lordsutch

The big advantage of 2.5 LTE femtocells over wifi is range; in licensed spectrum Sprint can put out a lot more power than WiFi and interference should be be much lower. Get a few Sprint customers in each big apartment building to install a femtocell+wifi router and they'll have their small cell deployment in urban areas. Or, more ambitiously, work with Big Cable to build 2.5 LTE into each gateway they rent.

The only minor complaint I might have thus far (and I read/knew about this going in beforehand from a review or three) is that you can't seem to adjust the brightness of the 'always on' screen.  I know it *can* be brighter than default because every once in awhile I see it initiate at full brightness, but it always ends up dimmer than I might like.

 

Can't say anything much about the LG UI because Nova Launcher went into play almost immediately after the very initial setup stages.  Overall RF performance seems to be a fair bit better than the GS4T I came from, for me thus far.

I agree with the auto brightness setting; particularly when I have sunglasses on outdoors the default tends not to be bright enough.

LG apparently is pushing the "App Drawer" enabled version of their home screen to phones; I guess they finally got tired of Every Single Reviewer complaining about it.

(Too late for me... I went to Google Now and ain't going back!)

Now that the Gmail app supports Exchange on all phones, I'll probably also ditch using the LG Email application and go with semi-stock there.

Love mine so far. Still getting used to the quirks of the LG UI here and there, coming from stock Marshmallow, but otherwise it's a great device.

Anyone have Fi roam on other RRPP or CCA carriers? Or US Cellular?

So far my G5 seems comparable with, maybe even a little better, than the Nexus 5X in the same areas, but I've only tested it in a few places so far. It definitely seems to hold onto LTE a bit better in marginal areas.

Well, I've had no luck trying to preorder the LG G5 from Best Buy for Sprint. Every time I try to add it to my cart as an upgrade (on-contract), it fails at the last step after verifying my eligibility and damage protection plan.

I guess I'll wait to see what deal Sprint offers direct...

I noticed since the March update there is an LTE Roaming setting in EPST; it may have been there previously but I didn't notice it then. Alas no potential LTE roaming to test around these parts.

More generally, so far it does seem to have improved lag and stability.

I've been working on another feature lately: logging and displaying the LTE timing advance values reported by the device if the RIL reports them.

On my devices they seem to be in units of 16 Ts (just over 0.5 microseconds), corresponding to around 78 meters from the tower RTT per unit 16 Ts, but I've seen other documentation that says the API is reporting data in whole microseconds, which would be about twice as far (≈149.4 meters). The map will also show a circle that should intersect where the tower is likely to be located. So for now it's very experimental, but it may help the tower hunters a bit as they try to triangulate sites more accurately than using RSRP values.

Any reports of how this seems to correspond to the real world on non-Nexus devices would be greatly appreciated.

More updates in this release; main changes:

• A few more LTE band guesses.
• Should be a bit more efficient when running in the background.
• Action button added so you can now exit directly from the notification.

Get it here, as always: https://www.dropbox.com/s/isejck79hskqqcl/SigDet2.apk?dl=0

Dark fiber is fiber that isn't in use; either the fiber was never activated because it wasn't needed after it was installed, or it was previously live but has been deactivated since.

Lots of fiber was put in place during the dot com boom for needs that never materialized, or by competitive providers who went bust, or to provide additional capacity that didn't turn out to be needed because of advances in transceiver technology (getting more bandwidth out of the existing fiber links). Hooking up your equipment to dark fiber is cheaper than building your own, but of course it needs to go where you need it to go to be useful.

It's live in Macon GA, too (Nexus 5X).

I strongly suspect Sprint is planning a similar deal with SoLinc that they cut with CSpire around Memphis: some sort of spectrum arrangement that gets Sprint more bandwidth in Atlanta and Birmingham in exchange for divesting/subletting some rural spectrum elsewhere in the SoLinc footprint, with a commitment that SoLinc will do a rural buildout on Roaming+ terms and provide CDMA 1X fallback using Sprint's band 26 holdings.

Sprint then pulls down the rural 3G-only sites left over from the affiliate networks (like those on the I-16 and I-22 corridors) and relies on SoLinc coverage instead, only keeping the towers that are already upgraded and replacing the relative handful of GMOs in the more urbanized parts of the SoLinc footprint. That would give SoLinc a lot more bandwidth to play with in rural areas Sprint never will build out in its own, perhaps to do fixed wireless internet, VoIP/VoLTE, and video as part of a quadruple-play with electricity service.

Option B would be to Shentelize everything in the region except maybe Atlanta/Athens... SoLinc owns the whole Sprint network in their footprint, sells service under Sprint's name, etc., and inherits the Sprint customer base in the region to pay for the LTE rollout using SoLinc's existing infrastructure (backhaul, easements, etc.) as much as possible. Enough bandwidth on ESMR to roll out three 3x3 LTE carriers, since you can squish together their internal guard bands, plus 1.25x1.25 1X Advanced, plus a ton of bands 25 and 41 for capacity in urbanized areas. The resulting network would probably stomp both Verizon and AT&T, to say nothing of T-Mobile.

For what it's worth, I tried latching onto C Spire's LTE network with my Nexus 5X in Fulton, Mississippi yesterday and I couldn't get it to work. It wouldn't even negotiate a useful data connection over C Spire's eHRPD... eventually the something timed out and it fell back to EV-DO Rev A which did work.

Whether this is specific to the Nexus 5X or a general configuration problem with C Spire in general (or in Fulton specifically) I obviously can't say. My suspicion is that Band 12 (which I believe is what C Spire's LTE is on) is disabled with a Sprint SIM installed on the current radio, but the eHRPD problems suggest there's also a configuration issue on C Spire's end.

Also, my Nexus 6 with Project Fi was in "Sprint mode" and it connected to C Spire 1x & EVDO as well (but no LTE).

They are using the same equipment as Sprint. Seems like it would make more sense to use SoLINC for data roaming, and continue to use Verizon 1X for voice roaming similar to how Verizon does in some LTEiRA markets

Unless SouthernLINC has some sort of deal with Verizon to enable eCSFB to Verizon's 1X network, that won't really work.

In any event part of the point of RRPP is to expand the network and thus avoid paying Verizon for roaming.

I don't think we'll see SouthernLinc roaming unless they deploy 1X as well for voice fallback, at least until Sprint supports VoLTE on devices. The good news(?) is 1X deployment might be part of the RRPP deal.

Sprint CEO paid consultants $25+ million for five months of advice that was mostly ignored.

 

http://www.wsj.com/articles/sprint-spent-heavily-for-advice-later-brushed-aside-1450820455

That's about par for the course when it comes to consulting, in my experience. Pay a lot, get some advice you could have gotten for a lot less money.

Alas I suspect Sprint is hoping that SouthernLINC will do a colocation and network sharing deal that has the side effect of fixing Sprint's woes in its ex-affiliate areas in southeast MS, AL, and GA.

A slightly more serious answer: the more advanced technologies tend to be more susceptible to interference, so the effective usable range for the same power is higher with simpler signals like those in GSM and CDMA 1X.

GSM, due to its use of TDMA, also has a hard limitation on its range of 35 km.

I just stumbled across this SouthernLINC press release from August with a bit more detail on their LTE rollout plans:

• "Mid-2016": Metro Atlanta, I-20 corridor from Atlanta to Birmingham, and Tuscaloosa area.
• "In 2017": Greater Montgomery and Georgia Power's service territory.
• "In 2018": All of Southern Company's utility territories.

So it's looking like at least a year before there's going to be significant SouthernLINC LTE coverage that doesn't overlap with Sprint's current coverage area.

We already have been discussing and dissecting for the last hour and half.

 

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/7203-sprint-roaming-coverage-map-update/

 

The article is in the editing stage and will be up on The Wall within the next hour.

Sorry, I didn't look at that thread before posting here

But, yay, LTE roaming!

Speaking of the coverage maps, they're now showing LTE Roaming (subject to caps) and LTE Roaming+ (counts as on-network) coverage as shades of teal.

http://coverage.sprint.com/IMPACT.jsp?INTNAV=LeftNav:More:CoverageMap#!/

Looking at the map, it looks like CSpire is active (as Roaming+) in Mississippi and around Mobile, AL. There seems to be a bunch of light teal (Roaming) in NC, VA, and WV, as well as Maine and other bits of New England and lots of the Midwest (USCC?). I'm not so familiar with partners in other areas, but there is also substantial Roaming+ in Kansas (particularly west of I-135) and central Washington state.

Around my neck of the woods, nothing seems to be active with SouthernLINC but I suppose that's not surprising since I doubt they have much LTE ready yet and even where they do, there's not any voice fallback available presumably unless they're deploying it on Sprint's spectrum.

I'm visiting a marginal LTE area and the 5X sometimes will drop LTE to use the Airave I installed. It definitely used it for a call I made earlier today.

I called my credit card company and got a refund of the difference since the purchase is within 60 days.

Thanks for this post - I'd have completely forgotten to check. We'll see if the Citi Price Rewind finds it on its own or I have to do more paperwork...

Tab 4 might be dropping to 3G due to a lack of eCSFB on the towers, since it can't hold both a CDMA and LTE signal simultaneously. Triband devices won't use LTE if eCSFB is not available unless you force LTE in the hidden radio settings screen (if that's even possible on the Tab 4).

Is it throttled on Bell LTE?

Yep, it seems to be throttled to about 256kbps (as is my Nexus 7 LTE tablet on T-Mobile postpaid, also using Bell LTE).

In Toronto tonight - same deal: Sprint is running on Rogers HSPA+, Project Fi and T-Mobile are on Bell LTE (throttled at 256k).