greenbastard

Xfinity hotspots have become more annoying than helpful. Most businesses don't have them, so they are non existent in a lot of heavy traffic areas. And if you do happen to stumble upon a Comcast hotspot, its very unreliable. Pings most of the times are higher than Sprint LTE and speeds will sometimes bog down mysteriously to a dead hault. Then add the fact that phones like the S5 hold on to WiFi for dear life, and the experience is horrendous. Driving around town and streaming a live music feed causes a lot of headaches. Too many drops as my phone latches on to a fringe WiFi signal as I drive by and doesn't let go.

One of these plans will have to be discontinued. It may cause some confusion down the road for consumers (which is one of the reasons framily was discontinued and #AllIn was adopted). While I applaud what Sprint has done (for free), they should have just improved upon the International Value Roaming plan. I may be doing a trip to Germany and Mexico within the next year. Both plans have its pros and cons for both countries and I will have to shuffle options and hope they are both still offered when the time comes for those trips. A one stop-shop offering would be nice, but whatever. It's free!

A lot of Mexico has yet to see LTE, so for now it wouldn't make much of a difference. Most companies have LTE only in the Big 3 (Mexico City, Guadalajara, Monterrey) and are now in the middle of deploying LTE in the rest of the major cities. Queretaro comes to mind as a city partly deployed with LTE by Movistar. I think they had initially deployed LTE only near a shopping center, the central square, and a popular commercial strip. The rest of Queretaro is on HSPA+.

Well, Open World gives you free calling, while IVR (or whatever they will call it now) doesn't. Also, It doesn't seem like they are going to charge you another GB automatically, just per KB. So 0.1 GB of overage usage would equal to roughly a $3 dollar charge The rate is insanely low for international roaming. If this plan is true, Sprint has outdone itself again. I cant imagine offering this was easy since Sprint was CDMA carrier looking for roaming deals in a GSM world. Good job Marcello!

Because International stays aren't meant to be used for long term stays. Domestic roaming would be ridiculous at 1 GB since people live/commute/travel to areas with no native Sprint service every day. The roaming costs would add up faster for someone uploading a photo everyday on Verizon than it would for someone who uploads it 3-4 times out of the year on Movistar/Rogers.

To be fair, even I forgot that phone existed. How is that phone holding up?

Good god, what the hell are the people at Samsung doing? How has this issue never been noticed?!?!

I hope you like terrible troubleshooting assistance and horrendous customer service, because that's all you're going to get from Comcast. Also, forget about renting a modem from them. You're better off buying a modem at Best Buy or online than dealing with their equipment.

I've noticed this too. Las Vegas seems to have B41 in more areas and coming close to a tower can fetch you RSRP as high as -59. But in other areas they perform on par with Clear equipment going only as high as the lower -70s (-78 or -79). If I had to guess, they are protecting legacy Clear equipment. Time will answer all of our questions soon. Is 8T8R really the bees knees? We'll see. I have my reservations, but I'd like to be proven wrong.

And then the Apple fans will call it innovative, even though MVNO's have been around for the longest of times.

Like I said, B25/B26 is already loaded. Unless 4t2r can magically produce more bandwidth, it won't help alleviate the under 1 Mbps some sectors currently get (and this is with a signal above -80). 8t8r radios do wonders for edge of cell, but B41 is so sensitive to anything that signal will fade rather quickly. This myth that it matches B25 is just that, a myth. Dont get me wrong, it greatly improves B41 signal, but it doesnt match B25. The S5, for example, has an antenna design so bad that I could have B41 at -108, but if I hold it the wrong way I lose B41 and get placed on B26 (and while this may be the case with most phones, I'm not exaggerating here. Holding the phone like I normally do makes B41 go haywire) Band 41 is the solution for crowded spaces, but not for you run of the mill neighborhoods with dense trees/buildings. A 10x10 600 Mhz would help in places such as Texas where a second B25 carrier is impossible to launch. I'm not advocating to have the fastest speed, but if Sprint wants to survive in this cut throat industry, it'll have to find a way to shake off the slow speed perception that many people have. For me, 1-2 Mbps works just fine, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to be the case when it comes to public opinion.

Just finished updating. It's acting a bit slow, but that's expected as it is settling down after reboot. I'll wait until it settles down and then do a full Clear cache/factory reset. Stagefright doesn't really bother me as Textra has removed auto play from Videos in their latest update. EDIT: signal bars still show 1 bar for anything below -100 RSRP.

Well well well, I just checked and the was rather quick. EDIT: Screw it, I'm taking the plunge. Maybe the fixed the random screen turning on and not turning off or the bluetooth/headphone volume mixup.

It won't do much of a difference since B25/B26 are loaded already. Maybe give me better reception (which I don't need, but others do), but not better speeds.

I'm still on OD3. I don't think I'll upgrade until 5.1 (if it ever comes)

I don't know if you've experienced Band 41, but it doesn't travel very far and there is only so much 8t8r can do to help it indoors. I live less than 1500 feet away from a Sprint tower with B41 and I don't get it indoors. Harold Feld wasn't exactly exaggerating when he said 'wet leaves' can disrupt the signal. 2.5 is an answer for crowded areas such as medical centers, downtown, parks, etc. But it won't address the issues in residential areas where B26/B25 is drowned. Even if densification would help alleviate congestion on B25/B26, we are forgetting about the speed test obsessed media that will continue to measure them as if the speeds were penises. Sprint needs reliability and speed, and B41 only gives you speed, not reliability.

Thanks. I didn't know Samsung put some thought into naming their updates. Now if they would only put some thought into getting this buggy 5.0 OS out of the S5, that would be awesome.

Hope you don't mind me asking, but how do you go about finding these RDF's? Also, how do you determine it was from July?

With Internet Calling and modern social apps, there's literally no point in selling buckets of texts or minutes. As its been said before, data is the wave of the future.

Not quickly enough. It's not something Sprint should sit on and wait to explode (if it ever even does) especially with the rising competitive nature of this wireless industry. It's still niche. You can't compare the Women's world cup (which was nationally televised) with a regular season MLB game that is regionally broadcasted. Soccer is very niche. Some teams have very poor TV exposure. In Houston, the Dynamo often get pushed to an alternative channel in favor of NBA or MLB games. Like I said, Soccer isn't something Sprint should be waiting around for to develop with T-Mobile closing in.

It's still niche. It's behind NFL, NCAAF, MLB, NBA, NCAAB, and the NHL. Market exposure is still extremely limited, especially since most teams don't have the same TV exposure as other league pro teams. Wether it is growing or not, its not something you want to use valuable advertising money in, especially if you're trying to grow a brand. There are times to invest in a growing trend but with the current environment of the wireless market, now is not the time to experiment with the CEO's hobby. But that's just my opinion (and this is coming from a casual soccer fan)

Who knows. Sprint seems to be more invested in Soccer, which in my opinion is a waste of money (unless they got a really good deal from the Gold Cup, but I doubt it since it was an international event). Unless the U.S. gets to host a world cup in the near future, advertising in Soccer is not a good move. America is not a soccer country so expanding your brand with soccer isn't smart. He seems to be going all in with that Miami F.C., which will not only be a niche market, but a regional one as well. Personally, I would have gone with football as the season is about to start up again.

In today's world of wideband LTE, 10 Mhz of spectrum is no longer considered a "chunk". Every major operator has 10x10 carriers or larger in the mid and lower bands.

And that's part of the issue which Sprint is about to address. It's unfortunate that Sprint wasn't able to deploy chunks of spectrum instead of their 5x5 slices, but it is what it is. It definitely would have helped to have paired spectrum, but they played with the hand they were dealt. It's helped, and quite frankly it has fixed data issues. Unfortunately, with the penis-like speed measurements that people obsess with, Sprint has a long road ahead. Personally, 2-3 Mbps is more than enough for me, but the wireless industry environment now demands more than that. I've experienced the same thing Terrell experienced with Sprint trying to cancel a 2 month old contract. Data was terrible in any part of Houston and Sprint did not want to budge. I eventually gave up once Sprint announced their NV plans and LTE rollout and the experience has been a lot better.

Nvm