bmoses

i know there is no set date for this to happen, but do you have any guesses as to a realistic time frame it would take for this to be all said and done?

thats good to know, thanks! i haven't had this phone for a day yet but in the few areas i've gone so far the signal strength and speeds have impressed me. i was concerned with them only having AWS/PCS spectrum and what that would do to in building coverage but if they did their entire network as dense as what i've seen, and you have seen, then it shouldn't be that big of an issue. thats not to say that there won't be holes/problem spots, but it doesn't look like it will be as much as i feared. plus i've confirmed that not only have they added a ton of their own/new towers, they did in fact go around to the original t-mobile towers that were here and have added LTE to them to (presumably as some kind of GMO add since panels didn't change up top on the ones i've kept track of). from what i can tell they have deployed a 10x10 LTE and 5x5 HSPA+ in AWS and have GSM/HSPA+ on PCS, i just don't know what size the PCS ones are. its nice that when i do drop off LTE i still get 5 to 10 meg down from HSPA+

i feel your pain same story with the huxley GMO tower, giant LTE hole along interstate 35, and not only that but in between 2 major metro areas. all other towers along I-35 have LTE but this one. just doesn't make sense. and i've contacted them multiple times about the tower and its always the same story "no plans to upgrade at this time" I even sent an email to Kevin Crull who is the president over the central region and all he did was forward my email on to Marci's team..... i bought a $46 android phone from best buy with a t-mobile SIM yesterday and have been using it to check out iwireless signal and speeds (you can run speed tests on t-mobile without having any kind of a data plan ). so far i've been impressed with what i've seen and their tower density is insane so far in the few places i've checked out. i'll use the phone to see when LTE is on in huxley from them and also check out how the signal is up there and if its good enough my 7 lines on our own Framily plan will most likely be switching as well

thanks, i'll shoot you a message tomorrow with all the info i have!

1 of the towers is a sprint only site and had the orange buried fiber marker installed about a year after getting NV equipment installed. then another year later all the sudden EVDO speeds shot up way faster than they were before. I reached out to some sprint employees through reddit that confirmed in the system the sites were now showing as having ethernet for backhaul.

as far as i know yes, everything i could find made it sound like they only had enough spectrum for a 10x10 in AWS in the des moines areas (maybe up to a 15x15 down the road). in other areas it was the same story except it was PCS instead of AWS.

thanks for the iWireless info/opinions my 3 main concerns with iWireless were 1) they only have AWS for LTE, which means poor in building coverage - UNLESS they densify their network properly and 2) i've not experienced it myself but i've heard GSM voice quality is not very good - coming from sprint who really does have awesome voice quality this could be a negative too. 3) back to only having AWS for LTE, it sounds like they are stuck with a 10x10 (maybe a 15x15 down the road) so it could become strained and lead to poor speeds - counters to this would be since they are a local carrier their user base should be lower so not as many users and if they have enough tower density they could overcome this.

i've been tempted to try out iWireless as they just launched LTE in des moines in december. but i really need their future LTE coverage between des moines and ames to be done in order for my whole family to switch. now with this news of the spectrum swap i'm torn on what to do....... this will help sprint out a lot in the metros but their stupid GMO towers still affect the rest of my family, plus i'm on my own 7 line framily plan and i would lose that if we switched and decided iWireless wasn't very good

it would increase max speed as well as capacity. you can think about it like this. if those were 3 separate 5x5 carriers they would each run about 35mbps for a max speed, but you would have 3 of them to spread people out over, so speeds would be good but you would never go over 35. if you combine them all together into a 15x15 you have the same amount of capacity but the max speed is now ~105mbps because you are connecting to 15 Mhz at a time instead of just 5 (on the downlink)

^^^^^^^ apply that last statement to most of iowa too.... i've confirmed on several GMOs around me that they are on ethernet and its being used yet no full build upgrades/LTE from them.

yep, and anywhere they are putting a 2nd carrier its been a 5x5. there are a few cases of a 10x10 B25 carrier out there but only in locations they acquired the C block, then they can just expand the original 5x5 G block carrier to a 10x10, they are also adding a 5x5 in the B block in those locations too.

the 2nd B25 carrier is also a 5x5 block, so you would have 2 5x5 blocks each capable of a max of around 37 meg down, so wouldn't double max speeds, just have more capacity to split users between. any sprint LTE phone can pick up the 2nd carrier since all sprint phones started out with PCS B25/2 support. all they are doing for the 2nd carrier is reducing the # of 3G carriers available and refarming them to LTE, so same spectrum, different technology.

i hope this ends up being really good! i have the flex 2 right now and my yearly framily upgrade is in march. i really wanted the nexus 6p but since i can't get it through sprint on easy pay it isn't an option for the yearly upgrade thing. i'm kind of disappointed with the options available.... i don't like touchwiz so i stay away from samsung, HTC doesn't have a new phone over 5" screen, not an apple fan, and can't get nexus phones through sprint. so that just leaves me with LG, hope they come through!

they guy posted back, it was just leftover equipment from the 65mhtz project in Ericsson land

in regards to the cell phones, i was meaning that from the point of view of possibly being able to take a sprint phone and use it on iWireless if i were to switch. i wasn't meaning being able to roam on iwireless while still on sprint.

iWireless roams on T-Mobile LTE for free and adheres to whatever plan you have. I don't know that T-Mobile customers can roam on iWireless LTE though. one of my coworkers has T-Mobile and i checked his phone yesterday and he was connected to W-CDMA according to signal check pro yet we have a closer iWireless tower than a T-Mobile tower. i believe he has a galaxy S4 so not sure if that was the issue or if T-Mobile just can't get on iWireless LTE. USCC thinks they are AT&T or Verizon and so they are way too expensive and don't have an unlimited option.

i looked at my area and have both dot and squares, they seem to line up and are labeled as local places. like shopping malls, sports complex, etc.

well surprisingly wikipedia seems to have a lot of information on them https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IWireless now i just need to find exactly what frequencies they have. looks like maybe even most newer sprint phones would work on their network assuming they allowed that?

Heard on the radio this morning an advertisement for iWireless for their 4G LTE network. I don't know the exact relationship but they are listed as a T-Mobile affiliate, however I know they have been deploying their own LTE network and it sounds like its finally live. does anyone know, or can point me in the right direction to find out, what they are using for frequency and channel width for their LTE? I'm considering at least doing their test drive as they installed a tower just up the road from my work and it would hopefully be able to give me better service than sprint does at my work. i'm not sure if i would actually switch though because their phone selection isn't the best and i'm on a 7 member framily plan on sprint where all 7 members are actual family and it would suck losing that plan! just trying to find some more technical info about them so i can be better informed

thanks to the huxley tower being a GMO and providing terrible service to huxley i was able to get connected to USCC LTE today got connected to both B12 and B5 on my Flex 2. sorry no SCP screen shots as it was doing the 1x/LTE bug and if i would have airplane mode i would have lost LTE.

i've been noticing that a lot in the reports where sprint did really well yet didn't win as many awards. the only think i could come up with is rootmetrics is putting a lot of weight on the upload speed and so thats what is preventing sprint from wining the awards

contact sprint. there aren't any upgrades happening right now so its most likely a tower issue.

yeah i didn't figure it would work, was just throwing that out there. my coworker will be at his parents house this weekend in NW iowa where there is zero sprint service but plenty of USCC LTE, he has a nexus 5, i'll have him check and see if he gets any LTE while he is up there.

at my work we don't have sprint LTE in my building unless we use a booster, but there is a US Celluar tower just up the road that reaches in here fine. I just did a non-scientific test of going to where i don't have sprint LTE and doing airplane mode but it would only connect to sprint 3G. i do have LTE roaming on and the non-sprint bands set to higher priority on my phone.

looks like a ZV9 update is out, my phone just prompted me to update to it Version Release Date Description of Enhancements/Fixes LS996ZV9 11/20/2015 Sprint Global Roaming Minor UI Updates App Updates Bug Fixes