tommym65

2 PRL questions: 1. My local GS3's both have PRL 25014. (I have another one that currently lives in Milwaukee, where the following questions are currently irrelevant.) Is there any practical way to "urge" the GS3 to lock onto 800SMR where available? All the cells in my area have been upgraded to 800 except for one, which is (of course) the closest to me (I have verified this with Signal Check Pro). I get better voice/text when my GS3 is on 800SMR, but (as explained in Digiblur's Wall posts on PRLs [Thank you!]), once my phone locks onto 1900PCS, it tends to stay there, even when I move into an area where 800 is stronger. 2. One of my GS3's never seems to find 800SMR at all, and sometimes suffers from poor voice connections. Again, both phones are on PRL 25014. At times, I have placed both phones within inches of each other, and checked the connections with Signal Check: One will often be 1x800, the second will always be1xRTT. I have tried airplane mode on/off and rebooting, but the silly thing just blissfully stays locked on 1900. Can anyone explain this, or offer a suggestion to improve it?

Almost complete? Not really. Nearly 100% of Chicago market sites have had some NV work. (They had to: The new Samsung equipment was incompatible with the old Motorola stuff, and had to be replaced almost instantly, or the whole market would have crashed and burned -- some people thought that it did, in fact.) In some parts of Chicagoland, nearly 100% of sites have 4G LTE. In others, not so much. Downtown has a lot of holes. And out in the boonies where I live (McHenry County, which in my opinion is by far the most important place in the entire Sprint world, but is 45-55 miles from the Loop), fewer than 1/3 of sites have 4G LTE today (12 out of 38). Clearly, Hesse-san does not share my opinion about my own importance. Oh, well. 800 SMR has made a wide appearance all over the Chicago/Northern Illinois area (per Robert's maps, 11 of 38 sites in McHenry County, and many, many more all over the area, and actually a higher percentage than the maps would suggest, as I have found a lot of 800 SMR sites which are live, but not on the maps as 800). And largely because of the coverage improvements from 800, voice and text are much better in many places than they were last summer, at least for those phones which can use it. But NV coverage is still somewhat spotty and far from complete. An educated guess is that about 70-75% of Chicagoland sites currently have LTE, and that fewer than 40% have all 3 upgrades (800 SMR, 1900 3G, and 1900 LTE) installed. Thus, things are much better here than they were, and also better than in most Sprint markets, but not done yet!

How are you determining the tower locations? Sprint towers in Milwaukee do not broadcast their actual 1X locations, but rather show an offset for each sector, resulting in 3 mappable locations for each. For example, my daughter lives just south of UWM, and connects to a cell on an apartment building just a block away. But the mapping apps (SignalCheck Pro, Netmonitor, etc.) and the engineering screen latitude-and-longitude all locate one of the sectors somewhere out in Lake Michigan and a second sector for the same tower about a mile west (I haven't seen the 3rd one yet), so you would never find the tower by just looking at the reported location. There are Premier Sponsor maps which show the exact locations of all the NV sites in Milwaukee (and in most of the rest of the country), and once Robert posts a site as being In Progress or actually having an upgrade, that site shows by exact location on the national Sponsor map ( I was going to post the URL, but I'm not sure this is a Sponsor thread ). If you already knew this, my apologies for rambling on.

Bobbleheads! We need bobbleheads!! I want the AJ!

Very crudely, radio waves travel approximately 1 foot per nanosecond. Therefore, a 5-mile transit would take approximately 26,000 nanoseconds (0.026 milliseconds) each way. For all practical purposes, distance to and from the cell site has no effect on latency/ping in mobile telephony. If anyone has more precise measurements, please chip in.

Softbank's web site seems to say that you can get 1 line with unlimited 4G LTE for somewhere between $40 and $80 per month. It's not clear how much voice/text usage is included. Given that Softbank's Japanese pricing is quite aggressive (that's how they've radically increased their market share), it seems likely that their US pricing will also be aggressive.

Except that the Coverage Map now starts up showing "Bouygues Telecom - 2G-3G" with the map centered somewhere in France -- or at least I think it's France, 'cuz all them names is in some funny furrin' language. Then I have to scroll w-a-a-y down the page to find "Sprint 4G". OH, the pain and humiliation!!!!

Oooh, would this be the long-awaited official S4GRU t-shirt.? I'll buy one!

Good news: It looks like recent mapping is finally starting to show up. Points in the far Northwest of Chicagoland that I tracked last Friday just appeared on Sensorly a few minutes ago.

Also have Airave 2.0, first on Uverse now on Comcast. Voice quality is quite good, texts go through instantly. I have had to do a couple of power-down-power-up resets, but have been very pleased with it overall I live in an area with much 800SMR (all but my closest tower), and have the Airave in my basement office. I get 800 frequently on the other floors, but it will not penetrate to the basement from the current towers, so the Airave is still a necessity. The tower not yet upgraded is a better line of sight, so when it is complete, I may be able to get 800 downstairs -- time will tell. The point being, don't count on the 800 upgrade to fix your connection issues. Convince Sprint to give you the Airave free.

Looks like their server upgrade may not have gone entirely as planned.

Signal Check Pro written by an active S4GRU member has a "Reset" button and works really well for discovering LTE. It also displays a lot of interesting information.

Isn't he also your bail bondsman? Quite the entrepeneur, that Guido!!!

The evo 4G LTE is notorious for not locking on to isolated LTE sites.

Your tone is offensive, and your facts are often distorted and incorrect. This site is in no way sponsored, funded, or even approved by Sprint Nextel. I have willingly donated multiple times to this site so that I may have access to accurate information, and also because I support its goals. I am not a moderator or staff member, and thus have no control over site policy or management. I am not now, nor have I ever been, an employee of Sprint Nextel Corporation nor its predecessors or assigns, nor have I been associated with it in any way. I have paid a very large amount of money over the years to Sprint, and have received both bad and good service during that time. I am a "shill" for no-one: I speak my mind. If you are so down on Sprint, rather than waste your own time and the time of supporters of this forum with things that we cannot change, you would be better off finding a mobile phone vendor which better meets your needs. That was my point. And, no, I am not "special": I am a paying Sprint subscriber who may or may not have valid points to share with others on this forum, but who maintains my privilege to share them. I attempt to do so in a respectful manner.

In the Chicago market, 800SMR has been deploying since fall, using shut-down Nextel spectrum. Milwaukee/Madison is similarly very constrained in 1900 CDMA spectrum, and is also Samsung, so you may see 800SMR soon. Of course, 800LTE is into very late 2013 or sometime in 2014. Virtually all of the newer Sprint-compatible phones are set up for both 1900LTE and 800SMR, although I think the iPhone 5 may currently be blocked from using 800. When I get 800, my voice and text are very good, and the in-building penetration it also good, but I am totally unable to explain why it shows up in a given spot, then disappears for hours or days, and then comes back.

Robert didn't answer, so here are some estimates: Kentucky-Fried-Chicken-for-Robert Account: 56% Jewelry-for-Robert's-wife-so-she-doesn't-take-away-all-his-phones-and-demand-he-spend-at-least-a-few-minutes-every-day-with-his-family Account: 34% Bail-Bond-for-AJ Account: 9.4% Operating Expenses: 0.6% Value to Sprint LTE fanatics: Priceless!

I think we determined that the 169-offset worked on Errickson, but did not work on Samsung. I don't think anyone commented on Alcatel/Lucent.

There is Las Vegas purple on Sensorly tonight! But it disappears if you zoom in too close. Hey,watch it! I am 65. I am a nerd. And darned proud. So there!

94% complete does NOT mean 94% complete. It means, basically, that 94% of all sites have had some NV work completed and accepted. Most sites will receive 3 upgrades: 800SMR voice & text, 1900 EvDO, voice, & text (3G), and 1900 LTE (4G). Approximately 6% of Chicagoland sites have had NO work accepted to date (it may have been started, but has not been carried through to acceptance). Of the remaining 94%, some have had only 800SMR upgrades accepted, some only 1900 CDMA (3G), some only 1900 LTE (4G), some have had 2 of those 3, and some have had all 3. Based on the Sponsor maps, it looks like between 60 and 65% of Chicagoland sites have had either LTE or all 3 upgrades accepted at this moment. So, yes, coverage remains incomplete and somewhat spotty in places, and will remain so for at least a few more weeks. [Especially in McHenry County . . . Oh,wait, I posted a reply critical of ranting, so I'd better stop while I'm ahead.] But, overall, things are definitely on the upswing in the Big Windy.

Bye-bye. Verizon's Sensorly map shows good 4G coverage in Milwaukee. Try not to use too much data, though. AT&T has some 4G in Milwaukee, but not very much. TMo currently has none. If 4G is what your are looking for, then Verizon is your answer, at least for the moment. If reliability is what you seek, then . . . who knows? Perhaps you jumped back on to Sprint too early. Sprint certainly hasn't promised you NV during your 8-month stay, and while your impatience is understandable, it really won't fix anything or speed things up. Your frustration is clear, but your experience is certainly not universal. I personally pay for 2 Sprint phones that live on the north side of Milwaukee, and I visit there myself fairly often. My experience has been nothing like yours. Yes, data is slow, but voice and text perform adequately. My recent experience with Sprint customer service has been good, though it wasn't always as good in the past, and I have used Sprint for 15 years. Hesse and company have done a good job of fixing a lot of things that got broken over those years. And while you weren't happy with the way that Sprint fixed your recent problem, they did fix it. So, and I am sure many other members of this forum will agree with me, it sounds like you are a prime candidate to move on. We have all heard of (and in many cases personally experienced) problems and frustrations with Sprint. Ranting to us about them will get you little sympathy here. But before you go, think about donating $10 or $20 to S4GRU, become a sponsor, and get access to the threads that talk about how things have improved in Sprint-land, and what progress is being made today. You might change your mind. Or you might not. The final choice is obviously yours, and we wish you the best of success with it.

Definitely no "knock-off". I've only ever seen the good stuff in Northern New Mexico. Say from Albuquerque through Santa Fe up to Espanola. Sadly, I live 1,500 miles away.

Oh, brother, now AJ is going to start a Chicken War. Besides, where Robert lives, it should be a large order of blue corn enchiladas with green chiles. And sopapillas with honey.

From Robert's "NV Sites Complete - 23APR2013" 13,255/38,909 Isn't it interesting that the S4GRU number almost exactly tracks Sprint's "official" number. That says something very positive about Robert, about his hard work on our behalf, and about his good relationships with his sources. Yet another "Thank You, Robert!" in an ongoing round of "Thank You, Robert!"'s!

I live in the Chicago thread [well, technically, not in the thread, but in the area], and can attest that there have been some problems during the upgrade process, as the crews mount and connect the new hardware and do all the testing and adjustments. There have been problems with connections, signal strength, texting, time-of-day, and others. But, they are normally not too devastating, nor do they seem to last for more than a couple of days at a time. As to how long it takes for things to go live, I have heard of cases where it was only a couple of weeks from the visible start of work (I say "visible", because there is much behind-the-scenes design, permitting, hardware sourcing, etc.), and others where it has been much longer. 2 examples from my part of Chicagoland: I bought my GS3 in October, and on the way home from Best Buy, passed a crew working on a tower near Wonder Lake, IL. That tower went live with 4G and 800 about 12 weeks later. On the other hand, towers in Crystal Lake where I live were reported to have 3G NV upgrades in September, yet do not have 4G after more than 6 months, neither on the sponsor map nor on Sensorly. (2 of the 3 do have 800SMR, but for some reason, their upgrades have not shown up on the sponsor map.) So, It could be a short time or it could be a longer time. But when it arrives, the results are amazing. And I am hoping right along with you because my daughter lives near UWM, and she is harassing me mercilessly about Sprint. (But I pay for her phone, so she can't be too merciless.)