maxsilver

I don't know how unpopular that position is, and I agree with most of it. If we're going to kick TV off spectrum again, I'd rather use it for something actually productive (such as making it unlicensed, so real people can actually use it) I don't think we need any more cellular spectrum now, and won't for a while. I'd love to see the FCC withhold all new spectrum for a while (2-6 years at least). This would force cellular providers to build bigger, denser networks (which is the real solution to supporting mobile broadband growth), and to actually use or sell off the spectrum they are holding now. Cellular companies already have a ridiculously wide array of bands at their disposal (700, Cellular 800, Sprint's 800, PCS, AWS, WCS, EBS/BRS). And that doesn't include the holding companies sitting on spectrum, or upcoming auctions companies refuse to participate in (Dish AWS holdings, or carriers turning down the PCS H Block auction). I don't see any reason we can't make do with what's already released for quite a while, and I'd love to see cellular companies actually compete on sites and spacing, rather than simply outbidding each other.

Should you ETF? That's a pretty personal decision for you, that depends on where you go and what you want. It's a trade off. In my opinion, Sprint and T-Mobile both do a below-average job in the Grand Rapids area. They just do it in very different ways. I could write up a giant long description of both carriers strengths and weakness in Grand Rapids, but I've done it a dozen times and I don't think anyone reads them anyway. - - To simplify it, you can look at the right side of this map. (link below). Ignore the "HSPA+" label, that's all LTE now. Ignore the date, the map hasn't changed in any meaningful way over the last year. http://i.imgur.com/j1v2Ivt.png If you never leave the dark green areas, T-Mobile will probably be a better experience for you (right at this exact moment), as they've executed their network slightly better for data (right at this exact moment). If you head into the light green / yellow areas often, or otherwise want/need good service out there, you'll probably want to wait it out on Sprint. - - In the future, it's all up for grabs. Sprint's already committed to running 800 LTE on all their sites, but their sites are spaced so far away in this city in particular, that 800 LTE alone won't be enough to fix things -- they'll still need to densify their sites. Clearwire has much better site density than Sprint in Grand Rapids, so (if Sprint keeps all of the Clear sites, and uses them all for PCS+800+EBS/BRS coverage) then Sprint may get better in Grand Rapids very quickly. On the flip side, T-Mobile just bought 700-block-A in Grand Rapids, and there is zero TV interference here (nearest TV station is Lansing, so no conflicts here), they could have much better coverage without needing any new sites. It could be lit, running and on sold devices by as early as late summer 2014. A lot of that depends on what they choose to upgrade (They don't need any new spectrum to fix Rockford / Ada / Byron Center / Coopersville / Allendale, they could do that today, they just need to upgrade the backhaul and air interface on those towers...) Sprint and T-Mobile both hold plenty of unused spectrum here, so that's not really an issue. They also now both hold three bands, so they'll both be running similar "tri-band" deployments in the future. But that's all just future speculation. I'd only make a purchase decision based on what you want to get today. (You can always switch to/from other providers later) - - For what it's worth, I "fixed" this issue by simply carrying both. T-Mobile and Sprint are both cheap enough that you could carry both with you for less than a typical AT&T/Verizon line, and get the best of both worlds, without having to give any money to the big/evil carriers I did it by putting the phone on T-Mobile, and the data on Sprint, and got locked into an awesome T-Mobile Business Plan (before they were killed as part of the Uncarrier switch). If I were to do it again, I'd probably switch that around. (Put the phone on Sprint for the larger voice footprint, 1x800 coverage, and roaming with Verizon. Put the tablet on T-Mobile for the easier SIM card swapping, faster and denser GR data coverage). If I had the free cash sitting around, I'd throw a Nexus 5 on Sprint Framily or Ting, and put a Nexus 7 on T-Mobile. Get the best devices, each on it's native network, and still save $10-$25/month over AT&T/Verizon

And of course, hours after I write that, I just picked up my first 1x800 service in Downtown GR. So, progress is happening

I can't speak for all of West Michigan, but I'm all over Grand Rapids with Sprint gear, and from my experience there's still some work left to upgrade. Downtown GR is just like the Lugnut in Lansing -- no detectable progress on EVDO, LTE, or 800. Spark devices aren't connecting to EVDO on that site (so if you have a Nexus 5, it's locked to PCS 1X in Downtown, even though EVDO is available). Some of the PCS LTE sites went live without all of the required backhaul in place, so they're marked as "accepted" on the map, but aren't actually fixed yet. Not normally a huge issue, but when they did this in dense areas, it really shows (Specifically, Grandville Ave at Chicago Drive, a strong, outdoor direct-line-of-sight LTE signal from that site results in speeds like http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/a/660546363 ). Similar problems exist in Easttown / Heritage Hill / South Division / ect. Some of the sites listed on the map simply don't exist? For instance, there's a site listed inside / ontop of the Amway Grand Plaza. (DAS?) If that site exists, I don't think it's live -- or at least, I'm not seeing it on my Nexus 5 or Zing Hotspot. The "sites completed" map on S4GRU feels slightly misleading to me. A number of those sites claim "3G" or "4G" completed, and while that may be true from a "internal checklist" perspective, it's not true in my experience from an end-users perspective. Not trying to complain about it -- I know they're working on it, and the sites that have been fully fixed are looking very healthy. (Especially ones near the edge of town, like Kenowa and 44th, or Knapps Corner). But if we're talking about completion, there's still plenty of work to do in West Michigan. From a (admittedly totally subjective) opinion, I'd guess that Grand Rapids is about 15-20% behind whatever work the map shows as completed.

Nah, there are a number of options for getting gigabit backhaul reliably over microwave. Plenty of gear from vendors like Ubiquiti or Dragonwave that are capable of that. (That's not to say Sprint is using it, but they certainly could if they wanted to.)

I don't see why T-Mobile can't do both. Go for 600 hard, but buy 700A too "on the cheap", as the fallback position. Sprint already has the old iDEN bands as a fallback position, T-Mobile needs a low-band fallback in case the 600mhz auction gets poisoned - but that shouldn't stop them from pushing for 600mhz. T-Mobile's has said it plans to raise cash (http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/t-mobile-raise-18b-stock-sale-could-use-funds-buy-spectrum/2013-11-12) and given their new growth and, I'd suspect they'll have very little trouble getting the cash they want from investors. Sprint's got SoftBank cash, so they've already raised a good chunk of the cash they need, and (while I think this is very unlikely) they could sell off some EBS/BRS for additional cash. AT&T and Verizon are going to hit 600 hard, not because they need it, but because they don't want Sprint / T-Mobile to get it. Sprint and T-Mobile should be hoarding their spectrum cash for that auction. Put "most-to-all their wood behind one arrow." Things like PCS-H are nice to have, but they won't fundamentally change much for Sprint or T-Mobile.

I've had no problems with WiFi, or with streaming Netflix or Hulu on mine. The LTE reception doesn't seem great to me, but it's no worse than some of the other devices I've compared it to. (Photon Q LTE)

The thing that excites me about this device is the dual CDMA + GSM activation methods. I'm guessing this won't work, but I'm going to try to activate it on the Sprint side, and then shove a T-Mobile sim card into it and see if I can trick the device to "fall back" to 1X/EVDO on Sprint when T-Mobile is in 'no service / no roaming' areas. Even if it's just data-only. I'm also curious to see if it can be tricked onto MetroPCS CDMA+LTE. (The bands appear to match for PCS CDMA + AWS LTE, so if the dealer system accepts the device id for the 1x side, this might work. That would let a Nexus device get full compatibility with all of T-Mobile LTE + Metro LTE + Sprint 1x data roaming + Verizon voice/sms roaming. I've always wanted a single device I could provision on every carrier, and just "pay for what's used" on each. The radio on this thing, being so open and supporting so many networks, is super exciting.

You assuming that someone should need data every single month, to want a data enabled tablet. Some people just need data some of the time. The $5/month plan is useful, in that it lets you keep a line open without having to go through the huge trouble of re-activating all the time. It's just like the "out on holiday" plans utility companies used to offer, when you wanted to keep your account open, but not use anything for a while. I could write a long rant about how much of a waste of time it is trying to re-activate a down device. (The website fails on me about 50% of the time, so I have to go bug a store rep, and feel guilty about it, since there's no comission in it for them and they're too nice to just let me pay them for their time). Technology failures half the time (the Sprint reps last week told me to "keep LTE off" for 24 hours, since device activations are failing in this area, if the device starts the process over LTE instead of EVDO. I thought that sounded ridiculous, so I waited one hour and switched LTE on ... and it broke (device found and authenticated to LTE, but no data would transfer at all), so I had to sheepishly walk back in there, admit my mistake, and have him re-do it again) If $5/month is all it takes to never have to deal with all of that, I'll gladly pay it every single month. - - - I'm not a third party sales rep, and have very little information about commission rates, but from what folks have written previously in this thread, it sounds like the real issue here appears to be some weird reverse incentive on Sprint's side. It sounds like you shouldn't be mad at customers (how are they to know you aren't getting paid properly?). It sounds like something is wrong on Sprint's side (don't reps get the cut of the activation fee? Are they not paying you guys for some tablet activations? If so, why can they get away with that?)

It looks like regular 5x5 LTE. It's just an empty tower. That's the speeds Sprint subscribers should see when there are zero-ish other active LTE data users on a site/sector.

It's kinda sad, because they've fixed most of that. The new keyboard is normal-sized. The new BB10 os is way less buggy, and has modern API support (you could develop a modern app identical in features to iOS/Android/WP8/ect). The new BB's have awesome network support and crazy good reception (Paratek dynamic antennas - a huge improvement over my Galaxy Note 2's reception), and support full LTE. The Sprint version got botched (lots of blame all around, Sprint way delayed the release and broke visual voicemail, and BlackBerry didn't add full 800 network support). But on every other network, it's an excellent choice.

It sounds like they will eventually, from the article you linked to : "We simply haven't announced LTE expansion plans beyond 225 million POPs yet" "We do have plans to expand beyond that," she added. "We will, and we will do it quickly." They probably just want to wait a bit for the new subscriber cash to roll in. Or more likely, they're waiting to bring back Shakira and call it "Uncarrier 4.0" first...

They've been 100% consistent in message since they announced the change, live in front of hundreds of journalists. It's certainly possible bad data got onto the site, but if so, it was a typo or similar. The terms and conditions have not changed in any meaningful way. Your mis-reading that. Wifi calling is no different than calling from the US. That means, all calls (incoming and outgoing) from your T-Mobile USA phone, to any USA phone, are *free* on Wifi calling (assuming your plan supports unlimited calling). No matter where you are in the world, your Wifi calling will never be billed at the 20c/minute rate, if your calling to or from other USA-based numbers. Calls to *foreign* countries are 20c/minute, even if made over Wifi calling. That's the portion your reading. Source : T-Mobile's own support website at http://support.t-mobile.com/docs/DOC-1680 (the section you are looking for reads "[no monthly charge to use wifi calling for the following:] Calls made from outside the US to US numbers [are] (not charged roaming)" EDIT : Notice the support document above was created a while ago, but updated on Oct 12, 2013 (to include the newly announced roaming price drop).

koi (and others) - I assume Sprint blocks the 'Mobile Hotspot' app on Tablets, correct? As in, If I went into the store, and bought the Tab 3 on the $15/month 2GB plan (on contract), when I open the 'Official Sprint Mobile Hotspot' app, it will try to block me from using this, correct? (It will say something like 'your plan is not authorized for hotspot use'). I don't really want the tablet. But I really like the 2GB + 100mb roaming for $15/month plan, and I'm assuming they won't let me put that plan on a Netgear Zing (or similar). If I could use the hotspot on the tablet, it would be worth it until tri-band tablets come out and I can switch the device over.

On the Sprint website, they are listing the white Galaxy Tab 3 7.0in with 1900 PCS LTE for only $50 on contract. The compatible data plans start at just $5.00/month. 24 months at $5.00 per month = $120. Plus the $50 upfront brings the total to $180, which makes this equal to or cheaper than the Wifi model (which regularly retails at $200, or is on Amazon.com for $180) You essentially get the LTE+CDMA chipset for "free", and get some small amount of Sprint data for "free". The $5 and $10 tablet plans are too small for me to feel comfortable using, but the $15 plan includes 2GB, and 100mb roaming. That seems like a sweet deal (cheaper per gigabyte than the next two lowest hotspot plans) - - - Anyone looked into this at all? Anyone used the Sprint variant of the tablet? I'm personally not interested in the tablet at all, but I'd love to get grandfathered into a 2GB $15/month tablet plan, and $50 to do that seems reasonable (even if I'd only end up using it as a Mobile Hotspot anyway). Thoughts?

We will skip the fact that you could just not answer your phone when traveling, and thus, rack up zero dollars of minute charges. Did you even read about the T-mobile announcement? Despite what you wrote above, international texting is free. Feel free to piss off your lovers, all their international texts are free, youll be just fine. No one is skipping over the 20c / min charge. It's an astounding value! Compare it to Sprint, which charges 59c in Canada or $1.49 a minute in the United Kingdom. And Sprint doesn't give you any free data or texts. (T-Mobile does) Theres pleanty of real problems with T-Mobile, you dont need to invent fake problems to gripe about. No matter how you cut it, the T-Mobile international announcement is a great deal, and represents the lowest postpaid international roaming pricing in the country.

Europe isn't "behind" so much as they're trying to avoid our mistakes. Verizon, Sprint, and AT&T's LTE all being on separate bands that devices can't properly switch between (until very recently). USA considers this a 'success', because we 'deployed early'. Europe properly sees that as a failure. The major goal of their regulation is to prevent exactly what happened in the USA. LTE intentionally being separately and incompatibly banded is a *bad thing* for *everyone*. It's anti-competitive to lock phones down like that, and it encourages isolated networks that force extra costs onto consumers. A properly run FCC should have pushed operators to do the right thing here. A properly run FCC should banded all 700mhz spectrum so that LTE devices on those bands were entirely cross compatible between any network. - - - - I think it's very much the 'pot calling the kettle black' when we point at Europe's "slow" adoption of LTE. In the United States, we still sell proprietary, archaic, legacy 1x/EVDO devices as modern equipment, and are still *deploying* new EVDO and 1x CDMA service on sites. That's the definition of backwards, even Canada is beating us in this regard, having properly switched over 95%+ of their population to GSM/HSPA+ by now. We can puff up our LTE deployment stats all we want -- but by international standards, USA cell service is still a giant mess of crazy and incompatible bands and services. I would greatly prefer we adopt a more European approach, if it meant providers were forced into modern GSM services and compatible band planning.

DC-HSPA+ (HSPA+42) is actually fairly common in major cities outside of the USA: In Canada, Bell and Telus both run DC-HSPA+ networks. Telstra runs one in Australia. SFR runs one in France. All three major carriers in New Zealand offers HSPA+42. 3 and EE in the United Kingdom run DC-HSPA+. Vodafone runs it in a bunch of countries including Ireland, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, ect. And of course, T-Mobile runs one in Germany. As you correctly mentioned above, lots of European providers invested heavily on HSPA+ banded spectrum, and LTE spectrum was being delayed while they (properly) solved the roaming / handset compatibility issues. DC-HSPA+ was a slightly-easier slightly-cheaper upgrade path that gave those operators good incentive to max out the use of their existing spectrum.

I'm fairly certain this is not true, AT&T roaming is never so expensive that T-Mobile could not afford it. I don't have hard numbers to back it up offhand, but numerous sources (including T-Mobile's own press release) state that the roaming agreement rates were "favorable to T-Mobile" T-Mobile may choose to not pay for roaming in certain areas, for whatever reason they'd like. (AT&T 'charging to much' likely means too many T-Mobile customers would rack up AT&T roaming charges that T-Mobile chooses not to pay, not that AT&T network access is so expensive on a given tower that T-Mobile can't afford to pay them). Besides, it's not like they could't charge for domestic roaming. Lots of subscriber would pay an extra $10/month just to have 50mb to 100mb of nationwide AT&T data roaming. (Just as Sprint charges extra for Verizon data roaming). http://gigaom.com/2011/12/20/t-mobiles-consolation-prize-a-whole-lot-of-airwaves/ http://www.engadget.com/2011/12/20/t-mobile-usa-and-atandts-seven-year-umts-roaming-agreement-gets-d/

Some in-market areas are allowed. Lots of out-of-market areas are blocked... There seems to be zero rhyme or reason behind it. It's like they threw darts at a map one day and said "in these areas, and only these areas, we will allow AT&T roaming". And it's stuck that way ever since. It's ironic, because it would save them a lot on the coverage issue. Sprint allowing roaming on Verizon pretty much solved the 'coverage' issue, because anytime someone worried about coverage, Sprint could just say 'no worries, we roam on Verizon for 'free', your never without coverage'. With the flip of a switch, T-Mobile could do the same with AT&T. I think John Legere is preventing it -- It would require him to admit they have better coverage, and he's physically incapable of saying anything about AT&T that could ever possibly be interpreted as a positive.

+1 to this. The MetroPCS network in most of Michigan has much better chosen sites than T-Mobile's, and they *all* run LTE except for Flint. (It's only 3G-speed LTE, but that's not really Metro's fault, they only had 10mhz of spectrum total for 1x and LTE to share). T-Mobile so far, does not seem to be using any of the Metro assets in West Michigan, which is a huge mistake. T-Mobile's LTE is fast (essentially matching speeds of Verizon / AT&T where it exists), but it's spotty (T-Mobile is PCS spaced running AWS, Metro was AWS spaced running AWS), and appears so far to only be using their old HSPA+ mainstays. I'm pretty sure whatever deployment strategy their using was in the works before the MetroPCS merger.

Yep. iPCS basically skipped entire parts of town they didn't like. Entire neighborhoods are missing coverage. Sprint will, at minimum, need to double their site density city-wide just to offer working 1x service on 800. Others reading this might think "oh, the complaining about iPCS isn't that big of a deal. These guys are exaggerating. It can't be *that* bad." No, you'd be greatly mistaken. There's no level of complaining that can adequately describe just how badly the iPCS sites are spaced up here. And since there's roughly only five of us here, we have to keep hauling it out in discussion, to keep our sanity, since Sprint's ignored the state for half a decade now... - - - anyway, back on topic - - - I really don't understand the fascination with Sprint and T-Mobile merging. Ignoring all the technical challenges, from a purely consumer oriented perspective, having Sprint and T-Mobile separate keeps them both in a healthy balance. If T-Mobile had already merged with Sprint, I don't think we'd ever be seeing changes like JUMP or 'free international data roaming' take place. There'd also be little-to-no pressure on Sprint to do BYOD or move towards removable SIM cards. Or even to fix service. (A large part of NV's fast pace is a reaction to T-Mobile hitting urban areas with LTE rather quickly) T-Mobile's lack of coverage (and lack of easy cash infusion) gives them incentive to innovate in ways other than adding new cell sites or buying competitors, and when they do this, it helps all of us. Every carrier came out with a JUMP-clone after T-Mobile did. I'd bet every carrier will at least slightly lower their data roaming rates now, as a direct reaction to T-Mobile's move yesterday. Having a 'scrappy' 4th place carrier keeps the other three in check. And when they make these moves, it forces others to react, which raises the bar for all of us, regardless of what carrier we happen to be on.

Um...yes? If you define "better" as "fastest average data speeds", then AT&T is (in aggregate) one of the best networks in the USA. I get the hate. I know AT&T has terrible policies / pricing / ect. They abuse their landline monopoly. I truly get that. I know for a long time, they had a Sprint-like problem of not investing in their network for years. But this "AT&T's network sucks" opinion is at least two years out of date in some markets. AT&T is consistently and objectively bringing home independent network awards in data speeds in a large number of markets. And it's not just on data speeds, but they're even winning awards in some markets for data reliability, and voice/sms service. For smaller carriers like Sprint and T-Mobile to compete, they need to know what they're up against. And right now, Verizon and AT&T are usually trading 1st place in service quality in most markets across the US. Here's a sampling of major markets where AT&T has won first place awards this year on data, voice, and sms service combined : Washington DC - (Jan 2013) http://www.rootmetrics.com/compare-carriers/united-states/washington-dc/washington-d.c.-january-2013/ Seattle, WA - (June 2013) http://www.rootmetrics.com/compare-carriers/united-states/seattle/seattle-june-2013/ Boston, MA - (July 2013) http://www.rootmetrics.com/compare-carriers/united-states/boston/boston-ma-july-2013/ Austin, TX - (Sept 2013) http://rootmetrics.com/compare-carriers/united-states/austin/austin-tx-september-2013/

Normally, this would be true. But in T-Mobile's case, it's not. T-Mobile has a flat rate, price-locked, nationwide roaming agreement with AT&T. It was negotiated as a concession as part of the AT&T/TMO merger breakup. There's nothing stopping T-Mobile from offering an 'unlimited edge-speed' nationwide US roaming agreement, just like the international one they announced today. AT&T could not retaliate (raise their roaming rates or restrict their roaming access) in any meaningful way if T-Mobile chose to do this. (AT&T is bound by contract, to let T-Mobile use any part of their network at decent rates for roughly the next 6 years). I'd love them to open up domestic roaming, but I don't expect them to actually do this, because people would actually use it. Very few people travel internationally so often that this T-Mobile deal will cost them any great amount of money. Lots of subscribers would hit AT&T roaming every single day, if T-Mobile allowed roaming.

This times 1000. The tower spacing and density matters a lot more than the frequency. Lower isn't always (or even usually) better. It's mainly site spacing / location / density / backhaul that matters most. Verizon runs all the low-band cellular here, but AT&T's network is a lot better - the tighter density of their sites lets them offer better service even with higher band PCS-only spectrum. (Handoffs have more grace area with tighter sites, speeds are faster since there's more backhaul per square mile, ect). AT&T and Nextel were roughly neck and neck for tower density here, until Nextel shut down earlier this summer. We had a lot of people hang on to those Nextel phones for a long time, specifically for that reason. (They had a killer combo of tight spacing and low band spectrum). Now that they're gone, AT&T is king here. Verizon's a far second, and Sprint / T-Mobile are distant players, despite all of them owning identically-banded PCS spectrum, mainly because of the cell site spacing. EDIT : This isn't just my opinion, AT&T won every category in the RootMetrics report this month, even while the network was fully-loaded with the largest international event we hold all year http://rootmetrics.com/compare-carriers/united-states/grand-rapids/grand-rapids-mi-september-2013/#combined