gusherb
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Everything posted by gusherb
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AT&T never stopped grandfathering unlimited users who upgraded. -
Telesales was always Filipino, and were usually well trained and understandable. Probably because I had an employee account, tech support was always stateside, and CS was always someone with a southern twang. That didn't seem to help with solving problems a whole lot as it always seems to be their systems that are the problem.
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Yeah, that was at home on a pretty much unloaded sector of the tower. But in an area that was previously 1 Mbps I would venture a guess and say that should be up toward 4-6 Mbps now. I have no idea what's gonna happen in downtown Chi, probably nothing. It'll more likely help in all the outlying areas where congestion wasn't that bad to begin with. Either way it's sortof a YMMV thing, I personally could've stayed with them easily because I never ran into any crippling congestion.
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Yeah that "cluster" would be Northern Lake County, IN. Would make sense cuz its a relatively easy area I think to deal with and there isn't really any congestion to speak of and a probably not ridiculously high subscriber rate here either.
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So it looks like the 15x15 upgrade for the Chicago market has taken place at least in Northwest Indiana. No reports over the border in IL yet but somebody on HoFo not too far from me mentioned it and then I confirmed it for myself. My speeds at home have gone from 20-30 to 30-40. I left T-Mobile May 30th so it could've happened anytime between then and a day or two ago. [/url]
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Your experience sounds about right for the average 5x5 PCS LTE behavior. I don't see anything odd at all about that. As to why your speeds drop so much, only explanation I could come up with is traffic and interference (which obviously wasn't that bad going by an SNR of 10 so it must've been more because of traffic/users) And yeah, Verizon is twice the bandwidth so in the perfect scenario where all parameters are equal, minus the doubled bandwidth, your speeds should be double that of Sprint B25 on VZW B13.
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Excellent post! You couldn't have worded my thoughts and feelings about Sprint better then that. This is what I've been trying to say for weeks but couldn't get it out as eloquently and concisely as you have in this post. OTOH it's kinda sad that it seems like a good number of us regulars from Chi have actually had to dump Sprint. 3 years ago when I signed on I thought I'd only be waiting just over a year for the network to reach a "happy point" not 3 years and counting just to maintain a decent LTE signal. This has been bubbling under the surface for months already, It just has finally reached the breaking point where the optimism and patients has run out, and realism has set in. Especially when every other carrier isn't having any problems. You're gonna think I'm a T-Mo fanboy for saying this, but from my experience T-Mobiles "last place" congested network has been at least consistent and predictable here. Something I can't say for Sprint. I think we should all crack open a bottle of Champagne when they're officially out the door (assuming it was really them at the root of all these issues all this time) Yes I did, I was with T-Mobile for a little bit and now Verizon. My experience with VZW has been a very good one so far...
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That's unfortunate because I like talking technical about other networks here, if I do at any other site it goes largely ignored cuz it goes over everyone's heads. I also consider this site a place to talk about everyone objectively without trolls coming in and bashing everything up (which still happens anyways but a lot less) If I made all my non Sprint related statements into a comparison with Sprint it would sound like I was bashing Sprint. It's already been made clear that aside from the B41 rollout the network has pretty much stagnated in a less then desirable spot for the last year, especially compared to competition.
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Have you tried Verizon yet? I have been the last few days and am slowly being proven wrong about my opinions on their network density. Finding many more cell sites then I thought they had (many of them are new) and Band 4 coverage is just about blanketing NWI which really took me by surprise. Actually they seem good enough to really give AT&T a run for it's money and have me reconsider who I wanna stay with. I haven't found a weak spot yet (except the basement of where I work in Bridgeport, and of course, Chinatown)
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Yeah, the good news is they still did better then last time. Just seems that competition remains stiff for them, even in their "flagship market" as some like to claim we are. It's nice that we have four very good carriers to choose from instead of just one or two. In all my testing of different networks lately they all seem to be very close together and have minor tradeoffs from one another but nothing too drastic. Nobody else but Sprint has those problems around here either, and I'm trying all the carriers out like cheap hookers lately so I know firsthand. What I really can't get over is the fact that nothing has changed in this regard in over a year since the start of B26 deployment. This is what irritates me most.
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Looks like my choice of carrier wasn't a bad one afterall (even though I'm not even on them anymore atm). Yes I definitely agree the bump to 10x10 AWS helped, as does CA, and most importantly the fact that everything WORKS PROPERLY with AT&T's network (minus the Chinatown black hole that only T-Mobile can seem to cover properly) They also probably didn't test in NWI where AT&T is spectrum starved and not very fast. Edit: looks like that testing does include alot of NWI so that rating is INCLUDING AT&T's slow performance here. I can also see how Verizon remains #1 here. (as I subscribe to them this week, quite pleasantly surprised I might add...) Sprint still has lots of work to do...
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They need 700 here badly too, mainly for the deep in-building coverage of Chicago's heavy masonry structures. They seem to do ok with indoor coverage on AWS in the suburbs though. Knowing them, they won't say anything til they have it. That way it'll seem like "poof", like Legere just raised his magic wand and made it so. lmao. (not a bad idea for Sprint to do from now on IMO)
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I'm referring to T-Mobile. Sprints network density is somewhere between AT&T and T-Mobile, but closer to AT&T's IMO.
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That actually sounds like the earpiece speakers your describing and not so much the network. My iPhone 6 on Sprint had a nice punchy lower-mid range as does it on T-Mobile. But on lesser codecs like what VZW uses and AT&T's AMR 5.9 that's missing. CDMA codecs are usually noted for their bright, sometimes described as tinny sound and AMR-NB and AMR-WB have a warmer often said to be more natural sound to them.
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Being that you're using two different devices on the two different networks does make it harder to have an objective opinion about the networks call quality so keep that in mind. I've used all four carriers with my iPhone 6 in the last month and my experience from worst to best has been: VZW (not counting VoLTE because prepaid doesn't allow it), AT&T (UMTS and VoLTE combined), Sprint, and T-Mobile. From the sounds of things It seems like T-Mobile is gonna have to refarm PCS for LTE before long if speeds keep swirling down the crapper around here as I don't think the upgrade to 15x15 AWS when they get that live is gonna cut it. OTOH I'm with them for the month and must be lucky as personally my experience has been great. No problem with speeds in NWI (probably because it's a dense network here with relatively light population density). Only had a problem out towards Southlake Mall on rt 30 yesterday with sub 1 Mbps speeds and that was it. (Trouble spot for all the carriers).
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Why does T-Mobile sound bad to you? I've been using them lately and have never been happier with call quality on a cellphone in my life. AMR-NB 12.2, AMR-WB 12.6, and 23.8 sound phenomenal to me. And no random artifacts in any of my calls either (something that I always had a problem with on Sprint)
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I've done the research and have the data to back it up for Northwest Indiana. It goes: VZW, AT&T, Sprint, then T-Mobile from least dense to most dense here.
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Their network is already the densest out of the 4 carriers here. At least everywhere I've been it sure is.
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Has anyone that tried getting unlocked try getting their DSU through the international department? If there's any one department that actually knows what they're doing, it's them. If you read the unlock terms closely it states that unlocking is supposed to be automatic when the terms are fulfilled, and in my case by some apparent act of God my phone was automatically unlocked as soon as I ported my number out.
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They definitely will be when they get the LTE drop issues solved. If they enable VoLTE before then it'll be dropped call bonanza. In my market there is physically no reason they can't match their 3G footprint almost exactly at this time, just technical/logistical/etc issues I guess. At least I said my call went out over UMTS and not HSPA! Hahaha. Ever since sometime after the launch of VoLTE or toward the end of last year they've managed to tune their network to fill in all the gaps that used to be places where you'd lose LTE. Ever since then I've noticed B17 LTE hanging on nearly as long as 850 WCDMA would, in some places better actually. (Though that has been the exception and not the rule). And 1900 WCDMA in my experience is definitely weaker then B17 LTE. As for making LTE work seamlessly and VoLTE flawlessly even at weak signal strength, if at&t and T-Mobile can pull it off in my market then any failure to do so on Sprints part is incompetence IMO. But I hope they can pull it off as I love the competition, the options, and would hate to see things like they were back 3-5 years ago.
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That would be correct. I was furious when my N5 started saying 3G while on 1x.
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I've noticed at times with AT&T that if the signal is weaker then -115 it will switch over to UMTS if I attempt to make a call. I think it can hold a call fine all the way to -118 db and won't drop it til some insanely low level like -123 at least. All the while it's not breaking up or anything. It's supposed to handoff when LTE becomes too weak but it's always dropped for me probably because UMTS was weak too. I had a successful handoff to UMTS when I crossed out of a VoLTE territory on the highway once though.
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It does on the other three carriers. But who knows with Sprint... I'd say it should when they finally enable it but I won't hold my breath.
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In real world use 1x Advanced is definitely more reliable then VoLTE. Sound quality is not as good as VoLTE, being I often experienced some garbling and robotic sounds that always reminded me that I'm on CDMA. Beyond that I think it becomes an argument over who thinks which voice codecs are better. I personally thought EVRC-NW in HD mode sounded tinny and unreal. AMR-WB 12.6 (on VoLTE) sounds very natural to me.
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If the iPhone 6 can stay latched onto other carriers LTE for better or worse then it can't be anything wrong with the iPhone 6. On att mine won't drop the connection til about -123db though it varies. The big difference as I'm sure you know is that the rare time dropping to "4G", it usually works. Unless I'm going in and out of service of course. Oh and one other thing, have you ever tried VZW? I managed to activate a SIM on prepaid without buying a plan and went out and about and found lots of weak band 13 with some B4 islands. They have lots of LTE drops just like sprint, thanks to their site spacing only good for CDMA 850. If I had switched to them from S, I would NOT be happy.
