ahecht

What's the snapshot thing do? Plug in your obd2 port and record the sensors like speed and acceleration? Then send it to them for a lower rate?

It measures the total distance you drive, the times of day you drive, and how hard you brake. Technically it is just recording your VIN and speed from the OBDII, getting time from the cellular modem, and using an accelerometer to make sure you aren't feeding it bogus data from an OBD emulator. There's no GPS or any way of telling your location (unless they triangulate with the AT&T towers, but they say they don't).

You get dinged for hard braking over 7MPH/s, driving during moderate risk times (9PM-9AM and 4PM-6PM), driving during high risk times (12AM-4AM), and driving over 30mi/day. They don't care if you're speeding, since they have no way of knowing what road you're on and what the speed limit is. At least in Massachusetts your rate can't go up because of Snapshot, and your discount is up to 30%.

In my case, my work hours are flexible so I can avoid moderate and high risk times, my commute is 20 miles round trip, and I am careful enough about keeping a large following distance so that I haven't had to do any hard braking. If I need to make a long trip or drive late at night I'm usually with someone else who can drive until my 3 months are up.

Okay, I'm officially an idiot. I installed a Progressive Insurance "Snapshot" device in my car last week, and it just occurred to me that it must be using a cellular connection to report my driving stats. A quick web search later, and sure enough, Snapshot uses AT&T. Mystery solved!

EDIT: A little further research shows that the buzz comes from the amplifier power control cycle in TDMA GSM, in which the cellular radio starts broadcasting pulses at max power to initiate communication with the tower. These pulses can cause the amplifier to draw at least 2 amps in 217Hz pulses, so the Snapshot, which is getting power from my car, is probably introducing the noise directly into my car's power system.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled CDMA and FDMA discussions.

Back when I had AT&T and T-Mobile phones, I would often get a morse-code like interference on speakers near my phone (especially my unshielded computer speakers and my car stereo). When I switched to Sprint three phones ago that problem went away. I assumed that it was a GSM-only issue.

Now, for the past few days, my EVO 4G LTE has been causing the same interference on my car speakers. It sounds like the exact same "dit-dit-dit" pattern. Could this be because LTE is based on GSM? Or maybe it is an 800Mhz issue? Anyone else experienced this?

I don't know which office he's working out of, but there is an LTE tower about a mile away from the Glove's Danvers office.

*COUGH* Google Voice *COUGH*

I had strong 4G connections in Lowell and Everett 10 days ago: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/972-rollout-for-boston-and-surrounding-towns/page__st__180__p__40114#entry40114

15 in the Boston area, comprising 11 different BSIDs.

I stopped at Cote's Market in Lowell today to pick up some baked beans, and low and behold, I had a great LTE signal in the parking lot. 15Mbps down/12Mbps up. Looking at the maps when I got home, it looks like I was hitting the tower a couple of blocks away at Merrimack and Cabot. I can't wait for the big rollout!

Got another 4G signal in Everett, MA today (probably the tower was in Malden). Not as great speeds (6Mbps up/2Mbps down), but I was probably 1.5 miles from the tower. This is getting exciting!

I stopped at Cote's Market in Lowell today to pick up some baked beans, and low and behold, I had a great LTE signal in the parking lot. 15Mbps down/12Mbps up. Looking at the maps when I got home, it looks like I was hitting the tower a couple of blocks away at Merrimack and Cabot. I can't wait for the big rollout!

I was able to get a brief flicker of 4G at Hafners near the "flagpole" this morning by toggling between "CDMA Only" and "CDMA/LTE", but it stayed less than a second before falling over to 3G. Still, it was exciting to see a 4 show up in in the notification bar for the first time.

I think they have been testing the tower north of that too, the not-so-hidden one on Rt. 38 in front of the South Tewksbury fire station.

If it was coming from the "flagpole", I would hope the signal would go further north than Cumberland Farms.

It may have lasted longer. I was stopped at the light and that was the last place I checked before I hit Burlington. I was just happy to finally see 4g on my phone.

Interesting. Sounds like there's either another tower that is testing that isn't on the list, or you were connected to the tower near the station but only one sector is operating.

^I assume you're talking about the Cumberland Farms at rt 129. I'm surprised the signal stopped at the commuter rail station, since the tower is south of there. If the tower has so little downtilt that you can't get a signal within a .5 mile radius, I would hope that the signal would at least propegate further than that.

A bird's nest is not going to stop a contractor from getting paid that day. If he climbed up their I can guarantee you he's not walking from a paycheck over a nest. It will magically disappear.

I don't think they're talking about robin nests here. Imagine making one of these disappear:

I don't think there has ever been an effort before to replace antennas and cables on every single existing tower. Birds nesting on established towers isn't a new problem, but is only significant now due to the scale of NV.

Pretty sure it's not an antenna - just some sort of ventilation pipe.

Looking at Google Maps, the white things are definitely antennas. There are three of them, they're mounted on tripods (so they're not pipes), and they have black cables running to them:

I meant to post this last week and forgot. Took a trip to the Burlington Mall on Thursday and just before leaving to head back home, I remembered that there has been some LTE work done nearby. So, I put my new SGS3 into LTE mode and.... no LTE signal. However, a speedtest of the 3g signal was really good. around 1.6 down 0.9 up. Way better than I've come to expect over the last year. Yay NV! Can't wait until it arrives closer to home.

Yup, the tower at the Burlington Mall is one of the better ones I've found. When I first activated my EVO LTE at the Sprint store there I was blown away with the speeds. However, the tower you're connecting to is BS13XC745, which is 3G only. The 4G tower is BS03XC011, which is on the other side of Lahey Clinic at the Marriott. Even when parked in the Marriott parking lot I haven't been able to connect to LTE, so you didn't miss much.

This is also the first Sprint network vision antenna I have seen without the RRU under it. Maybe they mounted it on the roof? Or maybe no RRU for this location?

I see two antennas in your pictures -- one white antenna mounted on the roof itself, and one brown one hanging over the side. Perhaps the one on the roof has an adjacent RUU.

Just noticed that my phone switched to eHRPD today in the suburbs north of Boston.

Interesting then that the Boston area is getting LTE towers going live, but I still haven't seen any eHRPD connections anywhere in Massachusetts. Only time i've gotten an eHRPD signal is in the Baltimore airport.

The dock comes with an adhesive pad you can stick to your dashboard that you can use the suction cup on. It also uses a standard Garmin 17mm ball mount to attach the suction cup arm, so there are a ton of mounting options out there from vent and lighter mounts to built-in vehicle-specific mounts from companies like Ram and Panavise.

Hehe, the kid at the Sprint store today told a customer that LTE stood for "Lightening Thunder Electricity" because it was so fast.

 

I was just there to get my hands on the EVOLTE before I decided if I wanted it (awesome device...just wary about when NV updates will go live in my greater boston area). I had a good chuckle though.

If that was the store next to the Burlington Mall, I've had plenty of bad experiences there over the years.Everything from reps trying to insist that my SERO plan didn't exist to the person that kept trying to rip the speakerphone cover off my EVOLTE to get to the battery. Only good experience I had there was with returning accessories.

Come to Lynn!

I'm assuming the LTE there is still blocked, right?

and now there is word of light bleed issues. If memory serves me right, the original EVO had the same problem. aarrgghh.

Wow, that site stole my picture from XDA! Sprint did replace the light bleed phone (as you can see by the fact that the replacement phone is in that picture), but the new one has a yellower screen.

This

 

 

http://screensnapr.com/v/56vQHh.png

 

Thats where I live .... hopefully I can get LTE somewhat once its turned on.. and once I receive my EVO on friday

Wow, I drive right by your house every morning on the way to work. I would probably gain 10 lbs if I lived that close to Donna's Donuts.

I guess I'm lucky that I have the old Samsung Airrave. No problems whatsoever with texts. It's only 1x data, but that's what WiFi is for.

The web status of my order also had the May 15th date this morning, but I now get the following:

Your order or a portion of your order is in backorder status. If you would like to select an alternate product or cancel your backordered item, please call 866-789-8292 between 8:00 a.m. EST to 11:00 p.m. EST Monday to Friday or 9:00 a.m. EST to 9:00 p.m. EST on Saturdays and Sundays.Please note that cancellation requests may not always process successfully due to the speed of warehouse processing.If you cancelled your backordered item but still received a shipment, please refuse the shipment or call us to process a return within 14 days of receipt.

Is it possible that the May 15th message was programmed in before the LTE problems were discovered, and that they've replaced it with the backorder message? Or did my order get in too late and the first round of phones are already spoken for (I ordered within 20 minutes of the phone being available)?

Does anyone still have the May 15th message in their order status?