maxsilver

This is my experience as well, on both site density and 'effectively available bandwidth'. Density usually seems to go: 1) ATT 2) T-Mobile 3) Sprint 4) Verizon Although, like nearly everything, this obviously varies on location. I hope so. I truly hope they focus on this, above everything else (even above NV2.0, in my opinion) But I'm still very concerned that they'll dump the Clearwire sites, like the Nextel ones went away last year.

Aww, come on. If your claiming I'm a "T-Mobile fanboy", I must be a pretty bad one, since I just signed a two-year contract on a Sprint LG G3 Anyway, I stand behind that statement. Sprint's PCS proprogates better than T-Mobile's AWS, so if you drop LTE on Sprint, it's usually a site placement issue (assuming the towers in question are upgraded to NV1.0 and live, which should be most of them by now) I'm not picking sides here -- the reverse is equally true as well. If you have Sprint LTE, but not T-Mobile LTE/HSPA+ in urban areas, it's usually because T-Mobile "cheaped out" on whatever cell site is nearby, which also happens. I'm not passing judgement about it -- Sprint and T-Mobile have less cash on hand, so they often *have* to get "creative" on sites. But there's no point in pretending this doesn't effect the network -- it does.

Just in case you missed it, data roaming is currently only for "custom" plans, and there is "additional cost for data or voice roaming". http://www.virginmobileusa.com/custom/#/ Roaming is an extra $5.00 (per 15mb) or an extra $5.00 (per 50 minutes)

Right. That's the problem I mentioned three posts ago. Any rule that lets Sprint and T-Mobile joint bid, would also let Verizon and AT&T joint bid, unless it specifically singled them out (at which point they'd sue, and probably win). We're basically asking the FCC to make a rule that says, "everyone is allowed to jointly bid, except specifically these two companies, simply because we don't like them". I don't think it's reasonable to expect the FCC to do that. Even if they were as pro-small-operators as possible, that's an unreasonable expectation, as they're still tasked to craft rules that are reasonably equal for all parties (even the ones we don't like).

Right. I fully understand how an auction works. But your "problem" isn't solved by a joint bid. In your scenario, if Sprint and T-Mobile are allowed to combine when bidding, then Verizon and AT&T can *also* combine to bid, to combat this. Now your still back to just two bidders for the same 10mhz block. Your not attracting any more money (actually likely less money), and the duopoly still gets the spectrum. Remember, Verizon and AT&T can joint bid on, and share/split a 10mhz block just as easily as Sprint and T-Mobile can. I'm all for the little guy at the auctions, but this FCC rule doesn't seem that problematic. If you let one group start 'fake merging' for bids, then everyone will do it, and they'll effectively write the rules for the auction.

I don't see this as quite the terrible thing it appears to be, at first glance. If you let Sprint + T-Mobile bid jointly, what's to stop Verizon + AT&T from also bidding jointly, and still winning all of the (non-rule-protected) spectrum at the auction. In fact, if you allow joint bids, what prevents all four carriers from bidding on the auction together, to drive the auction prices down. Doesn't the FCC basically *have* to make bidders operate independently, or else the auction won't work in the first place?

Yep. We need to remember our definition of "network being ready" is always moving forward too. It used to be enough to offer 3G-levels of speed. Then, 3G+ was enough. Now, you have to blanket a market in multiple levels of LTE service, just to be competitive. To stand out, you *also* need dense small cell deployments to be ahead of the competition. People continuously use data more, and expect a lot better speeds/latency. The benchmark keeps moving up, often faster than the deployment is. I agree wholeheartedly with Sprints / the articles message here. Sprint shouldn't spend a penny attracting new customers in any market, until their data service is obviously better than the competitors. In practice, I suspect this will mean no marketing of any kind should happen in a market, until Spark is 95%+ active and already running in that market.

I mean, they clearly admitted their slowing down something. You can't cut capex without pulling that money from somewhere. Either they're slowing network deployment, cutting cell sites, or cutting backhaul (or some combination of that). It seems more likely to cut some 2.5ghz than anything else. This is pure conjecture, but I'd guess this capex cut also likely means those nice dense Clearwire sites are up on the chopping block too.

I think it's just you. I've not experienced this problem on any modern smartphone (from any platform or vendor)

This would also seem like a better fit with Sprint's current business initiatives, many of which don't involve the network or existing business (things like IT consulting and Google Domain App reselling) - http://www.sprint.com/business/ A Dish Merger would allow them to diversify on the consumer side, in a similar manner to how they are trying to diversify on the business side.

I'd love to know where they pull these numbers from, and how they calculated them. The 'Barclay Capital' source quote hasn't been particularly helpful when searching Google.

I've seen some Band 26 just recently start to appear. (Single site in Granville, single site in GR) No Band 41 anywhere here. I suspect almost all our beautiful Clear sites will be binned without replacement.

This happened to me on a Photon Q before. If your device looses / forgets / otherwise isn't sending it's MEID to the tower, than Sprint doesn't know what account to associate you with. Your device appears unauthorized. "American Roaming" is the MVNO that you get shoved to (on Sprint or Verizon towers) -- as it allows 100% unauthorized devices (devices with MEID's like '000000'). You can typically only make outgoing calls with the device in this state (since your phone is in an unauthorized / unregistered state). http://www.americanroaming.com/ In my instance, I botched flashing Cyanogenmod (oops) and had to use the Qualcomm tools to get my MEID back. If you haven't been flashing stuff on your phone, a simple reboot with some updated PRLs and Profiles may fix it automatically.

It's printed on the sticker, on the side of the original box. Above the MEID and ICC barcodes, you should see a label that reads something like "Manufactured: 06/2014"

Also Black, 06/2014 Yep. Everything else about this phone is awesome, except that screen. I get crazy standby times. This thing gets about double the standby time of my Nexus 5. Battery life is amazing -- until you turn the screen on. I've never gotten more than 4-5 hours screen on time with the G3, and that's at 30-60% brightness. Basically, if the screen is on, the battery life is similar to or slightly worse than the Nexus 5. I *really* wish they had just put a normal 1080p display on this. I feel like the G3 is the best in every other category, except that screen kills it. I'm torn between keeping the G3, or trading it back in for either an HTC One M8 or a cheap used G2 and just waiting.

My G3 is *reporting* lower numbers than my Nexus 5 (in SignalCheck, the About page, etc). But my G3 is actually getting faster data speeds, and holding on to service better, than my Nexus 5 is. Not much better. But slightly better reception.

Here's an example of the website glitches. It's provisioned as "$30 for Unlimited Talk + Test", with a "$20 Unlimited Data Feature" or a "$10 3GB Data Feature".

So I got the test individual plan. It's working well. Some things I noticed : I don't know if this is typical for all plans or not, but Wifi calling isn't provisioned automatically on these plans, and you are not allowed to add it yourself on the Sprint website (even though it's free). Store reps claimed I had to do this online (I found out that's wrong, at least on these plans, your forbidden from adding Wifi calling yourself). Store reps also claimed they can't port numbers into this plan, and that I had to do it online. (I found out that's wrong too -- your never allowed to port in numbers via the website, unless your also ordering a new line of service from the website). The plan shows up as "Unlimited Talk" on certain parts of the website, but "30.0 Anytime Minutes" in others. It also claims "Unlimited Messaging is not included" on some parts and "Unlimited Texting" in others. I'm almost certain this is just a bug, but worth mentioning. I'm hoping this bug doesn't extend to billing. The two corporate Sprint stores here in Grand Rapids are still technically iPCS Wireless stores. The contracts all print with "iPCS Wireless" as the contract holder, even though they are corporate stores (and are listed as such on Sprint.com) . Very odd. You are allowed to switch between the 3GB addon, and the Unlimited Data addon, by using the website. You can also cancel insurance using the website. You can't do anything else online, which is extremely frustrating. I'll make a thread for this elsewhere, but the two (corporate) Sprint Stores near me, and Sprint's website, are both terrible experiences. Overall, I have the plan and I have a new phone. But it was a crazy frustrating ordeal to get it accomplished, that took 4 hours and three visits to three different Sprint stores. I won't be surprised if Sprint corporate thinks it's a "failure", not because the plans are bad, but because it's very difficult to get anything accomplished at some of these Sprint retail stores (even simple things, totally unrelated to these new plans).

Yes, this happens to me regularly. I like the G3 (and I'll probably keep mine), but I get the impression that the screen was a mistake. I really with they had just put a nice, bright, contrasty, clear 1080p display on it instead of the dark, dull, 2k display in there now.

Are the screen / battery comments from the reviews accurate? I'm kinda leaning towards an LG G3 over the HTC One M8 (prefer removable batteries, wireless charging, larger screen). But the battery life on cellular browsing / screen-on time is the most important thing to me, followed by the screen viewability (outdoors, contrast, etc) The numbers from reviews make it seem like the G3 is worse than the M8, because of the higher resolution screen. (Both in battery life, and in terms of contrast / brightness). I'm curious what folks think who have actually purchased the device.

Would you feel the same way if you had a gigabit fiber line in your home, and the 'public wifi' side was limited to just 10mbps (roughly just 1% of the total speed of the line) Would you feel the same way if your ISP gave you a slight discount for leaving their public hotspot wifi open (say a $5/month off the bill) Are you against the idea, period? Or are you against Comcast's bad implementation of this idea? Or are you frustrated with the bad implementation of their network? (with costs so high, and speeds so low / flakey that we instinctively fight for every Mbps we can get out of the network)

To be clear, I don't think they should ever drop the plan entirely. I think it would go of into a corner somewhere -- something they always offer, but don't really advertise and that 95% of people never bother to sign up for. Sort of like the "My All In" plan is today.

I honestly don't think it's all that bad to remove unlimited, if they up the data caps crazy high to compensate. Two people "unlimited" on Framily is about $140/month. (5gb each, before 'prioritization', no tethering allowed). Two people on this New Test Family Plan pricing is $130/month, and they get 10GB each (presumably on phone or tethering). It's a win for (almost) everyone. Instead of this race to the bottom on abusing the term 'unlimited', I'd love to see carriers race to the top on data caps. If Sprint launches this 20GB as standard for families, that will push T-Mobile and AT&T into higher data caps for their plans as a response. That's good for everyone, and it solves this whole 'data abuser', 'throttling', 'deprioritization' argument for good.

Did some investigating today on the new plans: Corporate Store #1 has never heard of them. I mentioned that they were brand new, and polietly asked if they would look it up on the intranet. They refused. They then offered to put me on some strangers framily plan. I refused. They got confused as to why I would want the individual plan, when some stranger's framily plan is cheaper. #sigh Corporate Store #2 knew about it right away, and was shocked I knew. He claimed that he wasn't allowed to sell them until this Friday. Set me up an appointment to visit the store and get started. Corp Store #1 is where I bought my launch day Palm Pre, so I'm sad they're not up on their game. But I can finally get a decent plan at a decent price without an MVNO, so I'm still feeling pretty happy.

Your right about the weirdness there. I wonder if it's done as a response to AT&T: Sprint - 10GB, 2 lines, $110/month + tax. AT&T - 10GB, 2 lines, $130/month + tax. Sprint - 20GB, 2 lines, $130/month + tax. Same thing for $20/month less, or 2x the data for the same price. Easy decision for Sprint either way folks spin.