dedub

No, no, not this. Every time you keep your smartphone on EV-DO or LTE at home while you have Wi-Fi, the Baby Jesus cries.

 

While that may be a humorous exaggeration, it contains more than a kernel of truth. Folks, some of you just do not get it. You have to offload. Or you have no justification to complain about slow speeds. Sprint cannot offer unlimited data and competitive speeds unless most subs use relatively little data and/or offload to Wi-Fi. That is part of the deal.

 

So, if you have Wi-Fi at home and are not offloading, you better have a really good reason why. Otherwise, I would like to punch you. And "LTE is faster than my home broadband connection is not a 'really good reason why.'" You do not need greater than 1-2 Mbps on your smartphone for any legitimate purpose, bar none. If you want Sprint to maintain unlimited data, then offloading is your responsibility.

 

That may be tough, but sometimes you people need some tough love to set you straight...

I have to call BS on this argument.

First, unless you are offloading onto some sprint sponsored wifi, the wifi bandwidth you use has to be paid for by someone. If you are using your home wifi, that bandwidth is being paid for by you and your isp. News just recently about cox and re-rolling out capped bandwidth on their cable network. ATT already caps their dsl, and no doubt other major internet providers are considering the practice, at least until if/when the FCC steps up and starts putting pressure against tiered/capped internet.

If you are using someone else's wifi or the various free wifi hotspots at restaurants and other establishments, the applies there, you are offloading what should be sprints bandwidth on to someone else network and it pushes the cost from sprint to whoever you connect with.

I pay my sprint bill same as anyone else, and we all pay for the service to be used anywhere and anyhow within the terms of service.

Offloading is NOT MY responsibility, it is SPRINTS (or whomever you have contracted service with). As I said, if sprint hosts wifi spots that sprint phones can connect to and offload sprint cellular data to sprint wifi network, thats fine.

Anything else is someone else paying for the privilege of offloading data that would otherwise have to be carried by sprint.

I am curious, how does the wimax devices like evo 4g/3d show both wimax and 1x signal in the status bar?

I'm just guessing here, but I think what that meant was instead of moving over to wifi, letting the phone stay on LTE at home. That is what I do. We do have wifi, but LTE is light years faster than my home internet connection. I do use it for tethering if I need a fast connection, but only occasionally, and I am using the hotspot plan from Sprint, so I am careful to not use too much.

this.

My home dsl is 3 meg. My wimax speeds are typically 4-10 in the areas I frequent. LTE will likely be better than alot of people can get for their home connection.

this is still a very interesting question to me. it will be something new if sprint is forced to NOT embed the sims this time around

neither the 4 or 4s have embedded sims, the 5 is not likely either. The carriers cowtow to apple, not apple to the carriers.

didn't seem to like my aol.com email address just now

spokeswoman

most important positive ever!

All of my current/past sprint phones happened to be bought at a local radio shack near my house, along with the iph5.

Mostly because of pre-order issues elsewhere, and the fact that that radio shack did not require a full price pre-order (50$ will get your order, with it applied to final purchase price).

I also like to support local stores when possible, and I've been a radio shack kid from the trs-80 days.

I did try out the iphone 4s after it came out, on both att and sprint, which I did get from corp stores. But I knew in advance that I would most likely taking both back, due to the fact I was on an EVO with decent wimax coverage and going back to 3g full time would have been like going back to the stone age.

yeah, I should have noted the article is dated 7/30/2012, but it was the first I had seen it, and don't recall it being mentioned here (if so I missed that too).

This is the first I've seen this article (it was linked in one of the tweetfeeds for CLWR

http://www.dailywireless.org/2012/07/30/directv-partnering-with-clearwire/

It's not quite unsolicited, you did ask for help and opinions.

In any case, even if you jump to vz or att, it is just as possible to jump back to sprint at a later date if you choose to. Whether by waiting for a contract change to let you out, or paying the etf and selling your old devices to recoup the costs of the etf and new devices, or waiting out a new contract.

Further, you can limit your exposure on a new network by *not buying the newest phones*, ie get a free or 50-100 phone instead of dropping 200 or more. If you go with free phones, all you lose is the etf fee, which effectively goes down every month anyway.

And you still might get some cash on craigslist or ebay for them if it comes to that.

Data network congestion, spectrum crunch, etc., were never major issues until about five years ago when the iPhone gave every Joe Schmoe the idea that he deserves, even needs a smartphone to fill his vacant mind with mobile entertainment. So many of you who have smartphones do not need them, especially if you are going just going to use them as glorified streaming devices to suck up/down data everywhere you go.

Uh oh, mobile-elitism alert, sensors overloading !

xenadu, I pretty much agree entirely, however I highly suspect that 4/4s (and looks like 5) are exactly the same between vz/sprint and ESID should work on EITHER carrier with the appropriate sim card.

I highly doubt that apple has or is going to segregate the same model device by ESID just so vz/sprint can squabble over who bought which phone where, when it can be much simpler by sim card. Even then, I also suspect the sim card itself is exactly the same (CDMA generic, not sprint/vz specific). (I expect) The carrier locking to be coming from the activation process.

Segregating by ESID would be logistically stupid, then you have to get into guessing supply volumes between sprint/vz, ie we ship 50m vz specific, vs 30m sprint specific or whatever the case may be, instead of just shipping 80m units of cdma. I don't think apple would allow that to affect their supply logistics.

I suspect it goes like this;

- apple creates/ships cdma phones (carrier agnostic)

- pallet of devices goes to;

-- apple stores (carrier agnostic)

-- vz stores (ESID's scanned into vz and locked to vz via itunes and vz inventory systems)

-- sprint stores (ESID's scanned into sprint and locked to sprint via itunes and sprint inventory systems)

PRLs don't effect LTE or transfer rates on CDMA.

PRL's don't necessarily affect transfer rates, but they can affect which towers you connect to and thus can affect transfer rates.

Any input would be appreciated.

If you need lte now, you could buy a non-contract vz iphone and sign up with vz only for as long as it takes for sprint lte to reach your area. Alternatively, you could buy a vz iphone for 200 and pay whatever the ETF (the eft will reduce every month) will be once you want to switch to sprint, which will likely be less overall than buying a full price phone.

Obviously you will be paying however much more for vz services and have to deal with the anxiety of data caps with vz, so you will have to decide for yourself if the extra cost is worth it while waiting for sprint to finish roll out.

I think at launch, the sprint 4s's were 'unlocked', so it was possible to swap in a different sim. I remember them saying they would be locking them after launch, but I did not keep either of my 4s so I don't know if they ever did.

It is quite possible that they may be baseband locked from the start this time around, but what I suspect is that it will be the initial sim that will determine what carrier and if it will be locked.

When I reset the device, I first tried to boot with no sim but if I recall it would not go pass the no sim/emergency call only screen.

So what I extrapolate from that is, if you had an unactived iphone 5 and a working compatible sim that was not iphone5/carrier specific, you could boot up with that sim and have an unlocked phone. I suspect this is what tmobile will be doing.

I have the 4S on sprint and my friend has it on Verizon. I swapped our sim cards and it did nothing. I can take the sim card out and the phone is still useable. I do understand that it has nothing to do with 3G though.

If I recall correctly, I tried this between sprint and att when the 4s came out (I had one from each).

If you swap sims, you have to factory reset with the new sim for it to work.

to clarify, I put the att sim in the sprint phone and factory reset via the settings screen, then my att sim worked in the sprint phone.

well since they have different models with different lte bands, it would suggest they didn't exactly pull it off.

CDMA model A1429*: CDMA EV-DO Rev. A and Rev. B (800, 1900, 2100 MHz); UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1900, 2100 MHz); GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz); LTE (Bands 1, 3, 5, 13, 25)

I think he meant no lte800 support.

finally got around to checking my sprint account online;

clicking my contract details

Your agreement with us, which started on 06/24/11, will be completed on 06/23/13.

clicking my sprint > upgrade

You qualify for 2-yr agreement savings on a new device for ###-###-#### as of 09/01/2012.

You'll need to sign up for a 2-yr. agreement.

Whether you want something new or maybe pre-owned, Sprint has options for you.

Upgrading to select certified pre-owned devices may not require you to renew your agreement with us or use your upgrade discount. Learn more.

pretty awesome deal if you qualify, I am likely to pickup the iphone5 until/if the next nexus has dual band lte, then sell or swap with a family member

1) my understanding is that is a complete network overhaul, all towers (that are not part of iden shutdown or otherwise scheduled for shutdown) will be upgraded. From most of the posts I've read, upgrading backhaul is the part that takes the longest, and no doubt rural/difficult areas are where backhaul is more likely to be delayed further.

2) the tower equipment being installed is 'multi-mode' meaning that the equipment will be ready for all the frequency bands that sprint holds, and works with 1.x/3g/lte.

3) No idea, but I assume that 800mhz will come to all towers where sprint holds the 800mhz licenses, which I also assume may vary by region.

finally some good clwr news, this week should be gangbusters for S & CLWR

iphones have come with their own sim card, it is not provided by the carrier, I would expect that to continue.

as for sprint iphones, since they don't use them for the network, they have generic sprint-locked sim cards.

Not that it wasn't already expected, but WSJ is reporting jesusphone5 will support various world lte bands. Which could be really really good for clearwire/china tdd-lte

http://online.wsj.co...3902952754.html

I've also been wondering about MNVO, in particular what would be the minimum subscriber number supported (and that would ideally be at least a little profitable). If they allow mnvo's of like 20-30, it might well be a good deal to larger families and extended friends/clubs/organizations etc.

If I were able to gain a notable cost advantage (while ideally retaining unlimited data), I could see getting 2-3 dozen friends/family/acquaintances hooked in.