4ginnc

The Service Alert is interesting, but doesn't seem to tell you exactly which tower is affected.  Just "one of your most used towers".  Any way to find out from the ticket number which tower is being worked on?

In my case, I don't think it's the tower I'm currently connected to because the towers closest to me have been 3G/4G accepted for a while now.  The ticket says work started Nov 5 with an estimated repair time of 2/3/2014.  Would love to know which tower it's referring to, or maybe if it's talking about the 1x800 upgrades.

Hmm how do you do this...

Ok...I've spent a little bit of time reading online trying to understand better how all of this works.  Seem to have it working a bit better now, and here's what I did:

1.  Remove current Sprint and Google Voice integration.

2.  Setup my Sprint voicemail with a new passcode, etc in case I end up with any voicemails there.

3.  On Google Voice website, have it create a new Google Voice number for you that is NOT your Sprint mobile number.  Do NOT replace your mobile number with the GV number or replace your GV number with your Sprint number.  Leave them separate.

4.  On your phone, dial *28xxxxxxxxxx  where the xxx  is your new GV number, then press Talk.  This will forward all No Answer/Busy calls to your GV number.

Hopefully this should do it.  My outgoing calls are immediate.  I seem to get GV notifications.  However, I still occasionally miss some of the incoming test calls I made but I don't think it's GV related anymore.

There is some additional info here about Sprint Call Forwarding:  https://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/101794

And make sure not to do Unconditional Call Forwarding because that will cost you $.20/min. and always send your calls to your GV number which is not what you want.  

Hopefully this will work better.  I guess I'll find out.

.....

I am a GV (sprint integration) user and I have noticed call quality issues as well. I have also perceived a delay in getting ring-back, it seems like the calls take longer to set up. I believe that Sprint phones are actually dialing into some type of server, delivering a terminating number to that server and then waiting for the server to make a call to the final terminating number and then that server bridges the two together. 

 

...

I've seen the same thing as I brought up in this thread:

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4927-connection-lag-when-making-phone-calls/

Taking a long time for ring-back, many times missing calls, missing and late texts.  I've turned off Google Voice integration and will try just forwarding my voicemail to GV instead.  The integration (for me, anyway) just doesn't work well enough to be trusted.

You can still get your voicemails through Google Voice by setting up voicemail call forwarding. Then, only calls that go to voicemail will go to GV.

I'll have to give this a try.  Thanks.

I'd love for that to be the case but I fear that a lot of physical equipment still needs to be replaced.  Currently the NC complete map shows 4G upgrades only for the majority of Raleigh.  I would stay with a SVLTE device for the time being.

When the Network Vision equipment is installed at a site, both 3G and 4G equipment is installed.  In some cases, 3G is brought up first if backhaul is not available, then 4G later.  Other cases, 4G is brought up first if backhaul is available and then 3G turned on in clusters to avoid dropped call issues due to incompatibility of legacy and NV equipment.  But, if a site is 4G accepted, then the 3G NV equipment is already in place.

Edit:  I would agree that until we're sure that the eCSFB issues are ironed out in the Raleigh market that I'd stay with an single or dual band phone.

It's going to be a while. The Raleigh market has quite a bit of old Motorola equipment, ALL of which needs to be replaced.  As far as I can tell before the know LTE/ecfsb issue surfaced they have been primarily focusing on 4G upgrades and leaving 3G for later.  All future work will do simulataneous 3G/4G upgrades. Bottom line I'm going to hold off on buying my nexus 5 for a few months until the dust settles.

Right, but hopefully they'll do something like just happened in Charlotte last week and turn on 3G for almost all sites that were 4G only.  They turned on a big 3G cluster just north and east of the Raleigh city limits, which you can see on the sponsor maps.

It's Google Voice that's been causing my problems.  I just disabled the Google Voice integration with my Sprint number and now calls go through immediately.  Tried while on 1x800, and roaming to several different numbers.  All calls were initiated right away with no delays.

Also, incoming calls started ringing on my phone much faster and I had time to answer before the call went to voicemail.  Tried calling my cell several times and it's much better.

So, not sure what I'm going to do at this point.  I like receiving e-mails or texts when I get a voicemail, and being able to get voicemails from the app on my phone or via the web when I can't listen to them on the phone (mainly at home where I don't have a great signal).  However, having all my calls come through to my phone is much more important.

Any thoughts?

 

EDIT:  When I disabled GV on the voice website, my phone showed a message saying there was a system update it was setting up services.  Don't know what it did, but it caused something to happen on my phone.

My sister just complained about this with her samsung victory lte. I thought it was a google voice routing delay.

 

Sent from my SPH-P100 using Tapatalk 2

Hmmm...I do have Google Voice as my voicemail.  My daughter and wife (who don't have the lag) don't have Google Voice.  I thought it was only for voicemail and the call still went through Sprint as any other call would, but maybe I'm wrong there.

Another note, it's the same on 1x800.  For a while I had 1x800 on the testing SID and then it went away.  I thought they just turned it off after testing, but apparently I somehow reset my PRL back to the stock Sprint PRL.  After restoring the digiblur PRL I can now connect to 1x800 again.  Still taking a long time to connect.

Also, I've noticed that incoming calls sometimes only ring once on my phone and I don't have time to pick them up.  Other times they don't ring at all.  I've tried calling my cell from the home phone and I'll hear the six or so rings but my cell doesn't ring or rings only once and then goes to voicemail.  

Samsung should call it the Galaxy S4 girlphone.

 

 

AJ

My wife might agree.  It's one of the phones she's thinking about getting.  Her old Samsung Seek is starting to crap out and she HATES my S3.  She'd love to have a phone with a slide-out keyboard like the Photon Q, but I'm not getting her that dog of a phone.  She does endurance horse riding so having something small enough to put on an armband that's not too uncomfortable or can fit in the saddle bag is important.

Nearly impossible now to find a nice phone with a physical keyboard.

I just had this happen today on my S3 - took a while before the call started to go through. Not the first time it's happened either

 

Today I was out in a parking lot in an area that's been getting a lot of upgrades, so hard to tell.

Still happening to very consistently.  The iPhone 5 of my daughter never has this issue, roaming or not and neither does my wife's old Samsung Seek.  Very strange.

So... Do we think that this may be a Spark tower?.... Haha

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Hmmm...don't see any RRU's so if it's Sprint then it's not an NV upgraded tower.  So go ahead and shoot it down and when they fix it they'll put up the new equipment.  

Has anyone found any 800mhz deployments around Raleigh? 

For a couple weeks I was seeing 800MHz in the Youngsville/Franklinton/Henderson area with the testing SID.  And I was actually able to get a signal inside the house.  However, it's disappeared for the last couple of weeks and I haven't been able to pick it up again.  It mostly seemed to be coming from that cluster of 3G/4G accepted sites around Henderson.  

I haven't seen any 800 in the Wake Forest/Raleigh area or even in Durham/RTP when I've been over there.  

I compared my daughter's iPhone to my S3.  The few comparisons we made her call was connected in 3 seconds or less and mine was consistently 10-15 seconds.  To me it doesn't sound like the tower was overloaded or we both would have seen the same delays.

Is an employer discount still available on the new hotspot plans (6Gb, 12GB, etc)? From what I'm seeing it isn't, but wondered if anyone could confirm.  If not, I really don't see how Sprint's mobile broadband plans can compete with the other carriers.

I currently have an old Sprint 3G card and plan where I still get a discount, and a newer AT&T LTE hotspot that I have a discount on as well.  Neither one is under contract, just month to month.

Was hoping to get a Netgear Zing on Sprint to replace the AT&T one, but without the discount it'll most likely end up costing me more.  On Sprint I can get the 12GB plan for $79.99/mo (plus taxes) which runs about $6.67/GB.  On AT&T, I can get the 10GB mobile share plan for $66.20/mo (plus taxes) which run $6.62/GB with my employee discount.  If I didn't have the discount on AT&T, Sprint would be better here.

However, overages is where Sprint kills you.  At $0.05/MB that's about $50/GB.  With the AT&T line I would pay $15/GB.  There are a few times when I have gone over, and a few other times where I probably could have but just used the Sprint 3G for a while instead.

I'd love to get rid of that AT&T hotspot and get the new Zing on Sprint.  Without the discount however, it just doesn't add up for me.

 

Samsung has basically put a freeze on acceptances and integrations, and put all efforts into installing equipment. They are pushing to get as much done before winter as possible. Once done, they will go back and start firing up LTE. Most of the sites you see probably aren't broadcasting LTE yet, much like Madison. If you want to catalog which sites have equipment installed and report them to the In-Progress thread, we can get them marked on the maps. 

I wonder (hope) this is the case in some of the Alcatel markets as well.  The last few weeks there have been almost no acceptances in the Raleigh market aside from a handful of 3G updates to some already 4G accepted sites in the Henderson area.  Just completely dead.  I saw 1x800 testing show up on a few sites (some of the same ones that just got 3G acceptances) for a couple weeks, but it has been turned off for over a week now.

On my S4 I experience it, I just end the call, and keep trying until it actually goes through. It happens on an airave, as well as out in Town. 

It normally goes through, just usually takes 10-20 seconds before I hear the ringing start.  (And I understand it's digitally generated and not a real ringing  ).  Rarely, it won't go through even after waiting a while and the call will just end without ever connecting.  This is very consistent when I'm on Sprint, never less than 10 seconds.

Also, I miss a lot of incoming calls with my S3 and have for a while.  I thought it was just network upgrades going on, and very well could be.  But, there have been several cases when my wife tries calling my S3 a few times and it doesn't ring.  Then will call my kid's iPhone 5 and it will ring.  And a few times tonight while I was on the way to the store she called and my phone never rang.  I was in the car and on a major road with very good coverage.

For a while now I've noticed that when making phone calls from my S3 it takes anywhere between 10-20 seconds before I start to hear the line ringing.  It doesn't seem to matter if I have a really strong or a really weak signal, the delay is always there.  I've also noticed that if I'm roaming (haven't noticed which carriers or if it really matters) the call starts ringing almost instantly, within just a second or two.

Has anyone else noticed this on either an S3 or other phones?  I would suspect a phone issue since it's only on the Sprint network, but I haven't tested any other phones.

it'll be weeks or months, not years... They do the 3G/voice thing in huge clusters. They did western Charlotte several weeks ago and it was massive chunks at once. Patience.

And they just did another chunk of 3G in the Henderson area.  The tower closest to me in Kitrell now shows 3G/4G complete, but I can tell I'm still connecting to legacy equipment.  Ping times are still close to 300ms.  Maybe they haven't switched the legacy equipment off yet, not really sure.  I would have expected much better with NV 3G.

Im currently on a Wimax phone (Galaxy S2). I feel like I have a lot of issues with connecting to data services (whether using 3G or 4G), and hence also issues with battery life. Im wondering if, with LTE now in Raleigh, if those of you with an LTE phone are getting decent service (concerned more about getting a connection rather than speed) and thus not having the issues with battery life issues I have (full charge to dying in 10-12 hours with close to no use). Im out of contract and want to stay with Sprint to maintain unlimited data, but I dont want to reup for 2 years and find that a newer LTE phone is only a minimal improvement. I realize this is slightly OT, but any help is appreciated.

Where I've been in Raleigh I seem to hold onto LTE pretty well.  However, I live north of Wake Forest so I'm not in the big city all that much.     I think it really depends on which parts of Raleigh you are in the most, as it still might be spotty in some places until the remaining towers are converted.  Some folks on here have said parts of downtown Wake Forest don't have coverage and I know of a couple of places in Raleigh where I lose it.  But for the most part there seems to be pretty decent coverage.

Well Goldsboro seems to be stalled on the roll out, 3G speeds are not even dial up fast anymore. Only one tower has 4G and its driving me nuts. Sprint reps have no clue what's going on and I can't seem to find any answers as to what the hold up is. Dropped calls are becoming more frequent to in the area. If anyone knows anything please let me know.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk 4

Raleigh market has been stalled for the last two weeks with no updates.  I have seen 800SMR signal popping up north of Raleigh the last couple of weeks so I'm sure there's work still happening.  One thing that has been running through my mind, is there Nextel decommissioning going on that has slowed work on the NV updates?

In my opinion, the best thing they could do is to start flipping the switch (insert Brian Regan switch flip video here) for 3G on the clusters where 4G has already been activated.

Please post phones with tri-band (800/1900/2500) support.   Note if official or if rumor, with sources.

Try this thread:

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/2456-sprint-lte-device-release-dates/

Me too. Good to see it working again.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 4

Congratulations Robert and good luck in your new job and with your move.  It's been said many times, but it's never too much, Thank you for everything you've done to get this community to where it is today.  And we thank your family for putting up with all of the craziness and long hours you've spent here.  I wish you the best and am glad you'll still be around even without Sprint coverage in Rapid City.

Wow, guess this is more widespread than I thought.  I'm wondering if it's something with IP Board since it happens on the website and on Tapatalk for me.  

I've unfollowed and then followed the subject thread again so I'll see what happens next time an update is posted.

For the last couple of weeks I haven't been getting notifications for the Network Vision Site Acceptance Report Updates thread even though it still shows I'm following.  It's the same on the website and on Tapatalk 4.

Is anyone else having this same problem?  I'll probably try to Unfollow then Follow again to see if that helps, just wondering if it's more widespread than just me.