gusherb

I've had luck like that with B41 too. The range and building penetration is impressive. The performance of B25 and 26 have continued to be lackluster in range performance without optimization but what has been making up for it is B41 which seems to be amazing everywhere I went. There is a restaurant here like the place you were that is buried in a row of brick buildings and I pick up decent CLWR B41 in there where even 3G is very weak.

That sounds like my experience at the Denver airport in October and December 2011, on WCDMA. Did sprint appear to be optimized in Denver? AT&T already appears to be cannibalizing the Leap network in Chicago as I'm seeing 10x10 AWS now. All we have in NWI is 10x10 B17 and 5x5 B2 but I saw one site that was broadcasting B2 in 10x10 so I think it's a possibility they may be in the process of refarming more spectrum over here. I initially wanted to switch to Verizon but their cell spacing here is terrible, to the point that falling back to 3G is common. And everyone I know seems to have problems with their ancient CDMA network.

iPhone 6.

at&t surprisingly. Has been working excellent too. Haven't lost LTE once since Monday and I've been all over the the city and in basements too. The only exception would be Chinatown Mall, where nobody works. Ended up getting a 22% discount through freelancers union, and got them to match Verizon's latest deal - the 15 GB's for $100 so the price comes out to $133 for two lines one on contract and one "BYOD". I'm glad it wasn't to T-Mobile because lets face it, their indoor coverage is still lackluster and the rural coverage still has a ways to go yet before being acceptable. I'm gonna be traveling alot this summer, especially to the southwest so I think I made a good choice. Roaming on Verizon or Commnet 1x was not always easy and I carried a phone with an at&t SIM last year for backup anyway.

I used to hit the 5 hour mark around 33% battery now I'm hitting it around 45% battery instead. The other day I saw it hit 8 hours usage and was at 20%. Not sure if that's iOS 8.3 or the network change...

That's why I left. They're very far along in Chicago but they still have a long ways to go yet. Despite all the improvements the network in places was still acting very wonky with speeds and/or dropping to 3G where it shouldn't be. Although I think I've had less luck then others in the Chicago area. I'll come back when optimization is done, and they've followed through on all their promises...

Because...it's Comcastic!! They'd probably buy them just for fun to see how they can create new ways to make wireless service horrible. And then sit back with cocktails while being fanned from their private villas on exotic islands somewhere watching the "peasants" react to them.

I wonder how quick they would run T-Mo into the ground if they bought them out. Welcome to Xfinity Wireless Service...

Does anyone think that sprint just automatically unlocked my iPhone 6 upon termination of the contract on the line it was associated with? I'm honestly still without a clue how it got unlocked and can't decide whether I wanna just pay off the ETF and not say anything at all hoping it stays unlocked or mention something and risk screwing up a good thing.

No it was not. I called apple and they confirmed that it was carrier unlocked.

The absolute strangest thing has happened. So today I called in just inquiring about having my iPhone 6 unlocked and got the expected "contract needs to be satisfied" from them etc. So later tonight, just for the hell of it I stuck a Verizon SIM card in and I got some kind of iTunes activation popup that made me log into my iTunes acct again. After that it started picking up Verizon signal, then I tried a dead att sim and same thing! So I pop a live T-Mo SIM in and now I'm using LTE, making calls over VoLTE and even the wifi calling is working! IDK what kind of fluke this is but I still fully intend to pay off my ETF and check the unlock status of this phone (and/or get it unlocked if this is just a temp fluke) I'm nearly jumping for joy right now, even if it is temporary.

I thought optimization also included getting the load balancing working right. Either way the network is pushing everything it possibly can to B41 when it could be spreading it out more evenly. I could've sworn everything i read about optimization also included load balancing...

It's been over a year since band 26 started getting turned on around here. Sometimes the network acts like a turd, and sometimes it surprises me and acts like its optimized. I can't stress enough how much I wish it were optimized already. Today I was stuck on B41 that was anywhere from 1 Mbps to page timeouts and nothing working at all. (Had to cycle airplane mode so it would attach to B26) I would hope after optimization a situation like I just mentioned above wouldn't happen.

What about the consistency in service though? Right now in Chicago AT&T and even T-Mobile are far more consistent then Sprint (minus T-Mo's weak indoor coverage) in overall network experience. Just sitting in the same spot I was seeing speeds anywhere from 20 to 2 Mbps because of the way the phone was hunting around on different bands. In far more places then I wanted to, I saw B41 running at just 1-3 Mbps which surprised me. And switching from B41 to B25 or 26 is like dropping off a cliff in most places, I thought they would all even out more or less with load balancing. BTW I saw a good bit of second carrier B41 up on the northside of the city on the weekend.

Same here, we have band 41 and 26 just about everywhere and still no optimization anywhere that I go yet. I understand them waiting on getting all three frequencies live on every site first, but it would seriously have helped to do SOME kind of optimizing in the interim to keep things flowing instead of leaving everyone hanging and frustrated for more then a year. I feel like if I leave for that "certain other" carrier whose AWS LTE fills in the whole area very nicely sprint might finally get around to optimizing the area lol.

Unless they acquire more AWS from somewhere that means finally shutting down AWS HSPA. Somewhere I read a rumor that they'll be upgrading LTE to 15x15 in June. After what they did in Indianapolis to get to 10x10 I wouldn't be surprised if Chicago's next.

I still have 5 more days with the phone, I'm not entirely convinced yet lol. But they do put up a strong argument against sprint, even with only 10x10 of LTE.

B26 may be deployed but T-Mobile's AWS LTE still blankets better then B26. I still drop off LTE a lot, and when I am on B26 it performs rather poorly. The numbers may look great but user experience is where it really counts.

My guess is no, at least not on LTE. My Nexus 5 was achieving higher speeds then the iPhone 5S at one point at home yesterday, but I think that's an iOS vs Android on the network type of thing. Now what I am seeing is unthrottled HSPA for the first time ever, every other device I've used including my iPad Air was always throttled to 15 Mbps on HSPA. Now I'm seeing upwards of 27 sometimes. IDK if that's a fluke or another iPhone thing, or bias toward the Test Drive phone. When I made my first call on it yesterday it said "welcome to T-Mobile Prepaid". But overall considering I'm still seeing 1-3 mbps in places on LTE I don't think there's any higher priority. One other thing I'm seeing, in high signal areas is one speed test getting 20-40 mbps then the next one only getting .5 mbps. IDK if that's a network/iPhone fluke or a problem with speedtest but closing the app and opening again fixes that. It was almost a year ago to the day that I drove through KC and experienced the best network ever, they pulled some kinda magic there with only two carriers - B25 and B26 and speeds were great throughout the area and coverage was the most consistent I've ever seen in my life (much like T-Mo is here). The only time I had that kinda experience around here was on B41 on the northside. B25 and B26 both behave like garbage every time I'm on either of those bands.

So I have the T-Mo test drive iPhone 5S, and have been comparing to my Sprint iP6 in NWI near where I live and am now in the middle of testing in the city. NWI was as I thought it would be, no coverage gaps and very good service, the slowest speed I saw was 1mbps in a more crowded area where signal was weaker. At least 5 places that the iP6 dropped to 3G T-Mo LTE was still hanging on strong. Today driving up the Tollroad/Skyway was something else... T-Mo was consistent in the 5-20 mbps range, while Sprint must be doing something in the area... While on the Skyway I had LTE drop and then come back 3 times, and on the Dan Ryan I switched over to Extended twice while on LTE. Speed wise they were fairly close to each other, but Sprint was not as consistent, with speeds ranging from 1 mbps to 35 (thank you B41). Now I'm inside around 33rd and Halsted and T-Mo is hanging onto signal better then I expected, it dropped to Edge initially but then came back up to -115 db of LTE and Sprint sitting next to it is parked on -104 db's of B25. The last time I did any real network observations with Sprint was back in October or so and Sprint still behaves inconsistently and erratically, IDK if that's how it is from here on out or if they're taking their sweet old time optimizing sites. IMO T-Mobile has done great with what little they have and seems to be keeping on par with even Sprint's B41. It's gonna be a tough one deciding on whether I wanna switch or not.

Does anyone know the status of optimization in the Chicago area? I drove down to one of my known dead spots for Sprint this evening (which happens to be the same place that an att/T-Mo tower site is located) and experienced loss of LTE the same as 6 months ago, and experience LTE drop in the same other places too. The serving site for this area has had B41 live since at least August... I can tell the down tilt must still be all the way down and power hasn't been increased either. Vince: I've been observing the same things as you in regards to T-Mo, everywhere I go with people it seems they're slogging along anywhere between 1-8 Mbps and in those same places sprint is humming along at 20-30 Mbps on B41 (and 15-20 on B25). I have a "Test Drive" iPhone 5S arriving tomorrow as I'm more interested in testing out their VoLTE, WiFi calling, and overall seeing how I like their network through an iPhone. As far as AT&T LTE goes, I might suggest trying them again after the leaves appear on the trees. Back in the summer I couldn't hold a B17 signal at or near my home to save my life but as soon as they fell off all the sudden I was on LTE all the time and holding onto it everywhere.

I just reactivated my TMO SIM in my N5 and have been testing them again lately side by side with my sprint iPhone 6. I don't have any super scientific answers for you but I have been all over the city the past couple days, and what I've noticed is that in more crowded areas like near Grant/Millennium park in Chicago I was seeing around 2-3 Mbps on TMO and 5-10 on sprint, and this trend repeated all the way up LSD to the northside just north of Devon on Clark and back down Clark through Lincoln Park. I also drove out to Orland Park yesterday and LaGrange road near the Orland Square Mall during early rush hour was the same thing, TMO started at like 8 Mbps and sprint was running along 21 on B41, and later on TMO was down to 3mbps and sprint was running at 8 mbps in this vicinity. So I think to sum it up for you, what I've observed is sprint seems a bit faster overall and there have been far more places where I've seen TMO slower then sprint then vice versa (that wasn't the case 9 months ago lol) I gotta say though, for one 10x10 LTE carrier TMO seems to be handling the crowds very well.

Then that doesn't sound promising, unless corporate is re-training these people to be more customer oriented. My experiences with the local corporate stores varies from rude, to arrogant douchebag for store employees. The managers were no better. It's so bad it makes me wonder how anyone uses sprint around here, but I think people just go to the authorized retailers which are at least courteous.

Yesterday and today I've had no problems, been using the wifi calling and it's been flawless. I still have random numbers showing up in my call logs though, including a bunch of calls from my own number while I was sleeping. How's it going for everyone else?

I've been in that mall, it doesn't look as bad as that picture portrays it lol but it is a small mall. In other related news I drove past my local RadioShack today and saw the big Sprint banner in the window and then looked in the window and they haven't even begun to remodel yet. Still has the multi-carrier fake phone display fixtures in it. What I wanna know is if these new corporate locations are gonna be performing the same shenanigans that the currently existing corporate stores by me do, try to force you off any non current plan and say that TEP is "mandatory". I'm tempted to walk in one and attempt to upgrade a line just to see lol.