richy

Iirc there's a 20 MHz per market maximum.

I haven't had sprint for over 4 years but I remember having data when I camped by uncle Francis' place just before Aleamai, just beyond Hāna but it was slow ish, edge type speed.

Sprint roams on Vzw out there who have coverage all the way out to hokuula/hamoa, or at least they used to but that's subject to the usual roaming limits. They could build out there, tmo got a permit, at&t have at least one tower (Vzw have one hy trevassa and one by the airport) and want another out by the dump but ran into opposition. Sprint could put at least one tower by trevassa. Would be nice to get some signal out there on sprint or tmo, hopefully sprint can do it as part of their new expansion.

Native in Hāna would be nice. Tmo have a permit they don't plan to use out there out by the hotel. Sprint could get one, it may be part of their next buildout. That's something I'm watching. A cursory check of permits shows them not up to much right now, hopefully we will see a flurry of permits over the next year.

Tempting to switch lol so we got 800 MHz on Maui? How's it on the pali? Tmo is useless for data between olowalu and maalaea. I was looking at switching but they didn't upgrade that many sites, I think the west side only got one down by Kaanapali so there's no lte once you had north a ways.

<p>From toms hardware? </p> <p> </p> <p>The plans being better than verizon I understand although it's subjective, what's better for one is not for everyone. Iirc they came out so we'll in the network test as 5 of the 6 locations were cities. This isnt a serious review and ranking, it's pretty effective click bait though so it probably achieved their goal. It doesn't sock me that Legere jumped on it like a fast kid on the last piece of pie, is well known that any test that shows then in a positive light is amazing and any that don't are 'flawed'. </p>

And there was me hoping they might announce something substantive. So basically they have fudged together a new coverage map that looks great but will is fantasy. So what happens when some more folks venture over from Verizon and find out the truth, they'll leave, never come back and tarnish tmo reputation even more. What we needed was something tangible today, more spectrum, towers or roaming. Not marketing hype. Trust arrives on foot and leaves by horse, he would do well to remember that.

He's going to drown himself? It would be nice to see something concrete not just half baked marketing. Looking at the permits here they are basically doing nothing. There's one area of the island with no service and they have a full building permit for a tower, had it since 2011, they never built it. I reached out to them to find out if they would as part of their current network build and they said no. This area has a low population but tons of visitora, plus the locals go there to escape tourists but there's no roaming so no measure of demand. They just see a low population. It would be nice to see them announce a serious build out and or more low band spectrum.

<history lesson> In the UK video calling was supposed to be a huge thing when '3g' was released. Calls were set at 50p (~75c) per minute, only worked between a few phones and mostly had to be on the same network, the whole concept died as only about 3 people used it, but the celcos had spent a lot of money on spectrum and deployment. They had huge amounts of unused capacity. Around this time, maybe a year or so later, netbooks started to be released and the 'dongles' for 3g internet which had been a niche product suddenly took off like a pigeon landing on a bbq. I did actually have a 'video phone' but only because I got it very cheap and could use it for mobile data. Tried a video call once and it was beyond terrible. </history lesson> Basically we tried 3g calling before (not sure if the USA did), compatibility and price killed it, if its the same cost as a normal call and works between all phone makes and cell companies then there is a small chance it might take a bite out of the facetime \ skype market but how are they going to monetize it? Or is it just going to be a 'feature' or just use it to drive data usage?

For the most part they have, they defined what you couldn't do, p2p, hide tethering etc in the TOS. What does seem to be iffy is hitting people who use vpn's or modify their apn. I've done both at times, the vpn for getting into my home network and the apn to force an ipv4 address as frequently the ipv6 address borks ftp connections. I didn't mind the 21gb soft cap, I don't mind them clamping down on people bypassing tethering but they need to be careful not to target legitimate uses. Legere states we can use netflix all day long every day and if you arent on a congested tower you wont even be deprioratized, but if they start banhammering folks for legitimate use thats light then they will likely lose customers, and decent ones at that. As for the 2TB comments, that actually came from some muppet on HF who actually complained his unlimited connection stopped at 2TB. So there is at least one chump out there who did abuse the network that much, although most abuse is probably in the hundreds of GB \ typical home isp range. Seriously 2TB, that is a lot of fapping...

Firstly, we all seem to agree Legere is the worlds greatest asshat, but this seems somewhat sensible no? To have any chance at offering unlimited smartphone for the next few years they need to ensure it is just that being used. They deprioratized the heaviest users (and published the level, which is rare) and now they are clamping down on people using it as an isp which seems to be a regular occurrence. My work patterns changed so I use less now than I did. My worst was 50 GB in a month iirc, currently about 10GB. The better half gets closer to 90 GB now mostly due to the half pints watching netflix in the car and her watching it at work (she has one of those jobs where theres literally nothing to do a lot of the time but she has to be there). We have never been contacted about our usage. I think she noticed the deprioratization recently on a trip to Oahu but otherwise nothing. We do use tethering now and again but not much and always using the phones hotspot feature so it gets recorded properly. The next few years will be very interesting, there cant be rampant abuse of any network, they have projections for usage when they offer products. Going beyond that will make the products less sustainable. Cracking down on asshats who run their entire home off a tethered lte connection deserve getting booted, they may just be worse asshats than Legere. I agree Legere is definately trying to ensure this doesn't look bad for tmo butif they stick to people who are deliberately breaking the rules and impacting the network then that seems fair but I could be wrong

No idea about dragonball z but its pronounced kah-may-ha-may-ha .

600kbps might just manage a 640x360 stream with some level of decency but 1mbps would be better. With h265 coming that will improve a little on devices that support it but it is most effective at high resolutions. I love unlimited, not because I thrash it, but because I know what my bill will be. If Sprint straight matched tmos 2 for 100 deal I would be very close to switching, tmos international plan is about all that would keep me. Sprint needs to shower a bit more love on the rock I live on but hopefully that will change in the next year. Tmos 21GB has been talked about a lot. It is the threshold at which the deprioritization kicks in currently for the top 3% of users. It's basically what they did before but now they are saying what amount gets you on the naughty step. What I don't understand about Sprints offering, even with the 600kbps is that it is enforced all the time, even if you are the only one on a site. That minor tweak alone would make this a very different proposition. If they have the capacity free why not let people use it? I understand the reluctance to offer unfettered unlimited because the reality is any provider would need to eventually restrict it. It also needs some clear disadvantage over a pay per GB plan (which is fair). Prioritizing the pay per GB traffic seems fair. Sprint came really close with this plan, lets hope they listen and tweak it slightly.

The concept of NPS is pretty good, but in practice it gets executed like 6Sigma \ LEAN (what belt were you ). The idea that you need to work towards turning your customers into promoters and that only the top end of the satisfaction scale act as active promoters is correct. The reality is that you cannot poll every sub at every contact point, so there is a selection process which is where the scum in the MBA mafia screw with the concept. Basically if it can be measured, it will be manipulated. When CSA's put people through to do a NPS survey do you think they select randomly or just the people who think they will rank them 10's? The desk warmers ensure that staff are rewarded for increasing their scores so their Dept looks the best. It rarely ever actually results in any significant changes in business practice

There's way too much mindless mud slinging from both sides here. Such a shame. Both tmobile and sprint have done a lot for the industry and have huge potential. Each has their own issues and each is taking their own approach. If they took identical approaches it would hurt them both, put them in direct competition and stifle choice for us the consumers. If it wasnt both both companies we would be getting screwed by the big two. There is this pathetic mindset that tmo or sprint must be bad and must fail and nothing can be learnt from them. Both companies have their zealots, but they also have a decent number of subs who just want a decent service for a fair price and are happy to switch between the companies. This site is an amazing resource most of the time but sadly the childish nature frequently ruins it. Yes I am a tmobile subs and have been for quite a few years, because Sprint was a less attractive proposition. Unfortunately Sprint hasn't been able to roll out lte here yet (beyond a single site I think) and many sites don't have permits in yet so are unlikely to see lte inside of a year. I come here because it is interesting to see the progress they are making and understand the factors which differentiate sprints NV \ Spark proposition from the other providers, hopefully next year I will be able to make the jump back to Sprint. The animosity here towards people on other providers, the assumption that because we are not on sprint we must be loony magentians, it detracts from a wonderful site and community. A lot of what tmobile has done has been fluff, but they have managed to grow their company, begin to acquire 700 lower a and provide an unlimited lte plan at between $50 and $80 a line. Fluff aside, the basic proposition is pretty nice right now (sustainability is a fair question however). Whats really important for both sprint and tmobile is that they are different from each other whilst both growing and taking chunks out of the big two. Petty bickering between each other and competing directly is just playing into the hands of the big two. One of the few sane things out of Legeres mouth was the comments about Tmo and Sprint not needing the other one to fail to succeed but that seems to have been lost. I apologise to Robert for my comments above as he has always been exceptionally fair with me, this site is a credit to him but the fact that it seems impossible to have an adult conversation, even with a few casual jokes, about another carrier without it devolving into petty, malicious drivel and sniping is sad. If it wasn't for this site I wouldn't even be considering sprint, I'd written them off before I found s4gru, but some folks are making it very easy to stop keeping an eye on them.

No. Is wrong when he did it like that and it's wrong when it's done here. How many Jews were in ghettos before going to their death? Legere's comments were in poor taste, as normal, but that is not open license to try and one up them. There irony was not lost on me that I watched his talk whilst stood in a field getting 5 bars of lte. Perhaps it was the lack of cows? Do cows block signals? I thought cows broadcast signals ; )

I think you are pretty much on the ball there. My (obviously biased as I am a tmobile troll) take is that they picked their battle. Going back a couple of years they were under performing in their market and under performing overall. Rather than go toe to toe with the big two on everything they picked their 'hero' product which was data and positioned themselves to appeal to a subset of the market that would appreciate their strengths and not notice their weaknesses. IF they actually manage to get through the next few years maintaining their growth I would expect to see them start to expand physical footprint and when they are in a position to fight on rural coverage as well they will re position themselves again. It will take them years if not a decade to organically get anywhere near the big two so to be fair theres not much point pretending to be them right now. Verizon thinks they are the right choice for everyone, Tmo is saying they are the right choice for a select portion of the market. Sadly to do this they appear to have hired an ancient giant forehead and dressed it like Justin Bieber. To go after at&t and vzw in the long run they have to sell what they actually do have first, which is a fairly decent data proposition in certain localities. Short of a merger they arent going to offer much more in the immediate future. Sprint however in theory has the money to get to the top quickly, if sugar daddy chooses to spend it

Nope, it's unlimited free Sardines. There's no way Sprint could match that.

Costco has just dipped under 3 bucks a gallon. Gas on account from the local merchant is about 3.25 currently, retail gas is about 3.90 to 4.10 at normal stations. Extreme rural stations, the small islands and harbors is probably in the 5 bucks a gallon range. Our local refinery is setup to only take sweet crude so or oil market is a little different to the mainland, we are still fighting with the demands from Japan for sweet crude for their oil power plants after they shut their nuclear stations down. Having a bike as a 2nd vehicles means our gas is pretty decent, it only drinks about $20-$30 a month, does about 60mpg. Time on the farm and cane roads is taking its toll on the mpg though! Amazing fun to be had chasing a truck on the cane roads. The car is doing pretty well on the farm but we really need the extra ground clearance. The new colarado looks pretty much in line with what we would want from a truck, but we can get pretty much the same from a CRV with the potential for better fuel economy and lower maintenance costs. That and the Honda dealer is vaguely human and I like wrenching on them. Doesn't hurt they are reliable and safe either. Ford made some astoundingly good normally aspirated engines, my experience was their turbos were less reliable. Ford also managed to do cheap fairly well as long as you stayed away from anything 'fancy'. When I look now I see price parity with Honda et al and cars that are increasingly complicated. Mazda are doing some great things with high compression normally aspirated engines that run on normal gas, they reckon by 2020 they will have sparkless gasoline engines running diesel level compression and much higher efficency than current engines. Basically taking the knocking effect and controlling it to detonate on demand. Pretty interesting and fairly basic to implement, rather than a relatively complicated turbo. Mazda do have to prove the engines will last though. At least we are seeing a massive improvement in gas mileage. Thanks for the comments on the colorado, will give the first model year a chance to iron out the bugs and see how it does.

No Although we may wait a year and see how the Colorado does and get that instead of an SUV. I realize folks get very attached to certain brands but please remember I live on a rock in the middle of the pacific, we can't go to any other dealer than the one we get, so if a marque has an expensive or disreputable dealer it basically rules them out altogether, even if we ship it in from another island for the initial purchase. Test drives, reliability and drive ability played a huge part. The subaru and mazda only just made the list and on the safety side I'm not sure about the toyota, going to see if the next MY does any better in the crash tests. I could understand if the Honda was 5k more expensive but the price is basically the same between them all so no harm in going for one that tops basically all the charts besides fuel economy (and a new cvt may be coming to fix that, and screw up the reliability lol). I grew up with Fords, suffered all the jokes, grew up thinking the RAC (British AAA) were a vacation tour company the number of times they brought us home, but I do love them. I just can't afford to keep one moving these days. I admit 4 vehicles is a small sample size, but all of them weren't just minor nightmares, they were full on sheet soakers. We do have a rather special climate out here, but some vehicles cope, some don't. If I went with my heart it would be a range rover, but I can't afford a 2nd one for the 50% of the time the first one is broken. Some of the new Jeeps look pretty darn nice though!

After having close relatives have me work on and explain a flex, f150 and explorer I have refused to go near anything Ford (along with anything by Nissan that isn't a car). They've made some awesome vehicles over the years but the ecotec seems have have issues with oil coming through the pcv (no catch tank and the inlet jets direct above the port get clogged to hell and back) and sync seems to have a rather demented mind of its own (although I am prepared to put it down to the heat and dust). I would have much rather seen Ford take the route Mazda did with engines than the small turbo route, it plays on Fords strengths and avoid their weaknesses. Hopefully that will be fixed in the near future if it isn't already but it was a short ride from the Ford dealers to the Honda dealers. The market for cars these days is awesome, a hell of a lot of good choices so even minor stuff (or major in the case of the engines) just results in a shrug and walk to the next dealer. I would love to see Ford do well but we are looking for a SUV and its down to a Subaru, Mazda, Honda, and a Toyota, sad not to see Ford on that list

Honestly I think they are so close it isnt worth bothering over $5 a month. The networks are far more important, as is customer service. We are a long way from the $160-200 a month for 2 lines the big two like to charge for any sensible level of service. I worry more than Sprint and Tmo hamstring themselves fighting over who has the lowest price tag rather than charging sustainable prices and going after the big two. Methinks Masa has deep enough pockets to beat tmo at that game. If this is just the pair of them finding price parity then thats one thing, but taking it farther into repeated rounds of price cutting just harms us as consumers in the long run.

But there is sometimes a cap on the unthrottled data. I was wondering if there was a limit on the non lte data before you got throttled.

I might switch over to the 2/100 offer, looks interesting. I wonder if the non lte data is also unlimited? i.e. is there a cap on 3.5g ?

No, it's just an update to my earlier comments referencing the max peak and off peak speeds. I'm sure there are faster sites on tmo and other ISPs.