richy

hmm perhaps it has something to do with the fact the network is nearly symmetrical but usage is naturally asymmetrical? i.e. 10mhz up 10 mhz down, even factoring in less efficient use of phone > site (lower transmit power correct?), the site > phone connection can suffer saturation that wouldn't affect the reverse path right? Put simply folks download more than they upload, so assuming no other limiting factor it's possible for only one direction to be congested, especially where the two paths are similar in capacity?? Please feel free to tear this apart This is just a guess \ suggestion based on work in a datacenter rather than a statement of fact. We would routinely see the inverse, over 10x the egress than ingress causing congestion on links that test fine the other way.

I went through a fun process at a cable company I worked for in another country whereby a large competitor who we also bought channels from decided to play silly buggers with their pricing and the same may be occuring here. Basically when a 'channel owner' signs a contract they may give the content away for free (and it be supported by commercials alone) or even pay a fee for it to be carried (shopping networks, TV gambling etc) but for more popular channels with expensive content (like say Fox) they require payment. This payment generally has two aspects, a per viewer figure and a minimum spend which is the gotcha. What we found what the channel owner offered a modest reduction (~10%) in the carriage fee per user but wanted to more than double the minimum contract value which unless we could double the sales (and given it was in the base package that wasn't happening unless we got 120% market penetration) we were seriously out of pocket and we turned down their kind offer and spent the money elsewhere. The other company went to the press and whined that they cut the cost, we whined they raised it, and both were true and false in their own way. It's also a way of saving face and not looking like the bad guy, cut the per sub cost but bump the minimum and you can say you made it cheaper even though the reality is it will cost more. So how does that affect Sprint TV. When I had it, Sprint TV was actually pretty darn cool. Yes channels were limited and you had to buy some of them, but it was essentially free. The problem arises when networks want more money. We haven't any idea how much sprint actually budgeted per person for licensing content, probably not more than a dollar or two a month, if that. That doesn't buy much when many channel packages cost more than that per month and it can be tough to get them unbundled into individual channels. It's likely ESPN figured it could make more money taking it away from sprint and using it's own app and have more control. Sad but true. Plus sprint tv is probably suffering a lot of competition from hulu, netflix, cbs et al, perhaps the viewing figures simply didn't justify the increased cost?

Or perhaps, "lets keep kicking it down the line and hopefully we can get it into the next presidents term who may be more sympathetic to the way I want to do it." Vice president of federal regulatory? Would this have anything to do with being in charge of donating large sums of money to politicians who completely by coincidence come out in favor of legislation written by companies or their lobbying firms, often for the sole benefit of that company and at the expense of the people who actually pay politicians wages and to whom they are sworn to represent? It's sad that companies have such offices.

I'm could be wrong but the lte sites active are on federal land and didn't need permits from the state. Also the are continuing to upgrade the '3g' network (more t1s etc) which is why you see their site mentioning upgrades that don't mean network vision / lte. I'm sure others will be along soon to give a more accurate / complete answer Edit: I suppose, technically they could be upgrades to fractional t3 I can't see multiple or even a single full to being needed but there will bea point where a ft3 is cheaper than multiple t1's.

Meh meant SMA not SAR I should add that I was just thinking out loud. I have some local experience of the permitting process in general, especially SMA from both sides of it but I haven't experience of sprints contracts.

The fact it is an industrial \ commercial zoning possibly made for quicker permit approval and\or easier access to backhaul. The SAR approval would be significantly easier to obtain. The location will also be significantly easier to obtain landowner permission compared to the roof of an office building or hotel so it could be intentionally first to allow them to 'practice' on a site with less time constraints imposed by land \ property owners.

If the FCC is committed to 4 nation wide carriers it cannot do a half arsed job, it has to give the two 'smaller' carriers a shot at sub gig spectrum (I know sprint have 800mhz, but I mean a significant chunk like 20-40MHz). The big two are not exactly innovating, their pricing usually all but matches each other, they roll out service pretty much as it suits their marketing department unlike Sprint who seems to be rolling it out as fast as it can or tmo who seems to be doing it as quickly as they can afford. Sprint and tmo cannot be 'token competitors'. Whilst Sprint is doing a good job these days they still need a decent chunk of low dial spectrum and to have a chance at expanding coverage. It would be nice to see them both get some assistance to level they playing field.

There is an element of lobbying and protectionism, which given the Chinese attitude towards their currency and state investment is understandable. They also have a long history of acting as manufacturers for western \ Japanese companies and then copying their work, then investing heavily in their own education to begin to develop their own technology based on what they 'borrowed'. They have an entire scooter and motorcycle industry built off the designs of a couple of Honda engines (to the point they can be part compatible in some cases). So not buying back stuff built off reverse engineering our products is not entirely crazy However yes, security is also a part. No sense making it too easy for them. We can't hop on our high horses about spying, it's not like we don't do it even to our allies, but we shouldn't make it too easy. I'd be worried however if transit gear were too vulnerable, surely it must be heavily encrypted if it ever goes near a public network?? Even government contracts, sure they could probably listen in on cell phone calls and intercept low level emails, but the real important stuff must be protected right? If not I think some of our people need to answer some questions. I guess it could leave us vulnerable to them turning everything off in the event of a war?

Exactly, if it reachers 'too far' in some areas you just lower the transmit power for the towers. In rural areas with big gaps between towers you can ramp it up and get increased coverage. As regards antenna etc, this is an engineering challenge. As soon as ALU et al see there is money to be made selling lighter \ less sail like antenna then you can be sure they will appear for sale. If there is sufficient money to entice a solution, and 4 nation wide networks wanting to purchase would qualify, well 3 nation wide and tmobile) then they will find a way. Plus not all sites are towers, the majority around here are sat on hotel roof tops and therefore subject to different limitations. In cities I would presume (probably incorrectly) that building roof tops are also a popular location? In cities it would seem to me that this means more capacity, in rural locations more reach as well? A question for our gurus, assuming they did drop the transmit power on towers, they could leave it alone on phones right? Allowing the 'upload' more resilience? Just wondering.

blah blah how to run an economy that turns a surplus blah blah universal healthcare blah blah low unemployment blah blah decent education system Well I guess they weren't listening too hard after all But the point is well made re China listening, we know there are back doors sorry deliberate security issues in all the kit (that we put there). Do we want to make it easier for China to spy? They obviously already do, would this make it easier? Probably. I think it's pretty much guaranteed that allowing that kit to become part of the national infrastructure would bring in compromises. The bigger question is (as mentioned) how far down are our pants already given the amount of Chinese stuff already in use and the economic dependence. I would hope however that anything important on a government \ military \ national security level would be safe by default as it should be encrypted in transit. The commercial impacts would probably be more severe, commercial espionage etc.

What else new is coming up? The 600MHz reverse auction hoohaa, a pcs block? Is there much beyond that in the near future? It would be wonderful if someone magically discovered 300 MHz of unused spectrum squished between 699MHz and 700MHz but even with my poor understanding of physics I don't see that occurring. Beyond that are we mostly going to see improvements in utilization of existing capacity? i.e. mimo etc, pushing mvno traffic onto lte to free up more spectrum to be switched to lte with its higher spectral efficiency? Your thoughts?

Glad to hear it worked out! One other thing I use (sparingly and because I know my oven) is leaving it in the oven with just the light on. We have a rather bright light in the oven that kicks out a fair bit of heat, I use it for proving bread and drying silica packets, but it isn't hot enough to damage anything. Just to idiot proof this, I DO NOT turn on the actual oven just the interior light. Worked quite a few times on laptops when clients killed them leaving them in the rain, on the lawn when the sprinklers were on or when they went to humid countries and didn't use an IBM or a Tosh (which slightly dates my advice lol).

It's a possibility but the reality with bitcoin mining is that the increased power costs often more than negate the revenue. This varies from state to state (with the differing power costs) and also with the value of a bit coin. Most farmers are switching to using asics for an added jump in performance which given the nature of how the mining works leaves cpu|gpu miners in an even worse position. The concept of bit coins is extremely interesting but it is most definitely going through a rapid evolution, between government action, technological developments and theft it is a high risk endeavor, but there are rewards for some out there. You just have to be very eyes open about it and educate yourselves, a lot of people make a net loss. Unfortunately power costs are insane here, even an asic rig would barely break even The states with a superabundance of power may have more luck though!

That's a feature, your iphone magically updated itself to a new flex version, or were you just sat on it wrong but seriously I'm glad they swapped it for you.

Honestly, with a rebrand and a price cut people forget REALLY quickly. Look at how many scandals we get over food safety or banking and people end up going straight back throwing their money at people who have been proven at best hard of thinking and more likely dangerously dishonest. 'Some' people remember, the type of people who care enough to do some research, the folks on these forums, but sadly we live in a world where a significant percentage of the population fall into the can't think, won't think category. Marketing messages work, but thats kind of the point, they work too well One rebrand, a few shiny adverts and some coupons later and sure you don't have the share of the market that can think back but you have a huge chunk of the rest back. But if they did it like you suggest people would whine about how long it takes. Sprint's situation is evolving, spectrum wise and financing wise. On top of that technology is evolving. If they waited until lte was rolled out entirely on pcs before beginning 800 or 2500 then doing everything one step at a time it would take a lot longer and people would complain even more. Sprint customer service is great, one of the best I have experienced, their in store staff are excellent and don't treat you like a cash pinata and are HONEST. They don't grab you at the door and try and log all your details into a tablet so they can hound you. They know their products very well and have always been honest about shortcomings. Thats pretty rare these days. There are problems with their network rollout in areas (and not in others) but your average consumer just goes my phone doesn't work sprint sucks. There is most definitely the argument that they shouldn't have to know too much about why it didn't work, but the flip side is it is perfectly valid to say we do know whats going on and that it's valid to say that will change over the next year.

Oh hell no it won't In three years tmo's lte will most likely be crawling at 100kbps speeds. Tmo's lte here already slows from 20+mbps to 4-5mbps during the day. Personally for me thats fine, I use it mostly off peak, not as a substitute for home broadband and 4mbps is ample for anything I want to do. Given they have a stratergy which is proving popular (it seems so anyway) they are only going to lose speed. If they get some lower A block that might save them for a while but they will have to build that out AND wait for phones that use it (band 12?) to come to market, even more so given they tend to 'share' phone builds with at&t. In one respect this could mean we do end up with 4 strong carriers, maybe tmo and sprint grab loads of 600mhz, but long term sprint has a better chance than tmo, both in general and with respect to a set price data deal (they will just have to wrangle data, throttling, blocking types etc to keep it realistic).

People always want more for less, as technologies evolve (be it docsis or lte) companies have the option to sell the same for less or more for the same, it's a brave company that tells its shareholders it's going to intentionally drop ARPU! A far more common scenario is to double the speed for 'free', them the following year stick you with a 15% price increase and state "hey we're just really nice guys we gave you that free speed boost remember". And no, not being cynical, this is from actual real world experience in a cable company. This is an entirely intentional strategy.

Sure no problemo To make this fair I used the absolute worst file I could find for encoding that I had close to hand. It is shot on a cheap camera setup ($1300?) underwater with a shedload of movement and sunlight play across a pattern. Short of getting drunk and trying to film indcars from a helicopter this is as bad as it will get so I am not trying to throw the test by using a static test card lol I stuck it into handbrake, set it to 720p and 1mbps and had it deblock a little. The end result is ok at 1mbps but muddy. This is a basic freeware h264 encoder, netflix et al have considerably better encoders and far more experience than I at using them. Frankly, if they cannot do better than that they should give me the company! You experience with streaming at ~1-1.5mbps will depend significantly on the service you are using. Sure I grant you it will not be bluray quality, but it should be viewable. If you have buffering then that is down to the choice made by the provider, do they choose to drop the resolution if they know your link is slow or do they drop the quality. They can setup their transcoder \ streaming server pretty much any way they like, some services will drop the quality, some the resolution, some will drop frames and some will just buffer. link to 1mbps 720p24 h264 video file. http://www.filedropper.com/honu

They may, by about 0.00001%, it's a matter of amount. If I pee in the Pacific Ocean it gets deeper, would you notice?

True you forgot that in a real duopoly it would be at least twice the price for the same lackluster service

True, but it may not be such a huge issue in the future with multiple 20x20 lte carriers in the future. I don't tend to shift large files for fun, but I do stream video when I need \ want to because my provider explicitly states I can. I don't do it when I can use wifi and movies tend to be about 2GB. It will be interesting to see how the next generation of network changes what we can do without impacting other people and if providers take the route of supporting more people or giving people more capacity for the same money. I think perhaps we will see more traffic shaping rather than caps. Unlimited is both a useful marketing tool and a valuable piece of mind to customers, tempering that with some shaping to ensure a decent quality of service would be the logical and fair next step. Maybe folks wanting to download a 6GB mp4 will have to wait (much) longer but still have the ability to do so. It will also be interesting to see how Sprint treats its inhouse and 3rd party MVNO subs, potentially giving priority on certain bands or throttling (something some of the at&t mvno's do i.e. no lte over 8mbps) etc. IMHO what makes sense on 800mhz doesn't on 2500 where there is greater capacity and again 1900 which is heavily used needs another approach. I think it would be pretty smart for Sprint to take a very flexible approach here. The cable co I worked for allowed completely unlimited, un throttled access on their brand new docsis 3 network then gradually introduced some QOS at peak times for subs on lower level packages in areas with congestion as usage grew. Barring a few people who were against the concept of any kind of throttle and wanted to download a huge amount 24x7 (these were 100\10 connections upgraded for free from a 50\5) it was very well received.

Is related to knox and some Android security feature. The 'fix' is to hit the ignore for 30 days button every 30 days. Some fix.

I think he largely missed the point. The worst result I saw was 1mbps down, he states frequently below 4mbps. At 1mbps I can happily stream 720p video, have a HD chat on skype etc, oh and not pay $10 per GB. All mobile networks will show speed fluctuations with demand, rather than just running speed tests did he at any point actually try and use the phone. I understand the metrics are useful to compare X provider with Y provider but they need to be put into context which in this case means stating that even at its slowest it is still enough to perform most common tasks you are going to perform that would require a decent amount of bandwidth. 80mbps elsewhere will just empty your wallet faster, and for what? So a webpage loads no faster because it is constrained by the SOC in the phone? A pdf might take an extra few seconds to load. Yes downloading an entire HD movie would take longer but if it was say 6GB, I'll take the wait and no huge bill thanks The points above regarding the spark icon make perfect sense however! I think Sprint do need to be careful not risk associating a new brand image needlessly and inaccurately with slower performance.

Frequently there is a scary correlation between favorable results in 'surveys' like this and the volume of adverts or consultation services going the other way. I saw this first hand working for a large quad play cable co in Europe. It's largely BS and besides some bad press and a few chances after credits there was virtually no impact on churn or acquisition. Sprint is an awesome company, truly great customer services and sales. Their network needs love but the great thing is it is getting it. There is a solid, publicly available plan. They are extremely price competitive and are effectively rebuilding their network. Once they have nation wide triband LTE it should be an entirely different story for actual customers. If they win big in the 600mhz auction it should be even better. As for LTE speeds in markets, honestly I would expect that. Tmo also offers unlimited and their 10x10 in my market (pretty sure it's 10x10) is awesome overnight 15-22mbps depending on signal and during the day it drops to 3-4mbps at times. So yeah it's busy, but even at it's busiest thats still a hell of a decent connection. I can stream 1080p at that, hell I can even stream 720p at the 1-2mbps mentioned above. Yes it is less, but in perspective it's still pretty darn fine! It's a simple choice unmetered and you share the network with people who also choose unmetered access (quite possibly because they use a lot of data, sometimes because they simply don't want a variable bill) or pay per GB and probably access to a less congested network. I expect that sprint may start to look at more agressive traffic management as LTE markets mature. This is purely conjecture and not meant to be critical of sprint, but I think they may start selling per GB access as well and give that priority over unlimited data customers, they have already said video will be capped at 1mbps, all pretty fair game. If nothing else they still have options! Plus in the longer run, besides more spectrum they can roll out mimo etc, more evolution's of LTE. I don't think NV is going to be a open and shut project, there will be a 3.0 and a 4.0 and a 5.0 as markets mature. The great thing is they have a plan, they have options beyond that and they are moving in the right direction.

May his crotch forever itch. Seriously people these days are such absolute.... Just because you can doesn't mean you should.