lordsutch

Sprint's problem in Warner Robins at least is very localized... alas to the main commercial area at Watson and Houston Lake around the mall. Frankly they need to be on the Centerville water tower with the other carriers to fill in their coverage; a DAS in the mall wouldn't hurt either.

 

In Macon, on the other hand, the only places I ever have trouble are in the Macon Mall (which nobody goes to these days) and the basement of Just Tap'd.

It's Rogers in Vancouver as well. Incidentally I've only gotten HSPA+ here; no sign of LTE (at least on my Nexus 5X).

 

Project Fi, on the other hand, seems to be roaming on Bell LTE (Nexus 6).

Actually, political discussion is not allowed. No matter what we say, we torque half the people. So I like to avoid it like the plague.

 

My apologies for bringing it up. Back to this thread's regularly scheduled Legerebaggery.

Vox Media is best understood as a network of sites designed to be a stalking horse for putting mainstream Democrat-friendly talking points in front of audiences not normally inclined to pay attention to political news sites. Any factual or substantive content is there just to get the page views for their underlying political agenda. So the more click-baity the content, the better.

My Nexus 5X arrived yesterday and I activated it online easily enough using the MEID (HEX) from the box and the 4FF v5 UICC (SIM) I got from Sprint Worldwide Support last week. A few observations:

• It's a lot more manageable size-wise than the old Nexus 6. Honestly I don't miss the screen real estate, and I have pretty big hands.
• The screen feels like a bit of a step back to the OG Nexus 5. I guess AMOLED has grown on me a bit.
• I haven't noticed much if any signal dropoff relative to the Nexus 6. My area only has bands 25 and 26 active, so I haven't been able to test band 41. 1x 800 also works fine.
• The debug and data screens are accessible from SignalCheck Pro. There seems to be an "LTE Roaming" setting that's new from the OG Nexuses, as well as the carrier aggregation setting. Band 12, however, does not show up as a toggle. Opening some of the settings even in view mode leads to a force stop.
• The "Nexus 6 Marshmallow bug" in SCP is also present on the Nexus 5X. Might be an issue with the new permissions system and how the cell info API interacts with devices that don't declare support for API 23.
• I've only used third-party USB C cables so far; for the most part they've been easy to use, but the short Micro-B USB female to USB C male adapter I got from Amazon doesn't pass through the higher-speed charging signals to any of my chargers. (The speed-of-charging indication on the lock screen is helpful. Google really needs to put this on the battery screen in settings too.) The USB A to USB C cables on the other hand seem to mostly do better.
• Already survived one drop in a case without any damage (or rattles).

Since my 5X showed up today, I moved my Nexus 6 over to Project Fi and ported my old T-Mobile prepaid number over.

 

Interestingly, Fi seems to park on Sprint rather than T-Mobile here in Macon. Haven't had the chance to play with it much more yet.

If anyone still cares, I've updated the app for Android 6.0 including a permissions prompt. Otherwise no big changes since the last release, I think, except moving the layer settings into preferences so they stick between launches. Same link as before (hopefully)...

 

https://www.dropbox.com/s/isejck79hskqqcl/SigDet2.apk?dl=0

I moved over to Open World since I don't plan on traveling outside of the Americas anytime soon; for short trips to Mexico and Canada, 1 GB LTE and unlimited calling is plenty as long as you don't do anything dumb like stream video (which you probably won't have access to do anyway). If I were going to Europe, I'd either get a prepaid SIM or go back to Global Roaming since unless you're in an Open World unlimited country (i.e. in the Americas), GR is a better deal because of the free 2G usage.

I guess we should rename this thread, "Say Goodbye to the Framily..."

 

This thread is 21 months old and has over 2,100 posts.  Gor-don can finally be laid to rest.

 

 

Alas, like Hollywood, Sprint couldn't figure out how to use Judy Greer properly either.

FWIW ordering from international chat is a breeze if you've never done it. (Alas, they closed the one corporate store in my area.) Just give them the exact info they need:

 

Part: SIMGLW446C

SKU: CZ2144LWC

UPC: 019962040146

 

You can then verify that they ordered the correct item for you when you get your order number.

The problem (from a non-philosophical perspective) as I see it with nationalized wireless infrastructure with carriers running as MNVOs on top of it is that the decisions about what places would get infrastructure would, inevitably, be politicized. And in our system of government, the squeaky wheel gets the grease, which in politics translates into the rich and powerful getting more resources and the poor and marginalized getting fewer. We see this in government-built infrastructure: a national passenger railroad system designed to appease politicians rather than serve customers; government agency upon government agency run from West Virginia because a powerful senator diverted resources to his state as a jobs program for his constituents; highways built to wall off "undesirable" communities from wealthy neighborhoods. "Universal" wireless might well claim to serve everyone, but it'll serve those with political connections much better than those who don't have them.

 

And when the poor and marginalized get screwed by the government, they can't vote with their feet or pocketbooks and choose another government instead.

 

Besides which, we've seen what we get from government-owned wireless in the United States already. And nobody would hold up the likes of iWireless, SI Wireless, or Swiftel as paragons of technological prowess or customer responsiveness.

If the Google Store were selling a USB Type-C to Micro-USB adapter, I would buy it in a heartbeat.  I want one charger at home for all of my (non Apple) mobile devices.  Alas...

 

I ordered a couple of these from Amazon.com; we'll see how they work in practice.

I think Trip is referring to the "extended network" indicator that Verizon phones (used to?) have for people roaming on preferred partner networks - I don't think Sprint has ever used this option. I suppose they could use it for the pseudo-native areas, but it'd probably generate a lot of support calls from people seeing the flashing "R" and being unsure what to make of it since it's not documented in Sprint's phone manuals.

I see. Didn't know that. Is it the same with Verizon & other CDMA carriers? GSM is so much easier.

 

I think the CSIM versus non-CSIM distinction is pretty much a Sprint thing. My understanding of the UICC standards is that there's no technical reason why they couldn't have the CSIM program on all of Sprint's SIM cards. Maybe they save a few bucks in licensing fees or something by only issuing CSIM-capable cards for phones that need the CSIM application.

I decided to pull the trigger on the 5X; my Nexus 6 is just a little too far on the clunky side for me, so hopefully going back to a more normal-sized phone will be nice.

But is that band 26 as MFBI? Bar none, SouthernLINC holds SMR 800 MHz spectrum below 814 MHz on the uplink and 859 MHz on the downlink. That spectrum is unusable for band 26, only band 27. So, if SouthernLINC does not do band 27, it will orphan that spectrum -- or leave it decrepit iDEN forever -- and be able to deploy only a piddling 3 MHz FDD carrier.

 

AJ

Given that Sprint is already squatting on SouthernLINC's spectrum in the region, presumably as part of RRPP they have a deal to allow SLinc to use whatever Sprint spectrum holdings they want and vice versa. Maybe they'll do a formal spectrum swap like CSpire did to further cement the deal.

Disregard my previous post...I see SouthernLinc is replacing their iDen network with LTE and using these RRUs...Carry On

 

Hopefully that means RRPP access for us Sprint folk is coming soon; post-Alltel EVDO shutdown, coverage in a lot of rural Georgia has gotten painful.

Wouldn't it be easier just to assign the phone a static IP and do QOS priority on its IP?

Oy. Why can't Sprint just make things simple and consolidate Open World and International Value Roaming into one plan? Surely they'd not be leaving that much revenue on the table.

Isn't the New Orleans market terrible with backhaul across the board? From what I hear the ISPs are terrible.

 

Cox was decent enough when I lived there from 2007-08, but they may have backslid.

New Orleans at least was historically a decent Sprint corporate market and should not be confused with the admitted crapfest that is the ex-affiliate markets surrounding it (most notoriously Baton Rouge, which even made/makes US Unwired's Mississippi markets and nTelosland seem good by comparison).

 

That said Sprint can and should do better in Baton Rouge. Any market with a large university (particularly those with students with money to burn, like most of the SEC schools do) has prime customers who haven't established brand preferences yet - but they will remember when they have more money down the road that they had a bad experience and won't go back even when they end up living and working somewhere Sprint's service is far better.

Clear may not be possible to, uh, clear as a national cellular service name since the Spanish cognate "Claro" is used by a competitor in Puerto Rico. Certainly they'd object to Sprint using the "Clear" name in PR.

The Virgin name would tie Sprint to an external brand owner. Part of the trouble Deutsche Telekom has had getting rid of its stake in TMUS is that whoever buys it would probably have to rebrand.

 

Something based on Spark might work.

Honestly, the solution may be the SBC one: buy out US Cellular, and rebrand using their name. They have a good reputation in the areas that they serve, the name tells you what the company does (as opposed to some weird, newfangled Latin-sounding name), and they can use the Sprint color branding with it (much as SprintNextel used Nextel's color branding with the Sprint name).

Good riddance to nTelos; a great day for Sprint and Shentel.