greenbastard

I'm not sure if you're serious, but I'll play along... A commercial may show how a phone could be useful for everyday tasks that a single mom may use/need. For example, a commercial showing Sprint Family Locator and how a mother can see where her children are located at all times may strongly appeal to single-moms who work 9 to 5 jobs. Now use the same commercial and show it to a young, single, educated male...you think the commercial will appeal to him?

Spanish speakers? You do realize that 2nd generation Hispanics and beyond mostly use the English language as their primary language? Once you get to 3rd generation Hispanics, the Spanish language is mostly gone. Go to places such as Corpus Christi, San Antonio, Albuquerque, and Tucson and you'll see that the majority of Hispanics in those cities don't even understand Spanish. The entire purpose of this hire is to target "Hispanics" and its growing population (Not Spanish speakers). You wouldn't target a middle class stay-at-home mom with the same ad used for a single, young African-American. America is full of subcultures and they all hold different social, religious, and cultural values. Knowing your target audience is important, and Sprint knows that.

There is still AM Stations using HD Radio? The last one in Houston to use this technology was Radio Disney, but they sold the station and its no longer in HD. The only AM station that I know in the state of Texas that still uses IBOC is WTAW in Bryan/College station. All of the state's clearchannels (day/night time 50 KW stations) have dropped the technology.

Same here. Both MGM and Ceaser Entertainment casinos have great signal and 3G bandwidth available throughout their floors. LTE was a work in progress last year I was there. The hotel rooms are a completely different story. I've never had any good data experiences at Flamingo, MGM, Ceasers, or NYNY rooms

Two questions. 1. Where/what do you do? 2. And are you taking job applications. Lol. But in all honesty, I'm more interested in Old Vegas since last time I had terrible data and voice inside the casino floors there. I've never had 1 issue in the strip (unless you're in the hotel room...hit and miss)

So, anyone tested out the international roaming feature yet?

I can attest to this. Last time I drove from Houston to San Antonio, I only lost LTE twice, but I can confirm that was due to eCSFB issues instead of coverage since airplane mode brought back LTE at -90 RSRP,(5 seconds later I was back on eHRPD) Considering its a 190 mile stretch, that's pretty damn good. From Austin to Houston (via SH-71 & I-10), I lost LTE 3 times, but that was only on SH-71 and once was lost reception between hills and the other 2 times due to eCSFB issues. From Houston to Dallas (as of October 2014), there is still a small stretch of I-45 with no LTE (closer to Dallas). But other than that, no eCSFB issues along I-45. Overall, still a good LTE experience throughout Texas. Consider the fact that Sprint has LTE covering the small rural road connecting Huntsville, TX to College Station, TX and T-Mobile does not. That speaks volumes of the commitment of bringing LTE everywhere instead of T-Mobile just focusing on cities.

So Vegas has actual 8T8R radios widely deployed? How is indoor coverage when compared to B25?

Speeds should go back to respectable speeds once Sprint finally configures a good load balancing between their bands. So far through most of Houston, phones seem to be diverted to Band 26 over Band 25, which is leading to crippling speeds on most triband phones (currently pulling 0.2 Mbps download on -90 RSRP band 26). Single band phones (B25) on the other hand are enjoying an unused band and higher speeds. The real difference maker in Houston will be when Sprint finally installs 8t8r radios. These dual Clearwire radios have a hard time penetrating through Houston's dense landscape. Hopefully, T-Mobile has 700 MHz LTE deployed everywhere in Houston so Project Fi doesn't add more users into Band 26 whenever they are indoors.

Not to turn this into an Android vs iPhone fan boy contest, but with the way Apple has lagged behind android and how they like to offer "Apple Only" services...not going to happen. You're better off praying for Apple to start a similar service instead of them allowing google into their phones. Sorta like how Apple Pay came along way after Google Wallet was around.

Maybe Houston? Coverage isn't bad considering they use AWS for LTE. I've been meaning to find a way to test out their new 700 MHz LTE but they are barely releasing phones that support that band.

Mmh. I had the exact same thing happen in Houston on Monday as well. My phone kept cycling from EVDO, to just 1x, to no signal all day. No LTE at all to be seen all day. I was assuming this was a Houston problem, but I guess it was more of a regional problem. By night time, the problem was fixed and I was back on LTE. Did your problems go away by Monday night as well?

I don't know what some of you are bickering about, but this is a pretty good offering from Google. I've had months where I use 1 GB and months I use 5 GB. Hopefully every provider adopts crediting unused data to it's customers. Also add the fact that your phone will automatically pick the least congested network, and data experience should be better than being in a single network MVNO. Also, international roaming may not be as good as T-Mobile or Sprint, but its still better than any other MVNO, Verizon, or AT&T. I take comfort in seeing this as a pattern of where the wireless industry is headed as far as international roaming goes.

Really? I seem to recall that LTE (Band25) was good enough for web browsing and Facebook last time I was walking though the piers. Are you using a triband device?

Good old digital sideband bleeeover. For many in the DX'ing hobby community, IBOC is their biggest enemy. In the days before IBOC, you could sometimes hear stations from as far as Mexico in Houston and Austin (under the right tropo conditions of course). Unfortunately, IBOC has killed that. Not even the best tuners can get rid of the digit noise heard on the adjacent channels of an HD station. Even in major markets IBOC causes havoc. HD has killed off San Antonio's KXTN 107.5 chances of penetrating into the Austin market. In the days before HD, KXTN-FM used to show up in Austin's ratings in every cycle. But once 107.7 in Georgetown turned on IBOC, KXTN fell out of the ratings and can no longer be heard like it once used to. The funny part is that both 107.7 in Austin and 107.5 in San Antonio are owned by the same parent company.

If a well programmed radio station is broadcasted in HD and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? HD Radio's real usefulness has come in the form of skipping through FCC loopholes and making FM Translators into full fledged radio stations (weaker, but still listenable in mid size markets). FM translators, by law, cannot produce original content and need a parent station feeding audio into it (different rules for commercials vs noncommercial, but the main point being it cannot have original programming). Since the FCC ruled that an HD subcarrier can be the parent station of an FM Translator, many companies have gotten creative in using this loophole to launch new stations that can be heard without an HD Radio. For example, KTTX 104.9-HD2 can also be heard in analog at 106.5 blaring christian music and KTTX 104.9-HD3 can be heard in analog at 97.1 blasting regional mexican music. Both repeaters are licensed at 250 watts, but since they sit atop a hill in Austin's tallest radio tower, they cover a good chunk of real estate. How too??? So good, that both translators travel farther out than KTTX 104.9's analog signal...ain't that something?!? Both repeaters are pretty successful and show modest ratings on Arbitron's PPM. So in essence, the owner of KTTX took one single license and turned it into 3 radio stations after purchasing 2 translators for a fraction of the price of a licensed radio station. Smart, but slimy.

The FCC office doesn't have the man power to mandate and enforce all of their rules. In Houston alone, there are 2 pirate radio stations that I know of which have been running for a very long time in the FM dial. If they can't nip 2 little pirates, what makes you think the field officers are going to check into the sound quality of an HD main channel? And sync problems are still there believe it or not. Not every station has the budget to replace 1st generation HD Radio equipment, so the problems will continue since its not a priority.

You also have to factor in that HD Radio uses less power than that of its main analog feed. HD Radio was only allowed to use the ERP equivalent of 1% to the total effective radiated power the analog station was licensed. That meant that full Class C, 100 KW stations only broadcasted HD with 1,000 watts. I don't care how tall their antenna mast was, you're just not going to cover the ~50 miles a full class C station does with a measly little 1 KW. Last I checked into HD Radio (which was a while back), the FCC was allowing testing on the use of 10% of ERP, but interference may have killed that proposal quickly.

Xm/Sirius is a pretty good alternative. The only time I bought subscriptions from them was when I would make a road trip throughout the U.S. or Mexico. Believe it or not, they can be heard all the way deep as Central Mexico (and maybe even farther south...didn't drive down that far to find out). My problem with XM is that, just like traditional AM/FM radio, its only a one-way mean of communication. As customers, we are only receivers and have no say in the music selection. But with internet, all of that changes. Of course, no company has a robust nationwide data network or spectrum to handle a full listener transition from FM/AM/XM radios to internet radios, but one can only hope that with technological advancements, we can get close to it.

Radio won't get axed anytime soon due to our reliance to it during natural disasters. But what we are seeing is big companies cut loose some of their smaller markets as the old business models no longer work for them. The old "buy and conquer" method of Clear Channel is no longer profitable in today's media market. In all honesty, I can't even recall the last time I used commercial FM/AM or satellite radio on my car. Bluetooth has done away with that for me since I can now stream Pandora/Spotify/podcasts or anything I like. Who says Houston needs an FM Active Rock station? I just pull up my phone and Spotify it. Sorry iHeart Media, you're going the way of the dinosaurs.

Nothing. HD Radio uses the thin sidebands of a radio station in order to broadcast the digital signal. So for example, if a radio station at 95.7 FM is broadcasting HD Radio, it uses 70 khz of side band at 95.7 to broadcast the digital white noise at (iirc) ~95.725 and ~95.675 FM. This is why you hear digital hash bleed over on 95.5 and 95.9 and why some radios stop on those frequencies when using the seek feature. Even if broadcasters could find something to do with this thin spectrum, they wouldn't be able to use another technology since the FCC chose Iniquity's HD Radio as the Digital standard for Digital FM.

A lot of this has to do with the lack of attention given to the technology by the radio stations. And quite frankly you can't blame them. HD Radio was only starting to take off when the entire industry got hit with the 2008 Recession. Many radio companies slashed their budgets and HD Radio just took a back seat to other priorities. Also, the first generation equipment many companies received are lousy and always go dark. Companies could upgrade the equipment to more efficient equipment, but most of the Radio industry really took the recession hard and til this day are still budget constrained. Replacing a technology that is mostly ignored by the public is not a top priority for many of the GMs of radio outlets. And the way the Radio industry is headed, I doubt HD Radio will even take off. Radio, as a whole, is a dying mean of communication and radio companies are running out of unnecessary expenses they can cut. The end is near for traditional radio. Organization giants such as Clear Channel and Univision Radio are seeing the writing on the wall and are now heavily advertising their online media and apps on the radio. Internet mobility is where future is for media advertising.

Since I'm not very knowledgeable on VoLTE.....how so?

Its a hit and miss as far as reception goes. HD Radio actually stands for Hybrid Digital, so don't let the "HD" fool you. Hybrid Digital only has the bandwidth to have one CD quality stream, so when a station multicasts an HD1 and HD2 channel, the quality degrades to slightly better than FM. Most major cities have FM radio stations broadcasting HD but because of the low availability of HD radios, most engineers don't bother to maintain their HD streams properly. For example in Houston, KBXX and KMJQ's HD main channels actually sound worse than their stereo analog counterparts. Also, KROI-FM spent an entire week once with a dead feed coming out of their HD carrier. Another big problem is engineers do not properly sync the audio from their analog feeds to their digital feeds. HD Radio by default delays the digital audio by (I think) 7.5 seconds, so engineers have to purposely delay their analog feed in order to have a radio sync smoothly from analog-to-HD (and vice versa). This leads to many stations suffering from audio lag when a receiver is in the fringe area of HD Radio coverage. Overall, nice concept when inside the -70 dBu contour of an FM radio station, but crap when outside of it. As far as AM HD Radio, not many stations adopted it nationwide, and those that did turned it off soon after due to the main analog channel suffering from interference. In all honesty, the only reason most companies are using HD Radio now is to skip through FCC loop holes. Since most companies have a limit of the # of stations they can own in every market, many of them are buying small translators and using the HD2 channel as the parent station in order to have more stations. One example is the Austin radio market. Most of the local translators rebroadcast a local HD subchannel rather than an actual FM station. This has resulted in Austin gaining 5 extra commercial FM radio stations. Its slimy, but legal.

Squaretrade FTW.