JonnygATL

Not really sure about that right now. People are able to connect to them just fine in Chicago and Las Vegas, but that's Samsung and Alcatel Lucent. Nokia is doing the deployment in Atlanta. We haven't seen any Nokia installs yet that I'm aware of.

Whatever the outcome, I am certain NSN will do an exponentially better job than Ericsson could or would have.  

 

The installs from NSN are due to begin in July.  I believe I read that on one of these forums here.  It will be awesome to have those sorts of speeds that band 41 can deliver but in all honesty I don't have any issues at all with the LTE speeds here in Atlanta on bands 25 and 26.  This will all just be proverbial icing on the proverbial cake.  

I recently activated my Nexus 5 on Sprint just because I can. Here in the Raleigh, NC area, the LTE is good and strong in my house but when I'm out, I seem to be on 3G way more than LTE. I'm not sure if this is related to the eCSFB issue with legacy towers or if it's just that 1900 MHz covers like crap, but either way, this is going to get old really quick! I'm driving to NYC in two weeks so I'll be interested to see how coverage is up and down the I-95 corridor and I'm interested to try Spark while I'm there.

yeah what you're describing sounds exactly like ecsfb issues but this time related to the rollout of band 26.

Here in Jacksonville before we were officially a spark market I experienced eCSFB issues on b41. I was running my nexus 5 on the .15 modem. I connected to the site but was in LTE only mode. Couldn't call or text.

 

 

For people with the new software you will get kicked to 3g.

 

Sent from my Nexus 7 using Tapatalk

Lovely.  Well the spotty Clear towers that have already been converted to LTE here are, fortunately, nowhere near my home nor my work.  Once the Sprint installs of LTE on NV sites really crank up then I guess I will have to suffer through it.  

 

But I can always just disable band 41 during these growing pains and reenable it once it's stable. 

All of the 1900 MHz CDMA traffic is being consolidated to the old regional switches. All of the LTE and 800 MHz traffic is on brand new switches that don't have regional designations -- only numbers, and you aren't geographically limited to certain ones anymore. Remember that day when LTE latency practically halved overnight? That was when the non-regional switches came online.

 

Then Google Voice integration makes it even weirder, because it causes your calls to go through one of 3 (with a fourth possibly coming online in the future) Google Voice switches directly to the cell sites. In other words, my calls never hit the local MSC at all.

 

I'm beginning to wonder if Google Voice integration is the cause of the failed handoffs.

I love the conversations I read in these forums.  It's fascinating and I learn a ton every single day!  

They are.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5

So will b41 also suffer from ecsfb issues when it is first turned on on Sprint NV sites (the way b26 did/does)?

Maybe it was CSFB problems all along. Huh. Well, glad it's working!

All indications are that that, indeed, was the case.

 

On another note, is NSN out deploying b41 on Sprint sites yet? If Sprint is to get the first 100 million online with b41 before the year is out then I would imagine they need to get a massive move on.

Thank you. Me,too!

I'm at a huge music festival currently and I've noticed that my phone sits on the useless B25 carrier when I know B26 is available. I basically have to death grip my phone for it to switch, and then a few minutes later of a perfectly usable connection, I get shunted back to B25, even with B26 on 1st priority. Is it possible that network management isn't fully integrated here yet? And yes, I'm back in EricssonLand...

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I think that is precisely your problem. Well, that and b26 ecsfb issues. I experienced the same thing here in Atlanta - obviously an Ericsson market - until they resolved the issues. The phone works beautifully now. Don't worry..they'll work it out fairly soon.

I am talking about how long it is taking for the network, and also I been having ecsfb issues for more than a couple months now.

I can personally tell you how beautiful it is once ecsfb issues are cleared up. The difference is definitely night and day. Instead of wanting to bash my phone to smithereens with a hammer, I now feel at least at parity with my vzw, att and tmo toting amigos. What's more I can see the light clearly at the end of the tunnel when I will be THEIR envy as soon as b41 is fully rolled out by the holidays here in Atlanta. That's going to be un dia muy dulce!

"We tested mostly during business hours, during a period from May 1st to May 23rd, 2014; we visited different cities on different days. In each city, our drivers stopped in 10 to 12 locations for at least 15 minutes (five test cycles) each. We also collected data while moving, both within and between cities."

 

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2459188,00.asp

Crap. I dunno how I overlooked that. Thanks!

It's an annual test, done over three weeks period of time, and it's supposed to showcase data performance of all four Tier 1 wireless operators at this point in time. That's exactly what they did.

 

They've also used commercially available user equipment, and travelled to same metro areas year after year to capture the progress.  Although I'm not a fan of these tests, at least they are consistent.

Yes, I know, I'm familiar with the methodology.  I did read that part as it's vitally important.

 

However, that is precisely my concern "this point in time."  I am wondering what that "point in time" actually was, especially considering that when scrolling through the (actually very neat and informative) photo sets from each of the 29 cities where Sprint is relevant, one can't help but notice that some photos seem to be shot in spring while others seem to be shot in winter or summer.  

 

So I guess I would need to know if these were all photos the author uploaded during her tours of these cities as she conducted her tests (as would seem to be the case given her excessive use of hashtags) or were some of the photos taken by others and she simply uploaded them to reflect certain aspects of her trip?  If they weren't taken by her then I could understand the apparent vastly different points in time in which they appear to be taken.  But if she took them herself during testing then it would be concerning as it would indicate that these tests were not, in fact, all conducted at the same, all-important "point in time."

 

This is my concern.

Johnny, they were probably aware of it. But they couldn't postpone the article for the eCSFB issues to be cleared up. The world keeps spinning. My only concern about this article is that it really does make sprint look like it's in for yet another year of "almost there"...when in reality this is supposed to be be "sprints year" for a come back.

 

Edit: I've come to the conclusion this is the only page that needs to be viewed. http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2459189,00.asp

I think that is exactly my concern as well.  It colors the results when the network is actually much better than the results would suggest.  More important are the continuing and substantial upgrades going on right now that won't be evident to most readers/users until a year from now when the next PCMag test hopefully shows a greatly improved network.  

 

I just really think it's high time for some positive press on Sprint.  And, despite what another user suggested, going from bad and even awful to usable and even somewhat more than adequate is a MASSIVE change.  I'm happy for Sprint and am glad I stuck around.

Getting back to intelligent discourse...my N5 after the update here in Atlanta is performing admirably well.  It very effectively switches between bands 25 and 26 as necessary and very rarely falls back to 3G.  I am happier with this phone now than I have ever been since purchasing it.  I am curious as to when PcMag did these speed tests in Atlanta but, as we all know, network performance is very dynamic and so I would venture to guess that the speeds and coverage now are far better than they were when these tests were conducted.

 

I have no experience with band 41 yet so I can't really comment on that though I know that there are many active band 41 (old Clear) sites within the city.  Once I have some experience with b41 on my N5 I will post comments on its performance here in Atlanta.

 

But my speeds are far more than adequate and my coverage has increased quite a bit due to the increasing prevalence of b26.

 

One final note - if you drill down into the PCMag article, you will see mention of bouncing back and forth between 3G and LTE in several of the 30 cities studied.  This would seem to me to be an ecsfb issue which I would imagine by now has been resolved.  This is a HUGE reason that Sprint seemed to perform so RELATIVELY poorly if I am correct.  Again, I think a lot of that has since been cleared up.  I don't think the article's author was aware of any of that. 

With this explanation, it sounds like your nearby tower is not CSFB compliant. Therefore, it shunts you back to 3G at your home, even if it can find LTE on other sites. That's why it works in LTE Only mode. This is a network/geography thing and not a device issue the best I can tell. I'm glad you've been able to find your device is working in other locations.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

My N5 after the update here in Atlanta is performing admirably well.  It very effectively switches between bands 25 and 26 as necessary and very rarely falls back to 3G.  I am happier with this phone now that I have ever been since purchasing it.

 

I have no experience with band 41 yet so I can't really comment on that though I know that there are many active band 41 (old Clear) sites within the city.  Once I have some experience with b41 on my N5 I will post comments on its performance here in Atlanta.

 

But my speeds are far more than adequate and my coverage has increased quite a bit due to the increasing prevalence of b26.

I would be shocked if they mentioned anything about a potential merger with Tmobile just yet.  It is much too soon and is still technically just a rumor even though we know they are working on it behind tightly closed doors. That event would probably wait until the beginning of Q3.

There's a new article out saying sprint has the slowest speeds. Lol. I can't wait until spark comes into play....

 

 

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I saw this and wanted to slap the nearest person standing next to me.  But it turned out to be Adrienne and I really like her...so I didn't slap her.  HOWEVER....it just enraged me because I'm so tired of people hating on Sprint's network.  It's just non stop and I really don't get it.  The article was honestly well written and seemed pretty fair (it's from PCmag for anyone who's wondering) but I think they missed the point.  Sprint's network has improved in incredible ways since their last survey one year ago.

 

We've gone from unusable 3G speeds to a nationwide average - per their results - of around 0.8 mbps.  This may seem slow compared to ATT or Tmo 3G speeds (which i think here are HSPA+ speeds) - but they are perfectly usable for casual web browsing and even downloading and/or streaming music.  To go from unusable to a low ping decent 3G connection is night and day.  But they didn't mention that.

 

Regarding LTE, Sprint's nationwide average - again, per their results - hovers right around 7 mbps.  Um...that's really good and certainly falls within Sprint's advertised LTE speeds (outside of launched Spark markets).  It's also a HELL OF AN IMPROVEMENT from last year or the year before when Sprint didn't even have LTE in many of the cities in which these tests were conducted.  And who isn't happy with a 7 mbps cellular data connection anyway?  Oh yeah, I forgot - people who don't really know much about how all of this works.  Marketing teams love people like that.  What do you need to do on a mobile device that a 7 mbps (also with a decently low ping) connection couldn't easily handle?  

 

The rollout of b41 will only improve on this even further.  But I forgot...Sprint "sucks."  Yeah, right.

I thought it was pretty obvious that the event would be about the evolution and transformation of the Sprint network. The giant celll phone tower on the announcement and the use of the word "connecting" seem to all but give that away (at least in my mind). I didn't find anything at all mysterious about the announcement and am confused as to why anyone would, especially as mid 2014 has long been Sprint's publicly announced goal of largely completing network vision's first phase.

 

Sprint has now mostly completed a massive project on a national scale and, just as a reminder, we live in a big ass country. They should RECEIVE NOTHING SHORT OF A STANDING OVATION FOR THEIR EFFORTS. I know that might be hard for some people to swallow but, just because you're one of the unfortunate few who has yet to see Network Vision bear fruit in your particular burg, town or ville doesn't mean that the OVERWHELMING MAJORITY of the U.S. isn't already enjoying a greatly improved network. Even with the latest (and possibly unforseen) issues with ecsfb on b26, the network is exponentially faster and more reliable in nearly every major and mid size city across the country (and even many of the areas in between).

 

This, I would contend, is worthy of celebration. And I would theorize that's exactly what we'll see at the event. There could be more (related to Framily or otherwise) but the achievements in modernizing the network will likely take center stage.

Still waiting for the OTA here as well. I thought the rollout was to be completed by today. In that case I guess I just might be last on the list. Story of my life!

I actually got the update maybe 30 minutes after posting that lol. It's been very successful at holding LTE for me except in 2 random cases where I was quite unnecessarily kicked down to 3g when a very strong LTE connection was readily available. But..toggling airplane mode fixes it in most cases.

Still waiting on the OTA. At this rate I'll be side loading it when I get home. Side note, las Vegas on 4.4.2 is a nightmare.

Still waiting for the OTA here as well. I thought the rollout was to be completed by today. In that case I guess I just might be last on the list. Story of my life!

Nope. Give me a break of your KitKat, all you Android version obsessives.

 

AJ

We see what you did there. Totes McGoats!

PRL update forces a rescan of all channels.

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

Right but I guess my real question is why the f do I have to do this in order to connect to a perfectly strong and sound b26 signal to begin with? And I think that question may be answered by outstanding ecsfb issues on b26 per several other posts.

Question: when in a location with known b26 connectivity (but stuck on a nearly unusable 3g connection)...why does doing a PRL update instantly connect me to b26 LTE? Of note.. I have yet to receive the spark update though I know it will come to me in very short order.

I am still waiting for the OTA. I am unlocked but stock everything. I have been checking every hour. Ironically my wife is completely stock and could not care less about the update. She got it yesterday. Figures.

 

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This sums up life in general.  : o )

Nope, never heard of her.  All I can say is that someone should have helped her momma spell her daughter's name properly.

 

AJ

Yeah I really hate when people spell otherwise normal names in a "unique" fashion in attempt to be original.  Makes zero sense and is, at best, a bit tacky.

 

But here is the link  

Ah, geez, is this the "4G fee" again?  I can just see it now.  I will be paying the extra $10 and told I will get a happy ending this summer.  But next year, I will still be waiting.

 

You did get the fractured speech pattern right, though.  "You want happy ending?  That cost extra.  Me love you long time."

 

AJ

did you get the Anjelah Johnson reference? The "glitter gel"/Asian nail parlor skit?