gusherb
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Everything posted by gusherb
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I guess then there is the possibility that EDGE is not on your nearest serving cell site. If this is consistent across a large area then I have no idea what to say.
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That really all depends on what frequencies the technologies are using. In suburban Lake County, IN AT&T 2G is still on 850 (and I believe they may have just shut off GSM on PCS across the entire Chicago market to make way for 15 mhz B2 LTE) So here 2G/EDGE still beats out WCDMA 850. In Chicago they have (or had) 2G on PCS on most of the sites and very few with 850, so WCDMA 850 beat out 2G most of the time. You could very well have 2G on PCS by you with WCDMA on 850. Over here T-Mobile has 2G and UMTS on PCS so EDGE beats it out by a small margin usually.
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If your signal is as good as you say it is then I'd be very surprised if you had any speed problems in your basement. I really only ever encounter a speed issue when there's a miles long traffic jam on the expressway (but it still works fine), or downtown at rush hour. -
AT&T really isn't bad in the Chicago market nor is it declining. What you're reading about them declining elsewhere does not apply here. What I complain about in my county doesn't even apply in the rest of the Chicago market. That's why I talk about Chicago and Lake County, IN like two totally separate areas. AT&T is a solid choice in most of the Chicago area alongside Verizon and just ahead of Sprint and T-Mobile. If your carrier works for the most part then you should just stick with them because you're never gonna find true happiness on any carrier. In the end they all suck one way or the other.
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Being they have 3 10x10 carriers now it's probably some localized congestion he's experiencing. I experience it too in very crowded places, like on the expressway where traffic is stopped. Hopefully band 2 gets upgraded to 15 mhz. All clues point to it happening, considering there is a 10 mhz chunk of the PCS A block sitting unused right now and they wouldn't have moved UMTS off of that for no reason.
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I thought it was obvious myself. Sprint would've been very stupid not to bid on 600, what low band they have now is not enough.
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I don't think they're clear enough in the ads to consider it not sneaky. But yes that's what I meant, it requires a new line on installment and they credit it. It's really nothing more than a "free contract phone" when comparing it to the old ways. The deal is misleading because it is by no means what one thinks when they hear "Bogo" but rather twisting the words to the limits of its meaning to favor their terms and conditions. It's only a good deal and not misleading if one is already adding a line or switching carriers.
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The BoGo offers have strings by the carrier too. T-Mobile and AT&T require you add a NEW line and AT&T (probably T-Mobile as well) set it up as a credit to a payment plan, so you're locked in all around. Can't just up and sell the device it's tied to an account and to a payment plan. Basically it's one of those "free" contract phones where you're locked into a comittment only a shit ton sneakier. It's one of the more clever smoke and mirrors tricks I've seen the carriers come up with.
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Well if you do decide to try them stick to a corporate store or order online. Go for unlimited if you have directv or Uverse TV. Otherwise, after you've been a customer for a day or two call Retentions and ask for the 20 gig $100 plan. (They've also been offering 30 gigs for $130, or apparently there's a 10 GB data add on available for $20, via Retentions as well). If you add a discount do it online don't bother with a store, it's easy to do online and fully automated and applies fairly quickly. I realized something, if/when AT&T gets B2 up to 15x15 and with B30 rolling out at 10x10 they will have 90 MHz of LTE running in Chicago. That'll give sprint and especially Verizon a run for its money, at least until VZW starts refarming it's PCS. T-Mobile better do something quick, they're getting left in the dust very quickly with their measly 15x15 setup.
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I think AT&T is getting ready to bump band 2 LTE up to 15x15 in the Chicago market. I noticed just on Saturday that the UARFCN for Band 2 HSPA+ changed from 462 to 612. I looked up the frequencies of those UARFCN's and cross referenced to their spectrum holdings and it aligns perfectly with them moving HSPA+ from PCS A block to PCS F block. So that leaves all 30 mhz of the A block open for B2 LTE (so far 10x10 is deployed on that block)
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T-Mobile has done all they can here short of acquiring more spectrum and eventually refarming PCS. They already kicked HSPA off of AWS for one, and I know PCS refarming is right around the corner. In Lake County, IN they actually do have 20x20 LTE here. Reason they have it is because they swapped licenses with AT&T to make their whole AWS block contiguous. I would say that they have done a great job making do with what they have. Now they just need to get PCS LTE online and get to buying that damn 700 A block already. I still believe it's a matter of when not if.
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They really should get to doing this sooner than later. Nobody cares about 2G anymore and M2M can work fine on guard bands, AT&T has been doing it that way for several years now. Even 3G can suffer to the benefit of LTE, most users have LTE phones anyway. The ones without can either deal or upgrade (they probably wouldn't notice anyway given the age of their phone and light usage habits). The way it is now, T-Mobile has reached its maximum capacity and can't handle any more new subs until this is done.
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I heard that Laser has already reached an agreement with Fox over that issue. So when T-Mobile gets the spectrum it should be usable right away.
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As far as I'm concerned "5G" is just a variation of 4G/LTE. I distinctly remember hearing about LTE hitting 1 gbps a year or so back. I wonder if they'll market it as "5G LTE". Talk about confusing people. Most still don't know what LTE is. IDK how they'd make their big bucks getting people to upgrade anyway, considering whatever this "5G" is would just be more LTE, which even in a much faster iteration is still the same base technology unlike going from CDMA/WCDMA to LTE.
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This is just like the massive Midwest outage sprint had almost a year ago to the day (I believe it was March 1st or 3rd or somewhere around then). Anyone remember that one? It lasted the whole day, calls and text were broken but LTE and 3G data worked fine.
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Two of my friends, both in PA have been having issues with T-Mo. I can't help but laugh because when I had ported over to them a couple weeks ago one of the things that crossed my mind was that they haven't had an outage in awhile and then it played in my head that one will happen soon. I ported back to AT&T last weekend and here we are...
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They've refarmed some CLR in places where they hold A and B block and I heard mention of a place in NY that only has 5 MHz B17 getting 5 MHz B5 now too. I can't wait until they refarm the last of their PCS here.
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In my experience it has been handoff issues. Less commonly weak signal (almost never actually).
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No, long distance is handled by fiber! before fiber it was microwave, and before microwave it was very long copper lines. Satellite was never used for any day to day mainstream communications.
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Well I ended up reinstating my line with AT&T. Turns out if you do it within 60 days not only does everything go back the way it was, they can also reactivate the same SIM card, so I was able to do it Sunday evening over the phone so I didn't have to go to a store in the snowstorm that day. With T-Mo I didn't have enough data and more importantly the service across the border in IL is lacking compared to AT&T. Ironically T-Mobile blows the doors off AT&T in Lake County, IN but AT&T is usually usable and works most of the time here so I can't complain too much. (It's just that it's erratic, some days the network is great, and some it's an abomination, I blame their self optimizing software.)
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That was my theory. If every carrier worked, then the overall consumption numbers may be a good indicator as to the percentage of subs from each carrier that were there.
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I don't see how they could ignore the network here much longer. Part of the problem is they are spectrum constrained. Their next move will be refarming PCS, possibly shutting GSM off in the process and getting band 2 LTE up and running. I don't doubt that they already have this in the works for sometime this year, possibly late spring. If they waited any longer than that they'd start losing subs in the area and there's alot of them.
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I take back the good things I said about T-Mobile. Was downtown again this time at rush hour and it was HORRIBLE. pretty much 150 Kbps for blocks af a time, lost service at one point out on the street and towards Michigan avenue it was just more 150 Kbps speeds as well as calls not going through properly and dropping. I was seeing like 100-700 Kbps down while uplink was 3-15 Mbps. iPhone doesn't show SNR but the signal bars are based partly on that and I was seeing 1 bar quite a lot while signal was actually -96 dbm or so. There were a few spots in the 3-9 Mbps range but they were less common than the SLOW spots. I'll be porting out when my testing is done. I couldn't stay with T-Mobile unless they do something about their congestion downtown and around the city. I wouldn't have minded having a sprint line to test out, I'd bet they're fantastic downtown.
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So I was downtown today and saw this at Ontario and Wabash:
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I have to hand it to them they do an excellent job at making becoming a customer a very simple and polished experience. They also do an excellent job making sure their network works well where it does work barring any speed or signal related issues. Can't really say the same for their GSM counterpart that generally doesn't run as tight of a ship in terms of network consistency/quality.
