aliensporebomb

Wackjob salespeople are possible in any industry but this smacks of an isolated incident with a salesguy who wanted his commission as high as it could go.

When I bought my iPhone5 I had no such problem and they paid me for my old phone too so I ended up walking out of the store with a 32 gig iPhone5 for a measly $127.

Before this transaction I also saw the guy in front of me buying an iPhone5 not having any problems getting his.

Some people don't much care for the Apple walled garden approach - there are other phones for those users but I would have loved to have witnessed the guy being told his fingers are too fat.

I spotted on Sensorly some new LTE signals showing up on the stretch of 494 that stretches east from the MSP airport to just west of County Road 31 near Mendota Heights. Some more signals show further to the east from 494/35E eastward towards Blue Gentian road. Interesting.

Driving in from the south on 169 heading north thru town maybe 1/4th mile past Delaware Avenue - strongest signal was heading past 2nd Street West heading towards Shakopee/Savage. Signal faded pretty quickly once past 185th street west.

Getting very respectable performance for moving at 65 miles an hour:

I experienced similar issues in Eden Prairie last weekend and I had no problems making connections nearing 30 megabits when I was in Jordan a few days ago. Hmm...

Gack. What have I started?

Is there any signage on the fence around the property that indicates who to call in case of problems? Do a reverse lookup on the phone number and try to find out. The odd thing about that is that it claims the owner is UNISITE but UNISITE was supposedly acquired by American Tower back in 1999.

You might also look at lots and land listings in that area to determine ownership and tax records - realtors have access to this kind of information so you might ask a realtor you know to help you with that.

Could it be a government tower? Awfully nondescript if you ask me!

Yeah - they could have called me - I've got a 720 video of one of my cats and it would be trivial to do a 1080 one now - those cats are always chasing each other and causing all kinds of trouble.

A friend has one of these - he's currently living in his sisters house on the basement which is sort of down in a depression and without it ANY carrier can't get down there. I was sitting in his room while he was working on his computer getting 5 bars of reception. Pretty slick.

That's a question I have: I sometimes see competing cell companies on the same tower. It's odd - to someone outside the industry it seems odd - I know that competing ralroads sometimes have the rights to use each others right of way but that's the closest analogy I can come up with.

The taun tauns actually are the LTE installers here.

Well, the iPhone version exists - it just doesn't let you crowdsource like the Android version does. Which is a bummer for me but it is useful to see the maps.

S4GRU: Yep. Tomorrow!

Well of course LTE must be coming - the towers are going live one by one around me and it's almost like....hey wait a minute installer guys I wear deodorant!

Greetings - just saying hello - a former AT&T refugee happily on sprint and awaiting the LTE rollout completion here in the Twin Cities!

Forgot to post a speedtest from Jordan, MN:

Sssh! Some of us aren't sponsors yet. Working on it!

Notice it seems to be coming down 35E - interesting.

Little jewel?

Anyone else ever encounter this? You're sitting there looking at your phone and it's sitting there at 3G as usual and suddenly LTE shows up for long 3 seconds then goes back to 3g?

http://www.macrumors.com/2012/12/18/apple-releases-ios-6-0-2-software-update-for-iphone-5-and-ipad-mini-fixes-wi-fi-bug/

Supposedly it fixes an unspecified wifi bug.

Mine gives me the "if you want hotspot pay us xyz and call us at..." deal.

The Sprint Store staff at Southdale Mall said that "March 2013" was the launch month/date but how accurate that date is can't be confirmed. Sure seems like things are ramping up faster than I expected.

I also saw someone working on the outside of a Sprint tower near my home in Bloomington - it looked like the guy was on small crane type device - so work is proceeding but it might be a bit more until your locale has LTE.

Wouldn't surprise me a bit if city bureaucracy is at work too. Especially in appearance conscious places.

Interesting; I was down near Jordan this afternoon and getting 30 megabit LTE DL speed. I was also near the airport today and saw no LTE so it wouldn't surprise me they are fine tuning as in Eden Prairie. I also noticed LTE signals in Owatonna off 35 near the Mills Fleet Farm. Surprising - not just in the Twin Cities.

Anyone with Sprint connections able to find out why?

Interesting; I attended a Christmas party in Eden Prairie right in the middle of their LTE land and a strange thing happened; I flipped the airplane mode switch and it would connect to LTE for a few seconds then revert to 3G.

It did this repeatedly - I wonder if they are indeed blocking access? I do notice connecting to LTE hasn't happened reliably since my last carrier update.

Sensorly shows lots of LTE all over the Twin Cities but not near my own location so much:

http://www.sensorly.com/map/4G/US/USA/Sprint/lte_310sprint

I've gone to certain areas where it purports to be and found that despite toggling airplane mode and back on again it was still stuck in 3G purgatory - this was not the case 3 weeks ago when the original batch of LTE sites went up.

I suspect some of what occurred was the storm a few days ago that dropped a foot or more of snow on the city delayed some of the workers.

But I spotted a couple of guys on a lift the day after the storm right near the MSP airport (likely the source of the brief LTE signal spotted there):

Another view:

They were fighting loss of daylight and it looked like the lower antenna array was only partially assembled.