nick

Maybe. I had a meeting the other week where we talked with the network engineers about what's going on in Milwaukee. All that's really left is going to be the small cell deployment and optimization.

 

Lambeau is getting another sector added for the DAS system before the big send off for Farve's jersey and Miller I wanna say they're leaving alone for this year. I believe they said they'll be installing something in the next year or so to make data more useable inside but it didn't seem like it would be anytime in the near future so I didn't pay too much attention.

 

Milwaukee proper will be covered in small cells as well as Racine and Madison. There will be others spread out across the state but nothing nearly as dense as those couple cities.

I look forward to that, miller park could use band 41 on the DAS for sure, capacity is an issue as currently deployed.

I know this is going to sound crazy. I like not having simultaneous voice and data. I had a really bad habit of talking to my wife on speakerphone and browsing the web at the same time while driving 45mins from work to home.

 

Sent from my Nexus 6

I hope you aren't behind the wheel while taking and browsing the internet.   

I'm happy with my phone for the most part. Around Milwaukee there are still spots where I drop to 3G and on 3G the speeds still aren't the greatest. When my phone is on lte it works great and I have no issues at all.

The Milwaukee market is coming along nicely, its also on the first round of NGN small cell deployment due to its low macro tower density.... hopping they put a nice high capacity small cell in state fair park, as data was basically unusable at last years state fair.   

In small towns (at least mine) it made very little sense - as it doesn't help.  Sure I can get near 90 down - but only when I am parked in the same parking lot as the tower LITERALLY - go about 2 miles and its difficult to keep LTE established...  

 

I know its not the same but in the end the consumer doesn't see it as a good thing.   

I used to get the same results, extremely limited LTE range, however that has slowly been changing, literally week by week band 41 reach and penetration has been improving.... I have no explanation as to why exactly, or why the change is so slow, but now with line of sight, or near line of sight to the tower band 41 can reach around 2 miles from my towns best performing tower... and 1 mile from the worst performing band 41 tower.  they are both boomers, with sprint equipment at or near the top rack.  

You guys confuse investing concepts. I do it professionally, how about you?

well I am not a professional however...

http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/s/ownership-summary

soft bank holds                                 3,250,596,924 shares  or roughly %83 of total out standing shares           09/15/2015

to me that apears to be ownership, and all the "little guys" are just along for the ride

          

Here's a new way to look at it that may be useful for some...

 

An important metric on which I think Sprint will renew focus is cost per acquisition, or the amount of money it has to spend to acquire each new customer. On this measure alone, I think Direct2U will fail to pass muster when compared with other channels. Here's why...not trying to get too far into the finance geek weeds here, but humor me for a moment and consider that a retail store has a much higher proportion of fixed to variable costs. The opposite is true for something like Direct2U. This means that for every new customer served in a store, the average cost to serve (or cost per acquisition for new service) decreases. With Direct2U, the costs actually increase with each new customer serviced. Why? In addition to its higher proportion of fixed costs, a store has "levers," so to speak, that it can pull to make each business day as efficient as possible (for example, asking a customer to wait while their phone hard resets so the next customer in line may be helped). Contrast this with the fact that each Direct2U staffer is 100% tied up on just a single customer until that interaction has completed...there is no multi-tasking, or multi-servicing, as we nerds like to call it.

 

I'm sorry, folks...it's just not financially efficient. And Sprint needs financially efficient customer acquisition initiatives. At this stage, they must pursue must-have tactics to execute their strategies - not the nice-to-haves. And from a financial analysis perspective, chances are very good that Direct2U is a nice-to-have.

of all the times i have visited sprint stores, or best buy mobile i have never, not once seen a store member move on to the next person while a phone resets, it's not a good customer experience... when your phone is done restarting the CSR is faced with a choice, abandon the new customer he just started helping, or ignore the person who just had their new phone restart untill he is done with the new guy... this strategy is fine if your a tech in the back room, but not if your the guy sitting face to face with customers.   another thing to consider is the hours upon hours that the store reps sit idle because the store is dead, they could have zero customers for hours then get rushed at 5:00 when everyone gets off work, that also creates bad experiences.  With direct 2 you the employee could be scheduled for appointments all day long leaving no down time (unless you count driving) but the driving is adding value for the customer by way of them not having to drive and improving customer service.  financially for direct 2 you to work, they need as many customers as possible (to keep the employees busy at all times)  and for those customers to be within the smallest radius possible to reduce driving time.  of course you have more variables like running over the 45-60 min target time frame, or customers that fail to meet for the appointment, forcing the driver to either wait wasting time, or try and bump his next appointment earlier, or fine one to take the place of the missed one.   

 

I think in a perfect world all reps would be in a car, or online only eliminating the retail space would save a ton of money, but that would be to extreme for people, there is nothing that a store offers that the car or online/ phone could not. 

Reported this a few days ago: I'm surprised.

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6s using moderately better tapatalk

Yes, i have had issues fixed within a day or two before, they have made a lot of progress on apple maps.  at this rate they will surpass google maps in a few years time.

Beyond pissed. Our phones have been received back by sprint but the amounts have not been credited to our account and the bill is due soon. Sprint chat says we are expected to pay the account a balance. Which is currently 2300 damn dollars.

 

They're out of their damn minds. The phone was received back on the 2nd. I have no intention paying that and receiving an "account credit" when the phones returns are entered into the system. Nor do I plan on paying late fees.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6s using moderately better tapatalk

i agree tweet sprint care and marrcello 

A little off topic, but hopefully this is okay here. My sister currently has an iPhone 6 lease which expires in December. She wanted to upgrade to the Galaxy S6 Edge and was willing to pay the remaining lease payments.

 

On MySprint there is some sort of option where you can add a "delegate" who is suopposed to be able to add Easy Pay or Lease phones to an account at the store without the account holder being present. Said they only needed to be over 18 and show photo ID.

 

We go to the Sprint store, without the account holder, and they basically had NO idea what we were taalking about, even after showing a screen shot of the webpage. They insisted her name was not listed on the account and the only way we could proceed was to have the account holder call Customer Care and add her as an authorized person. We ended up leaving because it just seemed so ridiculous, and the girl was pretty rude about it.

 

Why have this option on the website if they don't honor it? Anyone else experience something similar?

this is a new program, much like all of sprint lately, new programs for leases phone trade in easy pay new plans, loyalty discounts, and the list goes on and on... chances are she truly had no clue what this is, most sprint customer service reps are under trained and this flood of new rules, pricing and promotions is not helping, this is well documented problem with sprint.  chances are you know more about sprints new policies and plans than she does.  honestly i recommend people reach out to the ceo help line, use twitter tweet sprint care and marcello, say you want a pone call.  that team is prompt and professional, they can arrange an in store pick up, with min interaction with the store reps, then correct your account after you leave the store. trusting the store reps is a very hit and miss experience....             

Yes and i have an unlimited data with sprint. When im bored i run nonstop speedtests so that i can hopefully slow the network down just enough that everyone switches to t-mobile

 

[emoji6]

 

Sent from my SM-G925P using Tapatalk

what a great productive use of free time both of you! 

I emailed Tracy Morgan yesterday morning and got a response from her around 3pm Chicago time. She said she asked her network team to give her an update in the next 24 hours.

 

I got home around 4:45 and there was car sitting on the street in front of my house with 2 guys in it, didn't think much of it until 7:30 pm when it was still sitting there. My neighbor and I got suspicious so we went an talked to them. They were 2 contractors working for sprint and they were there due to my email to Tracy! They were running tests and collecting data on their laptop and communicating what they found to higher ups.

 

Follow up call form Tracy's chief of staff just now and she read me an email from the head network engineer Vlad which said they out here for so long because they were working with the tower people to physically turn and tune the antenna's to try and provide a better signal to my area. They said they don't have any antennas pointing directly towards my location, but they were able to make marginal improvements. The good news is (and we'll see how long it lasts) I'm at home today and the call from the chief of staff rang on my phone and the quality of the call was good.

 

Finally, I also pointed out to Tracy in the email the HD voice not working when you enable WiFi calling bug. This is a bug where even when making a cell to cell call HD voice doesn't work if wifi calling is enabled. This was forwarded to their devices and systems team and apparently they have been able to reproduce it and have opened a ticket with Apple and with Sprint engineering. So, perhaps we'll get some traction on this issue as well.

 

Kudos to Tracy Morgan for taking charge and getting things done, I've NEVER experienced anything like this with Sprint or any other carrier before. If this is what sprints new model for running their markets is going to be like, I think it's great.

great to hear you got this level of service, i think its Tracy Nolan you talked to though.  that is what it will take to make a great network, fine tuning micro adjustments are going to be key going forward.  hope your troubles are over. 

What is your signal level? Even when congested, running at 2-3Mbps, it is better for the network that you are on B41 rather than B25 or B26 so that they are available for those who are out of range of B41. Network Management / Load Balancing isn't always about making sure you have the fastest speeds possible every moment of the day. It's about making sure the network functions properly for everyone. 2-3Mbps is within reasonable standards. Once the second carrier is able to be activated in a little over a month, B41 capacity will double.

I was just thinking the same thing 2-3 is within reason, band 25/26 should be reserved for people who cant get band 41, or when band 41 is very congested around .5-1 with the ping breaking above 150 or so.  band 41 has significantly more capacity than band 25 or band 26, if the network pushed people off band 41 in your situation than band 25 and 26 would be the poor performer, and people out of band 41 range would suffer.  your area just needs a second band 41 carrier, then a third, fourth and so on... you get the point as more carriers come online it will get better and better, add more macro sites, plus tens of thousands of small cell they will have ample capacity for years to come.... they just need to execute the plan, and plow forward without any major delays.   

At my home location inside and outside calls are being blocked and rolling to VM. The signal is ok and when outgoing calls are made or an incoming call that comes in and isn't blocked, the service is fine.

 

When HD voice isn't working (due to wifi calling bug) calls are so muffled and distorted that you can't understand what people are saying. 

according to the network upgrade map on sprint's website your house is positioned between two towers, it is possible that you "bounce" between them and that is causing your issues (if one is being upgrades), have you contacted sprint care via twitter? I find the twitter reps to be slightly more knowledgeable than the phone reps, when you leave the area say 2-3 miles away is your service ok? I only ask because its possible you have a defective phone(unlikely but possible).  beyond that you may have to cancel service or just keep it and hope it gets better, you may have luck contacting tracy nolan on twitter, see her tweets for her email address, worth a shot i suppose. 

Having issues in Downers grove 60516 @ 59TH & Janes Ave (my house). Call are not coming in, rining on the callers end then going to VM on my end without ringing. 

 

Support tells me there are many tickets open on the towers in my area but none for the nearest tower to my house. They say blocked calls (what I'm seeing) are being reported an that tower upgrades are in process which may be causing some of this.

 

I've done pinpoint reports via sprint zone. I'm within my 14 day return window (iphone 6s +)and it's critical that calls come in at home. I can't use WIFI calling due to bug with HD voice not working on non-wifi calls.

 

Can anyone help pinpoint the towers in my area that are having issues or put me in touch with someone? (Tracy Nolan?) at Sprint who can really help? I would love stay with Sprint, but can't if this isn't resolved. 

you can find your tower on sprint's own map, here is the link.

http://network.sprint.com/search/chicago/

if the problem is upgrades in progress then no one at sprint can help you, the upgrade is being made as quickly as possible.  no one can magically speed it up or fix it.  Any one you can "get a hold of" isn't going to be able to fix your problems within your return window....  sadly you either have to wait and see if it gets better, or move on to a carrier that better suits your needs, also the "bug" that prevents HD voice is not the worst thing in the world regular calls aren't bad, they just aren't HD.  How is service outside your house and around town?   

Unlimited Plan price going up on 15 October...$70 now instead of $60.

 

http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/sprint-says-hurry-in-before-its-too-late-last-two-weeks-to-get-unlimited-high-speed-data-talk-and-text-for-just-60month.htm

most interesting part

" Those customers also may activate a new phone and remain on the $60 Unlimited Plan as long as they still meet the plan requirements and are purchasing a phone option and financing option that is compatible with the plan."

 

i wonder if that is to say after the cut off date people with a grandfathered $60 plan can add lines at the same $60 rate?  

Sprint shares fell another 6% today to $3.74

 

http://seekingalpha.com/news/2802656-sprint-falls-another-6-percent-in-valley-of-darkness-amid-network-fixes

 

Considering that Softbank had just recently spent tens of millions of dollars to buy more Sprint stock near the $5 price point, Masayoshi Son may be feeling more disappointment right now.

doubt it, stocks go up and down every day, someone like son, or anyone buying that many shares is not planning on selling them in the short term, that was a long term buy think 5-10 or more years. 

I understand sprint is in the middle of adding 2xCA on 2.5GHz. If I am not wrong, sprint has on average 120 Mhz of spectrum in the 2.5 GHz band in 90 of the top 100 U.S. markets.

 

2.5 Ghz may not propagate far but the spectrum is excellent for capacity.

 

Instead of deploying 2x20, why not roll out 3x20 and if i am being way too optimistic 4x20. Kill the competition basically and make you use of this large swath of spectrum now, instead of doing it in pieces while the competition zooms past them.

 

What is stopping them to do so ?

What are are the technological challenges to deploy 2x20, 3x20 simultaneously ?

phones don't yet support 3 carrier agitation for band 41, so adding a third carrier would add capacity not max speed. I am unsure of the hardware requirements for 3 band 41 carriers. Perhaps someone else can answer if the 8t8r panels are capable of 3 CA?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Here is my internal #iPhoneProblems dilemma, I am on a ED plan and qualify for iPhone Forever on two of my lines.

 

I can roll into a Sprint Store or Best Buy and if available walk out with a couple of 64 GB iPhone 6S Pluses for nothing out of pocket and after loyalty discount and phone turn in would only cost an extra $30 a month.

 

If I take advantage of the iPhone Forever option of trading the phone in next September for the latest iPhone, then I wondering if I should bother with a warranty. The phone will still be under Apple warranty by then. And other then theft or water damage (which I've seen a YouTube video of iPhones being submerged for over an hour and still being functional), the only other damage that can really occur is a broken screen and those I believe cost only $125(?) to replace.

 

Given those circumstances I'm wondering if its cost effective to invest in a protection plan.

those videos on YouTube don't show 24-48 hours after the phone was submerged, it's not the water that killed it normally it's the corrosion, plus $600 plus $ is a lot to be out if something unexpected happens, it's a risk some people are comfortable with it, others not so much. I carry apple care and have used it several times over the years, so it works well for me.... It's a personal choice.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No rep ever asks me if I want to add it, they just do, and then I go back and take it off. But I was waiting for confirmation first. Thanks all of you.

 

 

Sent from my Gold iPhone 6s Plus 128GB using Tapatalk

don't you just love that, add things to your bill just to see if you will miss it and pay it for years.... customer service at its finest, if that happens report it to @Marcicarris  on twitter, or Marci@sprint.com   it's a serious problem that could be considered fraud, and detracts from sprint's image. 

I thought so. This is my first time leasing. It's unfortunate that store reps can be misinformed about the simplest things.

 

 

Sent from my Gold iPhone 6s Plus 128GB using Tapatalk

yeah better training in critical, but easier said than done, have you looked into apples leasing program? if not it might be worth a read into. http://appleinsider.com/articles/15/09/10/if-you-buy-applecare-apples-new-iphone-upgrade-program-is-a-great-deal

 

apple store employees are usually (not always) more knowledgeable than carrier stores, of course if your gettig a special deal from sprint that might not work for you.

I was told that AppleCare didn't count for proper insurance on a lease, and that if I had AppleCare and got a replacement, my lease would come due in full. Anyone with Sprint care to clarify? I much prefer to have AppleCare over the very expensive TEP.

 

 

Sent from my Gold iPhone 6s Plus 128GB using Tapatalk

it does not have to be the exact phone, just the same type (regular or plus, storage size) you got some bad information.  when i picked up my plus on lease the guy working the counter said i dont want apple care as the deductible is $300, i just about died laughing, i asked what the sprint insurance deductible is he said it  depends $200-$400...   this is an area sprint needs improvement on, do your own research do not depend on the store reps, also twiter normally has the correct answers.  apple care is the way to go (unless you have it stolen or lose the device then you are not covered)  keep in mind for a one year lease or less  you can get a refund for unused apple care. https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT202704

I think it is a great thing Sprint is doing by having its network team communicating with customers when there are issues. I should have tried that after getting the Sharp device, which at least in getting the Sharp device would have resolved that half of the issues I had. Then I could have moved on trying to communicate with the network team.

 

I had a mostly bad experience with the store staff at corporate stores, which many people here on S4GRU have since advised me is a known Sprint trouble area Sprint is working at improving, which definitely is good to hear. I'm going to give Sprint another try, if Sharp brings an updated device to Sprint. Although I'm also considering Verizon if they have good holiday deals this year, along with either the Sony Xperia Z4v or the new Droid Turbo. I might also consider Sprint, if they introduce the Android Forever program, where I can get an S6 soon, then trade it in when the S7 is available.

the average customer service representative for sprint knows significantly less than most people on this website, they typically don't know much of anything about the network.... Not uncommon for all carriers, att reps at not knowledgable about att's network either.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Plus what does everyone do at events when they notice a data slowdown? Speedtest to see if they have a slow connection!

haha true true

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Of course they cause congestion if you stream netflixs on two devices and do a speed test on the third you would have similar results, It is shared bandwidth as you add more users it gets slower. That is while large events kill the network every device looks for push notifications and small data requests it adds up fast and kills it for everyone.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That was a major issue I was having when I had Sprint the last time around. I was being honest about it by trying to not entirely blame the network, but to give the possibility of it being a phone problem, which in part it was. The store employees I spoke with about it though were blaming the network, which seemed very odd to me.

 

However, I now regret cancelling, as I should have tried the higher rf rated Sharp Aquos Crystal and kept that while dealing with the network issues present, as I would have been better off than I am now dealing with T-Mobile.

no cellular network is perfect, they all have dead spots, and slow data.  but it was nice to have sprint reach out to me in a meaningful way, in the coming weeks i will know if i affected positive change or not.  I believe the network manager was legitimate as he had almost zero "customer service language", called well after hours, from his cell phone, and had more information available to him than any other CSR i have even delt with.  I wish they had an advanced customer service line, not just one that recommends people to update the phone's PRL or gives answers like the network is being upgraded or we are experiencing issues.  this guy was digging down to the degree of direction for each panel on each tower, talking about down tilt levels and power out put ratios.