greenbastard

1 hour ago, bigsnake49 said:

The fact that Softbank let Sprint go for a dime will tell you that they were desperate.

Did you forget to log out of your main account and into your sock??

Sort of odd both T-Mobile and Sprint are simultaneously having service issues in Southeast Texas. T-Mobile has blamed it on a cut fiber line.

1 hour ago, Arysyn said:

Consider though my suggestion was made to be something Sprint could have done after getting enough of the 600mhz spectrum. In no means did I intend to suggest Sprint should have sold the spectrum right away without the other spectrum in place. They obviously need something there to provide service where the vastly underdeployed band41 isn't.

It still would have been a terrible idea. Selling spectrum = slower speeds.

1 hour ago, Arysyn said:

At the time I asked, but what I was told was fairly limited.

Compared to the midband spectrum of the other three carriers, it is. In the market to the south of me, Sprint only owns 30 Mhz of midband spectrum.

Verizon owns 60 Mhz of midband spectrum, At&t owns 90 Mhz, and T-Mobile owns 80 Mhz (PCS+AWS).

But this doesn't change the fact that your suggestion was a terrible one. Selling their spectrum would have been a disaster of epic proportions. Their network has never been dense enough for 2.5 Ghz to work properly in most markets. Midband spectrum was crucial for their survival while they figured out how to properly deploy B41. Unfortunately they never got around to it for a myriad of reasons we've beaten to death on this board.

I don't know if this was a SCP/Qualcomm bug or not, but maybe T-Mobile has turned on MFBI. It only lasted a few seconds. This happened on my T-Mobile SIM btw....I don't have a Sprint account at the moment.

I may buy a cheap prepaid line and then port over for the 1 year free promo just so I can track T-Mobile LTE roaming rollout and then the merger.

7 hours ago, iansltx said:

Going along US-79 between Austin and Longview is a nice test of Sprint's roaming ability. As I type this, I'm on EvDO roaming with VZW; if I had to guess, it's an old Alltel site. Earlier, I was on AT&T LTE (B4 or B17) with VZW or Sprint 1x. The T-Mobile SIM in my tablet is pulling native LTE pretty consistently, bouncing between various bands and CA.

Unfortunately this is the last time I'll be doing this trip for quite awhile, so I won't be able to confirm when roaming goes live on that corridor.

It'll also be interesting to see what happens in the reverse direction. Though realistically the only roaming available in the other direction for me will be on PCS A-F, assuming the network is set up to properly broadcast Band 2 when the frequencies line up. For high end phones that just so happen to have a single variant cross-carrier B26 should be a nice boost in those places where TMobile hasn't built out yet and Sprint has.

EDIT: By the time I finished this message I was split between AT&T LTE and VZW 1x again.

VZW EVDO roaming is available on some sites inside the Texas triangle. Once you get into East Texas (east of I-45), At&t LTE takes over as a roaming partner. Unfortunately, this arrangement has left a lot of holes in roaming. I can confirm that the area west of I-45, south of SH-30, and east of SH-6 has no data roaming whatsoever.

From what I've been able to map, AT&T LTE roaming is available on I-45 starting at the Freeman/Navarro County line and ending at the Walker/Montgomery county line. On I-10, At&t LTE roaming starts somewhere inside Gonzalez county and ends at the Colorado/Austin county line.

5 hours ago, dro1984 said:

I have a feeling Sprint and T-Mobile will have to give up some spectrum (if it's approved) or at the very least will be subject to extensive build out conditions (which I have no problem with)...DOJ or FCC might even say, you have to remain a value driven carrier and offer rurual areas plans for under $--.00 .       They will be in-between AT&T and Verizon for size... so they will be a new "Major Player".   

They probably won't have to unload any lowband spectrum. At&t at one point owned 100 Mhz of lowband spectrum in Dallas. Sprint+T-Mobile won't own more than 60 mhz of lowband spectrum in most major markets and 70 Mhz in the rest of the country. 

Midband spectrum is where we'll see some moves happen. I think they'll end up trading the spectrum they have to unload to At&t/Verizon for spectrum in other markets where they still fall below the spectrum screen.

2 hours ago, MkVsTheWorld said:

I hope that we get to keep the penalty-free USCC LTE data roaming on the new T-Mobile. That's been one of the standout features over Verizon because Verizon only does 1x data roaming on USCC (Deep Creek Lake, West MD, etc.). I know T-Mobile has some LTE roaming on to USCC, but only in VoLTE areas far away from Deep Creek Lake and only specific phones.

T-Mobile offers it. Unfortunately they only do it where US Cellular offers VoLTE and it only works on T-Mobile branded phones. Also, since US Cellular only has VoLTE in Iowa, it falls behind iWireless in priority, so roaming is pretty rare.

6 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Yeah mine is reporting B3 for T-mobile. I am definitely in the US and it should be reporting B2.

You're probably getting Band 66 instead of Band 2 but see Band 3 instead.

14 hours ago, mhammett said:

I'd like to figure out how closely I can replicate the existing Sprint - Google Voice full integration. I use it extensively.

Send and receive SMS and phone calls from multiple devices including PC. Send MMS from multiple devices including PC.

Make and receive calls with the standard phone functions on my primary number.

The closest thing I can think of is T-Mobile's DIGITS.

Just now, nexgencpu said:

This is a different argument, I've heard multiple times in this discussion that uploads are congested. But let me tell you, in my personal case where my area is limited to 2xCA, the change in config brought on nearly equal upload and download, where before, uploads consistently outperformed downloads.

My issue with the timing change was that poor upload speeds became very noticable whenever you went below -110 RSRP or if you were indoors. Before I ported out, I would routinely turn off B41 just so I could send an MMS in a timely manner.

Before the timing change, I could see at least 0.5 Mbps on upload even with a weak signal. After the change, speed tests would routinely time out during the UL portion.

11 minutes ago, nexgencpu said:

I will say it again, B41's uploads are NOT congested. 

No one is saying that. Upload limitations on B41 are due to the change in timing configuration.

Sprint should have waited for interband CA phones (B25+B41) or at the very least allowed intraband CA upload on B41. Changing the timing configuration made it hard (and sometimes impossible) to do trivial things such as sharing pictures or sending MMS with a weak signal. In places where I used to get 1-2 Mbps upload, I could no longer do video calls. Speed tests would even time out on the UL portion from time to time after getting 10 Mbps on the DL.

Upload speeds are more important than ever before in today's social climate (sharing everything we do). Sprint needs to address them if the merger doesn't go through.

11 hours ago, nexgencpu said:

Pretty sure it does not. 

I think it does. But 256 QAM on B41 seems a bit redundant. In order for 256 QAM to work, you'll need an extremely good SNR (north of 18-20 dB). The only times I ever got a clean signal like that on B41 was whenever I stood next to a tower.

51 minutes ago, Dkoellerwx said:

1x only on Verizon.

I think mostly the Dakotas, Montana, Wyoming is where T-Mobile may have coverage. Beyond that, it think it's pretty spotty where they have coverage that Sprint or partners do not. I'm not sure if T-Mobile roaming is going to be prioritized over that of USCC or other partners like NexTech or Pioneer. 

It'll be impossible to roam on T-Mobile in most of Wyoming. Outside of Cheyenne, the only LTE band they use is LTE B71. 

44 minutes ago, Dkoellerwx said:

1x only on Verizon.

They still do EVDO data roaming too, but the speeds are capped just like they are on At&t LTE and it's not widespread. Before porting out last month, I was able to get data from one Verizon site in rural Texas.

I also noticed that domestic roaming that counts towards your roaming allowance has blocked off video services from places such as YouTube. Videos will not load at all.

12 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

It's a total of $6B. Plus a $5B of debt forgiven by DT.

The spectrum helped them more. It has had a longer impact  on the T-Mobile network. That cash they got was probably used up within a year. The spectrum is still adding value to the T-Mobile network.

1 hour ago, bigsnake49 said:

Then encourage the cable cos and Dish to jointly develop a 4G/5G network. Heck they can buy some of Sprint's network assets.

Exactly. Dish and Comcast are sitting on some very valuable low band and mid band spectrum.

2 hours ago, dnicekid said:

Let’s not. Let’s just keep it simple. Son was hoping for a quick turnaround... 

No. He bought Sprint with the intention of merging it with T-Mobile. That was the goal from the very beginning. He even said so himself.

2 hours ago, lilotimz said:

There's multiple VZW 5G CPEs and 1024T1024R 29 / 39 GHz Massive Mimo Radios  that have gone through the FCC. Neat stuff. I'm expecting to see it in my area in the coming months and maybe even at my parents residence....

Even with that amount of Massive MIMO, what would coverage look like on the lower end  of that spectrum? I can't imagine more than a city block outdoors. Indoor probably non-existent.

51 minutes ago, twospirits said:

The actual numbers.

37 minutes ago, Tomas said:

A possibly interesting viewpoint from Gizmodo.com ...

 

 

Wow. Lazy Journalism at it's finest. Canada =/= USA.

Canada is tremendously huge, yet has a fraction of the population that we do. Canada has around 38 Million residents to be split among three carriers. Sprint alone has way more subscribers than that! 

Why not use Mexico as an example? They went from four national carriers to three and competition is still good. They don't have unlimited data (and never have), but price for data has gone down considerably as time goes by. 

3 minutes ago, Thomas L. said:

I'd like to know this as well. Every Sprint device for two or three years has supported bands 2, 4, and 12, ostensibly as part of an effort of Son's part to support smaller rural wireless providers in the US, but what really was more likely device seeding in anticipation of a merger. Device support is there across the board, but I also would like to know what will be required to enable Sprint to roam on T-Mobile. I am also still waiting to hear if T-mobile can roam on Sprint. 

I didn't listen to the call and haven't found a transcript. But is there a chance they meant for this to happen once VoLTE is launched?

3 hours ago, Thomas L. said:

So I disabled CDMA and bands 25,26 and 41 on my phone and it's not roaming on T-Mobile yet. I would imagine it will take at least a week to propagate the update to towers and the system etc? 

The roaming is probably only for areas where Sprint offers no service for now. It's probably just like the At&t roaming Sprint has where it only works in the boonies.

Just now, IamMrFamous07 said:

really? what are the pings like? are there any videos i can watch

Read through the entire Reddit thread for more insight.

4 hours ago, xdfgf said:

Oh man. Ive been pretty neutral on the merger but Tmobile has brought its A game to rural Kentucky. Kinda excited to get in on it

What they did in Wyoming alone should be good news for network enthusiasts. They didn't wait around for fiber or microwave backhaul. They went in and used Satellite backhaul throughout the entire state. They were determined to get a native network deployed at all costs.

Of course ping times are terrible, but it definitely beats roaming. Satellite backhaul will do for now until they can hire crews to install proper backhaul.

10 minutes ago, SprintNYC said:

Finally, this is over and I don't think they would go through this a third time unless they got guarantee approval from the DOJ. Marcelo traveled to D.C several times the last few months with the smoke screen about removing regulations for small cells approvals. His visits were basically to the F.CC and DOJ.

Just my two cents.

The first time they tried this, they gave up because they got bad vibes from the government. Seeing how they're experienced at flirting with each other, something tells me you're right.