red_dog007

PCS still isn't really being used for LTE (outside the 2G-LTE conversion).  They turned it on in NYC but only for large events, and then moved it back to HSPA.  More than likely that is a 15x15 market on AWS LTE only.  If they refarm PCS, it'll be 10x10. 5MHz for GSM and 5MHz for HSPA.  It does seem like TMo might squeeze GSM into guard bands before shutting down HSPA on PCS so that is good.

If LTE speeds are poor, try forcing HSPA.  Might get some decent speeds.  But I am hoping that 2016 is the year of PCS GSM/HSPA to PCS LTE refarm.  It is becoming quickly apparent in many cities that it is needed now rather than later. 

With all their customer adds, data usage is just exploding on their network.  I'm sure BingeOn only decreased total throughput for just a few weeks before the increased usage from customer adds surpassed the pre-BingeOn traffic levels.  lol

As far as channel sharing, it is more just losing subchannels. IQ is still pretty good. Two big broadcasters, Fox and someone else are channel sharing. Fox went a head and moved off their channel and was a 1080p broad, now they are 720p. But IQ is still nice. The other major broadcaster was already 720p. Still enough bandwidth for a third subchannel 480p stream. Only thing is 3 or 4 subchannels are off the air now so that is lost profit for these guys.



As far as a technical question in regards to the auction, what if a broadcaster is on say channel 48 and 40 but are not wanting to sell. But spectrum was clear for say 84MHz. Does this auction pay the broadcaster to move off channel 48 and 40 and give them money for their trouble? If markets that have at least 42MHz of white space in UHF, will the FCC make those on Channels 45 through 51 shift to an open channel so that Channel A+B can be auctioned off?

Or is this auction not going to force anyone to move if they are not selling, and we hope that broadcasters sell from 51 downwards in sequential order. So a single holdout say between 45 and 51 could prevent the auction from happen all together?


So in regards to jefbal99's PBS station, PBS is on channel 40. If 51 through 41 sell out, then that is it, no more than 60MHz. The buck stops with PBS even if channels 38-39 want to sell? But if 84MHz opens up total, is someone going to pay PBS to move off channel 40 to the free channel below channel 37?

Map updated 3/01.  Can't tell if anything has changed.  The yellow makes it especially hard. :-(

Reddit has a post of a +200Mbps speedtest on Staten Island. :-O

720p is like a minimum standard these days. It just looks soooo much better. Now, what would be great is if BingOn gets providers to change their streaming format (not forced but by the desire of the service to offer the best possible IQ). Some of the newer formats could do 720p at < 1.5Mbps I'm sure.

I should test it. I have some H.265 on my Plex. Should see what that streams at.

All those services part of BingeOn go to 720/1080p in 3... 2... 1... 

lol

I've heard 2017 sometime.

The gradients are whack. Dark yellow for fair LTE then light yellow for good LTE... then back to dark yellow for fair LTE plus and light yellow for good LTE plus. So it's impossible to differentiate between LTE and LTE plus. Which might be good for Sprint on the surface but is really confusing. If it were a smooth gradient from really light yellow to yellow to dark yellow to really dark yellow it could work, but at the moment it's kinda weird.

 

That aside, it looks a little less pixelated which is kinda nice I guess.

Those gradients won't work.  On this monitor I can't see "really light yellow", it almost appears white and I can barely see "yellow" let a lot be able to read it.  The darks are easy to see and read but then those look more like brown, lol. 

Most people will have poo monitors and get similar results to me.  Surrounded by gray and white those light yellows won't really stand out very well. 

In regards to Chicago, at least 20 of the 30MHz Dish won will go up for auction again.  Hopefully TMo can at least do some long term planning in acquiring healthy portions of AWS3 and 600MHz.  At least 40Mhz. 

If they can get Leap's 700A this year and refarm 20MHz of PCS, get that LTE capacity doubled stat!  

At the least I'd think that a market like Chicago would be top priority for PCS for LTE refarm.

All cellular data including hangout calls country against you. No bing on or speed test exception applies on Project Fi.

That stinks.  Might have to pop in my TMo sim then.  

Now, you mention hangout calls...  Are you saying that as an FYI or does TMo not count Hangout call data against you?

<p>@Arysyn  When you did those tests, was TMobile still using the 24kbps on the AMR-WB codec?  IIRC TMobile downgraded on the down low the codec to ~12Kbps I think. </p>

<p> </p>

<p>My personal preference, I use a combo of stuff regularly.  It is pretty rare that I run into garbage where it sounds like Im trying to talk to someone using a 20ft 2in PVC pipe and really have to jam that phone speaker into my ear to hear well.  Mostly happens when I talk to someone on Verizon.  Here I just assume it is poor Sprint/Verizon call transfer.  But in terms of quality, I don't really have a preference cause they all good.  Each codec and technology is going to have its own unique sound, so as long as I can hear you.  I just want a reliable connection, which I seem to get less with VoIP.  Older technology can be a lot more forgiving in that department and can handle better much poorer signals. </p>

So when on the TMobile network, does the speedtest app count against my data allowance on ProjectFi?

So for I have rockin' Sprint's network 99% of the time.  Forced it to TMo so I can do some RF comparisons on N5 vs N5x. 

WTF are they thinking. Why would they ever push this to production!? They must have a fresh intern working on this or something???

Yes, lets change the color to different shades of yellow! Make it impossible to tell what is what. On these poo poo TN Lenovo monitors I have to use at work, it literally looks like a single shade of yellow. I have to go off angle viewing to see the difference in shade of yellow.

Maybe whoever edited this has an awesome monitor for color/contrast accuracy so during the changes it might have looked great on their monitor, but forgot to think about the poopoo average monitors most people use.

I got my phone, currently on the February update, downloading N right now. Not having any of these issues... Yet at least. Very fast. Much faster and smoother than my N5. Nice RF performance boost.

As far as the NAND speed, looking at reviews it does fairly well considering it is all encrypted. Still an upgrade from the N5 and even N6. However, the method used is less than ideal with the SoC provides a much faster implementation I hope Google implements on this device. Then it wouldn't be as much an issue.

The only thing that I think I might have run into is CA on Band 41. 2x CA is live in my market, but I don't see to have connected to CA yet. :-( Anyone know what is going on there?

It is not about number, it is device. Once device used on wholesale, it will have some trouble activating on Sprint

Yeah I know. I commented on that, as well as adding in the number porting issues from wholesalers cause that is supposed to be hell too. Either im lucky, our the people at my store actually know what they are doing.

When you head back to Sprint, get ready to teach the tech support over the phone on how to properly create a device ticket to move your phone back from wholesale.

I've never had an issue with my N5.  Done it a few times.  Never even got the horror stories of not being able to transfer a number directly from a Sprint wholesaler to Sprint.  I got the "wtf you talking about, oh btw your number is ported" look.  I was on RW and you had to port out to like TMo or something first.  Not I! :-D

Doing that CA with PCS is going to be a long time down the road.  I think PCS would need some new hardware to be able to do that. Don't think the current LTE Release on PCS can support that CA configuration.  

It would be good to do SMR/PCS CA as well for when B41 isn't around, like in buildings.  At least in markets that are stuck with 5x5 PCS like mine.

As far as upload goes, I think by the time Sprint could get around to CA PCS+BRS/EBS, the number of 3x2/2x2 CA devices will help offset upload load on B41 from all the 1xCA only devices on the ul. Sprint can do 3x3 at the tower and with proper load balancing, the PCS+BRS/EBS CA might be really only left for towers that are remaining to continue to have ul issues and provided that PCS doesn't have ul congestion itself.  So do more targeted deployments which might be rare.  And even then, maybe Sprint would just toss up another set of B41 antennas to deploy even more spectrum and just load balance off it, change up dl/ul ration.

IIRC I think Sprint is/was also wanting to make B41 dl/up ratio dynamically change based on load.  So if more upload was needed, it could change the dl/ul ratio on the fly to help improve experience. 

I just signed up for Project Fi. I will use mostly to gauge how good the T-Mobile and Sprint networks are in my area and the places I visit. In the beginning I will just set it to either the T-Mobile or Sprint network and compare. I also have a spare AT&T sim and use that to compare as well. It should be interesting.

That is a good way to kill two birds with one stone if you need a device, but if you didn't already know you can get a TMo sim (free right now on their website) and connect to the network.  Lets you use the speedtest app without service.  

But I jumped on that $200 deal.  More like $250 after tax and the cheapest $30 plan if all you want is the phone.  I hope that I get money back for not using the service when I cancel after a month to drop in my Sprint N5 sim.  But it will be interesting to see TMo vs Sprint preferences here.  My commute, both are super strong all the way through.  Work and home will be Sprint, but the commute will be most interesting.  Then I got a buddy in ATL that is interested in Fi but is unsure of service.  Can let him take it for a spin. 

My guess is Nutella with the hint they dropped.

I know of 1.4 MHz LTE carriers. I'm saying that the 1x carrier is more efficient for that spectrum slice than an LTE carrier.

 

-Anthony

Not for LTE-M if that was to be a goal for Sprint.  1.4MHz and 200kHz channel size is in Release 13.  And yeah, LTE is way more efficient than 2G/3G.  Only thing 1x800 does better in is coverage, and Sprint survived for a long time without talk on 800MHz. 

It really just depends where Sprint is five years from now.  With how not sprint like Sprint is, will there still even be EVDO channels five years from now?  We won't get VoLTE for another year, maybe more.  So who knows.  But if it ever came down to a single 1x carrier for backup talk on old devices, more opinion based if it will be on SMR or PCS.  But if Sprint were to take IoT and M2M seriously on LTE, then that 1x will be on PCS. 

When it comes time for that, the 1x sliver will most likely be in SMR because with one 5x5 carrier deployed, the remaining spectrum will really only be useful for 1x versus more LTE.

 

-Anthony

Spectrum would be more useful for LTE-M for the IoT and M2M.

Release 13 recently came out and allows for a just so convenient 1.4MHz block as well as 200kHz.  It looks like it is designed to use spectrum that is < 1GHz. 

Sprint might need to do a CDMA decommission in step with VZW.  CDMA is already a rare network technology around the globe, and one that is on its way out. Once VZW drops CDMA support in their devices, it is only going to become more difficult and more expensive for Sprint to secure phones that have CDMA support. 

Four to six years is a long time to get LTE up to snuff vs PCS 1x/EVDO.  Currently that 1x800 is more like bonus coverage for Sprint.  They don't even really show that coverage on their coverage maps.  Just helps push out that edge of cell roaming further down the road which with the increase in 3G/LTE roaming coverage that extra 1x800 coverage is going to be more painful than it is helpful to the end user. Going into some coverage areas with personal experience it is very annoying that I hold onto a completely unusable Sprint 1x800 single in a fully roaming area miles away from native coverage (on the Sprint map) when I could be getting USCC/VZW 3G or USCC LTE on their own 1x. 

Plus by then IoT and M2M will be a lot more mature and a lot cheaper on the LTE front.  Going CDMA or GSM won't make any sense. 

I'm not against leaving a 1x sliver somewhere in PCS/SMR, preferably just PCS, but I am all for the fastest decommission possible of 3G. :-)

Are they sure it isn't Android Pay?  Might have been pushed to the phone by Google/HTC.

Yeah, I was in WA, lacked 800MLTE.  Where there was LTE, speeds were great.  Two carriers on B25 and two carriers on B41 most places as well.  The 800LTE would be good though for stronger signal between towers.  I didn't see much 1x800 other than close to the OR boarder.  As soon as I crossed into OR and picked up an OR tower, B26 was there waiting. :-D

Let's be honest dish/Tmo/sprint will all come to a head with the next president. Vzw better move fast before sprint doesn't need to. However, Dt basically said Tmo isn't for sale anymore.....for this year at least. Seems to me Marcelo and Son have worked something with Dt... Tentatively for now.

I'd imagine that it is Comcast.  Comcast was going to buy TWC for BIG bucks.  Now Charter is wanting to get TWC and Bright House, and here Comcast is sitting quiet. 

Comcast showed a little interest in TMobile, so I bet it is them.  Or at least a group of cable companies.  IIRC sometime this year Comcast, Charter, Cox and a couple others get to access VZW AWS for free.