RedSpark

How do you avoid roaming charges? Put your phone in Airplane Mode? Is it possible to prevent domestic roaming on iOS now?

Nice catch there. If Sprint can do this for International Roaming Usage, why is it so restrictive on Domestic Roaming Usage.

Full LTE speed until 10 GB. 2G afterwards. Correct on AutoPay. Also requires eBill enrollment. You can also get a $5/month corporate discount per line.

The thing about deprioritization is that it's set up in such a way that you may never even be affected by it or notice it if you are. Dr. Saw (Sprint CTO) explained how it worked here: http://newsroom.sprint.com/blogs/sprint-perspectives/protecting-the-97.htm "This QoS practice is intended to protect against a small minority of unlimited customers who use high volumes of data and unreasonably take-up network resources during times when the network is constrained. It’s important to note that this QoS technique operates in real-time and only applies if a cell site is constrained. Prioritization is applied or removed every 20 milliseconds. And performance for the affected customer returns to normal as soon as traffic on the cell site also returns to normal, or the customer moves to a non-constrained site." You might not even notice this happening at all, given the 20ms cycle... or be able to distinguish it from normal congestion.

Sprint finally got International Roaming done right. I'll bet SoftBank, with its clout, helped negotiate this. http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/sprints-industry-leading-international-service-just-got-even-better-for-connecting-while-traveling-abroad.htm Very competitive offering in my opinion. Well done, Sprint. Well done.

You can get deprioritization even by staying on an older Unlimited Plan. Sprint's Network Management policy: https://www.sprint.com/legal/open_internet_information.html?ECID=vanity:networkmanagement Quality of Service (QoS): To help protect against the possibility that unlimited data plan customers that use high volumes of data may occupy an unreasonable share of network resources, Sprint employs network prioritization or QoS on the Sprint network. Customers who choose unlimited data handset plans launched on or after October 16, 2015, or customers who choose to upgrade their handsets or activate new lines of service on or after October 16 and are on unlimited data plans, that use more than 23GB (to be adjusted periodically) of data during a single billing cycle will be de-prioritized for the remainder of that billing cycle as compared to other customers at times and places where the availability of network resources is constrained. Affected unlimited data customers will continue to be able to enjoy unlimited amounts of data without the worry of overage charges or hard, full time bandwidth reductions. Customers subject to prioritization may experience reduced throughput and increased latency compared to other customers on the constrained site and as compared to their normal experience on the Sprint network. Unlimited customers may also notice temporary changes in the performance of data intensive applications such as streaming video or online gaming when subject to prioritization. These temporary reductions in performance will only occur at times and places where capacity is constrained. Performance will return to normal as soon as the resource constraints have been relieved or the customer has relocated to a non-constrained location. Unlimited data customers potentially subject to lower QoS will be notified when their individual data usage reaches approximately 75% of 23 GB so that they may modify their usage to avoid network management practices that may result in slower data speeds. We will also notify customers when they have reached the 23 GB threshold and are now subject to de-prioritization. ___________ The key sentence: "Customers who choose unlimited data handset plans launched on or after October 16, 2015, or customers who choose to upgrade their handsets or activate new lines of service on or after October 16 and are on unlimited data plans, that use more than 23GB (to be adjusted periodically) of data during a single billing cycle will be de-prioritized for the remainder of that billing cycle as compared to other customers at times and places where the availability of network resources is constrained." So you can be deprioritized even if you stay on an older plan and upgrade devices. However, I don't believe deprioritization takes effect on a plan if you do BYOD... at least based on how this is written. Having 10 GB of Hotspot per line on Unlimited Freedom is great!

Sorry friend... I don't know why reps are so misinformed on this stuff. It's on the damn website! Marcelo needs to give some one-pagers with this plan information to every rep. Then again, if they purposefully lied, they should be written up by management.

https://www.sprint.com/landings/unlimited-cell-phone-plans/index.html?INTNAV=TopNav:Shop:UnlimitedPlans "Usage Limitations: To improve data experience for the majority of users, throughput may be limited, varied or reduced on the network. Sprint may terminate service if off-network roaming usage in a month exceeds: (1) 800 min. or a majority of min.; or (2) 100MB or a majority of KB. Prohibited use rules apply — see sprint.com/termsandconditions."

The end of 2 Year Contracts has accelerated this transition of customers off of Subsidized plans (Everything Data/Unlimited My Way) and onto Unsubsidized plans like Unlimited Freedom. It'll be interesting to see the plan type (Unsubsidized vs. Subsidized) percentage breakdown in the upcoming Earnings Call Investor Update document. Here's the one from the last Earnings Call (Page 9): http://s21.q4cdn.com/487940486/files/doc_financials/quarterly/2016/Q3/3_Fiscal-3Q16-Sprint-Quarterly-Investor-Update-FINAL.pdf. "Postpaid phone customers on unsubsidized service plans^ represented 71 percent of the base at the end of the quarter, compared to 57 percent in the year-ago period and 67 percent in the prior quarter." The Loyalty Credit of $10/Month per line for leases/installments on these older plans isn't as good as the new plan pricing with installments or leases. I think Sprint will eventually pull the Loyalty Credit altogether when the number of customers on Subsidized plans drops sufficiently. Right now you have people transitioning from Legacy Plans or churning out. When it's small enough of a percentage with Loyalty Credits, I'll bet Sprint pulls them. Smart way to do it would be on the next customer upgrade, and to move them to an Unsubsidized plan.

In fact, B25 has been getting additional channel widths in a number of markets across the country. The goal with HPUE is to have B25/26 be the fallback for B41, especially with HPUE boosting B41 Outdoor Coverage area to nearly match B25 coverage outdoors and B41 indoor coverage to 90% penetration of B25 indoors. The idea is to have users on Band 41 all the time. Since new HPUE handsets are required to utilize HPUE, this device uptake number will be something to keep an eye on. S8/S8+ and LG G6 so far. We'll see what HTC and Apple come out with. Perhaps the next Pixel as well.

Oops! Lots of good threads on everything here. It was a good move to dump Open World. This is a better offer in my opinion and it's nice how you can activate it so easily while on a trip.

With enough CapEx and HPUE, this can happen nationwide. Hopefully Sprint gives us some more details about its network build/spend plans during the Earnings Call.

Sprint just updated Global Roaming: High speed (up to LTE Speeds) passes are available on a daily or weekly basis and can be purchased in-country. Open World is no longer offered for purchase.

I'd like to know the actual "conversion rate" (people who watch these ads that become new Sprint customers) or the "save rate" (Sprint customers who watch that stay Sprint customers and would otherwise leave). We could get this info with a survey.... and of course, doing a survey costs money for the participants as compensation. However, since we're dealing with such low view numbers for the videos so far, I don't think it really matters at all what these rates are. This is barely even a blip at this point. I agree with you completely. Makes no sense.

Günther was pretty specific in his phrasing, and lilotimz further clarified it. I don't think he meant POPs. This upcoming Earnings Call will be telling as far as Sprint's CapEx plans for this year. We're either going to be satisfied with their answers or we won't be. I don't want to prejudge, but Sprint needs to figure out how to really open the spigot and not spend its money on satire videos which have pretty low view counts. Seriously, look at the channel (https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7VOn09ACtvRfMPQzazOZzw) and see the number of views for these videos. No comments last I checked either. The metrics don't lie on customer engagement, no matter how many times they run the ads. UPDATE: Here's the Video View Count 3 Hours after uploading: 76 Views 61 Views 68 Views 113 Views 83 Views 126 Views The channel itself has 6,872 Subscribers.... which is not very many at all. Now look at the view counts of the other posted videos on that page. Except for a handful that really took off and got thousands, tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of views, it's pretty low numbers. I just don't see these ads "going viral". I just don't. What a waste of time and money in my opinion.

Thanks for clarifying this. Perhaps we'll also get a figure from Sprint how much of its network is 3xCA capable at this point. As I recall, these mini macros are not 3xCA capable.

I think if they were 1/3 as long, they'd be three times as funny. Needs more Paul and less fake Paul. This ad series totally missed the mark in my opinion. Whatever it cost should have been spent on CapEx instead.

Good catch. If we're able to discuss here, what percentage of Sprint sites are LTE? If not, I understand.

What was the basis for Günther's statement then? The "70%" number had to be based on something from Sprint's internal reports. What's the truth here, if we can discuss it in this general open thread? I understand if we can't of course b/c of site rules.

So it seems to come down to whether Sprint is right about doing a densified deployment of 2.5 GHz with CA and HPUE, combined with LTE over satellite for rural areas using Gilat (http://www.gilat.com/Gilat’s-Satellite-based-Cellular-Backhaul-Solution-Selected-by-Sprint-to-Extend-LTE-Services-to-Metro-Edge-and-Rural-Areas-in-the-US) or whether T-Mobile is right about 600 MHz being the future... because by spending nearly $8 Billion on this spectrum, I don't think they're buying anything else anytime soon.

Last we heard from Günther 3 months ago (https://www.reddit.com/r/Sprint/comments/5ipysj/2nd_ama_here_we_come/dba5dup/): "70% of our LTE sites have 2.5GHz. We are doing both. A lot of parallel work going on here as you can see..." Maybe we'll hear an update on this during the Earnings Call.

Either T-Mobile is right about low band spectrum or Sprint is right about high band spectrum.

"Making this timing all the more pressing for T-Mobile is the fact that 5G is supposed to start rolling out in 2020. That’ll start a new wireless battle right as T-Mobile is catching up to the last one." This is what the Sprint CFO was saying....

Good point on this. That's what Sprint's main point about 2.5 GHz is: That there's a well-established global ecosystem already behind it.

It's gradually rolling out to devices. This is a huge change for Sprint, and it's going to affect nearly the entire user base. Sprint needs to do this carefully and in stages to prevent a problem.