maxsilver

And on a completely unrelated note, it feels like daily post activity has dropped like 50% or so sitewide. 

My poor notification indicator can finally relax a bit.

100% truth. as many have said more or less - the biggest issue is the sprint haters

that said I've been on TMO now for 5 is weeks and in my area.

 

i get band 4 only (which is their older AWS spectrum ) and I get about 20-40mbps down all the time.  My area is suppose to be only band 2 and 12 for LTE so not sure what is up there.  From a technology standpoint -- I am sort of shocked at the performance - since TMO uses the same towers that Sprint does in my home area.  Yet with Sprint's full 800/190/2600 roll out complete I only saw 1mbps typically and when I saw LTE it was about 6mbps.... With Sprint's newer equipment I would have thought the reaction would be reversed.  Especially since TMO hasn't upgraded any of its towers here

*This* is the real "100% truth".

"Sprint haters" does happen, but is for the most part, an internet-only phenomena (e.g. FierceWireless comments)

However, people who say "Sprint sucks" because they are used to wildly different performance from their phones is fairly common -- even today in Spark markets. That's not "hate", it's just people disatisfied with the service in their area for totally valid reasons.

Some people tend to lump them all together as "haters" to make them easier to dismiss. That is a mistake.

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For instance, you just mentioned in your own market that T-Mobile is pulling down 4x faster data than Sprint, and doing so more often + more reliably than Sprint. You said yourself that you are "shocked by the performance difference"

Many normal reasonable people will see that and say "Sprint sucks" -- not because of any hate, but just as a reflection of the performance disparity present in that market. Especially your "nerd friend or family member" who is going to be more sensitive to data performance in the first place.

And the experience you just posted, while it's not true everywhere, it is not terribly uncommon today either. The majority of urban / suburban areas around here have very similar performance to what you described (verified by RootMetrics reporting), despite them being official Spark markets.

so..isn't 9mbps median download terrible for a Spark market?

For a Michigan Spark market, it's pretty typical.

In fact, it's actually better than average (Ann Arbor and Flint are both official Spark markets, and their median speeds were only 4-5mbps according to RootMetrics)

I guess you're right, but aren't they a Spark market?

Yes, Lansing is an official Spark market

Does this include a new physical tower?

If yes, how much does a macro site cost if it's put, say, on a building?

A cell site costs on average $1,500 - $2,500/month for a length of 3 to 6+ years, depending on various factors (location, weight load, space requirements, amount / provider of backhaul, etc).  There are some outliers above / below that range, but this is a pretty good average.

This generally holds true regardless of whether it's 'new' construction or not, a physical tower or a rooftop, etc

I love the data bucket size that Sprint has offered. Its more than generous and an easy sell if a user has good coverage.

I wish they would offer that for individual lines. I'd prefer to pay for my data -- but Sprint doesn't really have a fair price for data buckets for individual lines

Sprint only sells the $50 or 60/month for "Unlimited with throttling/prioritization/management/asterisks/whatever after 5GB". Which seems like a worse deal for everyone -- Users are incentivized to use as much data as they can, and Sprint is incentivized to slow their data down as much as possible or play stupid games with data (like double-compressing images)

Cricket's plans are the right idea. If Sprint just shamelessly copied Cricket's entire pricing + plan lineup, I would be thrilled. Kill "Unlimited" and replace it with reasonable data buckets and no overage fees. 

I'd happily pay $45/month for 5GB (w/ no overages)  or $55/month for 10GB (w/ no overage) over $50/month for "Unlimited-ish-depending".  That solves the whole 'fairness in data usage' issue and the iPhone vs Android price/data discrimination issue all at once.

I'm curious to why Verizon is the least dense around here, as that has me worried for the future if I ever have to go with them for wireless service

It's like that everywhere. They're site spacing is setup based on their low-frequency spectrum holdings.

That used to be true a few years ago. But it's not like that *everywhere* anymore.

Verizon's thrown a lot of money at increased density in some urban/suburban markets, since they've deployed mid-band (AWS) LTE. I suspect that trend will hit Chicago, if it hasn't already.

And Verizon's was awarded #1 in the last two Chicago RootMetrics reports (including a win for data speed/performance on the most recent one) - http://www.rootmetrics.com/us/rsr/chicago-il/2014/2H. I wouldn't be worried about them or anything.

I'm guessing token B41 sites helped them eek out higher numbers. That's how it works though. 

It's getting better. A LOT better compared to what it was in GR.

Yep. "token B41 sites" is also how I would describe it. And they're great when your near one (Metro Health is a B41 site. 44th and Kenowa, and 28th and Breton are too). 

Service is getting better, absolutely. But I don't think service is "good" yet.  There's nowhere in the city that I would describe as "solid B41 coverage". They simply don't have enough site density right now.

In fact, I wouldn't describe GR as having "solid B25/B26 coverage" today either. There's still a couple of large chunks of Grand Rapids with no LTE data at all. (Wealthy Street Business District, Easttown / East Hills, SE Kentwood + Broadmoor, etc).

T-Mobile had spotty coverage before B12

T-Mobile didn't get reliable just because of B12.

They added a lot of new sites and hardware in West Michigan from MetroPCS.  A few specific examples are Knapps Corner and 44th and Kenowa (ex MetroPCS sites, converted). Along with areas like Muskegon / Grand Haven (in which 100% of market coverage is ex MetroPCS sites). 

And on top of all of that, they did a lot of rural / exurb conversions -- something like 85+% of their 2G is now converted to LTE. (including Zeeland, Hudsonville, Rockford, Sparta + Kent City, etc)

T-Mobile did with MetroPCS, what I was hoping Sprint would do with Nextel in GR. And it's paying off for them -- I believe these new sites + upgrades are the reason T-Mobile still ranks competitively with Verizon. If they hadn't just done all of this work, they would have scored much lower in RootMetrics report in every metric.

B12 is helpful, but it's not even fully deployed in GR yet. The new sites + upgrades are what's improving reliability more than anything else.

Especially while coming dead last in every other metric.

I wrote about this in another thread, but since it's happened again in this report, I'll restate it. 

T-Mobile did come "last" place in voice, but it's not really a reflection of their network quality/coverage. In fact, VoLTE + GSM on T-Mobile is 2x more reliable than Sprint's 1x800 voice is today, according to this RootMetrics report (in the dropped calls metric).

T-Mobile's "call blocked" rate is their only problem here, and it's very high. But that's not network coverage -- that's VoLTE call setup issues.  Should T-Mobile's score get penalized for this? Absolutely -- it's a real problem that impacts subscribers. But I don't think it's a reflection of their network -- the problem will get fixed even though no one physically touched any sites / radios / backhaul / etc.

Oh, I see what your referring to.

I'm guessing it's a median vs mean vs average situation. Hard to know for sure without seeing the actual data.

Subjectively, Verizon probably should win #1 in Grand Rapids for data (their speeds are faster than the report claims. And Verizon has full backhaul for their AWS LTE here, T-Mobile doesn't). But (still subjectively) Sprint and AT&T are both noticeably slower than RootMetrics's report claims in Grand Rapids.

RootMetrics in general does very little indoor testing, so that might be part of the discrepancy. But otherwise I'm not sure why their report looks like that.

I'm not seeing anything here that seems worth disputing, particularly since I'm not aware of anyone who does more thorough testing than they do.

I don't get, Verizon has almost a 10mbps lead on T-Mobile in download speed, with a similar upload and far superior reliability, yet T-Mobile beats them on the speed index? How the hell do they figure that?

I don't think they actually said that.

They said Verizon's median download was 31mbps, and that T-Mobile + Verizon's median upload was 18mbps. But that doesn't imply that Verizon leads T-Mobile by 10mbps on download speeds -- I don't think they ever actually said what T-Mobile's median download speed was at all.

The difference between T-Mobile and Verizon is only 0.2 points. Their data speeds are effectively identical.

Verizon claims its VoLTE coverage is good. According to other articles I've read, Verizon's LTE footprint is essentially its 3G footprint at this point.

I have my VZW S6 locked to LTE only and have had no problems with VoLTE in my area. I wouldn't hesitate to buy a LTE only phone.

Yeah. From a practical standpoint, VoLTE is not nearly as unreliable as some claim. I think VoLTE gets most of it's "unreliable" reputation due to some of T-Mobile's blocked call issues, not because VoLTE itself is actually unreliable in any significant way. 

For instance, in the 2015-1H RootMetrics Report for Ann Arbor, Sprint shared 1st place in calling with AT&T while T-Mobile took last place in calling.  But in the report notes, they say both AT&T and T-Mobile dropped no calls at all during all of their testing (presumably Sprint did), while Sprint had no blocked calls (presumably AT&T + T-Mobile did).

The penalty T-Mobile incurred in "Call Performance" is entirely in call setup / "blocked" call issues because they never dropped a single call during testing. And even hitting that problem is relativity rare (they only came in 0.1 points lower than Verizon's call performance)

AT&T has VoLTE on that handset and in that market. So unless RootMetrics disabled VoLTE (or blocked the update), AT&T's VoLTE+GSM is presumably the service they tested that tied with Sprint for #1 call performance.

--------

TL/DR: VoLTE being "less reliable", while technically true, is often way over exaggerated. RootMetrics testing backs that claim up fairly objectively.

And this is just a guess on my part, but by the time a VoLTE only phone launches on Verizon, VoLTE reliability will be indistinguishable from CDMA for the vast majority of users. They appear to be pretty close to that already, nearly everywhere except rural areas.

 The thing that makes me the most mad about this is that there was no problem getting VZW to go on the tower but when it was about AT&T getting new antennas and same with Sprint, recently T-mobile too, they (city and residents) had a fit about them being up

 

all residents the went to this meeting said they only want VZW and they could care less about the others. So it really seems like VZW can ALWAYS get their way and I CAN'T STAND THAT!! 

I suspect your right on Verizon getting their way most of the time. But for what it's worth, the opposite does occasionally happen.

For instance, we have a local rural town that is (probably illegally) blocking Verizon, even though AT&T was allowed. - http://boycottverizonwexford.com

That can't happen without a network that can compete with Verizon. The quickest way of achieving this, would be to merge Sprint and T-Mobile.

I don't know that that's accurate.

The quickest way to inflate your subscriber count is to merge. But a merged Sprint/T-Mobile isn't inherently competitive with Verizon on their network at all. They still have to do the almost the same work they were previously doing, depending on which companies network gets kept. They might save a token amount of cash by puling assets between them, but it would probably take 2+ years for that to take effect. (As seen in Sprint/Nextel, Sprint/Clearwire, T-Mobile/MetroPCS, AT&T/Cricket-Leap, etc)

The only significant changes I see from a merged Sprint / T-Mobile is an easier time taking on debt, and less need/desire to compete. Neither of which I would consider "good".

There is an aspect of "networks are cheaper per user, the more users you divide the cost by". But that seems greatly overstated, and only really applies to rural coverage.

Competition will be a lot stronger the more people there are to give service too, because the more money is at stake.

I'm not sure that's true either. Sprint was a significantly worse company (in terms of pricing / policies / service quality) when it had larger market share previously, than it is now with less market share. 

I think we're making some really big assumptions that carriers (out of the goodness of their heart?) will continue to compete when they have more subscribers. But history seems to show the opposite in many  markets -- the smaller a company is and the more competitors they have, the harder they compete. 

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I think the vast majority of what we're seeing is simple mismanagement. AT&T struggled greatly during the early iPhone days. T-Mobile struggled for a long time under Humm and the merger. Sprint's struggled for a long time. All of these seem pretty clearly management issues, stemming from various bad decisions. (And AT&T looks poised to fall back into that, getting distracted with DirectTV)

I don't see any evidence that we can't have 4 profitable cellular providers -- there's plenty of money in all of these companies revenue statements. All I see is evidence that it's easy for executives to mismanage cellular companies.

Neither are making profits.

T-Mobile did turn a profit over the last year (39 cents/share between Q2 2014 and Q1 2015). And while some of that came from a Verizon spectrum sale, Q4 2014 turned a profit without that spectrum sale -- so it's not a one-time occurance. And they're telling shareholders they expect a positive cents/share profit for the next three quarters.

Now, they're only just barely profitable. But they are "making profits".

Which phones label 1x as "3G"? I know the iPhone actually says "1x" if it's 1x.

I don't have a way to check this, but my understanding is that all Sprint branded Android LTE phones display both 1x and EVDO as "3G", and iPhones don't.

And my memory is hazy on this, but I think Nexus devices don't Nexus devices do, BlackBerry's don't, and Windows Phones do, but my memory is very hazy -- I'm not 100% sure of this.

(edit: I forgot that I changed this manually on my Nexus)

Out of my testing of all providers in this market, sprint is the only one that consistently (for me) lost LTE more than 75% of the time of stepping indoors with my phone in my pocket. Maybe it's the network, and possible lack of optimization, or maybe it's the way the iPhone handles signal and LTE band handoffs, I'll never know.

This has been my experience in most markets too. (Especially northern markets, like Michigan, Seattle, Portland, Minneapolis, etc).

Chicago is actually the one place I've been to that I've seen this happen the least. I'm a little surprised you see it that often actually, Chicago is the best Sprint market I've ever been to.

I can also tell you that it's being noticed by the non-tech savvy. I have a few family members that I've converted to Sprint that are so upset that they're always on 3G in a bar, restaurant, or store, can't load anything, and have to go searching for wifi (horrible, I know). They repeatedly tell me, "that never happened on AT&T." That little "LTE" logo up top is very comforting to the masses, and when it's gone, the network is "crap." And when AT&T/T-Mobile drop down to "4G," nobody bats an eyelash.

I see people having this reaction a ton. Especially since we have sizable chunks of the city without LTE. And since everyone knows me as the "guy obsessed with cell phones", I hear about it from lots of people.

I think a big part of this is caused by Sprint claiming 1x as "3G" (regardless of the fact that the technical definition allows it -- I'm not trying to rehash that discussion).  

But from a purely customer experience standpoint alone, users see "3G" and expect a full data experience, just slower.  So when AT&T / T-Mobile drop down to "4G/3G/H+", no one bats an eyelash because "stuff mostly still works, just slower".  But when Sprint drops down to "3G", it often 1x800, which translates to 'no data'. "Twitter doesn't work, Facebook doesn't work, Reddit doesn't work. Nothing works" is how I hear people describe this.

People remember that. Like Forever. It's their own mini-PTSD episode.  It only takes a handful of times for "3G = no data" association to happen before people learn it, and just give up.

Even if later on their phone is parked on EVDO with good backhaul, they're so accustomed to "3G" meaning "no data" that they just assume the "network is crap" whenever they see the 3G icon, regardless of whether data is actually working or not.

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That little "LTE" logo is comforting to the masses, in large part because telcoms have explicitly trained people pavlovian-style that data is only useful if they see the LTE / 4G icon.  

A few years ago, T-Mobile replaced two broken EDGE-only rural sites in Holland / Allegan with HSPA+, but left the T1 backhaul as-is. If they still did that, or if AT&T or T-Mobile labeled EDGE as "3G" (which they're similarly technically allowed to do by ITU), I think you'd see the exact same problem + response happen with them.

Yeah, we already know Michigan native expansion is taking place.  I've seen people on reddit reporting new coverage in north Michigan.

Would you be willing to link to that?

I've seen a lot of people talk about the Northern Michigan rollout has starting. But I've seen zero objective evidence of it so far (no permits, nothing on sensorly, etc)

Everything I've seen to date has been existing 2G -> 4G upgrades, or switchover of Metro sites.

Does anyone know if you can set up a Fi phone with hotspot capabilities?

Google claims it includes tethering, at https://fi.google.com/about/plan/

It is an inane move to do this while still selling several new phones that don't have LTE. 

All currently sold non-LTE phones will still get 4G data in all markets, just as before.

They're only pulling down *AWS* HSPA+. PCS HSPA+ will still be live, providing 4G data service to almost all non-LTE phones sold in the last three years

The Sprint store I go to check has speeds ~ 0.05mbps on ookla while iphones - can't download app - max at 2mbps on bandwidthplace.com test.

But it is representative for non-trivial major markets.

You know your not being fair -- you know your making comparisons based on one of Sprint's known-worst markets (Michigan).

Clearly, not every market is deployed like Michigan was, and not every market has these same issues. (Unless you consider NYC or Chicago to be a trivial, not-major market.)

I don't have time tonight for a full financial analytical response, but you are more likely to get that "$2" from them than from any of the other major wireless carriers. Because it is easier for Sprint to double its stock price now than any other carrier.

I don't think that's true though -- currently, you are more likely to get that $2 from other major carriers.

For instance, simply holding a share of AT&T's stock, would have earned you $1.84 last year in dividends, in addition to the $1.50 that the per-share price rose.

As an investment, AT&T's made their investors $3.34/share profit over the course of 2014, while Sprint's stock lost their investors $4.12/share

Now, AT&T also spent last year slipping on their network rankings in many markets, while Sprint started gaining in them. Again, this isn't a measure of the business in any way, just the measure of the investment opportunity. A bad business can make investors a good offer. A good business can make investors a bad offer.

EDIT : Is it more likely that Sprint's stock will double than AT&T's? Absolutely. But that chance is still super small, with super high risk. And AT&T still a better/safer investment in the eyes of investor, even if their stock price never rises this year -- it's still less risk and more profit, more reliably.

Maybe do something like Dominos did by admitting openly that their network sucked, but that now its getting better, bolder, and stronger. Say exactly what is making the new network so much different, but do so openly in public forums, rather than just news reports. 

The biggest problem with that option, is that they've sort-of already used it a couple of times. That path isn't effective the third time you use it.

Their current option (promoting RootMetrics results) seems much better. Regardless of whether it's true or not, no one believes Sprint when Sprint says they've fixed things. They need a respected independent objective third-party to say that, and promote the third-party's message.

RootMetrics isn't perfect, but they are probably the closest fit for that need right now.

I dunno why Craig is so anti-sprint but oddly enough people pay him a lot of money for that opinion.

Because as an short-term investment, Craig's mostly right. The math isn't working out to investors favor, there's a lot of risk that's unaccounted for. There's a 80% chance that Sprint's stock price won't rise in a huge way in the near future, and a 99.999% chance that they won't post dividends for at least half a decade.  

An investors opinion on a business isn't a signal as to how good/bad the business itself is. It represents how good/bad the current investment opportunity with that business is, in comparison to every other opportunity on the market today.

If you want a low risk chance of profit on your particular investment in the next 1 to 12 quarters, Sprint is one of the worst places to put your investment money. 

That doesn't mean Sprint as a *business* is bad. Sprint could be making all the right moves, Sprint could be doing *literally everything* right to fix their business (in customer service, in network quality, in promotions, in marketing, everything). They could do everything right, be an awesome business, but still be a bad investment -- these two aren't actually directly related in any way.

I've seen no evidence that Craig is actually anti-Sprint in general. In fact, most of his recent articles start out by saying something like "Sprint's making the right business moves, with promotions / pricing / network improvements / whatever". He then launches into the financials -- the fact that if you give Sprint a dollar today, your not getting two dollars back. Or even one dollar back, anytime soon. And that's where he gets really negative. Frankly, from that particular perspective, I don't think he's wrong there.

- - -

Getting mad at Craig because he's writing advice to a certain class of investors, and not to telecom fans, seems counterintuitive. His advice seems pretty accurate for his target audience. It's just that, if your reading S4GRU, your probably not his audience -- your not looking at the financials from the perspective his audience typically is.

Anyways, the main reason I'm starting this thread, as I'm excited for Monday when I get started officially with the new device and service (thats when I'm going to the store for a device swap), is I am working on a solution to the congestion issue.

If I remember correctly, in that previous thread you never experienced any congestion issues, you experienced coverage issues. (You claimed your data was fast when you had it, which typically means your area was not congested in any noticeable way. You said you lost data service when entering buildings and/or driving around town -- which would point to coverage issues.)

If that's what your still talking about (data's consistently fast, but your loosing it, it's not always available), you'll probably want to use the word *coverage* to refer to that, since what you've described is not congestion.

So, I'll start by asking about Wideband. Is wideband a solution to congestion, and how much different is is than just the normal spectrum mhz, example of T-Mobile's soon to be 15x15 AWS network.

It *could* be. It depends

LTE is deployed in blocks of spectrum. Usually it's paired into separate up and down channels. (Called "FDD" because it's divided by frequency). For example, Sprint usually runs 5x5 LTE on PCS spectrum in most markets. (That's 5mhz of download, 5mhz of upload).

Wider channels offer more data bandwidth. So, if *all* other things are equal, 10x10 LTE is roughly double the bandwidth of 5x5 LTE. And if the number of users stay the same, and their data usage stays the same, and the backhaul is sufficient, then you could experience close-to-double the download speeds.

However, in the real world, all other things are *never* equal. Each carrier has different bands, different placement, different backhaul, etc. (Which is why "it depends").

"Wideband" as T-Mobile uses it, is just a marketing term for 15x15 LTE (or greater, presumably).

In theory, if an area is "congested" (that is, if users are experiencing less-than-2mbps of data speeds), then using more spectrum is one way to help increase those data speeds (assuming there's enough backhaul to support them).

There's lots of ways to increase users data speeds. Wider channels is the cheapest / easiest method, but also the least efficient (since spectrum is a limited resource, but nothing else is at the moment).

Other ways to help that (in my slightly-biased opinion, *better* ways to help that) is to increase site density. You can "split" cell sites (that is, put more sites in the same already-covered area). This divides the number of active users across more cell towers. This can be done almost-infinitely. However, it's takes more time / effort, and occasionally, more money. Which is why nearly every carrier would prefer to just use more spectrum.

In some cases, T-Mobile has already done this work. They advertise this effort as "Data Strong". You'll also hear people talk about "Small Cells" -- that's work to achieve the same effect. There are differences (tight macro network, vs dense 'small cell' network, but in general they're both attempts to do the same basic plan. Improve performance by covering people with more unique sectors, less people per sector.

Data speeds are only as fast as the slowest metric. So, sometimes spectrum has nothing to do with it, and backhaul is the problem (the internet supplying the cell tower). Sometimes, neither spectrum nor backhaul is the problem, sometimes the cell sites / cell towers are too large or far apart.

"congestion" (as in slow data) can be entirely different causes on literally a street-by-street, block-by-block basis. Coverage problems can also have different causes on the same block-by-block basis, although it's usually slightly simpler (since backhaul doesn't effect coverage)

What I'm wondering is how T-Mobile's ability to have a wideband network with that spectrum is any different than just saying they have 15x15.

It's really not. "Wideband" is being used as a marketing term for 15x15mhz (or greater?). Just like "Spark" is a marketing term for 20mhz TDD LTE (1 or more of them).

I've heard Sprint is going to have a wideband network here in the Chicago market, though with the different spectrum bands, how is that going to be implemented, in comparison say to T-Mobile's implementation.

They already do. The Sprint "Spark" 2.5ghz LTE service is fairly similar to "Wideband" T-Mobile LTE in terms of data performance. The main difference is slightly different spectrum (1700/2100mhz for T-Mobile, 2500/2600mhz for Sprint) and slightly different channel sizes (T-Mobile uses 15x15mhz FDD. Sprint's EBS/BRS spectrum isn't paired that way, so it's a single 20mhz channel (or multiple of them) that carries both upload and download.

Someone will yell at me for saying this because it's not really accurate (and I'm aware of this), but simply for a *super-rough* comparison, you can think of Sprint's EBS/BRS LTE as kind-of like a hypothetical "14x6 LTE" service. Again, that's actually *not* how it works (it's split by Time, not by Frequency and it's not locked like that, they could allocate more to download or upload as needed), and some people might argue about the (again, hypothetical) allocation (12x8? 13x7?) but in the interest of not making this post two paragraphs even longer by writing about TDD vs FDD LTE, that's a simple *hyper rough* approximation of how it compares, until you want to dive into the details.

The other significant difference is that T-Mobile has just one carrier of their "Wideband" LTE -- they usually can't deploy more than 15 or 20x20mhz of AWS LTE in a market, that's all the AWS spectrum they own to use in many markets.

Where as Sprint can run 2 or 3 different 20mhz blocks simeltaneously in many markets. So, if you are measuring *total* bandwidth, maybe T-Mobile's sitting at 15x15 X 1 in Chicago, but Sprint could be at something like "14x6 X 3" or "42x18 X 1" of *total* capacity.

(I don't remember Sprint's exact spectrum holdings in Chicago. But from my hazy memory, I believe they could run 3 LTE carriers once WiMax is shut down. If that's wrong, I'm sure someone will correct it in a response below).

Note that, until Carrier Aggregation becomes live and common, you cant' actually use all that capacity at once. You'll only be on one 20mhz carrier at a time, even if there are two or three of them live. But people can be spread out amongst them evenly to load balance. And eventually with Carrier Aggregation, people could use all of them at once.

I realize Sprint has more spectrum than T-Mobile, though it is more wide range spectrum variety, which is curious to me how T-Mobile or any other company's network could/couldn't have wideband with less spectrum.

Anybody with enough spectrum can have "Wideband". By T-Mobile's definition, it' just means your using 30mhz of spectrum or more. Verizon's "XLTE" is greater-than-"Wideband" in many markets (where they run 20x20mhz LTE in AWS).

I could say I'm writing this from my 5ghz "Wideband WiFi" network, it would be just as accurate as T-Mobile's use of that term

MetroPCS has fast speeds here in the Chicago Market while outside traveling around the area and such, but inside the home here in this suburb, a house that is wooden and slightly stucco, often loses a signal, even though I'm usually right near a window. I think that is really bad, especially when T-Mobile's newer coverage map shows users around here reporting an excellent signal. I'm not even talking about a drop in data speeds, but a total signal loss on a new ZTE ZMAX device that gets good to great signal most places outside.

 

"while their overcrowded network here in Chicago just gets worse"

 

T-Mobile isn't actively recognizing their network/spectrum issues in the Chicago Market, which really upsets me, while they promote their supposed "great" service, along with their new 700 mhz, that isn't even in Chicago. A sure sign of incompetence or ignorance, perhaps both by them, in regards to being honest about their business among their attempts in persuading people they are "Data Strong".

 

 

Anything to combat T-Mobile's lies at this point, I'm thinking. 

So, I'm not sure how that's lies.

You claim overcrowding (which is a real thing that happens on T-Mobile), but you said that you get fast speeds in the Chicago Market, so it must not be *that* overcrowded. And that aligns with their marketing. In some urban areas, they have some of the densest urban cell spacing in the nation, which is how you get fast speeds even with lots of usage despite having less spectrum -- that's what "Data Strong" means.

T-Mobile didn't promise you 700mhz service in Chicago, so that's not a lie. 

T-Mobile's coverage map is lies. But everyone's coverage map is complete lies (including Sprint's). No carrier can claim to be more truthful than another in that regard -- there's not a single shred of integrity left in anyone's coverage map.

- - -

Chicago is a known weak T-Mobile market, and a known strong Sprint market. You should switch, you'll probably like Sprint better -- especially if it works in your home.

But I wouldn't discredit T-Mobile as a business because of that. If you head over to another market (Detroit or Seattle/Tacoma come to mind) you could easily have the opposite experience. But I wouldn't say Sprint "lies" just because there's no 800mhz service there. And I wouldn't call it "lies" when Sprint claims "Spark has launched" even though 800mhz service is missing.

Use what works for you, obviously. But I wouldn't assume everyone's lying just because you had a bad experience. T-Mobile as a business wouldn't exist if your experience was common. (even if S4GRU makes it sound that way)