4ginnc

Has anyone seen improved 3g speeds? East cary has always been very bad for me with 3g speeds and I have noticed lately it has gotten better. I can actually stream pandora with no interruptions. I still never see speeds above 300kbps while other markets are seeing closer to 1mbps with the NV upgraded towers.

 

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I've noticed better 3G performance at home.  I'm guessing it's because now that LTE is active some people are connecting to 4G and there are less on 3G.  The speeds and ping times aren't what I would expect from 3G on an NV upgraded site but the network is more stable.  The last few months there were many times during the day where just loading a simple webpage (like Google) would timeout.  The last few weeks that hasn't happened more than a handful of times.

Ahhh, it depends on what you are calling Raleigh. Raleigh itself is pretty well covered except for certain parts of North Hills including Crabtree. Step right outside of Raleigh and things go downhill relatively quickly. Seems like Garner has stalled out and Wake Forest is still a black hole.

And again, that all depends, because most of the towers north of Wake Forest have been upgraded.  All of the Franklinton towers are now complete and all of Henderson as well.  In fact, Henderson was officially launched in the latest announcement, along with Dunn, but not Fayetteville.  And Durham and Chapel Hill are still not launched and showing on the coverage maps  even though coverage seems pretty good when I'm in RTP and parts of the way out there.

Oxford still has only one tower showing as accepted but I've never gotten LTE from that tower, only the ones from Henderson that happened to reach.

Things will fill in a get better as the rest come online.  But I really can't wait for LTE on 800 since I can't pick up LTE from the tower closest to home, even though it's broadcasting.  

Any word when 800 MHz 1x and EVDO will reach the Raleigh/Durham/Cary area? With the IDEN network being shut down in less than 2 weeks, I hope we're not far away. There are some spots in the area that could greatly use the expanded coverage and building penetration of 800 MHz spectrum.

 

I am fairly sure my BlackBerry can connect to 800 MHz, but obviously it would require a PRL update.

I don't think we know for sure when CDMA or LTE on 800MHz will show up.  The hope is that voice on 800MHz will start showing up rather quickly and LTE sometime soon after, but with no phone supporting LTE on 800 yet it won't matter whether it's turned on as quickly.

As for EVDO, it will never be available on Sprint's 800MHz network.

The tower closest to my house near Franklinton was finally lit up with LTE, but I can't get a strong enough signal at home to pick it up.  I drove by and mapped it on sensorly last week so I know it's working.

The coverage maps seem to do a pretty good job, at least out this way, compared to what I've seen.  There is a "hole" of 3G in the LTE coverage that's right on top of my house.  Oh well, need to wait for 800 LTE which hopefully won't be too much longer.

Thanks for the breakdown digiblur.  I still haven't gone to the Sprint store yet to pick this up but plan to do so soon.  I probably would have preferred 800 first since the 1900 signal is kind of weak at our house, but with the external antenna it should be strong enough if I keep it by the 2nd story window.

Was just wondering if NV work might slow down when the Nextel decommissioning starts?  I'm sure Sprint wants to get the equipment off the towers as quickly as possible so they can stop paying leases, power costs, backhaul costs, etc.  With crews already busy on the rollouts of all the carriers, do you think they might prioritize the Nextel work a little over NV to get the cost benefits sooner?

Just more of a general thought, not sure that anyone has heard anything on way or the other.

round mound

(see Barkley, Charles)

 

 

 

 

It's one or the other you can't combine those offers.

 

 

 

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That's what I thought. And since I want to wait for the tri-band phones before using my next upgrade the 3 months free sounds better.

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Yes, it does. Here's a pic from the back of the box of one.

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The notable section is: "Operates within Sprint's licensed frequency band of 800/1900 MHz (CDMA)." Sprint doesn't have any licensed 850/Cellular, so...

That clears it up.  And with that FCCID on the box, QISF253, I found the FCC OET filings.  It supports CDMA800 (Band Class 10) and CDMA1900.

Good news.  Thanks!

I can't find the FCC ID for that thing anywhere so can't look up the OET info.  I called the local Corporate Sprint store and that was an adventure in time wasting.  First, the guy told me it takes about an hour to port the number (which I know it takes longer than that) and when I asked about 800MHz his answer was that after Sprint shuts down Nextel they weren't doing anything with those frequencies.  I politely said Thank You and got off the phone with him as fast as I could.  

Called a non-Corporate store and the guy was much more knowledgeable.  Said it takes 2-3 days to port (which is more reasonable) but he wasn't sure on 800MHz support.  So he's going to e-mail an Account Executive and get an answer.  We'll see what kind of response I get.

wind surfing

Since this is a Sprint device and Sprint lists on their website that it supports 800 CDMA, wouldn't that suggest it's Sprint's CDMA band and not Verizon's?  I'm not even sure they allow roaming on a "fixed" device like this.

Does anyone know if the new sprint phone connect 2 (landline) is compatible with the 800mhz band?

Yes, it is.   From this link:

http://newsroom.sprint.com/news/sprint-phone-connect-2-fact-sheet.htm

• Two RJ-11 ports (bridged) to support multiple devices

I started a topic on this device a week or so ago and got some good replies from folks who had used this device.  Check it out here if you want:

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/3904-sprint-phone-connect-2/

 

See if you can find out where your central office is. They stop installing DSL at a certain mile radius because the speed starts to drop off dramatically. I check to see if I can what the cutoff is.

 

Looks like 15,000 feet assuming there is no fiber in your area.

 

http://webapp.psc.state.md.us/intranet/Info/dslfaqs_new.cfm

Right, it depends on where they have fiber runs.  They ran fiber and put it DSLAMs to two of the phone cabinets not far from my house (one less than 1.5 miles away) but unfortunately the cabinet our area is on runs further up the main road and then back down, and they have not run fiber to that cabinet.  One of the local retail managers mentioned they could run DSL extenders from one of the new fiber installations instead of having another fiber run to our cabinet, but they've said it's not in their budget and they won't commit to anything or give any indication they might ever actually do it.  Not to me, not to my County Commissioner and not to the folks at the NC broadband mapping office.  Time Warner is no better.

So while they were porting the number you have no home phone service?  Or is there a way to coordinate the disconnect of the landline with the start of the Sprint Connect?

Not sure I can afford to be without home phone for 10 days.

We sell a lot of them here. I've heard rave reviews, and an occasional terrible review. The PC2 is much higher quality than the PC1, if customer reviews are any indication.

 

You do get 3 months free and a waived activation fee if you sign up soonish.

That 3 months free, free device and free activation seems like it's going to seal the deal for me.  We were worried about power outages in emergencies but with battery backup I think that solves that issue.

I really appreciate all the feedback from everyone.

EDIT:  One last question, do you know how long the 3 months free will last?  Wasn't clear on the website when I was looking.

I setup the Verizon one for a family member of mine and he loves it.  It is much louder than his old landline that seemed to go down once a week.  With its larger external antenna I had no issue getting the 3 out of 3 bars with it inside his home even though I had a -95dbm signal of roaming VZW signal. 

 

If the broadband card works fine then I bet this would as well since voice works on 1X which doesn't require as strong of a signal as EVDO to function correctly.  Give it a shot and if you don't like it, return it.  Or if you have a decent ping/jitter broadband I'd just go with a VOIP setup.  I use Google voice on my Obi voip box back fed into my home for a phone line.  Sure can't beat free

That's what I'm hoping, the external antenna should give me enough signal near the window.

I had the original Sprint Phone Connect and had a few times where the voice quality was so-so. If you want fax, there is Internet fax, or Vonage if you have a high speed Internet connection.

 

 

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And that's one of the main reasons I'm leaving CenturyLink.  I can't get high speed internet through Time Warner or CenturyLink at home so the Sprint broadband card and my AT&T wif-fi hotspot are my only options.  And as soon as Sprint gives me 4G here and those new Tri-Band hotspots are out I'll be dropping that AT&T hotspot.

CenturyLink really lost me the last couple years because of two things.... First they called me and told me that couldn't use my "unlimited" long distance to dial my conference call numbers for work anymore or they would start to charge me some insane long distance rate.  So I've had to use the toll-free numbers, which costs my company money to dial those instead of using free long distance.  Then, more recently, we've got a farm with a small shed not far from where we live.  They told me I could get DSL there so I've been fixing up the shed to use as an office.  Now after I've spent money setting things up and was about to turn power on, I called CenturyLink back again to have them setup DSL and they're telling me it's not available.  You can't imagine how mad I was.      Still waiting for a manager to call me back but I doubt anything will come of it.  Sounds like I'm SOL.

Anyway, I'm ready to stop giving them any more of my money.

Anyone have any experience using the Sprint Phone Connect 2?  I'm really po'd with CenturyLink right now for several reasons and want to drop my landline service with them and port my number over.

I see the Phone Connect 2 supports both 800MHz and 1900MHz CDMA, which is a good thing since the signal in our house in non-existent right now.  By an upstairs window our mobile broadband card works fine so I would assume the phone modem would work ok.  I don't like that it can't handle fax traffic, but I think in the last 5 years I've used the fax maybe 2 times so it's not a showstopper for me.

Does anyone know how long the battery will last in a power outage?  How is the voice quality compared to a landline?  I work from home so I need something that will hold onto calls well.

Thanks for any feedback.

I added the Broadband LTE devices in their own table under the first. I will try to clean up the OP when I have time and figure out how to build a table on this forum that will stick.

Thanks Josh.  Looks good and very handy!  

Josh, it would be nice if the hotspots (and even tablets) were in the table that you have just to have an easy view of which devices  support which LTE bands.  You could just put N/A (or -- or whatever) in the SVDO and SVLTE columns.

This is great news.   I'll be after one of the hotspots/modems when they come out.  The next closest tower to home has LTE live now and I'm fairly certain  the NV equipment is on the closest one, just couldn't confirm 100% with my S3's camera and didn't get a chance to go back with a digital camera with a better zoom. 

 

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I really need a new phone so I can use sensorly myself, but I know the day after I get one they'll announce the first 800 LTE phone.

Then I'm sure there are lots of folks on here that would like you to get a new phone as soon as possible.

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On the other hand there have been price increases for all people who get an employer discount on family plans at Sprint as they now apply the employer discount only to the first line. This did raise my monthly rate about 6%.

Yeah, that happened in stages too. For a while it was on all lines, then it switched to only the first two lines on a family plan because they were kind of bundled together. Then they finally switched it to show the second line separately and removed the discount for that one as well. At least I still get a discount on the first line and my mobile broadband card since it's not included in the family plan. But the changes to the family plan discount raised my bill $15/month and then with the addition of the $10/month data fee for "smartphones" I'm paying about $55/month more in the last year or two.

When it comes to requiring sub-100ms latency, how much of that time is taken up in the air between the phone and the tower? I understand it will vary depending on distance from the tower, but just assuming some longer distances for rural towers (say 3-5 miles for selfish reasons ) how much lower than 100ms would the backhaul latency need to be to account for travel to/from the tower? (That would seem to be the slowest part of the path to me)