nick

https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/3hkzd4/uicepick_installing_b12_by_the_orlando_citrus_bowl/?ref=share&ref_source=link

 

Great mistake by this fellow here, believed T-Mo to be installing B12 when it was actually Sprint installing B41. Thought I'd share for you boys!

but but but...    thanks for sharing 

Well this is a theoretical situation with all flatlands and no obstructions with antennas at basically no downtilt that showcases my point. Carrier tends to not do that in more populated areas as capacity is needed. One typically does not set up a urban cell to cover more than a few miles in radius which is how Sprint gets away with saying 8T8R B41 can be similar to B25. 

 

Also sounds like they need to adjust the 2.5 RET settings remotely. Shit happens so spam the crap out of Sprint support. 

I have been in contact with sprint support, its slow going...   they always run to, " I see no problems in your area"  yes i know its on, but you must see almost no connections to band 41, as the tower is in a corn field yet band 41 reaches 4-5 houses and a small lightly used road.... mean while the interstate and my home within view of the tower 1.5 has sub .5meg edge of coverage band 26  all day long... on plus side a different tower in town 1-2 miles away while inside buildings with steel walls and steel roof, great band 41 service both signal and speed.     

AN easy explanation is this. 

 

In a rural area at full power

 

B26 --> ~10 to 15 miles

B25 --> up to ~10 miles

B41 --> ~4-5 miles with old Clear equipment --> ~5-6 miles with new 8T8R equipment

 

Substantially superior compared to old equipment but can't change physics. 

That is either overly optimistic or my area is in desperate need of major optimization, i have a very tall tower (so tall it needs a flashing light) band 41 about .5 miles, band 25 about 2 miles band 26 about 3 miles tops. (yes its all from that tower signal is strong if I hug the tower,  that is over an open corn field unobstructed view, level ground.  can optimization really improve range to that much?   if so that would be AWESOME!  

No it will not.

 

8t8r substantially improves the 2.5 frequency to the level that it can be comparable to b25 but only at closer distances. One cannot change physics and the difference between 2500-2700 and 1800-1900 frequencies.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

he was probably thinking of this article

 

 

http://www.dailywireless.org/2014/02/05/sprint-spark-firestarter-or-blowing-smoke/

 

"base stations equipped with beamforming and 8T8R technologies could increase cell range by a factor of 1.5 – theoretically reducing the need for cell sites by nearly 50 per cent."

 

But that is talking 1.5 increase over old clear equipment I think.

 

 

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You can get it! Go into field test mode and record the EARFCNs. If it's the same one every time it's single carrier, but if you see a different one that means it's a second carrier! You can't get carrier aggregation but you can still find and benefit from those second carriers, hope this helps!

learn something new every day, thanks

With Textra for text messages you can set to prefer WiFi, so if the WiFi is that strong, you'd really have no problem getting messages out. (of course the chat apps would work off that data) It's nice to hear there's something workable at Miller Park.

 

sent from an underwater dust storm from my Sprint S5

yeah i had no problem with Imessage, regular texts and phone calls all working fine (wifi calling was turned off).  this was a huge difference from last year when my phone was a paper wight all game.  I have found the millwakee market has been getting better the last couple of months, LTE has been more prevalent and reliable.  Has any found any second band 41 carrier in Milwaukee? I have in iphone so i cant get it ) :

On Easy Pay and Lease Program I understand there's no down payment and a small additional monthly fee however doesn't the consumer have to pay taxes on the retail price of the device upfront sorta like a closing cost of a transaction.

 

At least that's what I understood, is this true or not.

 

Easy pay has tax added at the time of sale, the lease you walk out without paying a cent for the phone ( with good credit).

 

 

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I was on the lower level, behind home plate, I had band 25 most of the game, signal was between 90-100 in the stands and 85-90 by the concessions. It was usable all night, I was curious about the wifi but where I was sitting it was basically dead. I have to imagine they have many antennas for both the sprint system and the wifi, so as you move from antenna to antenna service and speed will change. Overall I was happy with the experience, band 41 was very nice in the parking lot [emoji3]. I wish the DAS had band 41 though, it wasn't a sold out game (33-34 in attendance). I hope the DAS gets upgraded in the coming years with band 41.

 

 

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I think 49% of people that still chooses Easy Pay or Contract upgrade should not be neglected here.  I like that Sprint offers choice, unlike the competition.  

the question is do the 49% of people prefer 2 year contract subsidies or do they just fear change so they stick with what they know, i know many people who don't under stand lease or easy pay... so they stick with what they know ($200 phone on 2 year contract) not everyone follows this stuff as close as we all do.  Take my girlfriend for example she didn't understand lease at first, but when she pick up the iPhone and didn't have to pay a cent in the store and only $25/month for the phone she was very happy with the choice.  I think most people will be ok with the change, most view it as the phone used to cost $200, but now it is no down payment and $15-$30 per month (of course that varies wildly from phone to phone)

I am on SERO and love 2 year contracts.   If they do away with them, then I think I might leave Sprint.   This sucks.

leave sprint for who? AT&T is the last nation wide carrier to have 2 year contracts... you think they wont  follow everyone else?

The only hitch in this new offering is this:

 

Do you have to pay the $36 activation fee for each phone? So, if my wife gets an Iphone 6 now ($36) and then an Iphone 6s or whatever ($36).. that is about 10 months of the difference between $22/mo and $15/mo. 

 

Just food for thought. I have a rather large corporate discount at Sprint so I will have to look if that includes waived activation fees as well.

I think activation fees need to die, especially if your leasing the phone... if your a member of a credit union or AAA you can have your activation fee waived by sprint (plus some other perks) most wireless carriers, or any company will happily waive a activation fee if you call them and ask real nice any ways..  

I think average sprint user will be ok with this, lease the phone pay us nothing up front, return the phone to us in a year or two and we will let you walk out with a new one, again paying nothing up front.  sometimes you just have to move forward, this is the direction all the wireless carriers seem to be heading, I would think people on legacy plans will be encouraged or offered an incentive to change to the new way, but not required.  

It is used year around with huge events on many weekends much like State Fair Park. Their own internal systems show the issue that bmoses is talking about with the main area of the fairgrounds being in between two sectors and with the huge dirt filter (hill) between the site and the main part of the fairgrounds it just would be impossible. Some lower management levels in certain divisions are full aware but like any huge company it's hard to get a&b talking to c, d, e and f.

 

Either way Sprint is doing a nice job around town with deployments over the past few years and are doing quite a bit of B41 so we can't loose sight of the good they have going and huge strides they've made. It's pretty amazing in some ways due to the rip and replace they had to face !

 

btw, I hope you had a few cream puffs and a brat from the leinie lodge I have had a guinea grinder and pork chop on a stick so far and will have a corn dog on one of my next visits out here before it's over.

Happy to hear they are aware of the issue, hope they can resolve it ... Soon... [emoji12]. As for the cream puffs yes and yes, giant cookies fried cookie dough, and even cheeses cake on a stick... Dipped in chocolate and covered in sprinkles how I don't weight 300 pounds I haven't a clue!!!! On a side note I contacted a mid level manager in customer advocate department, he had a "long talk with network management and engineering". At first glance the Wisconsin state fair appeared properly covered and that data was operating "as expected". But upon further inspection they agreed with me that data was unusable, I have an online appointment with a network engineer tomorrow to go over my data... So we will see

 

 

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the macro tower that has B41 that is near the fairgrounds actually does a horrible job covering the fairgrounds. from what i can tell its because of its height in relation to the fairgrounds along with the fairgrounds being on the edge of 2 sectors. so with that being said no i don't think the COW was overpowering B41 from that tower as i doubt i would have picked up B41 in any other places than i did. I would say overall the COW helped the surrounding macro network not get killed by the fair, but the fair was killing the COW.

 

last year the COW was doing nothing for the fair because they didn't configure it correctly so it had eCSFB issues and wouldn't let any tri-band phones connect to it. 

I see, its a shame the macro tower is not positioned better to cover the fair grounds, if your fair grounds are like the WI state fair grounds its used for large events all summer long (ours even has a large race track).  Perhaps next year they will place a Tri band COW.

    For years no cow or augmentation and basically unusable phones. Then they got cows in there the past three years but have never gotten it right for a few reasons.

 

They are paying contractors lots of money to include installing then removing the backhaul each year, seems like actual Sprint folks should hold some payments back for non compliance!       It's too bad as they are really deploying a great network around here and have been for sometime now and at a huge event like this where they could shine they sort of allow things to not be better seems so odd to me.

It frustrates me as well.... they have the assets (spectrum wise) they know when theses events occur, would love to see some super COW, with Band 25,26, and 4 or more Band 41 carriers with carrier aggregation... and a big sprint both with free mobile hot spot  access and a big sign "your carrier failing you??? try sprint LTE, make the switch today".  Wisconsin state fair is sponsored by US cellular they have a macro tower right in the heart of the fair (plus a COW, I think it was US cell it was half hidden behind a roller coaster) they also have a mobile store that is packed with people buying new phones and signing up for service.      

At the fair now! The COW is only broadcasting B25 and B26 and is only sort of working. I was hoping they would have a tri band COW. I had decent speeds from it this morning but as the day has progressed they have gone down. However the south and east sides are getting coverage from the B41 they just added to the Dean ave tower. Speeds from it are great, getting over 30 meg down

 

question, did the COW hurt the performance at the fair this year? could the new band 41 from the dean ave tower have covered the grounds if the COW would not have been present, perhaps over powering the band 41?  I ask because i was at the Wisconsin state fair this year (last Saturday) and north end of the fair had strong usable band 41, but the rest of the fair was covered by unusable very strong band 25/26.  My first though was sprint had a COW present that drowned out the usable band 41 with unusable band 25/26... I dont know if that was the case or if its even possible for a COW to do that, but that was my first thought.  

I was at the state fair last night. Data wasn't too fast but it was still usable. I was locked on B26 every time I checked.

I was at the Allstate fair yesterday (Saturday) found data on band 25, 26 was overloaded and unusable.. But I had band 41 in all of spin city and the far west edge of the fair, it was holding up well didn't do a speed test but it was auto loading videos on my Facebook news feed just fine. I hope that 2 carriers of band 41 blanket the entire state fair next year! ( : it's tough to watch sprint fall down at large events like that because of the limited capacity of band 25/26, people like my girlfriend gets frustrated I heard " I have full lte why won't anything work" so many times. lol

 

 

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Happy to report miller park now has usable data, seems they installed a new DAS. Between the DAS and the great wifi coverage data wasn't a problem. [emoji2]. Also parking lot had full band 41 coverage it was blazing fast for tail gating.

 

 

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I want to get one...next gen.

 

Even if Apple doesn't add a camera (don't want/need one), extended battery life would be key, and perhaps slightly cheaper? *fingers crossed*

for me battery life is not a problem, by the end of the night i have 50-55 percent left, it won't make it two days of normal usage for me tho... But I am happy with battery life.

 

 

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I think B41 is pretty much everywhere around Milwaukee. There are very few sites without it, but I guess the sheer number of people at the fair still overload it. I went on a Saturday, so it was super busy. So maybe on a lighter day it might work better.

I notice a lot of band 41 in Milwaukee but it seems most is not optimized, I find some sites that extend 1.5 even 2 miles while others .5 miles or less. ( same in my home town janesville wi)

 

 

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Sprint in MKE has been is and IMO will always be the worst of the major carriers. Regardless of bands. Trying it at any major event is hopeless.

why do you feel it's a lost cause? If band 41 covered the fair I see no reason they couldn't deploy 3-4 or more band 41 carriers... That could handle all but the most crowded of events.

 

 

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Yea, I did on Saturday I think. It was pretty bad. Data was extremely slow if it worked at all, which it usually didn't. I didn't try texting or calling though.

That's what I figured ) : it was the same last year, I have noticed a lot of band 41 deployment in the area and I was hopeful that would improve the fair experience, millwakee has been a work in progress for awhile now..

 

 

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They certainly shouldn't rebrand yet, because the network really isn't back up to par in so many places. They need to get up to at least T-Mobile's level in all the major metros before they do it - there are too many markets, like LA and San Jose and San Francisco where the network is not up to par. 

I agree, the network is much improved but it should be the number one network before they rebrand, otherwise its just a waste if people come looking for new sprint (what ever they call it) and discover old sprint.  Before anyone jumps on my case about how much better sprint is now, i know its much improved and getting better everyday... But i think they only get one try at a rebrad so it needs to count..... but honestly sprint as it is plus the best network in the country should do well without a rebrand, If they deliver a fast reliable cellular experience across all markets they operate in, and all large events the service will sell itself.  I added large events because sprint seems to struggle with those in my area, think fairs concerts, summer fest so on...   

Has anyone attended the Wisconsin state fair, I will be there this Friday and wanted to know what to expect as far as data service?

Because it is using data....it goes idle when I am using it and the the circle appears and sometimes it goes to the unable to load on the web pages. I could see if I wasn't using my phone but I am.

Odd you mention that, my iPhone 6 plus has been doing the same thing but only on my "home tower" (3G only). It will go from strong usable 3G to no service then 30 sec later 1x if 5-10 min then back to strong 3G... Hopping that's a sign my tower will have Lte soon but I don't think that's the case..... I can dream tho.

 

 

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