JWMaloney

EDIT: mobile ate my post The last few times I experienced a Sprint outage, Verizon didn't let anything but 9-1-1 calls through. In-market roaming isn't designed to failover an entire market.

Force close the app before you overwrite the file.

AJ, I think you're on the right path, but my interpretation is slightly different. I suspect SMS is still passing over LTE, which is precisely the reason for the delay: e/CSFB devices will still periodically scan both networks in-between the LTE paging interval to report back to the eNB, so there's a chance what you're seeing is related to being in a connection state in which an active session must be re-established (such as idle, TAU, etc.).

It requires and collects much more information than that as part of the reports, which is why it doesn't work on non-Sprint firmware out-of-the-box. Per my previously-linked post, if you have root filesystem access, you can hard-code the required values into the appropriate XML file; but said information is extremely account-specific, so good luck to any non-subscriber who wishes to forge it for false reporting. The reports themselves are reviewed on the other end by real people. I've actually had Oklahoma City call me about reports filed through the app so that they could open a ticket and have an engineer follow up; this eventually led to a macro site being physically adjusted to fix a real coverage issue. At any rate, the T-Mobile PCC map shows signal data collected at the firmware level by CarrierIQ and speed test data from Ookla; and correct me if I am mistaken, but I believe it only shows verified coverage, not verified issues. EDIT: Forgot to answer these. The billing/usage info actually works correctly with the aforementioned modification.

It was written in Chrome. EDIT: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/46.0.2490.80 Safari/537.36

See my post about the proper configuration for non-native devices (root required).

Many underestimate the importance of call reliability, particularly in an age where, more and more, people will forego landlines and use the cellular networks as their primary method of voice communication. A significant amount of churn during Network Vision was due to dropped or blocked calls. I almost left myself at that time because (unbeknownst to me before discovering S4GRU) the mix of legacy and modern equipment in my area was causing me to drop calls on an almost daily basis -- handover between the two just didn't work. Take a look at what Claure said about this very topic last year:

Use the Vertigo effect and you'll see it. I zoomed my browser out to 25% and zoomed in to the coverage map, and there's definitely light yellow scattered about. However, you can see from the sharp cutoff in the corner that this market is using an overlay mask. I've seen that in quite a few places, particularly in Texas: My favorite exaggeration is the mythical 12-mile LTE radius used frequently in Louisiana: They clip the 3G projection exactly the same way, which is why you don't see it extending past the LTE projection other than where there are still 3G-only sites. Click the preview images for 1920x1080 captures.

Hangouts on iOS almost always gets new features and improvements in advance of its Android counterpart. Particularly frustrating for Android and Sprint users alike was when Google Voice calling was added on iOS months before Android received it.

Have they officially launched your area as an LTE Plus market, or did you just turn off that layer? One thing to keep in mind about the LTE Plus map is that light yellow isn't necessarily meant to correlate directly with band 41 coverage: In this area, there are a few band 41 sites in the dark yellow areas (as well as a few more in some of the light yellow areas). What the light yellow really means here is that you should receive good, consistent service, because even if you aren't on band 41, the other people who are will be unloading band 25 for you.

https://www.tracfone.com/direct/Purchase?payGo=true&app=TRACFONE&lang=en&smartPhone=true $35 for 90 days of service + $10 for 300 MB data. http://tracfonewireless.com/byop/

Open the Data tab and set your device to HTC EVO 4G LTE.

Last time I did the math, the cheapest route was to switch to Cricket for normal phone service, because Sprint will still authenticate to LTE with an inactive SIM just like T-Mobile does. IIRC the next best option was one of the really cheap Tracfone plans for AT&T mapping. Walmart has a free, comprehensive guide to your options in their mobile department. Just about anything you would want is printed in it.

So would 2T4R then be called 2x4 MIMO or simply 4x receive diversity? Either way, that's what both of them have been doing in this region. You can see it denoted in Verizon's diagram as "4xRx RRH". AT&T is even using these crazy 12-port (4 low, 8 high) antennas.

1. Copy the following into a bookmarklet: javascript:$.getScript('http://jwmaloney.name/s4gru/maximize-sprint-impact.js',null); 2. Go to the Sprint coverage map. 3. Click the bookmarklet.

Are they using the same bands? If not, you could try forcing a specific band using a Samsung device -- that lands my T-Mobile SIM on AT&T frequently when locked to band 12.

I'm not sure what you're trying to say? LTE inherently supports SFN via OFDMA on any band. Verizon: 1C = 20 MHz (10x10) band 13 2C = 40 MHz (20x20) band 4 3C = 30 MHz (15x15) band 2 Total 90 MHz Verizon has had 2C complete on all sites for over a year. They substantially completed 3C only recently (coincidentally right after RootMetrics tested the area, so they came in second to T-Mobile for data speeds); there has not yet been any sign of 4C, but it's more than likely going to be AWS-3 over band 5. AT&T: 1C = 20 MHz (10x10) band 17/12 2C = 30 MHz (15x15) band 2 3C = 20 MHz (10x10) band 30 4C = unknown Total 70+ MHz AT&T has also had 2C complete on all sites for over a year, having additionally built several new sites during the overlay. They recently picked up 10 MHz (5x5) of disaggregated band 2 spectrum to bump 2C up from 20 MHz (10x10). Their 3C has been substantially complete for a few months (as I stated previously, they are constrained in this market without any band 4, so this was one of the early band 30 markets). They have recently started overlaying 4C, but it is unclear what band it will be in at this time, as they are using single-low, dual-high antennas like Sprint does; but I suspect it's a second band 2 carrier (they have 10 MHz of non-contiguous band 2 to work with, and they recently started removing one of the legacy antennas from several sites). I can't comment on their actual speeds as my Cricket SIM is limited to 8 Mbps, but they have the highest site density by a long shot. T-Mobile: 1C = 30 MHz (15x15) band 4 2C = 10 MHz (5x5) band 12 Total 40 MHz T-Mobile 2C is in the early stages here. It's unclear what their choice will be for 3C: Right now, they have DC-HSPA in band 4 and HSPA + GSM in band 2. Their 50 MHz (25x25) of band 4 is contiguous, so they could refarm one of the HSPA carriers to bump their LTE to 20x20; more likely they will refarm the band 2 carrier. But either way, they're not hurting for capacity right now. They converted all but two MetroPCS sites to full build, practically doubling their site density, and speeds are commonly 30-50 Mbps. Do you call a 2T4R setup 2x4 MIMO or 4x2 MIMO? Shreveport doesn't require permits for existing sites, so I'll borrow this from a NOLA permit (same equipment): Those are the Alcatel-Lucent RRH 2x60-B4: Verizon did a rip/replace of all their band 4 equipment when they did their band 2 overlay, so both are 2T4R. Similarly, AT&T achieves 2T4R with the Ericsson RRUS 12 + A2 module (which adds 2xRx); and as I said, we were an early band 30 market, so we have 4T4R as well. T-Mobile has been 4x2 capable from the beginning with Nokia. The only exception here has been that they have a large number of 4-sector sites, some of which re-purposed the MetroPCS LTE equipment for the 4th sector only.

It's really not as big of an advantage as they make it out to be. Verizon has 90 MHz of LTE on the air *today* across three carriers on almost every site in my city, with a site density high enough that they use narrow-beam antennas everywhere, and they haven't even started their AWS-3 overlay yet. AT&T has 50-70 MHZ on the air across 2-3 LTE carriers with an even higher site density and is overlaying another carrier right now (and this is actually a spectrum-constrained market for them as they have no AWS here). Everyone but Sprint is already running 4x2 MIMO on their high-band spectrum (although Sprint has at least upgraded to hardware capable of it now). Sprint isn't planning to do more than 3x20 MHz of band 41 on most sites, putting them at 80 MHz (plus any additional band 25 carriers) on most tri-band sites in the *future*. And with the lowest average site density of the top 4 carriers, you can see why small cells are so important to them. Now, before I get responses from people who think I just called band 41 worthless, please re-read the first sentence of my post. All I'm saying is that the amount doesn't necessarily make it the acclaimed treasure trove. The biggest advantage that spectrum will probably offer is its ability to be shifted to downlink-only (thanks to TDD) for carrier aggregation.

*ahem* http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/7337-ultimate-sprint-coverage-map/

It's those types of situations where it's nice to have the option to force roaming. I have to do this quite often in fringe areas or else my phone will get stuck in a loop trying to connect to an unusable Sprint signal.

Recent releases of Android will by default continue to use cellular data if a Wi-Fi connection is unusable (such as when blocked by a captive portal).

New Orleans was a priority market for NSN, but to date they have built out less than 50% of the permitted band 41 sites. Dozens of issued permits and site plans have been completely abandoned -- many for over a year -- with no sign of change. A lot of the sites actually went through two sets of band 41 plans only to get an extra PCS antenna and RRH at the end. From what I've read, it looks like this was part of their shift to a more surgical deployment strategy -- opting only to add capacity where needed to restore a cell to expected market performance. Still, it's disappointing that so much time and money was wasted drawing up site plans and paying for permit applications. Don't expect a significantly higher deployment rate until NGN is underway next year.

At the risk of sounding like Sprint Care, have you tried updating your PRL?

Let me know if you find out. I've had the same experience.

Forgive me for not reading through all 102 pages before jumping in, but I thought a few of you might be interested to see this: The maps depict data coverage for Boost Mobile (orange) and T-Mobile prepaid (green). Very little (if any) roaming is included for either carrier.