gusherb

1 hour ago, JThorson said:

While good idea I bet people will say Sprint just copied T-Mobile and that will not help them. 

It's really not like they can do anything different than TMO. TBH I want them to follow what TMO did as far as network improvement goes. What they've been doing has been different from TMO's strategy and it has failed left and right. People are not gonna let Sprint live things down for a long long time and that's just the way it's gonna be. Ultimately in the long run, rebranding with a new name will help this. 

Some things I'd like to see is Sprint rebranding. Like the Sprint name gone. It is far more tarnished than T-Mobile ever was.

 

I'd like to see densification take place everywhere they currently have native coverage, and build out new coverage into parts of metro areas that have been developed over the last decade.

 

They need to get VoLTE going ASAP with better site optimization (for gods sake stop being afraid of pushing B26 and 25 out farther, it NEEDS to be done!) so calls don't wind up dropping like crazy. All new sites need to be LTE only, urban areas with good coverage need to do lots of B41 only sites with as many carriers as they have spectrum for. No skimping on backhaul either.

 

I'd also like to see them expand coverage. All interstates need to be covered 100%. US highways need to be thoroughly covered as well. They don't need to match Verizon but they need to cover ALOT more than they do now.

 

 

3 hours ago, derrph said:

 

Marcelo came out and made a 10 part statement. All the typical things that Sprint has always said but these two points stuck out the most.

 

Maybe a sign of things to come.

 

 

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Remember those densification plans that leaked a couple months back? I think that's their plan now, at least I hope it is. I'm half tempted to open a free line just in case this starts coming to fruition.

19 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

You don't have to then go and be all sarcastic. But seriously, people have been calling for Sprint's death for years. This really isn't all that different. If anything, Sprint is in a much better place than it has been in years. It can survive on its own. 

Absolutely, they're presently far better positioned to continue on into the foreseeable future than they were in the last 10 years IMO. Anyone that remembers the tragic mess the network was 5-6 years ago should understand this. 

2 minutes ago, dro1984 said:

Prices?  Well lets be reasonable... the free ride WILL stop regardless.   Merger or not.   

I meant everyones prices, not Sprint. Sprint's prices now are clearly unsustainable. 

Yeah true, if speed tiers take off we can credit AT&T for that lol. 

I don't want to see a merger for three reasons:

1. I don't want them having any association with TMO because that has the potential to drag TMO down with them if TMO doesn't handle the merger super carefully. 

2. I don't want my prices going up any higher than they already are (which are already asinine compared to many other countries) 

3. I want to see Sprint put into motion those densification plans that got out recently and see them succeed on their own. 

18 minutes ago, Johnner1999 said:

IF anything -- it's a bullet point John and the press can hit VZW and ATT about.   What your network can't handle the extra overhead?  (of course they have almost 2x the subscriber base) 

but that's just my opinion 

 

Yeah I agree, it's mainly a marketing move focused on differentiating themselves from everyone else, since everyone sells unlimited data now. If anyone responds, it will probably evolve into a new form of tiered data plans - where all of them are unlimited and unthrottled but will have different de-pri thresholds. If anyone is to be credited for what may potentially happen here It would be Verizon who started it by offering an always-depri plan and one with a 22 gig threshold. 

51 minutes ago, S4GRU said:

Wow.  Seems extreme.  LTEiRA as domestic roaming?  That would not be a good move for Verizon 

Have a look at their coverage maps. They just changed it recently to show all LRA coverage as Extended coverage. They've definitely taken the extreme route on this one. 

I think they could've found a way to handle the issue without booting everyone. But maybe not, because the way they setup LRA in the first place would never work in an Unlimited world. If they hadn't made it seem like it was native coverage and let people sign up in these areas in the first place then it would've been fine today. 

16 minutes ago, S4GRU said:

When I go to the source and read their Facebook posts, I can see how all of this could be a misunderstanding.  Although it may very well be true that Verizon is pulling out of Washington County, Maine, I can also read all of the official correspondence only to refer to abusers being thrown off and the Machias Valley News confusing what it means.

From reading details, Verizon confirmed to the local news that they are sending notices to 30k-40k customers nationwide.  Not necessarily to 30k-40k customers in Washington County.  Some VZW customers claim not to receive notices.  The local company that built out the network says they know nothing about it and only commented on what the local news was reporting.  This all could be a big misunderstanding.

If it turns out Verizon is not actually shutting down the network there, then this makes this whole thing even more interesting.

Robert

I think ultimately they're booting everyone. Not very high data users are getting the letters too. I don't think they're killing any partnerships (at least not yet), but are considering LRA area's domestic roaming now and will probably throttle all domestic roaming to 2G speeds as has been worded into Unlimited since it was released in February.

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1899159-Verizon-sending-letters-to-LTE-in-Rural-America-users-concerning-termination-(letter?p=16901393#post16901393

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1899159-Verizon-sending-letters-to-LTE-in-Rural-America-users-concerning-termination-(letter?p=16901571#post16901571

I found another new site going up and this time it's not AT&T or Verizon (Verizon is already on this tower). It doesn't look like TMO....So could it actually be a new Sprint macro!? The only thing I could tell that it might be Sprint is the two equal sized outer panels and shorter inner panel (two B26/25 and one B41 panel in the middle), but I'm holding reservation about it being Sprint just because they don't really ever add sites, and there's already a Sprint site right in that area. 

 

 

After the closure of radio shack they must convert/open as many new stores as possible.

They NEED to be able to walk and chew gun at the same time.

The notion that they could spent 100% of their budget on network upgrades(as much as some current customers would love that) without advertising and growing their retail footprint is pie in the sky.

My point is it would look bad on them if they opened all these new stores and people signed up then realized the service was not up to par or worse than they had before. If they're simply replacing all those radio shack stores then that's a different story.

 

A good case in point was the steady flurry of people that signed up for the free year then discovered service hadn't improved for them or even got worse, or just simply discovered service sucked in their non rural area.

https://twitter.com/rogersolerafols/status/898649411965734912

1000 Sprint stores are opening across the country.

I hope there's a Macro Site or Mini-Macro outside each one, and at least an AIRAVE 3 or Magic Box inside each one.

Seems like they're jumping the gun, you're supposed to invest in the network BEFORE you open stores. They will need a Magic Box inside every one not near a macro or mini macro for sure.

T-Mobile has been super serious about deploying B12 in the Chicago area, especially where I live lately. Unlike people's complaints from earlier deployments; 1. They appear to be going for having it on every site. And 2. They aren't being ultra conservative with the downtilt/power levels. For example they added it to my home site sometime in the last week or so and have it live already, and I'm seeing signal strength equal to what Verizon is pushing out from its tower on B13 in the same location - about -82 to -90 dbm.

 

Driving up to Michigan today I was able to test signal and found them actually blasting B12 into Michigan where USCC squats on the 700A license. I connected as far as 15 miles from the stateline. On the way back I drove down a specific stretch of Dunes Highway along the lakeshore that was a complete dead zone for T-Mobile and now has fringe B12 coverage. Back toward my house there is a county park that T-Mobile used to drop to unusable UMTS and is now -109 dbm B12.

 

The way B12 is fixing holes like this is what I expected Sprints B26 to do when that was first rolled out. I'm so far very impressed with T-Mobile's B12 rollout!

Man that's freaking awesome. I'm assuming they have some form of fixed backhaul for them? Curious how they got fiber there, unless they ran it up the side of the building?

 

If that's NoVA where Trip's profile says he is then Verizon fiber is a plenty over there. I'm sure they just ran a strand of fiber from the nearest terminal to the building for it. 

 

I wish Sprint could move so fast...

 

- Trip

This is what I've been saying all along! Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile all move really fast when they set their mind to something. B12 adds have been popping up weekly for TMO, Verizon can do its macro builds within a few weeks (the biggest delays there are getting backhaul in place), and AT&T can seemingly do carrier adds overnight.

I know but can they do 15x15?

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They can and still have 5x5 worth of CDMA. They hold 50 MHz of PCS here and 30 of it is contiguous.

 

As it stands now they have a 10 MHz channel and a 5 MHz channel. If they enabled intra band that could be 15 MHz DL today.

Again sprint has the the highest if not one of the highest subscriber counts in the market.

 

Add high subscriber counts, ultd data, increased high data usage apps and streaming, lack of network investment in terms of additional site density unlike the others means all else equal the network will be less speedy compared to less loaded and high density networks.

 

It's not an apples to apples comparison especially when you get into 4x4 and 256QAM, that is live on ATT AND tmobile and the innumerable small cells Verizon have deployed.

 

Tldr: standing still for a year means others catch up.

 

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Do you know for a fact the subscriber counts are very high or are you basing that statement off the person who revealed that info for several markets some years ago? Cuz if I had to guess, I'd still say AT&T was number 1 here followed by T-Mobile and sprint and then VZ fourth.

Chicago is one of sprints top markets that they've always used every single ounce of spectrum. So yes, contrary to your belief, there is a huge amount of sprint users which with the ever increasing data usage means more congestion even if there was 0 subscriber adds especially since the 4th 5th 6th B41 carriers are not in operation.

 

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I just have a hard time believing they're so congested with 100 MHz of deployed spectrum while in my county specifically, Verizon does fine at 60, AT&T runs anywhere from 50-80, and T-Mobile running 40-70 MHz.

Uh, that is users gaming the system. I do not know why you would say otherwise.

 

AJ

I'm not sure how it could be gaming the system when it's Verizon's own inability to properly deprioritize and throttle. Assuming someone discovered this on accident and decided to go with it. Maybe if one signs up specifically for the intent of getting unlimited full speed tethering one could consider it gaming the system...but it's also Verizon's job to make sure their system doesn't get gamed. Either way their solution of booting users instead of finding a way to throttle and deprioritize is silly and will just leave a bad taste in people's mouths.

 

Also, AT&T didn't boot users off its MSA plans for using too much during the months they weren't able to throttle them for whatever reason. People went nuts with that too. They just fixed the issue and now they get throttled when they're supposed to.

Got my dad on the free sprint promo with his Moto G5 Plus. Not sure what the deal is but the network seems a lot slower than it was 2 years ago. I realize the G5 Plus doesn't do CA (last I heard anyway), but we have 3xB41 and I've sat in the same spot testing as the phone jumps across each of the 3 channels and they're all equally slow. I mean like 1-6 Mbps slow, so even with CA working it wouldn't amount to anything impressive. At home on my unloaded tower I can only get up to about 28 Mbps which is exactly what I got 2 years ago when only 1 B41 carrier existed. I even tested back in April on an iP7 that had CA and could only do about 45 Mbps, though it did spike up to 80 very briefly.

 

So that leads to my question, is there really that many sprint subs around? (I doubt it), have they let backhaul go, or are they just doing a really poor job at optimization? Cuz it makes no sense to me how they could be so slow with 100 MHz of deployed spectrum on LTE.

Sprint has just extended its "1 Year of Free Service" Promotion, which was set to expire today, through July 30th.

 

https://www.sprint.com/en/shop/offers/free-unlimited.html?ECID=vanity:1yearfree

 

What do you all think this means?

Either it went well and they wanna keep adding, or it didn't go well enough and they wanna reach goal. I actually signed my dad and brother up for this promo, the actual order process went smoothly but after that things went south. In the email they send you they say once you initiate the number port it will take up to 10 minutes, well instead it took 24 hours. I thought something went wrong and calling in nobody could find an account or even had a clue of the promo, ended up getting passed around like a hot potato. Not a good way to welcome a new customer.

For my brother they kept saying his card was declined when it wasn't, so he told them to just cancel the order. Next day it goes through anyway and they ship him a SIM card. By then he'd already ported to Verizon and washed his hands of Sprint over that ordeal.

 

Also been reading many reports of people porting in then back out sometimes as soon as an hour later because the coverage wasn't up to par.

 

So based on my personal experiences and other similar reports to my own experience have me leaning towards it not going well enough, but who knows (hence me also suggesting it did go well)

This isn't a good thread for the unlimited versus all you can eat even if you are destroying the network experience.  The thing here is Verizon should be more transparent when people are actually roaming.  If roaming is masked and appears native, it should count exactly the same in every way...IMHO.  Because people will use it that way.  But Verizon wants to pretend that they have a super mucho rural LTE network.

 

 

 

 

Agreed.  And they aren't booting everyone in those areas, just the heavy users, AFAIK.  If there is a secret limit to using LTEiRA data, they should let people know and allow them to track their usage.

 

Robert

 

 

So far it appears to be the heaviest users. And so far the only reports are coming from Appalachian wireless territory. Supposedly they can't deprioritize users on LRA partners or differentiate hotspot use from normal use so people are going nuts tethering. I'm sure if they really wanted to they could find a way to deprioritize LRA users and differentiate hotspot usage, but I guess they'd rather just boot them arbitrarily.

 

 

Some people with billing addresses outside of native coverage can have legitimate reasons for signing up, thus should not necessarily be prevented from doing so.  They may live elsewhere but plan to use the majority of said service inside native footprint.

 

In this VZW case, however, some people signed up for illegitimate reasons.  They knowingly tried to game the system in various ways, as evidenced by posts at HowardForums.  Those people, who might include most of the affected VZW users, should get booted with extreme prejudice.

 

http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1897881-Verizon-is-kicking-Unlimited-LRA-Users

 

AJ

I'm not sure they could game the system, Verizon was letting people in these territories sign up with addresses within the LRA area with no issue. Many people don't even have a clue they're signing up for Verizon in a roaming territory. I think the real reason VZ has decided to go to war on these users goes back to the fact that they're unable to throttle hotspot users or deprioritize and these users figured that out and are taking advantage.

I'm glad I'm not with Verizon anymore after reading about how they are only using half of their spectrum for LTE. If John Legere is to be believed, then Verizon ought yo be deploying their spectrum for LTE just as Sprint should with band 41. I'm not sure how these carriers could be content with seeing their speeds drop, if they easily could do something about it by deploying more spectrum.

I'd really like to know how much spectrum T-Mobile is using. If they're actually using it, then that validates T-Mobile's network claims and I'll respect John Legere for speaking up on the issue.

  

 

Really not true. The Chicago market for example has 60-70 MHz deployed for LTE and 25 MHz left on CDMA for now. Pretty much everywhere I've been lately including very rural areas has more spectrum deployed on LTE than CDMA.

 

You're forgetting that Verizon has far more legacy customers than T-Mobile. Customers who have non-LTE devices and don't want to upgrade.

That spectrum currently houses EVDO and 1x. They're slowly sunsetting older technology for LTE.

Verizon can't just pull EVDO offline, like TMo has done with HSPA in some markets.

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Not really many of those left. EVDO has already been moved off PCS and only a few 850 channels left in my area for example and it's never congested. 1x OTOH I'm sure still sees a lot of use.

T-Mobile has reclaimed number two on Root for the first time in years in Chicago. Not sure how cuz I tested extensively in the end of March and it still wasn't good. Methinks a lot might've changed since B12 launch (perhaps a bunch of small cells were fired up simultaneously like they claimed they did).

http://rootmetrics.com/en-US/rootscore/map/metro/chicago-il/2017/1H