payturr

I think everyone here has a bit of neighborhood bias. Nextgencpu has great experience in NYC's network, I have a pretty good but sometimes crappy experience in NYC. Kg4icg has a great time in DC, Terrell doesn't. Terrell thinks Southeast states network is bad, I think Sprint in Southwest Florida is pretty solid. Ultimately, it comes down to the person in question and what their opinion of good service is. If a person wants to go with Sprint, don't steer them against it or to it, just say give it a try. If it's for them, they stay, if its not, they won't. Telling them what to do isn't the best advice.

There's probably a lot more push back from small cells simply because of how noticeable they are. I feel like a macro site can be put 3 miles away and still give you strong coverage whereas a small cell could be right across the street from you and is much more noticeable which will get NIMBYs to be even more outspoken. Also the sheer volume of permits makes it harder since whoever is looking through them has to make sure that if they're erecting a pole it is in a goof spot or in the case of NYC, if there is even space on the pole.

I understand 2000 is a lot but I don't agree with the idea that people are really complaining about the appearance of these poles. Verizon, T-Mobile/Metro, and AT&T/Cricket were able to build out dense small cell networks in a few cities including NYC, no one ever says anything and the performance of their networks have been proven to be rather stellar as a result. There has to be more going on here than just appearances that is holding Sprint back.

You are referencing something that you are shortsighted in forgetting that T-Mobile had to turn themselves around to become profitable with a couple of CEO changes and such. As what Sprint is going thru to, as is blackberry and a few other companies that are restructuring the way they do business. It doesn't happen overnight and this armchair CEO stuff from some who aren't even in a business oriented way is getting tiresome. I guess next you might want to tell my big boss Fred Smith how he should run his company.

No, my point is that DT didn't buy T-Mobile when everything was tough. They bought T-Mobile in a time of growth given VoiceStream was new and had just got spun off from their owners. T-Mobile hit hard times later on in the 2000s much after DT's purchase. SoftBank bought Sprint at a bad time knowing things were gonna suck. To compare the two isn't fair because they have very different situations; DT kept trying to sell T-Mobile during the bad times.

And exactly how much did DT have to pony out for T-Mobile US before they started becoming profitable recently. Man do people look at things with blinders on to much. Stop and think about it before you go on. Because T-Mobile US only became profitable in the last couple of years.

DT didn't buy T-Mobile US, they bought VoiceStream which became T-Mobile US. Furthermore, it was 2001, when voice service was all that was important and broadband internet still wasn't a thing. They didn't realize what was coming. SoftBank knew what to expect.

What a turnaround if Dt bought sprint???

I believe the next few months will be a show all.

If sprint doesn't make significant gains in the network by say end of Sept it could be a very long winter for sprint.

 

Half off has been running a over a year now??? Hoping for change.

Everyone looks at another buyout to fix Sprint's debt; will never happen. Nobody will buy a company for such large liabilities at this point, SoftBank bought Sprint and has had 0 return in the past 2 years, in fact Sprint has been costing them a fortune. On top of this, they never paid Sprint's debt, nor will anyone else.

 

No one is gonna buy Sprint from SoftBank. They just don't have that much value. Every company who's interested is better off waiting for a bankruptcy so they can swoop in and buy their spectrum holdings.

 

Sprint has to plug holes in their network that are inconsistent, lack coverage, and provide poor performance and they need to dump their branding. That's the only way they can get out of this rut and pay their bills before it's too late. A new name that performs as well if not better than the competition will lead to new customers and a chance at raising the ARPU to a level where they're posting a profit and shrinking their debt.

Looks like John Saw (CTO) and Gunther Ottendorfer (COO, Technology) are making an appearance at the 5G Demonstration at Levi's Stadium in Santa Clara, California this coming Friday: Link

Very interested to see what Sprint's plans for 5G roll out is

Hey everyone, I'm out in Lehigh Acres 33974 for the summer. First I gotta say LTE coverage is really impressive, hard to find yourself on 3G unless you find yourself in my house. But speeds are pretty respectable so no complaints, I love it! Far better than New York. Interestingly enough, my neighborhood's local telephone lines were wired by Sprint before they spun off the service into Embarq, which is cool. All in all very satisfied with the results of NV and, as a New Yorker living here, I love this town!

That's simply not true. If all carriers had the same amount of paired spectrum, then they would have even more reason to stand out against their competitors. At the end of the day, its all about the money, and Evdo, WCDMA, HSPA, and LTE would have been ways to gain a competitive advantage against competitors.

 

As a matter of fact, our wireless industry started out in a similar way you set your example. Two simple Cellular blocks for each market.

But our wireless industry didn't start out with 4 national guys, it was a bunch of tiny regional companies. Arysyn is talking about 4 companies controlling all the spectrum in equal divisions in all markets, not a small guy controlling half here and there.

Wow, what twisted logic!

Gotta admit, I'm pretty cynical.

 

Going to what you were saying about the word, I know the world would continue to advance in terms of tech and what not but like I was saying the US would have little incentive to adopt a newer tech & help develop existing tech. I think the current system of eratic, uneven holdings helps keeps the industry on its toes.

 

Just my 2 cents though!

I have no problem with 7mbs, what I do have a problem with is that not actually being NYC's average.

 

I'm pretty certain it's probably nearly double that in the five borough's and ATT is probably closer to half their recorded speed.

 

T-Mobile is certainly not 3 times faster in NYC, it's probably pretty close give or take a few MBs.

Well it's not the average, it's the median. Two very different things my friend!

http://rootmetrics.com/en-US/rootscore/map/metro/new-york-city-and-tri-state-area/2016/1H

 

Is new york this bad according to the report? Even after 2xCA, this seems odd to me. 

I mean it's not bad. 93 is far better than a 60, and it's an A- technically to my college. I'm fine with it! Nothing wrong with 7Mbps median download. Just need to improve that 7Mbps to point of consistency in terms of LTE footprint.

My dad's 5s died, so he went to Sprint to see what we can do. On ED1500 currently, he was offered to switch to the new XXL 40GB plan. All four of us are still on contract, but apparently the manager is able to waive the contract access fee on all my lines? Is this part of this big sale or is a separate thing Sprint started doing? I asked for it on paper as proof but got nothing, and I'm full of doubt.

The point of my idea here is that it would improve the service for many people. If the government worked out a fair deal among the carriers, which I admit it would be easier to do a 45x45 per company for three national carriers than to do a 30x30 per company for four national carriers, which is my preference. I know it isn't a popular opinion for many that there'd be only three national carriers in the U.S. than four, but it really seems to be headed towards that, which if it does, it would make it easier to not need these spectrum auctions, then simply divide the available spectrum as a whole, not just what isn't being leased. Rework those leasing agreements to give an equal share among the carriers for a fair flat fee "rental" of the spectrum to be paid over time. This will involve reworking how spectrum bands are planned out, which if the FCC and the carriers work together on this, it could give them a lot of spectrum among each carrier to officially put a near close to spectrum capacity concerns, and let the carriers compete on what matters, pricing and services.

 

There will still be fun things to discuss around here though. These carriers will have their focus on network sites and equipment even more than now, as they'll need to develop their networks to work with the new spectrum arrangements. This is what will carry them into the future and make things much better for consumers. Of course, as much as I am interested in the spectrum side of things with this, my main outlook is to get the network quality here in the U.S. so amazing and lucrative, it will drive interest in more competition here among device manufacturers. I'd like to see companies from Asia such as Vivo, Oppo, Meizu, Xiaomi, etc. all decide to sell devices for the U.S. market. That will help to improve technologies here at a higher rate bringing more meaningful value to consumers here than even spectrum will.

My point is it would hinder services for people which you keep seeming to miss. 30x30 sounds great NOW that we have LTE but if it was 30x30 for everyone during the beginning of cellular networks with AMPS, no one would have moved pasted cdmaOne or GSM because there would be no point. All carriers would have equal spectrum holdings with equal speeds and would have little to no incentive to innovate. We all would suffer because of the equality on their level. It's bad for business, it's bad for us. They wouldn't give a damn about network tech, they would just build out coverage and charge for minutes and texts and whatever little data we get.

Madison, WI? T-Mobile barely has spectrum there. Might explain why they suck there.

 

NY isn't that spectrum rich either but the head engineer there, Salim Kouidri, is really good.

 

Sent from my SM-N920V using Tapatalk

Proves a point - T-Mobile doesn't even have 100MHz of spectrum in NYC, but they innovated to make a total of 60MHz KILL. Giving everyone an equal footing will not breed innovation. 

Carriers don't advertise spectrum amounts though. Really the only people who know about spectrum besides the FCC, carrier employees and engineers, people in the industry pretty much, are people who read about wireless technology online. Carriers do however advertise their network, which while spectrum is an important part to the network, it isn't much a part of the marketing. Most consumers when they here about network, they think of which carrier has the most towers in the area in which they travel or are located in. They may even search online for tower maps and reviews of area-specific network experiences from other people who write about it online. In most cases, those reviews will be about the signal quality and data speed, sometimes along with tower information, though certainly not as detailed to the extent as what can be found and learned here on S4GRU.

 

Yet, rarely anything much about spectrum, and probably is a major reason why in cases such as with Sprint, they advertise saying stuff like "Spark" back when that term was used, and now "LTE Plus". Sprint doesn't come out saying "Enjoy 50% off on the amazingly fast 2x carrier aggregation network which uses 40mhz of spectrum that can be used in a variety of ways to service the download or the upload, whereas our competitors who in some areas though no where near as much as ours, use 40mhz as 20x20 spectrum. They can't be as flexible with their spectrum as we can with our spectrum. We simply have the best spectrum, period!" Same way T-Mobile doesn't advertise their band 12 700mhz spectrum as just that. Instead, it is the "Extended Range LTE".

 

Regarding the carriers having the same amount of spectrum nationwide as boring, really doesn't apply here. Just ask anyone what their network experiences would be like going from one well-built area to another using 30x30 spectrum. Say if this spectrum amount were true across the four nationwide carriers. Then tell people about it and hear their reactions as they go around with their devices in these well-built areas (in terms of network build) rarely ever going into a congested area, pretty much most of the time getting a minimum of 15mbps to 18mbps which is the speed I've heard from some power users they'd be acceptable/comfortable with for a speed cap if this speed could be maintained. However, in the scenario of 30x30 spectrum nationwide across carriers, most people would get speeds far greater than that much of the time without a speed cap set to that.

 

I'd very much guarantee most of the people asked what they think under those network conditions would say how wonderful things have become for them using the networks. Of course, there ought to be appropriate safeguards to prevent network abuse I'd imagine could still greatly hinder even a 30x30 x 3 network. Oh, one correction, on high-band it wouldn't be 30x30, but 60mhz. I just like using the average equivalent it could be run at with 3xca which I believe high-band ought to be TDD, while the mid-band and lower-band remain FDD. The point however, is I seriously doubt people would be saying this situation as "boring" I doubt people actually like seeing their network quality fluctuate to being crappy in certain areas and thinking, "Well, at least this 5x5 network isn't 30x30. Those much better speeds I'd be getting then would be oh so boring!"

It's boring because no one would try, that's what you're missing. If I have 240MHz of spectrum and the guy next to me has 240MHz and the guy behind me also has 240MHz, what's the point? I'm not making new tech to squeeze the most out of it. I'm just gonna chill cause regardless of the situation we will all have the same speeds and capacity at the end of the day. Tech innovation ceases, no one has "lightning fast" or "extended range" LTE. Because it's ALL THE SAME.

 

The way the system is makes people get to WORK. Verizon knew CDMA wasn't gonna last, they needed more. What did they do? Throw 20MHz, a TINY SLIVER, at LTE and made a network exponentially faster than the existing one. That's innovation. The threat of death because of small spectrum holdings keeps carriers on their toes. If everyone has equal holdings, nothing is interesting. I am interesting and you are interesting because I am me and you are you. If we had the same opinions and thoughts, we'd be boring.

I still have 3 3g gmo's in Granville, OH and it's ridiculous to talk about 5g when I don't have b26 or a full 4g rollout!

 

Sent from my SM-G935P using Tapatalk

5G is important because it offers new sources of revenue with greater return which means Sprint can invest in Granville OH and give you guys 4G and even 5G

However, I don't see how there couldn't be a system where each carrier in the current four carrier market couldn't have 30x30 low-band, 30x30 mid-band, and 30x30 high-band. This would resolve much of the congestion issues on the networks. There would need to be some difficult changes made to do this, but with technology advancing though I still believe it could be quicker in the wireless market if certain things were done, there ought to be some changes made to the access of spectrum.

 

The reason that doesn't exist is because they don't have the money, and if the FCC gave 30x30 of every band type the market would be BORING. Like SO BORING. Who would bother trying if they each have the same amount? It's unexciting, it's not sexy, and it makes for bad marketing.

 

The current situation makes stuff exciting! T-Mobile is FANTASTIC in NYC but is pure CRAP in Madison! That spurs competition that makes Sprint VZ and AT&T take shots at them, it keeps marketing fresh, innovation fresh, and the industry being something worth talking about.

 

Who would make MIMO if we all have the same amount spectrum? There's no point

I still think spectrum is too expensive. Understandably it is worth it for carriers to pay when they really need the spectrum and I don't think carriers should avoid purchasing the spectrum at these rates. However, I would like it if the spectrum cost less and carriers could purchase more of it while still having money to spend on upgrading their networks. I know there are the two forms of opinion on what to do, whether to buy more spectrum at higher rates then deal with its deployment the best way possible, or use the spectrum carriers have in the most efficient ways by focusing on site expansion, upgrades, etc. I believe both ought to be possible. I hate how there almost always seems to be sacrifses to achieve something that will never be "complete". Yes it is the way the world works, but I really think people ought to be striving for something better.

There's no such thing as "too expensive" in a capitalist market.

 

Spectrum is a finite resource much like oil, except far more finite since we have an exact idea of what frequencies we can use and for what. Because of this, the cost of spectrum per individual it can cover is of course gonna be a fortune. Once all the spectrum has been divided and sold, it's gone forever (unless someone goes bankrupt or this ridiculous incentive auction).

 

If there's someone willing to pay, it's not too expensive.

Ok thanks!

Wow I'm LATE

Sorry Deval finals are hell! But as I promised, screenshots of 39991 still live on Baruch College campus

 

Verizon is behind.

Oh I'm well aware. One thing to keep in mind however is the range. 1.8Gbps over 0.6 miles of coverage is rather impressive!

I think we're all worrying about this capex too much. It's been recently revealed that Twin Bells also cut their capex, T-Mobile is the only one increasing capex, which they need because they have many lone 700MHz towers that need UMTS and higher capacity LTE in their rural expansion. Majority of Sprint's towers are upgraded, and the remaining GMOs that need upgrades won't need as high as a capex as previous years did, especially since the cost of equipment they're purchasing has most likely dropped in price. Sprint's just gotta focus on densifying. I don't care if my speeds are 110Mbps or 15Mbps I just want some damn consistency, and Sprint is looking to deliver that consistency. Stop panicking about the capex.

Verizon's CEO claims to have produced 1.8Gbps in Basking Ridge with their 5G fixed tests. That's EXTREMELY underwhelming.. Unless it was a small 40MHz chunk or with existing spectrum.

 

McAdam does state fixed wireless gives you all the return on capital you need, so it definitely looks like they wanna become a WISP. Super neat! Source here: http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizons-mcadam-5g-fixed-deployment-gives-you-all-return-capital-you-need/2016-05-24

Interesting; I'm planning to go to the kickoff game in Santa Clara on June 3 and Great America next door either that day or the day after. I doubt that there will be any noticeable effects but I'll keep an eye out.

You won't notice because it'll be on their own private testing equipment. However, if they do a demo on a big screen and tell people how fast it is, please let us know!

Thoughts on what he'll say?

 

Sprint CFO Tarek Robbiati to Speak May 25th at the J.P. Morgan 44th Annual Global Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) Conference

"We now have our 2.5 network reinforced in major cities under LTE Plus thanks to carrier aggregation and MIMO. Our speeds have essentially doubled and are much faster than the competition according to Nielson ratings. Our densification plan is rolling out and in affected neighborhoods the customer response has been positive in terms of speeds and coverage. We will have 2/3 of major cities covered by the end of next year. We've cut a lot from our budget and Claure keeps finding new ways to do so without damaging the quality of the network. We posted a positive operating income and will continue to increase in subscribers thanks to the increased LTE Plus coverage. We're on track to posting a positive net income."

 

Not too hard to predict what Sprint management say at this point. 

Currently it may be very unlikely, though with a major pro-business FCC in place after the elections if it goes that way, then it may be likely, probably more so than Donald Trump naming John Legere as VP while he has a drunk leprechaun riding around on a unicorn with lightning rods for horns in the shape of "11" for Uncarrier 11, offering T-Mobile customers free birth control pills.

More like pro-monopoly. There's no competition between AT&T and Verizon as it stands! They just hangout and do what they can and don't even bother to make the other work cause they essentially have equal footing in terms of subscribers. In a world where they're the two only carriers, it would be crap for everyone, nobody wins everybody loses. In fact I bet everyone would give up on 5G and start charging $80 a GB. 

 

Everybody needs to drop talk about anybody merging after the new administration comes to office, its never gonna happen. Especially a Sprint/T-Mobile merger. The US government had to investigate for quite awhile when Softbank bought Sprint and the deal seemed very volatile at the point. 2 years later Softbank is struggling because of Sprint, and people think its plausible that Masayoshi Son will further burden his company with debt. Softbank has enough debt operating on its own as well as the buyout from Sprint and Clear. Sure they can do a leveraged buyout, but that can blow back HARD and then we're left with two carriers.

 

The US needs four carriers. Twin bells don't compete, they just sit back and make money because they're both equally respected. No one who has AT&T says Verizon sucks and vice versa. It's just a matter of who would you rather give your money up to. Sprint offers cheap unlimited data while T-Mobile breaks everything that a traditional carrier does and makes it sexy for everyone, and now all four are building superfast reliable networks. Any of them merging will screw up a careful balance in place and honestly, there are no benefits if anyone merges.

 

EDIT: Verizon CEO's comment on buying a big network company: https://twitter.com/FierceWireless/status/735081759621009413