4ginnc

I drove by one tower in North Raleigh today that was scheduled to start NV work a couple weeks ago. New panels and RRU's seem to be up. Took a picture, but it's from my crappy Hero. I'll upload later once I can get it on my PC and if it looks worthwhile. Ran a speed test and got the following results: ping: 137ms dl: 1188kbps ul: 508kbps Don't have an LTE phone to see if 4G was active. There's a Sprint store right in front of the tower but I didn't have time to stop in and check it on one of their store phones.

Sprint's maps at network.sprint.com only show "band-aid" fixes and not NV work. There are several threads on here discussing that topic. As to your questions on removal of old equipment first, the answer is no. The schedules typically show that old equipment is removed about 45 days or so after the new equipment comes online. Sprint has to accept the site first and test to make sure things are working before turning off the old equipment. Otherwise they'd have a disaster on their hands.

That's for sure... when I hit 400kbps I'm having a really good day. Typically 200kbps or less downloads and uploads rarely show over 100kbps. And my tower now shows it had a data speed upgrade in the past 6 months. I've been waiting for them to say it was finally done, but it hasn't really improved my speeds. I did see 1Mbps down on a single speed test early one morning but that was short-lived and it was only once. Guess noone else was on then.

When I went to visit my closest tower a couple months ago some guys were there working on AT&T's equipment. Talked to them for a bit and they also said Sprint was one of the worst about throttling their customer's data speeds. In my head I knew better, but it seems to be a common lie for those associated with AT&T to spread.

There are also maps in the sponsor section which show all towers that will eventually get upgrades in a market. The premier sponsor maps also have dates for when towers are scheduled to begin and complete different phases of NV work. Well worth becoming a sponsor, and definitely worth becoming a premier sponsor if you can.

If you'd held your breath you'd be more than just blue in the face:

An update on my closest tower... (not that anyone cares but me ) Now network.sprint.com is showing this tower as having a Data Speed upgrade in the last six months so I guess they did something. However, my speed tests this morning aren't showing any better. Best I got was: Ping: 316ms Download: 143 kbps Upload: 87 kbps Oh well. At least NV backhaul should be there sometime in October if schedules hold.

One thing I've noticed on the network.sprint.com maps is that sites disappear and then reappear quite often. My favorite local tower being one of them. I check that thing waaayyyy too often. It was there in February when I first found out about Sprint's website, then it disappeared for a few days and then came back with a "data speed upgrade". It was there continuously for several months until it disappeared again in July. Again it was back a few days later with a data speed upgrade, and a week or so later a voice capacity upgrade was added to the list. Now this week the data speed upgrade is gone but the voice upgrade is still there. It's just crazy. Almost as if they're resetting the dates so it can always be 6 months out or something. I don't know what's going on with the network.sprint.com site.

I tend to agree now that I understand why/how it's happening. Especially when Sprint is still trying to provide unlimited data to mobile users it can help improve the experience of all users. The replacement of the alt-text on the images is a little annoying but nothing I can't live with. I wish AT&T would do something similar to save me usage on the data that I pay for.

HTC Hero

Not sure how I would do that. It's a Sprint USB card that I have plugged into a wireless router so I'm not using the Sprint SmarView software to connect to the network. Isn't this all happening inside the Sprint network anyway?

No, DNS wouldn't do that it just does name resolution. I did, however find this on Sprint's end user agreement at http://www.sprint.co.../agreement.html Edit: Last paragraph is key. So I guess that explains it.

Of course, now that I have this AT&T hotspot too I can confirm that it's not Chrome. When I'm on the AT&T hotspot I don't get that alt-text, but back on my Sprint 3G card I do. Guess when you don't get unlimited data they want you to use as much as possible.

I've been noticing recently an annoying alternate text on every image on all web pages I've been loading lately. I was thinking it was Chrome since that was the browser I use almost all the time but after a quick Google search I found this; http://ralf.schaeftlein.de/2009/07/30/get-rid-of-annoying-shift-r-and-shift-a-hints-on-images/ Seems like Sprint is doing this as well, reducing image quality on web pages and replacing the alt-text when you're using their network. Has anyone been seeing this in the last few weeks? I haven't seen any announcements from Sprint, but I guess it's just something they've turned on in their network.

Or, one other option if I had Verizon LTE here, is their HomeFusion with 30GB of data for $120/mo. Of course that's supposed to be a fixed solution and not mobile. For that amount of data it's probably the best option out there price-wise. But if my 3G backhaul improves I'll be happy enough with Sprint 3G.

I agree, but slow 3G speeds cause the same sorts of headaches for me. I'm constantly having to make sure noone else is using the internet during the day while I'm working and become a "speed" nazi instead of a data nazi. When things get really bad at certain times of the day I'm always bugging everyone to make sure noone is streaming YouTube or playing a game on Kongregate because I'm working. When the backhaul to my tower improves things will get a lot less stressful. 10/27 can't come fast enough (assuming the schedule holds).

Currently there is no known app that will tell you the LTE tower. In fact, as boomerbubba has mentioned in several different threads, there isn't a known api within Android for an app to even retrieve this information. Makes it difficult to know for sure which tower you are truly connected to for LTE, especially since your phone could potentially connect to three different towers at once: one for 1X, a different one for EVDO and a different one for LTE.

Read this post by Robert in the Sponsor forum version of this topic and it should help you understand better: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/1708-sprint-lte-august-2012-schedule-map-for-sponsors/page__view__findpost__p__36014

The interactive maps are for Sponsors. There is a sponsorship link at the top of the main Forums page. Well worth the investment to keep this Site going and get access to more content.

I was only joking. My mom just got a phone with texting and learned how to use it a few months ago. She's not ready for a smartphone yet.

Did she get the tower info from CDMA field test or Net Monitor? How many speed tests did she run? And did she snap some pictures of the RRU's on the tower she was connecting to?