gusherb

Sprint needed to get completely on the C-SIM bandwagon (which I hear they are finally starting to do) I don't think it's coincidence that the iPhone on the three carriers that actually utilize a SIM didn't have any problems with the iPhone 5 when it launched, but Sprint the last one to be stubborn and hold out had all kinds of problems. I do hear the 5S fully utilizes a SIM card now??

I had an S3 for 9 months, battery life was ALWAYS better on LTE then EVDO. I've had an iPhone 5 3 months now and it's the same story. Also, at 8 months my S3's battery was indeed getting a bit weak. I put a new one in and all was good again. Average time before the battery in the S3 starts to go bad seems to be between 8-10 months. A popular Android fanatic on Youtube said the same thing back when I first got my S3 and I thought he was full of it til I experienced it myself.

I had the issue of no 3G when LTE was weak or turned off. It would flicker between 3G and 1x for a little bit then stick to 1x (also nice that it says 1x now haha). I had to restore my phone (for yet a third time today, due to various annoyances) to make 3G work again. I swear every time a new iOS release comes out there is something not getting along with the sprint network.

I had probably the worst sounding call I ever had two days ago; it was a Sprint/Verizon call. When I heard the word "under water" described I apparently took that with a grain of salt, but the person I was speaking to really did sound like she was under water! not only that but also sounded like she just had her mouth numbed from the dentist, and had a mouth full of shit as well, combine that together and I couldn't understand a word for the life of me. I had to call back on her landline and it was clear as a bell, obviously it wasn't me! I held that clear call just fine inside with just 1-2 bars on my iPhone. I never realized Verizon could sound that bad...

All but 5-6 sites in Lake county are LTE/3G accepted (and many 3G800 as well), which is where the majority of the population in NWI is. So when I referred to NWI I was pretty much just referring to Lake county. Also to answer your question, yes.

I experience awful EVDO especially during weekdays between 12-8 all across Northwest Indiana, and several parts of Chicago and other suburbs. It's been this way since about December 2012. I consistently see 150-500 kbps all day long everywhere I go around here. LTE has begun to take a noticeable hit for me too, but still works good for my needs/wants. I've been noticing alot of flakiness in NWI the past week as though they have been changing something... Everything was great from when I first started with Sprint in September til december, in the backhaul upgraded areas on EVDO at the time. I saw better EVDO performance on Legacy sites with T1's out in the southwest during peak hours this summer, then I do on our full NV sites around here.

The Nextel site closest to my house has had the panels removed within the two weeks I was out of town. I took pictures of that site almost a year ago. I'll try and get some without Nextel on it. Only thing left on that site now is Leap/Cricket.

Currently staying the night in Santa Fe. Came down from Durango (visiting from Chicago) this afternoon and stopped in Albuquerque to do errands with my sister (who lives in Durango). No loss of coverage down 550, I faded in and out of roaming on commnet a lot though. I didn't pick up any LTE in ABQ, I was about a mile from a 3G/4G accepted site. In Santa Fe I got good EVDO speeds up in the square/downtown. Where I'm at now is really slow. Coverage seems good in all the towns/cities I've been to and overall (including roaming) I've never had better coverage. On the way down 550 my sisters att phone lost service a lot while I didn't haha. So far most everywhere I've gone has usable EVDO to some degree. I guess not many have sprint in these parts of the country.

That means the iPhone 6 will get it not the 5S if that's the case.

We are served by the wireline duopoly AT&T and Comcast here. No other options. Have Comcast 50/10 right now and love it. 58 dollars a month for that and basic TV, standard rates after a year is 80. Got Comcast in Chicago too and that's a mess, service goes to shit whenever it rains a lot. Was thinking about switching to VOIP from their voice service but due to the instability of the Internet connection (and the only other option, AT&T is no better) I may put together some kind of phone solution using cellular home phones (this is a small retail shop).

Had a great experience in the Indy area on I65, 465, then back on I65 down to Edinburgh, IN. Came from Northwest, IN. Service was awful around Roselawn, then really picked up from Lafayette and the rest of the way do Indy. I had LTE and working 3G the whole time I was in the Indianapolis market. On the way back I took route 31 to Indianapolis/465 and found pleasant service the whole way, even between towns! (I was able to stream HQ Pandora without any interruption) It seems Samsung/Sprint has paid quite a bit of attention to the Indianapolis market, especially the rural coverage. Between Lafayette and Crown Point service is almost horrendous, several stretches where service is stretched so thin that EVDO fades out and you get a barely usable 1X signal for periods of time. I dropped a call in one of those stretches during a handoff, would've been better if I weren't using an iPhone 5 though. Those spots definitely will benefit from LTE 800!

The RT-N66U is an excellent router as well, almost got it then saw the AC version on sale for just 20 more and got that. I dabbled in DD-WRT and Tomato and found no real benefit for it at home just yet. It is nice to finally know how to set up and use tomato and dd-wrt though. I'm happy with the stock firmware on the Asus for now, although I do have Merlin flashed on there which is just stock with extra features enabled.

Sprint is offering the 10 dollar 1 GB hotspot add on for EPRP plans. Found it while building an EPRP plan.

I bought a Netgear R6300 TOL AC router in March while also switching to Comcast 50/10 tier and had pings around 10-15 MS all the time and very fast web page loading. After a month pages got slightly laggy and speedtests showed a 20-25 MS ping. I bought an Asus RT-AC66U router (their TOL AC router) and put it in and latency dropped back to what it was supposed to be and things started loading much snappier again. So the router can be a cause. Have you wired your problem device straight to the modem yet? That was how I confirmed it was my router. Also with the RT-AC66U wifi performance is pretty much the same as a wired connection, by far the the best wifi router I've used to date. It has amazing range too.

I had no problem when I asked telesales and I quote "can you check and see if you can waive the activation fees for me?" When I pre-ordered two iPhone 5's the morning they went on sale. She put me on hold and then came back and said ok. It must've been my lucky day or something.

T-Mobile likes Flagpoles and water towers around here.

Hmm I never would've guessed Clearwire. Did they deploy sites like this? I checked T-Mobile and Sprint coverage maps and the pattern of the "best coverage" patterns don't line up with this location so it appears like it's neither of them.

I actually just noticed this today: http://goo.gl/maps/vB5U3 Anybody know who that is? If I had to take a guess I'd say T-Mobile, but I'm only good at spotting Sprint NV panels, so not sure.

Sprint to T-Mobile doesn't suck. It's just ATT

The voice quality on the Nokia Lumia 521 on T-Mobile UMTS is nothing short of amazing. I was blown away the first time I tried it, my first impressions were how much bass and clarity there was! Instead of being real flat it was more natural like having the person in the room. I thought it seemed a little better then a good VOIP call. my iPhone on Sprint is good and natural sounding too, I actually enjoy most conversations on it (depending on what carrier the other end is on) but I really liked HD voice! I wouldn't mind my next Sprint phone to have it, I always think audio quality on a phone call can be better. My previous S3 didn't have as good of sound quality as the iP5 IMO, I never liked talking on it much and felt that listening was more of a strain especially in louder environments (I think Apples noise cancelling works better) As for talking to people on AT&T my head hurts after those conversations. (or worse yet Verizon)

I'm not sure what to say about these new plans except that I can see more family plan customers giving even less (to no consideration at all) for Sprint because the prices are now more comparable to AT&T/VZW. I'm about at the point that I may just tell my cousin (who has a 3 line family plan on USCC and is gonna be forced to switch soon) to just run for AT&T and tell her to forget all the good things I've said about Sprint. My reasoning with her was that Sprint has an equally as good network as AT&T in Chicago and is MUCH cheaper....but without the cheaper part they may as well go with AT&T, she would get a decent sized discount from them being a government employee. As for us and our two line plan If we're not grandfathered in at upgrade time then I'll wait out the contract and see what T-Mobile's up to. I'll only consider staying and paying higher prices if they have the rest of their act together by then.

Porter county is just a few miles east of 65 so its mostly on the porter county side.

Lake county, IN is very well deployed from what I can tell. Porter county is where all the unfinished sites are. :EDIT: This reminds me: The ILEC changes east of I65 as well as the county line being there. Lake county IN is mostly served by AT&T as the wireline carrier and east of 65 is all Frontier territory (used to be Verizon) I wonder if Frontier is not dealing well with Sprint. There is one town called Culver that happens to have AT&T as the ILEC. Southeast of Lake county the ILEC is CenturyLink (It used to be Sprint haha) As for the town of Culver I wouldn't be surprised if the one site there all the sudden became a lone LTE site.

You forgot Lake County, IN. They got to this area very very early on. Outside of that they need to get to it and get this moving! I thought 80/94 would be lined with LTE by now not broken EVDO. Maybe things will pick up once the SoftBank thing is finalized?? (one can only hope)