gusherb

I'm not sure about discounts on Sprint, though if a business offers it, then great. Discounts on wireless service are good to have.

 

The 22% off discount on AT&T service I found out about through S4GRU member gusherb, who mentioned it here somewhere on the forums some time ago. In order to get the discount, there is an organization online called the Freelancers Union, The membership is free and it gives members a wide variety of discounts to many different services, including AT&T.

  

This is the direct link to the Freelancers Union AT&T discount page :

 

https://www.freelancersunion.org/discounts/detail/ATT

Keep in mind anyone seeing this that Freelancers is for people with their own businesses and such. Please don't abuse it, I would hate to see this nice discount taken away.

So how is wifi to CDMA smooth handoff any different from LTE to CDMA smooth handoff? Aren't they both switching over from the IMS to the CDMA core network? Also is there a good way for me to attach a 30 second video here?

If you have a YouTube account just use that.

Those remind me of some of the US cellular setups we had around here in the north eastern Illinois area. A single tiny antenna per sector.

 

Sent from my 2PS64

 

That's what they all were around here too. I thought the towers were abandoned or something. Guess they didn't need more then that considering they only ran PCS 1x/EVDO. 

That is one fugly, ramshackle looking tower.

 

AJ

This ones worse:

 

 

 

Ugh! My bad... Now its feelings are really hurt!

 

I can't tell if the middle row is abandoned with the cables in place or if something is there...

 

Sent from my 2PS64

IDK what the deal is with that center rack, I see a few towers around with those kinds of setups still. IDK if it's a WISP (do they even have setups like that?) or if it's from a defunct carrier.

OOooo. That was a former Nextel location so a nextel conversion!

Wow I didn't realize they were still doing those. That's cool.

Location? O_O

 

Could it be a former Clear site or Maybe even an old USCC vacated site?

Good question, definitely not Clear, I don't think USCC either but they took those sites down pretty much the day after that was shut down so I could be wrong.

 

It's at 61st and Taft st. Merrillville, IN.

This thread has been abandoned for long enough...

 

Yesterday I discovered a brand new sprint site on this T-Mobile owned tower:

 

From top to bottom it goes: T-Mobile, Sprint, AT&T and the bottom is presumably Verizon (it's brand new too).

 

I guess that means sprint is adding sites in my area. Though I don't remember this spot being weak to begin with.

No more overages but they added a BYOD charge so two steps forward and one step back.

 

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Are you talking about the $15 activation fee they charge across the board including BYOD or is there now a new charge? If so I haven't found it yet...

Actually, on /r/Sprint and /r/TMobile the trolls tend to be downvoted and their posts automatically hidden after it hits a certain threshold.  However, I do expect to see HowardForums inheriting a bunch of those troll posts, even though that site is also decently moderated.

That site is not moderated enough. There's been a troll trolling the Verizon forums for weeks now that everyone wants gone and the mods won't give the axe to yet.

I'll entertain the notion that they likely have been running a lean ship out of necessity, more so than want. So by the time that the money came in to get the ball rolling on projects, it was likely "too late" to head the congestion off at the pass if you will. And here we are. Not saying this is fact, but a plausible scenario.

 

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I suggest want instead of necessity because they're numbers have been good for the last year or so. If they really wanted to they could have spent the money on it sooner and then not had as good of numbers to show. But I also think it wasn't just a money thing but also them wanting to have 700A before they go doing all this investment.

I'm wondering if Illinois is a bad state for T-Mobile in general, including in Chicago. Thank goodness my mother's prepaid service with T-Mobile is almost over, and is learning to use her new smartwatch on AT&T. The T-Mobile service around here became unbearable to use after Binge On was introduced. Before that it was fine on the predominant 15x15 AWS and sometime 5x5 or 10x10 PCS LTE though I don't remember the exact amount of PCS LTE here in the Chicago area. Still, its little spectrum compared with what AT&T has here.

 

Have you considered trying AT&T, Fraydog? The unlimited plan is great, especially with the Freelancers Union discount gusherb originally mentioned. Even without the television service, you could get the $100 monthly 15gb plan for just under $80 monthly with the discount.

Looking at coverage maps (zoomed in, not the pretty pink "coverage everywhere" zoomed out one") they aren't the worst but not the best either. They will likely continue to fall behind as they don't have any 700A to deploy in the majority of the state, as more of it is deployed elsewhere. Indiana for example does better for T-Mo than IL, and will continue to improve since NWI will now be getting 700A soon.

 

They could've been doing great in Chicago if they had started investing in it sooner, but they do run a pretty lean ship and didn't wanna spend the money a year ago when they should have started. I suspect they held off until they knew they would have 700A in their arsenal since the competition is fierce from the other three, and without it probably would've spent a ton of money and not quite gotten the results they want.

Except here's a problem with this idea of yours. I live in a town called Harrisburg in North Carolina. It's basically a suburb of Charlotte, but has a population of ~15,000 people. There is a Sprint tower about two miles away from me (which is outside of the city limits) that I connect to regularly with a -113 dBm Band 26 connection, and regularly get less than 2 Mbps down and less than .5 Mbps up, and that's late at night, or "off-peak" hours. This is an example of the power not being turned up on Band 26, with it not covering a huge expanse of land, and not being far away from it. And yet, my speeds still suck. Compared to EVDO, I can regularly get over 1 Mbps down and up at most times of the day, with a -85 dBm or greater signal. Turning the signal up is not the solution. Densifying with more towers/small cells is the solution. I can only imagine how bad the speeds would be if they had the power turned up on Band 26 here.

 

-Anthony

Is the network real aggressive about putting you on higher bands when available? Because I've heard a lot (and seen for myself) the network parking devices on B26 where it's not really necessary. The other part of the problem is that they haven't really turned up B25 that high either. Your area may be a case where LTE needs to be kept turned down, but where I am with 15 MHz DL worth of B25 and 2 B41 carriers they really need to crank up B25, and crank up B26 and get things optimized so devices don't unnecessarily park on B26. B25 has to be turned up with B26 as part of avoiding B26 congestion. In the suburban area where I live, cranking up both wouldn't cause any harm to the network and would just fill in lots of gaps. Adding cells in some of these current weak spots would be silly because they're not really super high population areas that need more capacity.

 

I also would like to remind anyone thinking my logic is flawed, that KC has had things setup this way since early 2014 and AFAIK has no issues. I definitely saw B26 far outreach B25 in that market.

The answer why is because it's 5MHz and band 25 is also 5MHz, its used mostly for capacity and not so much for coverage. If they operated it at full power, it would perform like 1x because of the sheer number of people that would be parked on it.

 

And I just stated two posts above yours that such is not actually the case. its clearly proven by other carriers that this isn't true, that it CAN be turned up and pushed out quite far before the 5 MHz channel starts to buckle. There are no more valid excuses for why they don't turn up LTE 800, yes it will slow down but in most situations it'll still be working better than the alternative - EVDO.

I finally found a scenario that 5x5 B17 didn't work on AT&T due to overcrowding. I was at one of the wineries in Michigan which was having a fairly decent sized event and LTE was just crawling. I was able to pull between .4 and 1 Mbps, with a lot of flakiness. Mind you this is a good ways out in the country. When heading back west towards I-94 I tracked down the cell sector I was connecting to all the way back to a boomer type tower in Bridgman right next to the interstate. That turned out to be 7.5 miles from where I was. I was kind of surprised I had any LTE at all from a tower 7.5 miles away on a 5 MHz 700 carrier in the middle of a hilly forest.

Anyway the point I'm getting at is that Sprint definitely could turn up its 800 LTE in suburban areas where cells are only 1-3 miles apart and work fine, they would just need to watch out in rural areas like I was at. I haven't had a problem with AT&T 5 MHz B17 in the more suburban areas.

Sprint does need to add hundreds (if not thousands) of sites nationwide in New suburban areas. I see that Sprint is lackluster or non existent in many metro areas in neighborhoods that did not exist 10 years ago.

I see it a lot in the Puget Sound. Great coverage in city and new suburban areas. But challenged in New neighborhoods built since 2007/2008.

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I used to not think my area had this issue but recently I figured out it did and where. Now I've realized Sprint is missing cell sites in whole areas south of me where the other three have them, and those areas are neighborhoods built since around 06-08 just like you pointed out.

They do bring up some points though... What will happen when the 50% off expires? Vzw does have much more reasonable data buckets vs what they had. That is a real possibility; sprint could lose customers simply because the promo is over and in the 2 year waiting period they haven't built out/upgraded enough towers for enough customers to be happy with their service vs vzw.

 

I do believe sprint should come back with double the data or change the buckets. This time figure out a way to get rid of access fees or drop the prices on them. That would make for great commercial

They need to just offer one plan structure, something customizable and give plenty of data options within that one plan structure. Then market the hell out of it. That's what both Verizon and T-Mobile have done and it's worked great. I can't even figure out what they offer with the way it is now. The only thing prominent on their site is the 50% off offer. They also need to increase the number of self service options and make it work at least most of the time. People these days actually shy away from things if it's not self service. (I'm one of those people)

I ported out of Sprint to AT&T now I regret it so much data speeds are much slower, latency much higher and i'm getting frequent Network Communication issues on good signal on Speedtest

 

Currently on the phone porting back

Where are you?

This is what 5 MHz B17 looks like in a fairly crowded small tourist town:

 

 

These were taken a bit east of Michigan City, IN in a pretty rural area:

 

 

About what I would expect for 5 MHz B17 on a carrier with a lot of subs around here. Really not that awful for sparse site spacing.

Any one up for a good laugh, read this. http://www.tmonews.com/2016/06/t-mobile-three-channel-carrier-aggregation-testing-spotted-dallas/

 

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Is the "good laugh" the fact that all the commenters are complaining about crap service? Sometimes I feel like their network isn't handling all its new subs as good as it should be. AT&T has twice as many subs and some sites running the same amount of spectrum as T-Mo and yet it works fine or equally as bad (with twice the subs). I wonder if T-Mo even realized how big of an influx in subs they would be getting.

The T-Mobile fanboys view this like a sports competition.  "Your team was eliminated.  Ha ha.  That means my team is better than your team."  It gives them an illusory feeling of superiority.

 

AJ

 

The network isn't even that great. In the Chicago area it's either overloaded beyond any usability or there's no coverage. I've seen a complaint on Reddit every day or two about congestion or coverage issues lately, I wonder if people are starting to take off the Magenta colored sunglasses and see the reality of it. 

I dont think its so much an excuse as a reality of the situation. Same goes for B12 for Tmobile.

The point is that slow LTE would be better then slow 3G. And if they would start cranking out the distance of B25 and B41 then overloaded B26 wouldn't be much of an issue since B25 would travel almost the same distance and B41 pretty far too. As it has been the last couple years they all seem to just drop off around 1-2 miles which is silly. I'm tired of the excuses regardless of how valid the concern may be, I know that it can be done because i see it done by other carriers regularly. I've also pointed out before, that in order to refarm more spectrum from EVDO and eventually 1x, they're gonna have to tear off the band aid and push B26 out there and fill in the gaps or else nobody is ever gonna get off the 3G network enough to be able to refarm for LTE.

I think a lot of folks are underestimating the effects of adding pop to a limited 5x5 block without other bands to relieve it.

 

In some cases dropping to 3G is probably better than a completely saturated B26.

I feel like that excuse has been used to death.

I've been in plenty of 5x5 700mhz areas with AT&T to see the reality of it. They actually pull it off just fine, spanning from more dense towns to rural areas. In the towns where site spacing is pretty good it runs pretty fast. In the rural areas it gets pretty slow but it still is more responsive than the 3G alternative.

In my area Sprint has ok site spacing for PCS in a lot of areas and some areas the spacing is more for low band. In those more sparse areas where I drop LTE (only 1.5 miles from a site mind you) the EVDO is super slow and almost unusable anyway. Would rather have slow LTE than slow EVDO. They can make it work just fine if they implemented it properly.

Even when it was 10x10 it was still close to matching B17 which is 10x10 here. Maybe they have the power turned up high or have really tuned their network well.

Yeah at 10x10 I was still able to drive across town and hang onto B2 everywhere on a good day. Towers are 4-6 miles apart in a lot of places around where I am too which makes that fairly impressive. Now at 15x15 I'm almost always on B2 anytime I'm outdoors almost anywhere, and in fact at home my B2 signal is stronger then B17 sometimes now.

It's crazy how far AT&T's band 2 reaches in my area. Even before moving to 20x20

I wish we could get 20x20 B2 here. Not gonna happen since their PCS isn't all contiguous.

When it first went to 10x10 in the fall is when I first started experiencing band 2 at pretty good distances. Prior to that they had the threshold set at something like -112 dbm so I always fell to B17 pretty quickly, though once I was able to hold onto it about 2.5 miles from the tower when it was 5x5. When they went 15x15 is when it really started to shine though, going to that bandwidth made it stable enough that I can now stay connected all over town just about.

I used to chalk it up to Sprint using 5x5s and everyone else using 10x10s, but then once I got my Verizon moto E I started realizing that Verizon's second AWS carrier (a 5x5) performs just about as well as the larger first carrier. It's probably my biggest network gripe.

I was just in Southwest Michigan where USCC squats on 700A and B leaving AT&T with just lower 700C and the coverage was fantastic on the 5x5 channel, very few towers and all forest. The only complaint was that speeds were sub 1 Mbps when the signal was weaker, miles from a tower, but it was still better then the HSPA alternative (actually HSPA worked ok but in general the latency is never as good as LTE)