slibbidy

Awesome news! How do you plan on getting around the municipal fiber legislation? Would this be a private company?

Which is weird, because it's data that most of the operators are trying to cap. Voice and SMS is a giveaway, a mirror image of the situation 5 years ago. You'd figure they'd want people using as much data as they could charge for, capacity allowing.

I don't necessarily disagree with his take as far as a current snapshot goes. Once NV is completed and Sprint has a decent network (especially around Raleigh), the picture might be different. There are lots of people who have switched to MVNOs and pre-paid lately, especially with the Nexus 4 being so cheap.

I use it with Uber to pay for cabs. So simple and fast.

Right, but I switched to T-Mo pre-paid until NV is rolled out because 3G in the "Research Triangle" (that's for you, danielholt) was not really usable. That means when I go back to Sprint, this will be my only option.

This sort of thing was inevitable, but it would be a better situation for new customers if NV were finished first. What really worries me is the video throttling. I sometimes watch a show on Netflix while sitting at the dog park. Sure, I could watch the dogs the whole time, but they lack imagination and things get pretty repetitive. Anyways, 1mbps isn't even at the recommended bandwidth for broadband from Netflix. 0.5mbps is the minimum, and 3mbps is required for DVD quality. I realize that I could use a VPN to get around this, but not everyone has access to one. Isn't 1mbps just a bit low for an arbitrary throttling speed for video? Another question is will they throttle video when a phone is being used as a hotspot?

That's about the sum of it. I switched to T-Mo until Sprint finishes NV in the Raleigh market, and my plan was to use GrooveIP to make up for the 100 voice minutes on the $30 pre-pay plan. However, latency is just too high on T-Mo's HSPA+ network to get a reliable call with decent voice quality. On LTE with sub-100 pings, though, it should be feasible. On a completely unrelated note, I really miss Sprint's integration with Google Voice.

I find the exact same situation in Raleigh with my Nexus 4. In most cases, I just turn on Airplane mode to save battery.

One other caveat I found to the $30 pre-pay T-Mobile plan: I need a bit more than 100 minutes, so I added $20 to my account. At the end of the month, I have auto-renew so that I don't need to remember to pay again. However, their billing system is not smart enough to take out the $30...instead, it takes out the difference between your credit and the $30. In my case, I had $6 left - enough for 60 minutes of calling. T-Mobile took out $24 for the next month, leaving me with 0 minutes and unable to make calls until the next day. Their justification is that their system isn't smart enough to realize that the payments you made between monthly renewals is specifically for voice minutes. There's no other reason that you would add funds during the month, though. Of course, they were happy to offer me a list of other plans that were more expensive and offered much less data. The truth is, T-Mobile is only offering this plan to get people on there, and then hoping to up-sell them later on. The customer support they offer to pre-paid customers is pretty lax, too. We just don't make them enough money, I guess. The take away from all of this is that you need to keep a balance of at least $33 to make sure you have minutes if you use more than 100 during a given billing cycle. Otherwise, you'll end up being told that you don't have any calling time.

I recently made the jump to the $30 prepaid T-Mo plan with a Nexus 4. I'll probably make the jump back once Raleigh has NV fully rolled out. Here's what I've found: Downtown and in urban Raleigh, the HSPA+ speeds are fantastic. I'd almost forgotten what it was like to be able to load Google Maps and Rdio. Forget about data on the ground floor of a "tower" (what counts for one in Raleigh) once you get a few rooms in. The building penetration just isn't there, likely due to the higher frequencies in use. GrooveIP is not consistent enough to use over HSPA+, and in some cases even over WiFi. I've opted to add $10-$20 every couple of months to add voice minutes. These minutes roll-over for 90 days. The Nexus 4 is a phenomenal phone. It is also slippery. The second you are out of a city, you will be on Edge. However, Edge speeds are roughly equivalent to Sprint 3G in the Raleigh area, but Raleigh just may have the worst Sprint 3G speeds in the country. Less than 100 Kbps is what you can expect for both in the areas I frequent. There is no roaming with the $30 pre-pay plan. You are on T-Mo, or you are not in service. Hope this helps someone.

I mean, I've got no reason to lie here. I'm just repeating what the Asurion rep told me when we had to replace a Nexus S.

There is some fine print about this. If they have the same model in their warehouse, you will get the same phone. Otherwise, you will get the most "similar" model. I sent my wife's Nexus S off, and they said they might have to replace it with some phone I'd never heard of that was still running 2.3. Thankfully, they found another Nexus.

A new tower is going up in Raleigh. Is there any way to tell if Sprint will be using it? Approximate coords are 35.7904, -78.6244. http://goo.gl/maps/hJbc4

Is it usable? I live and roam downtown, so I'm waiting to upgrade my OEVO until LTE is working. I'm running a JB ROM (thanks, Mazwoz!) so WiMax isn't functional anyways, but I want to decide between the One and S4.

Their slogan is "Our Employees Just Need A Tip."