JossMan

I personally know an Ericsson employee (Network Technician) he keeps everything running in my area from Johnson City, Kingsport, and Bristol to Atkins, VA roughly 200+ sites.  He came from Sprint's network management team before Sprint handed network maintenance over to Ericsson.  He has said nothing but good things about Sprint when it comes to their network especially Sprint's LTE network which will closely match Verizon's 700 LTE network once 800 has been completed fully and optimized according to him.  He explained that Sprint's site density in their mature markets beat Verizon's due to Sprint's 1900 PCS spacing setup coupled with 800 being on the same 1900 sites will provide for dense LTE coverage.   

Mister Cooper

I'm not sure what good will come out of this thread. Everyone needs to remain civil. Please be respectful. If things start going sideways, we will take the thread offline, as warranted.

Let me know when the dust settles 

Am I the only one that prefers 1x for voice? LTE is way more fragile and 1x is a monster w/ it's voice quality.

 

I think Google will probably make it an LTE only service which will be interesting but it will lack the coverage of that of 1x.

 

Sent from my M8

I agree with you, with most of the hardware upgrades complete and 1x Advanced coupled with HD Voice there really is no reason to have VoLTE at the moment. 

I am not sure I buy that.  Are you insinuating that most Sprint postpaid subs have poor credit ratings?

 

AJ

After I read your first post are you insinuating that people that use Sprint's prepaid services have poor credit?  I choose to use "Sprint Prepaid" because I don't want to be tied down to a contract, I didn't have to sign a contract to get my cable and internet so why should I have too for wireless service? 

I know there are people that have no choice but to use prepaid because their credit rating is poor but its not the case for everybody.  

Initially or if the safety clause Sprint put in the contract kicks in?

Initially.

So any takers on how much money Google will be paying Sprint to use their network?  This could really help out Sprint's Band 41 deployment, future Network Vision upgrades, and money for the 600MHz auction.  

I'm curious how Sensorly detects which provider you have, is by the PLMN ID? If so they need to add 312530 for Sprint as well. I have not been able to map LTE for weeks now.

Edit: Just to update, I took a screenshot of Sensorly under the "Details" page and this is what it shows.

I've seen that issue once or twice. We have band 41 down here and my S5 seems to always favor it when I'm close enough to pick up the signal. But for the most part it stays on band 26. It will switch over though. For example, at my job I work outside in a mechanic shop. While I'm outside I'm on band 25 because it has a much stronger signal. When I go inside of the building and my band 25 single weakens it jumps to band 26 just like it's supposed to. Before I had been 26 it would stay on band 25 and I would almost have no data. But now while inside I still get on average of 3-7 Mbps while outside on my band 25 I get 4-12 Mbps.

The site close to my house had 800 turned on a few months back, its now swamped during the evening hours with speeds averaging 1-5Mbps.  My phone use to stay parked on 800 but for the last week its now favoring 1900 LTE with speeds 15Mbps+ most of the time no matter what time of the day it is. 

Hopefully within a few months they will have the final few sites lit up with LTE here which will help out dramatically.  

Land Shark

To answer the thread title question, no. But we will all ultimately adopt ISIL wallet -- or pay by the bullet.

 

 

AJ

Follow up: two days later, and after driving through most of the cities in Broward County, I have yet to EVEN SEE a 3G signal on my S5. I have had an average of 3-10 Mbps all around town. Where I used to have a weak LTE signal, I'm now cruising the Web at a wonderful pace. In the place I used to hide my phone, knowing it was only capable of making calls, I now pull it out and start offering to Google everything, lol. So far, life is GREAT in my mobile universe. =-)

This is what we like to hear! 

Speaking of Band 41, is there a national map showing how much of the spectrum Sprint owns in each of the MTA/BTAs?

Would you buy a boat that is sinking, in hopes of patching it up, and pumping the water before it sinks? I know I wouldnt. Radio shack is going the way of Circuit city. Sad to say.

Well the boat hasn't sunk...yet.  Considering they are going to file for restructuring bankruptcy (Chapter 11) they can emerge as a more lean company, now if they were filing for Chapter 7 bankruptcy "liquidation" well then they are past the stage of restructuring and it would be safe to say the boat has sank, this is not the case...yet.    

Someone is going to have to buy Radioshack here in the near future as they are on the verge of bankruptcy.

Name Badge

Does 8t8r need to be optimized?

If your referring to Band 41 when it is initially turned on, yes it needs to be optimized.  The first Band 41 8T8R site here couldn't even reach a couple blocks and the signal was strongest when I was almost directly under the site, a few weeks later it almost matches up with PCS LTE.  

Just a note this is my experience with Band 41 and every situation will be different.  Some sites are designed to cover a few city blocks and others are designed to cover miles.  I believe they will try to maximize every ounce of coverage with Band 41 to make customers data sessions more enjoyable.  

Just to update on my recent purchase of this device I am quite impressed with the performance and the build quality of this phone. The bezel-less screen looks great not to mention the display looks very sharp and crisp with the colors popping out at you, Sharp really nailed it.  What is the most impressive is the performance of the radio, on LTE 1900 I see a stronger signal by -5dBm and on LTE 800 it shines with a -12dBm gain!  On my LG Volt I couldn't do any better than -99dBm in my house on LTE 800, with the Sharp Aquos Crystal I see a -87dBm connection!  It seems like Sharp got the signal bars configured correctly on LTE as well, this will definitely be a keeper.

Just picked this phone up a little while ago, feels like a solid device. Ill report back once I play around with it for a while.

Thinking about picking this phone up, looks really nice. For those of you that own this device what do you think of it?  Does it play well with SignalCheck Pro?  Thoughts?  

1) Does the 60K include small cells?

2) Keep in mind Sprint doesn't exist in select markets (IE Virginias). This means that comparing the total number of sites doesn't prove greater density at all. It simply suggests that it's possible.

Sprint has native coverage in Virginia, just opposite ends of Virginia somewhat.  Sprint's sites end once you leave Atkins, VA and they pick back up just south of Harrisonburg, VA and just about the entire Virginia coast is covered with native coverage.  West Virginia however is a different story.

Now the question is, how much of the 2.5 spectrum are they going to sell?

I don't know if this is being discussed anywhere but I found an article saying that CEO Marcelo Claure said that the carrier’s management is currently evaluating the 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings, and might be interested in selling the airwaves.

Article found here.