Trip

I can't believe towers are that much of an eyesore. I like the look of cold steel and power. I think there is beauty in some of them. Idk why but I love the ones that are in the middle of fields and brand new. Just something majestic. [emoji851]

 

 

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I actually saw one that I honestly thought was an eyesore a week or two ago.  I finally found the Verizon site that has been taunting me (01A22Dxx) and it was on a monopole next to a fire station.  And I guess after building it, they decided it wasn't tall enough, because all the antennas were mounted on individual poles attached to the rack to get them up another 20 or so feet.

I wish it was on Street View.  I'm someone who generally likes cell towers as well, but this one was not one I liked.

- Trip

Band 66 isn't specific to Dish; Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile, and US Cellular all bid on Band 66.

Band 70 is Dish-specific, I think.

- Trip

I've never seen burn-in on AMOLED displays, I know it can happen but I have yet to see it. My Note 5's screen in fine no issues.

Toward the end of its life, my S5 got burned in with the SignalCheck Pro screen elements.  I'm not sure if that says more about me or about my S5's screen...

- Trip

If you're concerned about radiation, and the FCC has strict limits to prevent unsafe levels anyway, then you want the tower there.  Read up on the inverse square law.  A phone pressed against your head is much worse for you than an antenna a hundred feet up and hundreds of feet away, especially given the vertical antenna patterns of such antennas.  And when the tower is closer, the phone transmits with less power.  Following that logic, the closer the tower is, the safer you are.

As far as appearance is concerned, that's solely a matter of opinion.  If the tower randomly appeared somewhere one day without public comment, how many would even notice?

- Trip

If I want to see what LTE bands are being used in my area, is there a sim I can pop in my N5X and it work?  Similar to TMobile's prepaid sim cards.  Those give me free Speedtest's but that isn't necessary.  Just want to see if I can spot B30. 

I throw $10 on an H2O Wireless SIM and I'm set for three months.  I just restrict background data.

- Trip

300MB is plenty for me when I leave the coverage area.  I just wish that EVDO on VZW worked more often then not.  

I wish my roaming cap was 300 MB; it would be enough.  My 100 MB makes me nervous on months I venture into US Cellular land...

- Trip

Don't know for sure, but I suspect AT&T, if only because it doesn't look like Sprint equipment (which ShenTelos would be using) and Verizon usually has more panels per sector.

- Trip

Yeah, c'mon! It's not like nTelos and Shentel are running for the Presidency!

 

 

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If they were, I know who I'd vote for though!

- Trip

Once I get past 128 kbps in MP3 quality, I stop noticing the difference in audio fidelity. And this is coming from a guy who gets easily bothered by XM Radio's 'underwater' audio quality.

 

320 kbps is overkill with todays compression technology. Anyone that notices the difference is being picky. Most iHeartRadio live streams are 48 kbps AAC and they sound way better than what is coming out of the FM dial.

I can tell the difference between 128 and 192 kbps MP3 pretty easily, especially when it comes to cymbal crashes.  Beyond 192 kbps, though, it gets very hard to tell.  Even still, all my music is stored locally and encoded in Q8 OGG Vorbis (~300 kbps) just to be safe (and since disk space is no issue), and I cannot tell the difference from a FLAC source, and I grew up in a house with an audiophile.  I can't imagine why anyone would want to stream something higher than that over a wireless network except to be vindictive toward other users.

- Trip

I'm pretty confident the middle rack with the two antennas far apart is T-Mobile.

- Trip

Trip,

 

Deval at one point mentioned about salespeople not mentioning speed limits to customers in store, which could essentially be the same for online/phone ordering I assume. Based on that, if people sign up not knowing about these limits, and they have difficulty streaming HiFi audio that works over 1mbps, or they are gamers noticing the speed limits, they very likely will complain about it, as they likely aren't use to that wherever carrier they came from.

 

It is very important customers are told upfront about these limits in all forms of shopping. If they choose a plan knowingly, then they have the option to switch or leave. Yet, it likely will first result in them being unhappy and complaining about it in some way, especially if they didn't know about this.

I can't speak to in-store or phone, but I'm looking at Sprint.com and right on the home page, it says:

"Enjoy unlimited mobile-optimized streaming videos, gaming and music. And, unlimited 4G LTE data for most everything else."

Immediately below the "Learn more" button in rather large fine print:

"Mobile optimized: video streams at up to 480p+ resolution, music at up to 500kbps, streaming cloud gaming at up to 2mbps. Premium resolution: video streams at up to 1080p+, music at up to 1.5mbps, gaming streams at up to 8mbps. Data deprioritization applies during times of congestion. All while on the Sprint Network."

I'm not sure how much clearer Sprint can make it.

- Trip

If they notice their speed being throttled, and they most certainly will

No, they won't.  Why do you think they will?

The video is capped at 480p.  That is made abundantly clear up front.  I don't think most people will care; I don't even watch video on my phone.

Audio is capped at 500 kbps.  Again, made clear, but even if not, 500 kbps is plenty for audio streaming.  In truth, I'm surprised it's that high.  I would have capped at 320 kbps, being generous, and probably gone lower than that.  I don't think anyone riding in a car down the highway, or on a train, or otherwise out and about, will notice the difference between a high bitrate compressed audio stream and a lossless audio stream, no matter how great a pair of headphones they have.  And if you're using it at home?  Well, that's what home Internet is for.  You can stream there to your heart's content without bogging down the wireless network.

And the gaming bitrate?  That could be a concern, but again, up front, but I ask again, how many people actually play such games on their devices while on the go?  If you're gaming at home, again, home Internet.

The same people who complain about everything will find reasons to complain.  The other 99% of people will not notice or will not care.

- Trip

Maybe it's time to find out who the regional manager/president is for your area and start escalating some of your concerns. And report the coverage holes. I would like to think they're already on the radar for fixing, but you never know.

That's... a really good idea.  I will do that.  It certainly can't hurt.

To your later comment about reporting issues, I've reported issues I've come across from time to time.  Unless it's something like "data doesn't work on this site" (I've done that report on my home tower at least twice) there's really no way to know if anyone's seen it or is doing anything.  Given the lack of permits, I doubt the latter, even if the former is true.

- Trip

I'm surprised hearing this coming from you, have you not visited any of the other premiere threads? There is a ton of stuff being posted.

Other areas don't help me, and don't allow me to recommend people I know to Sprint.  "Service is a problem in this area, but should you ever go to Kansas City, Sprint is great there!" 

I keep hearing that Sprint is focusing on cities; have they decided DC, PEA number 5 in the current FCC auction, isn't a market worth investing in?  Even if work hasn't started yet, shouldn't there be permits in the works so they can hit the ground running?

EDIT:  I'm stuck on Sprint, can't go anywhere, so no matter how unhappy I get with it, I'm not leaving.  It would be nice to be able to recommend it to others, of course, but more importantly to have a service that I'm not anxious to leave the moment someone covers the area I really need once a month or so.

- Trip

I do hope this is a change in policy.  It was very frustrating last time I visited the area  where my parents live and every time a whiff of 1X 800 popped up, it would drop the US Cellular LTE and I'd have no data for a few minutes until it realized the 1X 800 at -105 was too weak to be useful...

- Trip

I'm not trying to be a downer, I'm calling it like I see it.  I live in Fairfax County, the most populated county in Virginia, and the most populated county in the DC metro area.  I live so close to I-95 I can hear it from my back yard and the exit ramp practically ends in front of my house, and yet I can drive less than 2 minutes and get to a site without NV upgrades or LTE, a site where T-Mobile has LTE on both AWS and 700.  (Somehow they managed to deal with it being on a power line, as did Verizon and AT&T on adjacent power line towers, so why can't Sprint?)  I can drive past that site and less than 3 minutes later I'll be in an area where I'm roaming on Verizon 1X/EV-DO, an area where Sprint allowed a permit to expire that would have filled the hole--a hole found outdoors on a highway that an exit off I-95 leads you to.  Not exactly a back road.

In the past year, Sprint has zero antenna permit applications on file with the county, and two granted and active antenna permits, one of which is for a microwave antenna.  For good measure, I also searched for "APC Realty" and "Mobilitie" since I have seen Sprint applications under the first name and could imagine some under the second.  None found.  In the entire county.

By contrast, AT&T has two or three pages of permit search results in the last year, T-Mobile has three or four pages of permit search results in the last year, and Verizon has at least six pages.

I'm glad to hear they're talking less and doing more, I'm just not entirely sure where else I should be looking for evidence of all this work that's supposedly being done.  It's clearly not being done here.  I have seen zero evidence of any small cells, additional Clearwire/IDEN conversions, new sites, or new B41 equipment being installed.  As far as I can tell, all work here has stopped.  If I'm looking in the wrong places, please tell me.  I want to believe Sprint is continuing to improve, but I can't find any evidence to support it.

- Trip

We already know these devices can't connect to 1x and LTE at the same time. That's just a glitch. My question is, were these native service areas or roaming only? That would go a long way to figuring this out.

SRLTE?

- Trip

Oh yeah, saw this while at a gas station in West Virginia.  Thought others here might find it as amusing as I did.

http://imgur.com/a/aQ7HZ

- Trip

I didn't realize people were so mistrustful. Everything I have is automatic, online. But I also have automatic alerts if something unexpected shows up. (different part of the country, large amount, overseas, etc.) None of that has ever happened.

I used to have AutoPay with US Cellular, because it came with a discount, and it was nice because you could set a ceiling.  They would never take more than that amount, so it was easy enough to just set the amount below your bill and thus AutoPay was "set up" for the discount, but I'd have to go in and pay by hand.

Of course, I didn't actually do this; I had AutoPay set up right at my normal bill level.  When they DID screw up my bill, it simply failed to go through rather than resulting in me having to try to claw back money they'd erroneously billed me.  I was able to call and sort it out first.

I can't tell if AJ is being facetious or not.  These things DO happen, and it's much easier to get a satisfactory resolution when you are in possession of your money rather than trying to claw it back.  I don't use AutoPay for anything right now, though I do pay my bills online at least.

- Trip

Sounds just like Metro too; run it for 45 days, then turn it off while evaluating feedback.  All of which will either be positive, complaining it works poorly (it IS Metro), or requests for it to be in more stations.

- Trip

That article is from 2012.

- Trip

Although it probably doesn't matter...but I do notice that I am getting Strong LTE all along the Silver Line...both Tysons and Reston.

Aren't the new Silver Line stations above ground?  Which would imply nothing special needs to be done for LTE service there since they would just depend on the local macro sites?

- Trip

I hate how every time I go out now, it's Verizon that has new sites up. (They're co-locating on the AT&T tower at US-50 and I-495 near Merrifield; the antennas looked like Verizon antennas and there was a construction crew on the ground outside the compound.) Meanwhile, nothing from Sprint lately, not even permits.

- Trip

I assume AJ will be offering employment (and relocation incentives) shortly in order to rectify the problem? 

- Trip

Shentel has had Central Va since the sale of.nTelos went threw back in May.

Not all of it.  Louisa County, for example, is one of four or five counties that Sprint has in the "Southern Virginia" market.  It would be nice to see those counties rolled into the Shentel region.

- Trip