands?

Now that would be interesting. Have a Television, wireless, and Wireless internet ( Like the trials in Texas) under one company. 

This has been happening in Europe for a while. The benefit is reduced churn, you'd be amazed how quickly people pay their cable bill when not paying it cuts off their cell phone Plus reduced per service acquisition costs. There actually isn't much by way of operational savings, beyond marketing. Would be interesting to see sprint buy dish and liqghtsquared lol. Go Son!!

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/01/09/us-lightsquared-dish-idUSBREA080SG20140109

Just saw it on reuters. I wonder who will try and pick it up next?0

Quadband phone????

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

There are already quad band lte phones on the market for other carriers so this is not unrealistic Over the coming years I fully expect to see hexaband LTE phones, at least if we see sprint and tmo hop into the sack with each other. The PA's exist, there are issues right now with fitting too many antennas in phones but this will evolve. 

It would be interesting to see what SprinTmo and to an extent AT&T did with regard to band access. Do you allow pretty much all phones on all bands or restrict access to some bands to premium phones? Sprint have said triband for all, but if they suddenly find themselves with 6 or 7  bands (600, 700 , 800 , 1700\2100, 1900 , 2500), would this affect the cost of handsets enough to make it worthwhile to not include access to some of the bands? i.e. if you have access to 1900 LTE does it really matter to allow access to the (potential) 1700\2100 LTE. These are just idle musing rather than any suggestion Sprint may attempt to screw people or anything similar and it will be a little less complex should Sprint not buy tmo.

It's really based on personal preference. People want what's available now. And the truth is, T-Mobile has speeds that blow the doors off of Sprint in most urban areas. Living in the third largest city in America, I can say, I'm not impressed with Sprint's LTE speed. Sometimes, I would pay for a tmo device on edge just to pull up a mobile site in less than 2 minutes. Only the sprint faithful care about the scope of the project, and what they'll be doing in 2-3 years. The average consumer doesn't care and will bail quickly, or just avoid sprint all together.

I think you should do it.  If I was experiencing what you claim, I would have left Sprint.  Especially when Tmo is so good?  It makes you sound foolish to stay with Sprint.  You should go.  But remember, if you get the magical Legere speeds, DON'T MOVE!

 

Robert

This so very very much. I made that switch to tmobile, it made sense at the time now it doesnt. I went from 1mbps to 10mbps. However, I lost a lot of coverage, including in town. We have two island of LTE, one of which is a single site. In West Maui, mostly tourists and more affluent (i.e. on vzw and at&t because they dont care they pay $400 a month), we get 15mbps down and about 10mbps up. In Central Maui, more locals \ business premises etc, you get 3 down and 6 up. That is the reality and the future for tmo. Poor coverage and a declining network. If you are switching and making a comittment for 1-2 years, honestly I would wait it out with Sprint. Sprint will be better than tmo as soon as NV hits your area, once NV really rolls out with the overlay and the 800 LTE it will not only be better than tmo but continue to be better than tmo. Once Sprint completes enough of the rollout to start adding sites to increase coverage it will decimate tmo whilst tmo is still attempting to find the cash to continue its LTE rollout and work on starting it's 700mhz rollout in the areas it has where there isn't c51 issues. Sure I am on tmo, sure performance is good ish right now. I changed at the right time, now I am waiting to change back because the writing on the wall is not great. Sprint is already selling phones that support its additional bands, it is rolling out equipment and backhaul that will facilitate quicker upgrades. This may seem like a pro sprint rant, it is an objective argument, if you are looking at 3-9 months for sprint I would keep with it. 

Tmo likes to rant about headlines, they shout about lte and xmbps or new spectrum, the bottom line is look at how much they actually roll it out. How many locations have more than a few LTE sites, how many have the 10x10 or 20x20 they talk about? In Legeres mind if a few big cities have it then its time to scream about it. Not a great thing to hear when you have LTE that is swamped on peak already, before you have all those families with 5 iphones that suddenly get unlimited LTE on the network.

The whole idea of a data cap is so wrong though. 1GB at noon =/= 1GB at 2:30am in terms of network stress. I really, really, really, really would like to see some kind of peak/off peak data cap thing like Verizon used to have for minutes.

 

But the fact is, caps are used to increase revenue (at least in Verizon and AT&T's case), not to relieve network stress.

I agree the on peak off peak has merit but working very strongly against it is the fact that it complicates the situation for consumers that can barely tie their shoes. The biggest benefit of unlimited is not having to worry about your bill (apart from the abusers who just want to hammer the network for whom a special corner of hell is waiting), having time criteria reintroduces some worry. I agree it's a great concept, but practically it will run into issues with the cant think wont think crowd which seems to be about 70% of people  

Caps are most definitely revenue related at the moment. They look at usage tiers and see where they set the packages and prices to make X revenue. The problem with that is that the tiers also impact on usage so it is a cycle, they don't trust that raising the caps will likely result in a corresponding increase in use and satisfaction. (by they I mean at&t and vzw).

That must have been something they quickly backpedaled on; the Launch Guide and FAQ from a couple days ago clearly said that the Unlimited Guarantee was not included, despite Unlimited Data being offered.

I think unlimited will be around for a while in one guide or another. I think it would be sensible for them to continue both sell metered and unmetered packages, they give metered (pay per GB) priority on the network and they cap unlimited at Xmbps (say 4mbps?). There is value in avoiding bill shock, there is value in catering to the I don't want to pay for unlimited crowd, no reason they cannot do both. I would love to see the networks move away from smaller allowances for per GB packages. It is so easy to blow 2GB a month on just browsing and email before you add in any kind of video or radio \ music etc. The 3GB plan is a pretty sane amount for basic usage. Having the levels be 3 \ 7 \ unlimited would be nice, but I guess it would result in a lot of downgrading of packages and therefore ARPU unless people opted to pay the same and use more in which case it could be a win.

Which London Bridge?

 

Also, when they say they cover 239 Million people does that mean POPs or actual residential areas?

Theres two extant bridges that have been called that, the one that allegedly someone thought was Tower bridge and bought it (apparently this isn't true) and the one they replaced that one with The older bridges were much cooler, there were shops etc built into them.

Tmobiles strategy is definitely getting ore disruptive but they sure as hell need the network to back it up. I was just sat in the corner of a pizzehut in the middle of town. Right by a corner window, I could barely get a signal and when I could the signal was not reliable. I have one big question for the loudmouth colgate advert, what happens when these people come? What happens to your network if you add 5 million subs? Sure assuming it costs you nothing to acquire these subs (hint: in wont) give the ARPU you would net an extra $2bn ish a year, the reality is it might add an extra $1bn but you have to have the network to keep them. Especially as you know AT&T will start making it easy for them to return and AT&T have the money to make the network happen. Assuming an unlimited budget exactly how quickly can you expand the networks capacity? 2 years? They have been and gone. Tmobile needs to have already started an aggressive expansion or they need to do something about the unlimited, perhaps capping the speed? I hope it goes well for them but part of me thinks this is an attempt to fluff the company prior to sale so whoever buys it has to deal with the reality of all the subs. Then again I could be wrong For the record I am not anti tmobile, I am reasonably happy with them, it does what it says on the tin, at least until Legere started making writing on the tin.

Little man syndrome? 

Wasnt the idea behind this the Netflix SuperHD quality, where only ISPs who signed up for it, would allow their customers to see that new playback quality?  Last I knew they scrapped this and allow SuperHD for any ISP now.

 

Also, cable companies (and most other ISPs) chose not to sign up for this, not because they hate netflix but because it shifted the costs on to the ISP.  It messed with peering agreements and the like that many national ISPs have and are beneficial to them.

Netflix takes money directly from cable companies pockets, hence all the fuss over TW making things as difficult as possible for them without upsetting their subs too much. You are right they changed their minds over super HD, TW holding out was hurting them too much. We cancelled our ~$70 a month cable TV package for netflix. I bet TW just LOVE that happening  

Peering agreements are agreements to share traffic for free. One of the biggest monestisable assets ISP's have is access to last mile connections, this is what they sell. yes they peer, especially with each other. Their network egress is vastly outweighed by their ingress which is why they can cherrypick their peering partners. They peer for free for redundancy and critically for customer experience, better routes, more diverse routes. The money on the other end of the wire is in selling links to data centers, something this wouldn't affect barring some impact on what they sell to amazon if they peer or connect to amazon and if they do it will be on a huge scale so margins will be thin. VOD has vastly changed the already scewed traffic ratio ISP's see, having a netflix content server or servers on network reduces calls to faults and improves customer experience. Reduced cost and reduced churn. It's not a clear cut win, but nor is it a clear cut loss. When netflix starts cutting out and buffering because one route 20 hops down the line is congested a good chunk of viewers will call the isp, some will buy the line its netflix's fault, some won't, its still a traffic driver and a churn driver. I agree it is not entirely a win, my thinking was could it be shaped into a win if it was approached eyes open?  

Seems like Sprint did something right here! People in the comments of articles online are creating Reddit "things" (I don't know what they're called because I don't use Reddit) to make Framily groups. i could see Sprint Q1 2014 earnings being really positive. Although we've only started the year, Sprint chose a great time to announce this!

Great So they write up a press release and get how much free advertising! This is absolute gold for Sprint. It targets non subs, acquisition costs are low, the publicity and goodwill is free. 

I wonder how much of this is related to the tmo overtures. I mean this is a great idea by itself, but if they can take tmo subs and tmo mvno subs without having to buy tmo then you either make tmo cheaper to buy or remove the need to buy them anyway. An extra million subs won't really raise their costs but will add a huge amount to their income. I really dont see how they can lose from this.