cortney

How's your negative (Sprint/T-Mobile/Verizon) anecdotal experience in which you're not even willing to share the general geographical area of coverage going to help any one of us relate or discuss? 

My location is not absent from my profile. You're also putting words in my mouth. I never said I had a negative experience with Sprint, so stop with the Fabian tactics. 

Mention 1: "Sprint's work-in-progress"

Mention 2: "Sprint is physically here, but they have a couple of noticeable holes and too much LTE left to deploy for my taste"

For AT&T, I even stated my experience may be anecdotal: "I might be a huge minority, but I've still yet to see the problems I know indeed do exist for others."

Where exactly are you that VZW is that bad and T-Mobile and Sprint are not in the game yet?

I'm normally don't entertain trolling, but I'll reiterate that I'm in a non-urban area, which in my case is a mix of suburbia and rural.

Sprint is physically here, but they have a couple of noticeable holes and too much LTE left to deploy for my taste (and roaming in the more rural areas, although that's not really a concern for me), so I can't quite use them as my primary yet. They are making progress, so hopefully by the end of this year. 

Hardly maintaining, as their data performance has been dropping, still no VoLTE or Carrier Aggregation rolled out in a meaningful number of Top markets. It's been a very sloppy job.

 

It seems to me that they've lost their focus and shifted resources and investment into Mexico, DTV, and small things that don't require almost any infrastructure investment like IoT (50¢ connected cars, homes, etc). That's where their "growth" comes from.

 

They've not been making their wireless subscribers happy in a long, long time, dropping a few hundred thousand prime postpaid phone subs for several quarters in a row.

I will attest that as a non-urban customer, AT&T makes me very happy and others who are stuck with VZW's non-competitiveness and sub-EV-DO speeds as the alternative (and T-Mobile's non-existence and Sprint's work-in-progress). That will continue to benefit them in many areas, which is why their churn is not as embarrassingly high, nor their situation as bleak as your statement would make them out to be.

Time will tell if AT&T will indeed truly fail to make their (all, or certain urban?) subscribers happy or if they will pick up the pace, as most of their rumored and alleged plans for getting down to business are not to be expected for several months, mainly mid and end-year. 

I'd say "maintaining" is even getting to be a stretch. With the reports from RootMetrics coming in, it sounds like a lot of places need updating. Even Robert has mentioned there are numerous sub-par areas.

This is 100% correct, but I'd like to mention I don't think AT&T is crumbling so fast in suburban/rural areas, or at least not as much.

I still have a far superior experience with AT&T to this day. I can virtually always pull a minimum of 10-15 down (not a speedtest fiend, but I do check occasionally and when I go to new places) on LTE and 3-5 on H+. I might be a huge minority, but I've still yet to see the problems I know indeed do exist for others. 

For comparison, I speedtested a VZW user's phone today to see humorously if they've given a care yet, and with a healthy signal and ping: ~0.40 megabits down and 1.5 up. This is commonplace for LTE for them for nearly a year now and zero concern from what some seem to think is the best carrier on the face of the earth. 

My point is, the big two are both licking the wounds they caused in places all over, where they banked on people accepting the quantity instead of quality while they've both failed to invest and deliver the combination of both in time for many.

Sprint is finally making it seem like their in it for the longhaul. With WiFi "roaming", small cells, and what seems like LTE-LAA, Sprint is in a great position in terms of their network.

For sure. Their gestures are showing how they want improvements every day for all users, instead of asking customers to play a 6/12 month waiting and "press your luck" game with "duopolist"-esque but unrealistic EOY maps and promises like another carrier. 

This is definitely a new Sprint, and although I think we all can't help but want more quicker, I think it really is coming at a reasonable pace and they aren't screwing around.  

I have to mention, I'm kinda sick of hearing about AT&T's North American fantasy. They want to go all Mexico happy when back at home: they still have holes in their LTE all over the place and no VoLTE in a ton of places (not an invitation for particularly VZW comparisons, especially for those in markets like mine), they still need to add CA to tons and tons of towers, and they still need to roll out WCS and start offering devices to be compatible with it.  

I'm not a particular fanboy of AT&T, but good lord could they be handing VZW's butt to them in the majority of markets if they gave half a damn. 

How about another multi-billion purchase, Ma Bell? Just for fun!

Have you seen the DT capital markets day slide of coverage improvement?

They're increasing lte coverage from 0.6 to 1.6 mil sq miles EoY 2015.

 

I don't live in a concrete jungle and lte coverage is good (suburbs), some parts fall to Hspa outside.

 

In conference call they said they're not relying on getting more 700a to reach 300mil lte.

 

Don't know if there will be densification for not so well covered suburbs.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Have you seen this clip from DT Capital Markets Day that like 3 different people have pointed out in the past couple months (not on this forum)? 

It's interesting to hear the CEO of DT talk as a businessman as opposed to the warm cocoon of delusional optimism and cherry-picked "facts" from the T-Mobile team. 

Where T-Mobile lacks low-band, they automatically lack much indoor coverage. Where T-Mobile lacks density (virtually all suburbs and outward, and even worse than sparse in rural areas), they lack any reliable coverage, period.

I don't care what lies Legere and Ray and any of the team wants to give the magenta children to run around shouting for the next 6 months. The reality is: T-Mobile is non-existent or almost always completely unreliable in the majority of the suburbs, commuter towns, and rural areas in this country. They are an urban carrier and that sucks for everyone outside of cities, which is surprisingly more than 1% of this country's population. 

That coverage map will not be achieved (common sense). How much will actually get done? Well time can only tell. Not T-Mobile's "spot-free and perfect track record" like many magenta mouthpieces on other mediums have be raving about endlessly. 

Legere is a master at marketing and it shows.  With 1.3% churn, it doesn't seem like anyone is leaving T-Mobile.

I'm not so sure about that. Maybe some or most urban customers are staying, but unless it clearly continues, it's a fluke to me.

Non-urban T-Mo users are flocking and this is very abundantly evidenced in part by the increase of people giving it back to the trolls on fanboy war-zones like TMoNews and FierceWireless, and throughout social media. This "trolling the trolls" and "fact checking" minority has recently exploded from "one in the bunch" to several on nearly every post, on T-Mobile videos on YouTube, on forums and blogs, etc.

From the many stories, much of the ongoing churn ranges from:

-People switching from AT&T, and go over the river and through the woods, back home to Ma Bell.

-People going from Sprint to T-Mobile and heading over to Verizon like everyone else they know uses (still too common  )

-People who have tried them all recently except AT&T and T-Mobile and after T-Mobile fails, head over to Cricket/GoPhone and are shocked how close/superior AT&T's coverage is to Verizon and how the 10-year-old FUD perceptions everyone has/had were untrue

-People ditching VZW and using T-Mobile to try them and for the ETF payment, then take their new GSM phone once unlocked to AT&T

And so on so forth.

There are also certain T-Mobile users that only use them as a secondary (so even though they hate the service a portion or most of the time, they technically haven't left yet to contribute to the churn), and are getting fed up and considering leaving. Many T-Mobile users are also staying with spotty service, "backhaulless" 3G or as bad as sporadic 2G with non/partner service in hopes it will improve, but they will also eventually get fed up and leave. 

My intentions are not to rail T-Mobile and discredit them or their progress, however I'm sick and tired of the constant and excessive benefit of the doubt, defending, and praising of magenta from many people in one way or another (this rant is not towards you, but in general).

I do want them to be around with Sprint to give it back to the big two and help for competition's sake. However, for those who do not inhabit a 3-5 block radius in a concrete jungle their whole lives, or live in the lucky areas with a little B12 and denser coverage even extending a bit into some suburbs: the problems often far outweigh the benefits of the occasional islands of LTE and fast speeds for the e-penis. If Sprint isn't in these many many areas yet, it's "two" or nothing.

T-Mobile is just not a non-urban competitor, and it sucks. 

Cause Softbank+Sprint is more/less worthy of backing than DT+Tmobile

Shouldn't you be on FierceWireless? 

Call it 'network management.'  Call it 'throttling'.  Call it whatever you want - peoples speeds are being reduced due to overuse and/or congestion.

 

So unlimited.  Much 'Uncarrier.'

Yes. Unfortunately, just because it's T-Mobile doesn't mean you can suck 100-500GBs a month at anywhere from 40/10 to 100/30 megabits down/up and it will last. The inevitable has happened, no surprise. They're throttling, no matter what the "UnCarrier" euphemism is.

I'd love to know which area of NYC was this, and how many months/years ago did you experience this? I'll be willing to test it out myself.

 

That behavior is nothing like what I've been seeing in NYC as all sites have 40Mbps max rate set on LTE sectors, and that's at the very minimum. Most of them are at 80Mbps.

 

It doesn't make very much sense, especially since you're saying that the latency stayed low.

People constantly misconstrue that metro doesn't mean just the city, but the entire area as a large.

I apologize for the confusion. No, I don't live in NYC; I'm in the suburbs. 

What do you call the problem on T-Mobile where you get like 0.01 to 0.10 megabits down/up and occasionally give or take 1 megabit? All with a good signal, outdoors (for this example), good ping, but not throttled/over your limit? DSL backhaul  ?

But really, I saw it a million times when I tried them. The towers were not under load (if under any load at all because no one in my area uses T-Mobile). Only a couple areas had "functional" HSPA+ (even though practically all their coverage was marked as LTE, 95% of it wasn't). 3 pm or 3 am; wouldn't matter. 

Ironically the one area I'd get good HSPA+ speeds from had like two outages over the 2 months I used T-Mobile for 1-2 days at a time. 

overused meme

http://www.cricketusers.com

???

That dates back to the days of cricKet CDMA (Leap Wireless), and now continues on for Cricket under AT&T. Not quite the same but I guess it's the closest as any GSM network discussion is indeed of AT&T.

Simply because their god and savior John of Legere told them so. Plus they have those coverage maps which show Verizon'esq coverage coast to coast that they claim will be available by EOY.

Not to drift off-topic, but I find it entertaining that the timeline was supposed originally to be EOY 2014 IIRC.

Then the wildly spread myth that it would be half complete 2014 and "substantially" complete mid-2015. Oh, now it's right around the corner from mid-2015 and not even a fraction of what they claimed would be done is done as per their own coverage maps and crowd-source maps, so now the new bogus claim is it will be all done EOY 2015, and then what? "Substantially" complete by Mid 2016 and then EOY 2016 and substantially complete mid-2017 and EOY 2017, and on and on and on. It's just ludicrously pathetic. How about EOY 2020? Sounds slightly more realistic.

We've all caught on to the mid-year EOY game they're playing to mask the ridiculously slow / non-progress outside of urban cores, *yawn*. Even Nextel blew T-Mobile out of the water before their sunset in suburban and certain rural areas.

T-Mobile band 12 deployment is not putting any significant pressure on Sprint band 26 deployment anywhere.  The unwashed masses of users on both sides have practically zero knowledge of the behind the scenes low/mid/high band machinations.  Only we few semi professionals and advanced users care.

 

And, in San Bernardino County, if any pressure is being applied, Sprint is the one applying it -- to the FCC to force the incorrigible rebanders to move their shit.  What T-Mobile is doing is not a concern.

 

AJ

lol... I too don't understand the hype behind T-Mobile's minuscule band 12 deployment. CH51 complete handicaps them in their most important markets. I remember some trolls were actually asking AT&T and Verizon users if they were jealous of T-Mobile's band 12. It's just another excuse for magenta children to whine about how far they think their carrier is coming, meanwhile any combination of all other 3 carriers complete trump them in 99.9% of all markets and places. 

Yeah, AT&T needs to increase their capital spend big time and get those additional relief bands deployed!  As an AT&T customer, I am seeing first hand wherever I travel significant decreases.  It's great for me in rural areas, but in the cities it is unusable in many urban areas.  

I agree. AT&T needs to CA with PCS/AWS like mad and roll out the WCS fast. They already have done some PCS CAing in NJ, so I don't know what's holding them up from doing far more. 

Outside of NYC in the tri-state area, I'm happy to use AT&T over VZW. My calls no longer drop constantly on highways and back roads or go to voicemail, and whenever I want to just Google something or stream a video or some music, it just works. 

VZW was the worst data experience I've ever had from 2012 to this year, luckily not my personal phone. I do agree the results are humiliating, but I think people forget that the only reason VZW is still afloat in the speed category is the initial boost from throwing AWS around, and a user base largely in fear of using data due to extortionate prices. There are way more ways to use more data for cheap on AT&T and I think this and the fact that AT&T is not keeping up is the reason for this. 

AT&T is definitely crumbling, but for exceptions like me they aren't, and where Sprint has more 3G and roaming than LTE to this day (I'm crossing my fingers for a 180 turnaround by the end of this year), I really can't afford to ditch AT&T quite yet because they blow everyone else away where I work and play. I'm hoping and waiting for Sprint, but it's not worth my time or money yet. Then go into rural areas, and forget it; not even VZW users get a signal where I do. 

4. In every year of testing before this, Sprint has had 0. This is actually great comparatively.

Another thought I've had is outside of the metro markets. Not only are there still more markets to be unveiled, but unlike downTown urban Mobile: Sprint is making a lot of these noticeable improvements in suburbs, commuter towns, and highways throughout states.

I can't wait to see reports for states for both the first and second halfs of the year, because that will also show another light of Sprint improvements. 

Ive entirely stopped commenting there because I was tired of them.

 

That site is over run by trolls.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6 using Crapatalk

I hate to beat a dead horse, but yeah. That site's comments is just anarchy. The combination of total lack of moderating and trolls running freely thinking they own the place and posting the most obscene personal attacks is just... bleh. I don't even bothering checking the site for news either, as now it seems their authors seem to be spinning for T-Mobile.

I propose they redecorate the site (and its already butt-ugly UI) with magenta instead. I guess Tmonews needed competition, I dunno. 

It was probably Fabian.

Yes, in a desperate attempt to help rid the world of the evil Sprint and convert all the other oppressed "twin bell" customers to T-Mobile's <precisely mimic marketing garble> network with ~450 million pops covered and 310 pops of LTE.