slibbidy

I can tell you that we are proceeding with plans for a FTTH provider here, with or without Google.

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

I am sure that Google would like to include a native VoIP client, but the wireless operators are basically implying, if not outright saying "Don't you dare do that."

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.

This doesn't affect you or you streaming unless you switch to the new plan.

 

Robert from Note 2 using Tapatalk 4 Beta

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?

If a Tmo user on HSPA+ in Atlanta, GA has a ping of 2309.43ms and an eventual dl speed of 15.79mb, how would the perception of speed compare to a Sprint EVDO  user with a ping of 588.34ms and a dl speed of 2.38mb?

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.

It definitely varies by area. However, this is not true anywhere that I go, unfortunately. Tmo indoor coverage in New Mexico is pretty poor unless you're within half mile of a site. Sprint is better in that I can keep 1-3 bars inside (but the data speeds are poor until NV). But with Tmo, I lose service altogether in most commercial buildings. If I'm lucky, I'll fall back to an EDGE signal.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

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:

1. 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.
   
2. 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.
   
3. 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.
   
4. The Nexus 4 is a phenomenal phone. It is also slippery.
   
5. 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.
   
6. 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.

What? I've never had that issue even when 2 years ago, i sent my old optimus in and it got lost. They replaced it with a brand new optimus. They replace the same phone you had. And if they don't have it in stock, you just have to wait until they get an order in or go to the nearest best buy that has em in stock. They usually send it in, try to fix it. If they can't, they will send a refurbished one. works all the same really

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.

If you have there insurance which is 10$ a month, if it breaks or anything. THey send it off and if they can't fix it. They replace it with a refurbished (The same) phone.

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

Get it fairly often at Capital square and yesterday was at Moore square

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.

Is that the Little Dick's Halfway Inn parking lot?

 

AJ

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

The Sponsor map for current sites doesn't show any towers in Raleigh (or Durham, CH, Fayetteville, etc) to be in progress. Do you think this is bad data? I am really ready for them to get around to the tower that covers downtown Raleigh, or at least to get the new backhaul installed. Speeds are unusable during the day and on weekends.

I switched over to Sprint because of the unlimited data for my family and now i have to wait for LTE till when? What is the hold up here in Raleigh which I know is one of your biggest markets.

I sure hope you are trolling on purpose. At any rate, to be upset about waiting for LTE when you signed up with Sprint before the market was launched is a bit much. Next time, do some research. I'm sure it's been tough on your family, though.

http://www.youtube.com/embed/Qh2sWSVRrmo

Is it reasonable to extrapolate dates based on the running deployment list, or is this a non-linear process?

For example, let's take Raleigh, which should be far more important to Sprint than whatever city you live in, and by enormous coincidence happens to be where I live. Since we first made it to 1% completion, it has crept up about 1% a month (a bit less, maybe, but let's keep the math clean).

Raleigh/Durham

...Sites Complete = 3%; Anticipated LTE Launch = Spring 2013

...Original Scheduled Completion = August 2013; Current Production Rate Completion = TBD

Would this mean that the Raleigh market, where the women are beautiful and the men eat too much BBQ, should expect to have 100% completion 97 months from now? At this point, there's no way they'll hit the scheduled completion of August 2013, and certainly not the 40-50% completion that triggers the launch, right? I guess I'm just wondering if the percentage is broken up by steps (i.e. the first 20% is running new backhaul, and this takes longer than the other steps so the other 80% will go by much more quickly) or if each tower counts as the same amount towards a 100% completion (i.e. a tower is, say .05%).

It could also be that the numbers aren't exact and that I'm reading too much into them. It definitely could be that.

I hear, "I hate Sprint, but I don't $350 hate Sprint. So I don't really hate Sprint, I'm just overly entitled."

That does happen, and definitely the case for many. However, I think it's fair for people to expect better than 200kbps speeds on 3G, and for them to be able to use GV, Rdio, GMaps, etc. Sure, I could leave and pay an ETF...but I actually want Sprint to pull this out and complete NV and to be a legitimate competitor to AT&T and Verizon. For that reason alone, I plan on sticking it out. Still trying to convince my wife, though. Story of my life.

just got threatened violence over calling somebody out on having their facts wrong (and being a liar, to which he readily admitted).

He could have been lying about being a liar. It happens. It really is crazy how invested people get in a company (see the comment section on every post about Apple and Android on any tech site). I'm not sure why people can't just use what they like and let others do the same.

For a counterexample, Google Talk, which can be leveraged by Gmail and GrooVe IP integration for VoIP calling, uses the G.711 codec at 128 kbps (64 kbps each way) plus routing info for a total bit rate of approximately 160 kbps.

Ah, this certainly might explain the issues I've been having with GV in Raleigh lately. Speedtest on 3G is showing consistently less than 150 kbps up/down. Calls ring once and go to busy, and people who call me go straight to voicemail. My wife is really on me about switching, but I'm holding out hope that NV will roll out soon even though no percentage seems to have been complete according to S4GRU's deployment status page.

It IS wireless backhaul.

How much throughput is wireless backhaul capable of having?

The likely cause of going from 1x to 3G more often is a weaker signal on the 3G network. Why all of a sudden? Cell Breathing. Here's a link to a decent article that explains it pretty well. Basically as the tower gets more and more overloaded with users, it's coverage shrinks.

 

http://www.gizmodo.c...r-call-dropped/

Interesting stuff! The article stated

Likewise, the more people that are using a cell tower, the more power each phone needs to be “heard” by the tower. This actually results in a contraction of the cell’s coverage area.

Does this mean that in a literal sense, the more overloaded a tower is, the shorter the battery life will be on my phone?

A radome.

 

AJ

So what is the microwave antenna that it is protecting used for? Can it be used as some sort of wireless backhaul?

I do need the education I thought pretty much there all the same just fancy names! So why is it that's sprints website shows my area as a WiMAX /4G I think and iam guessing the iPhone 5 is LTE only???

I wonder how many other people this has happened to? Can't be a happy day for them.

Thanks, Mercurial. I'll do that, but I'm willing to put up with it since I know the current network is oversubscribed and there's not much they can do about it until NV gets rolled out.

Really, I'm just curious about how the phone determines the signal it will use, and when to drop to 1x in the presence of a 3G signal. Is it signal strength, some calculation of throughput, etc? Could anyone point me to more detail about this? It's pretty interesting stuff, and I'm just getting into it because of this site.