Trip

I think you've sort of missed the forest for the trees. First, I was making a point about many of your posts being pie-in-the-sky. Not that I actually think or expect there will ever be perfect coverage. As you may know (I certainly repeat it often enough) I grew up in and my parents continue to live in an area where only US Cellular has service and there are large areas of poor or no service even with them around. I'm definitely someone who knows these things. But that wasn't my point. My point was that while the things you say aren't necessarily physically impossible, they're impossible given the realities of the world or country that we live in. Perhaps my exaggeration hid the point too much. Do you know why the FCC auctions spectrum today? The FCC auctions spectrum because until the late 1980's, spectrum was allocated in basically the way you say you want it to be. Everyone came to the table, made their case for why they would be best to get the spectrum in question, and then the FCC would pick a winner or winners. The term that is commonly used today, a bit derisively, is that they were "beauty contests." And the reason for that is that they didn't work well, and that's basically what they were. It was basically a contest of who could promise the most. And then once someone's spent millions of dollars to deploy something but otherwise broken those promises, what can you do, as the FCC? If you revoke their license, then their new customers are left in the dark while a process taking probably years allows someone else to win a follow-up beauty contest and build their own system years later, presumably while also breaking their promises. Auctions force companies to put their money where their mouths are. I agree with you that it's not a great solution, because that money that could be spent on deployment is instead spent on spectrum, but it's aimed at preventing people from abusing it. If I give you something for free, will you value it as much as something you spent your hard-earned money on? Some of your other ideas are similarly flawed. It's not so much that they can't happen because the laws of physics prevent it, so much as the realities of the situation won't allow it. And it's tiring to read through your sometimes very long posts about things that are already discredited or which are so off the wall that they can't happen given the way things are in the world. I don't believe anyone here thinks you are here maliciously. Even AJ. But it does get tiring, and I'm sure you've observed people run out of patience with you. Like I said, do some reading. Ask questions around here even; plenty of people here are glad to either link you to resources or answer directly. S4GRU is here in part to educate people who want to learn, and there's a forum full of people who will help you every step of the way. It's one thing to have opinions, but quite another to have, if you'll pardon the use of the word, fantasies. A bit of research and careful consideration, as I suggested above, would likely lead you to more of the former and fewer of the latter. And you'll have a much better experience here as a result. Opinions are welcome. Fantasies... less so. - Trip

Band 5 is a subset of Band 26. - Trip

Notwithstanding the equipment, they could only expand the existing B26 to 10x10 if US Cellular owned the A-block in the area. Otherwise, it would have to be done as separate carriers. (Long-term, they could get up to 15x15, even, in those areas.) - Trip

Bear in mind the auction happens in stages. If the wireless companies don't bid enough to pay the price the broadcasters demand, the number of blocks decreases and bidding continues. So if the broadcasters want, say, $60 billion but only $30 billion is bid, the amount of spectrum will drop to 114 MHz and bidding will continue. That can happen multiple times until supply and demand meet. - Trip

It's here. The PN announcing a 126 MHz clearing target, good for 10 blocks in most markets: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-16-453A1.pdf And here's the list of markets and number of blocks for sale in each: https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DA-16-453A2.pdf - Trip

I wasn't inclined to read your wall of text, but this caught my eye. I am someone who quite regularly disagrees with AJ and even finds his posting style to be somewhat terse at times, but I definitely did not find that phrase to sound like bullying. Many of your posts do stray off into, paraphrasing, "this will never ever happen, but..." followed by several paragraphs of things we've read before that have been shot down as entirely infeasible. Yes, we all want to live in a perfect world. I would love a world where I got free wireless service at unlimited speed, with no caps, and with perfect coverage in every unpopulated cow pasture in rural Wyoming, all while getting a new device whenever I want. However, we do not live in that world. (Call it a "wireless fantasy land", if you will.) While it's fine to think about these things and maybe even to comment on them in passing now and then, they aren't very constructive or conducive to discussion of the world as it is, which is something S4GRU prides itself on. While I'm not someone who will call many ideas "bad" out of hand without study, the bigger problem is that your ideas aren't practical. If they will never come to be, why not expend your energies on ideas that could actually happen? You say you're not an expert, so why not spend time reading up on those things so that you can have a discussion among equals? You talk about lowering costs, but you never talk about what kind of cost-benefit analysis or anything else that went into those discussions other than what you would prefer, which is not how businesses make decisions. Why not read up on the financials of the companies you follow? Or perhaps you're interested in the technical side; why not read up on the technologies and learn how to use the FCC or other websites to look at spectrum holdings? I'm an engineer, and engineers look at things like this as problems to solve within the constraints given by the world as it is. But that's what most people do in business or even in the world at large, not just engineers. And it's what people on S4GRU try to do. I think that's why you run into so much headwind on some of the things you say, because they're not based on the world as it is. - Trip

Ah, understood. Will it not attempt to update itself at some point? In any case, I'll show her how to do a profile update and try to have her do it half-way down. nTelos vanishes after Carysbrook and then it's US Cellular roaming until Sprint picks up again in Farmville and falls off again south of town. If she does the profile update in Farmville, that should give the opportunity for US Cellular without the update north of Farmville and with the update south of Farmville. - Trip

My sister has a Nexus 5X on my account and she did not have LTE roaming last time she visited my parents' house in USCC land. She will be back there after graduation in two or three weeks; I'll bug her about it then. Oh, and I have her running SCP in the background for me, so if she sees it and doesn't know it, I'll have it logged. - Trip

But what's the uptake? Have they announced how many customers actually use that option? - Trip

... are you living in the same universe that I am? As I recall, China's economy is currently slowing down rapidly to the point it threatens the economy of the entire planet. All while having the central planning of a dictatorship with the government owning large pieces of most major companies in the country. I'm not sure pointing to China as an example is going to sell anyone on your opinions. In any case, you didn't actually answer the question. What makes you think that people are going to upgrade phones every six months just because more phones are available for sale? I find upgrading phones to be a huge hassle, and I'm very technically literate; why would the common person want that hassle more often, exactly? - Trip

Do you have any market research at all to back up this wild assertion, or is it mere rampant speculation? What gives you the slightest inkling that people are willing to do this? I know I wouldn't as it would be a fantastic waste of money and energy, and I'm someone who likes being up to date on technology; I can only imagine how someone who just wants a phone (i.e. most people) would react. - Trip

I drove down to South Boston yesterday and found no LTE on any of the towers there. - Trip

Well, I bit the bullet and did the update today, since I've heard nothing about it. We shall see what happens. I admit I'm really surprised that the UI still looks basically the same. - Trip

Did you have logging enabled? Your older image is what I see when I see sites that are not in my log appear as neighbor cells, or when logging is not enabled. - Trip

It's been there for a while. It uses the "strongest" latitude and longitude in your log to tell you the distance and direction. - Trip

You might be surprised. Try to put up a cell phone tower in your yard and see how many people come to town meetings shrieking about cancer risks and other such stupidity--often while talking on the phone pressed against their head. The inverse square law is really lost on those people. - Trip

I work in the same branch of the FCC as the people who take complaints about health risks from RF devices. (Though I don't do any of that myself, but I do hear about it in the weekly status meeting.) And yes, they absolutely would complain about things like that. We get complaints about cell towers. We get complaints about cell phones. We get complaints about smart power meters. We even still get complaints about wifi and the like. If it does anything with RF, we get complaints about it, despite ample evidence it does no harm and despite pretty rigid safety standards. The more paranoid among them live in Green Bank, WV to avoid the "dangers" of RF. - Trip

That's my problem, though, I'm not in a US Cellular area right now. - Trip

Quick update; since I'm planning to visit US Cellular territory twice in a month (this coming weekend, then Mother's Day), I decided I would bite the bullet and put a month of prepaid service on my old S4 Mini. As I was going through the screens, I found that US Cellular actually does have a pay-go plan which is otherwise not listed on the website. $10/month plus fees for calls, texts, and data ($0.03/MB, which comes out to about $30/GB). As long as I don't actually use it, that seems very reasonable if I can put $10 on it only when I need it. Bigger problem is that now that the online process is done, I can't actually activate it until I'm in US Cellular territory. This phone activates by dialing *228 and that goes to Verizon activation at the moment. The PRL hasn't updated since I left US Cellular nearly two years ago, so it still talks to Verizon and not Sprint. - Trip

You mean in the icon in the notifications bar? I'm not sure I'm following. I don't like the #X notification because I don't think it will look as nice. But that's me. - Trip

I actually like cdk's suggestion of using a subscript for second carrier, if feasible. That gets rid of the "squared" implication while still looking elegant, I think. - Trip

I'm due for an upgrade this summer. I have been considering the LG G5 but seeing what I've seen of this device online this morning... I have to admit it's very tempting. I wonder if it has FM radio. Haven't seen that listed anywhere, but it usually isn't something advertised up front. (The G5 has it, I think.) - Trip

That site is the weak spot on my drive between my parents' house and here on US-15. The nTelos 3G service is better, believe it or not. The only places where it's worse are where I'm roaming or clinging to service before roaming. I don't know why it hasn't been upgraded but it's the one I keep hoping for most. - Trip

Whoops, yes, I did. My fault! I somehow missed the word "Sprint" in that post. - Trip

What? T-Mobile has moved a number of stations off channel 51. There are plenty of other channels to move WPXX to, and T-Mobile is more than willing to spend the money to get it done. - Trip