JWMaloney

I'd pay a little extra for access to roaming and VoLTE.

Allow me to introduce you to the Nexus S.

AJ, I'm not sure why you continue to belittle my alleged past experiences, but for the record, I lived and worked within WiMAX coverage for the entire duration of my time using the Nexus S. That was the entire reason I bought the device in the first place. That has nothing, zero, to do with my opinion that blocking WiMAX-capable PHONES from the network would be a bad move. Are we not allowed to have opinions here?

And millions others never connected at all. Are you seriously implying that more people did use WiMAX than didn't? That's certainly something we can put to the test. Can anyone else confirm this to be the case for phones? If not I'll go ahead and swap mine tomorrow and report back. Didn't Sprint used to offer dual-mode CDMA/iDEN phones? Anyone know what happened with them after Nextel was shut down?

Robert, I can assure you there was neither accusation nor any personal agenda in my post. In the event I tried to activate a legacy device, I would expect and accept the 3G-only scenario which you outlined. There is no need for Sprint to waste any more resources on the WiMAX network outside of the court order. All I'm saying is that, from a customer experience standpoint, it would be a huge mistake for Sprint to leave someone without service just because their working legacy device happens to have a WiMAX radio in it, particularly since so few of them ever actually connected to anything. Hopefully I never have to find out.

You don't think it would be odd to disallow activation of WiMAX devices given the number of areas which never received anything more than license-protection levels of service (particularly after the users of those devices paid the 4G fee for months)? I would port out ASAP if something unfortunate were to happen to my Nexus 5 and Sprint didn't allow me to reactivate my Nexus S until a replacement was received.

Wow! Surely speeds like that are deserving of the $10 "Premium Data" charge!

So they only had to establish substantial service ON a certain date and not afterward?

How is Sprint planning to handle the FCC substantial service requirements with WiMAX being shut down?

Don't hold your breath for a second PCS LTE carrier. Sprint is still happily using all of its non-G-block PCS spectrum for 3G:

I'm going to bet you're connected to 1x800 when this happens? It tends to have that side effect when it's sparsely deployed.

Sprint seems to agree, as they've recently added several new macro sites and a B25/B26 DAS with at least 5 nodes to Tiger Stadium. Gaps in discovered GCIs are also indicative of future expansion. That said, with AT&T having twice as many tri-band sites in the area as Sprint has sites altogether, they still have a long way to go.

Some markets (particularly in Ericsson territory) saw quite a few 2.5 permits filed 2H 2014 which were approved but never actually built out. Many of those have been rapidly re-filed in 1H 2015 with the addition of RRUS 31 swapout and second set of PCS antennas. The additional antennas don't really make sense as being necessary for a second carrier, nor do they make sense as being for >3-sector sites with having the same azimuth. They only really make sense as being either for higher order MIMO or for getting more antenna elements in the air to improve the B25 uplink when inter-carrier aggregation launches.

You can make conditional call forwarding unconditional by turning off your phone.

Wouldn't they have different azimuth or be narrow-beam antennas? These have the same azimuth and 65 degree beam width. It just seems like a waste to put up new 1900 antennas without taking advantage of 4x2.

I found a NSN/Ericsson Spark permit in my area which, in addition to adding 2.5 equipment and replacing RRUS 11s with RRUS 31s, also adds new 1900 MHz antennas -- APXVSPP18-C-A20 on the alpha and beta sectors, and APXVRR13-C-A20 on the gamma sector. The original NV antennas also remain, so this may be the first indication that Sprint will actually be using the 4x2 MIMO capability of the RRUS 31.

I found a NSN/Ericsson Spark permit in my area which, in addition to adding 2.5 equipment and replacing RRUS 11s with RRUS 31s, also adds new 1900 MHz antennas -- APXVSPP18-C-A20 on the alpha and beta sectors, and APXVRR13-C-A20 on the gamma sector. The original NV antennas also remain, so this may be the first indication that Sprint will actually be using the 4x2 MIMO capability of the RRUS 31.

Ground Mount Option -- new base station equipment with legacy antennas, and almost none of them have any LTE. The worst part though is that they can't support 800 voice, meaning you get islands of coverage around sites that do have 800 voice. You can't drive down the interstate without dropping a call a few times. No, like I said, I still have another year of contract left, and the network actually works where I live as long as I don't travel too far.

Update: Found a recent AT&T penta-band LTE permit that has everything, including UMTS, on new tri-band antennas and RRUs. This one doesn't mention GSM at all, so unless it's coming out of the UMTS RRUs, it's not there.

It doesn't really. Much of the Greater New Orleans metropolitan area is reclaimed swamp, but that's actually Sprint's strongest area in the entire state. There are hundreds of cell towers in Louisiana on which Sprint could colocate if they wanted to improve their coverage. There are even dozens of former Nextel sites in Sprint coverage holes that they could easily use if they don't keep losing them to Verizon when the leases expire. But for whatever reason, they have chosen to leave huge holes of both coverage and capacity in former affiliate market areas here, and they have chosen to leave dozens of GMOs along the major highways. Nobody really knows why. As was stated previously, most of the members around here have ported out to either one of the GSM carriers. AT&T has the best coverage across most of the state, and they're still adding new sites all the time. They're already running LTE on at least three bands in most areas. I'm fortunate enough to be in an area where the service actually works unless I drive down the interstate, and my contract isn't up for another year, so I'm sticking it out.

What about Ericsson sites with RRUS 31s?

There are recent permits in Ericsson land. Sometimes.

This is what AT&T is doing -- rip/replace with new CommScope SBNHH-1D65C tri-band antennas to create a penta-band LTE network. Antenna 1 (new) Port 1 - GSM 850 Port 2 - GSM 1900 Port 3 - LTE WCS Antenna 2 (new) Port 1 - LTE 700 Port 2 - LTE 1900 Antenna 3 (legacy) Port 1 - UMTS 850 Port 2 - UMTS 850 Port 3 - UMTS 1900 Port 4 - UMTS 1900 Antenna 4 (new) Port 1 - LTE 850 Port 2 - LTE AWS http://www.commscope.com/catalog/andrew/product_details.aspx?id=3767

And now for something completely different. In size/weight-constrained spots (namely stealth sites), Sprint is actually ripping out original NV equipment and installing these new antennas, the CommScope DHHTT65B-3XR, with an RRUS 31 B25 and an NSN RRH alongside the original RRUS 11 B26. http://www.commscope.com/catalog/wireless/159/product_details.aspx?id=23327 http://zh.commscope.com/catalog/wireless/pdf/part/DHHTT65B-3XR.aspx?id=23327

It works with the Nexus 5 if you manually override your device and account info. You will need root. Open this file: /data/data/com.sprint.zone/shared_preferences/com.sprint.zone_preferences.xml Add the following lines with the correct values: <string name="funnyPref1">%NAI%</string> <string name="funnyPref2">%MEID-HEX%</string> <string name="funnyPref3">%RESELLER-ID%</string> <string name="funnyPref4">%MSID%</string> <string name="funnyPref5">%PRL-VERSION%</string> <string name="funnyPref6">%MDN%</string> <string name="funnyPref7">%MAKE%</string> <string name="funnyPref8">%MODEL%</string> Mine looked similar to this when I was done (real info masked): <string name="funnyPref1">myname00@sprintpcs.com</string> <string name="funnyPref2">0123456789ABCD</string> <string name="funnyPref3">Sprint</string> <string name="funnyPref4">5045551212</string> <string name="funnyPref5">55021</string> <string name="funnyPref6">5045551212</string> <string name="funnyPref7">LG</string> <string name="funnyPref8">Nexus 5</string> I found about these settings last year by reverse-engineering an older version of the app when it didn't work out-of-the-box on my Nexus S. They seem to exist for debugging purposes and will override the (not) detected values.