bkco14

Oh I agree that Mediacom is a lot cheaper than SpeedConnect's extreme service. I was agreeing with the post above where people will pay more for the same service if they don't like the business and I know people hate Mediacom. There are also many posts in this forum as a whole about people who wouldn't do business with ATT (even if their service is better than sprint) because they don't like the business practices. I am also upset that this company bought up all the spectrum so Sprint can't have proper service in this area. We do need competition here in the wireless, TV, and broadband services though.

Exactly. We have 2 choices, ATT DSL with a max speed of 3-6 Mbps with a cap at 150Gb or Mediacom who is despised in this area and caps their plan at 250 Gbs (unless you want to pay more for a larger cap)

Yeah. I don't understand why this market is so terrible with multiple carriers even with a population of 500,000 people. Also, I was just floored at the response was "looks like the area isn't good, so turn off LTE". They even said there wasn't anything in the pipeline to do anything here to fix the problems. I can't wait to move :-).

Slow as ever.

Since I still have tickets open with sprint, I called today to see how they were coming along and was transferred to their Oklahoma office. I was told that in this area, the best thing to do would be to turn off LTE on my phone and just use 3G.

If sprint worked for you, why did you switch? 3mbs vs 30mbps is a big speed difference, but as long as the Ping is low, you won't tell the difference on a smartphone. (I just used that as an example of an insanely difference in speed). Heck, even 1mbps will open up all apps just about as fast as a 30mbps network. I have even gone through that a little bit as we have recently switched carriers, because there are areas where our carrier and sprint were the same, but unfortunately there are many places sprint just didn't work. You have to choose the right network for your needs. Looks like there really wasn't a problem with Sprint for you and that is why you are regretting it.

Reliable and the quad cities don't mix. There are places where sprint is fantastic. John Deere road by the mall. West of Camden park in Milan and Colona work great. Downtown Moline will not have data services, Milan is pretty brutal and the davenport/Bettendorf speeds are around .16-.24. I ended up switching to for the time being because data was not reliable at all. It was great until February and then went downhill fast. Multiple tickets and calls to Sprint and no one could say what is wrong. They say that they haven't seen a ticket priority set as high as the ones in the QC market, but they claim they can't find a problem. My daughter's framily line is still active (as voice and text work great). I am hoping they get their act together in this area in the near future as I would love to come back as I am rooting for them and have had service with them for 20 years. Also, I have been to other markets like Chicago and Cincinnati where sprint seemed better than the other 2. So, I know what they are capable of; they just need to get it working here. However, what I have heard is that they really don't have the spectrum here to deploy Spark. Wondering what can be done here or if this area will always be a problem.

No, data speeds aren't the end all be all, but when you are in "best" lte coverage and the network times out or when it takes 4 minutes to tell you the temperature in the weather channel app then that is a problem. That is my home market. Some people have valid complaints about the network. Now, I have been to the Chicago market and Cincinnati and love the network there as it works great. Now I agree 10 vs 50 Mbps I could care less. Netflix and YouTube (most data intensive apps) will work just fine at 5 Mbps. So I do get upset when I hear people complain about that. But when lte doesn't work or only gets .8 in the best network shouldn't be tolerated.

That is awesome. Wish my area was eligible for some of that B41 love :-(.

That isn't what he is saying. He said what is the difference between a bucket of data and having music apps be unlimited vs having a bucket of minutes and having select people or mobiles be unlimited. Isn't that the same type of analogy?

We only have 5x5 carrier here for b25/b26. So why wouldn't they put up b41 equipment but put up the others? I don't care about blistering speeds. I just don't want to have .15 Mbps in the best LTE area. Sick of driving In the middle of town and hearing Siri say "sorry, but I have seem to have lost data connection" or being at a park for my son's baseball and not even able to connect to LTE or 3G to check the weather radar. If we could get a consistent 4 Mbps all over then I would be happy.

So in non tech speak, what does this mean? ????

Ha ha. Yes it is. I think VzW and AT&T work fine here, but the others, not so much. That is surprising since we do have a pretty big population.

But after that 8-10 seconds what impact does it have on the towers? We are quick to say that we shouldn't consume a lot of data, but if it were that detrimental, don't you think Sprint would have not kept unlimited? The reason the big 2 did it was to make more money since data is the "flavor of the month" just like texting was. Remember how we kept getting gouged on the price of a text message? I think Sprint is also losing money because they had tens of millions of people leave, but their network costs didn't go down. Thus if 60 million people were paying for something and now you are down under 50 million, your income goes way down, but your network costs don't.

I don't think the bandwidth of 15Mbps is a problem. I thought the whole problem was people using a lot of data. Heck, I would be happy with a reliable constant 2-3 Mbps since you can do really anything with that. Video and audio streaming works fine. I think in the end, capacity is the biggest hurdle for any of this to be reliable. Here in a 5x5 network, 37.5Mbps is the max right now we can get out of a tower. If 38 people are on it at the same time, we are now down to < 1Mbps per person. So, because of that, there is no way that anyone can say they will guarantee any sort of speed since the speed is dependent on how many people are using the same tower at the same time. Also, I don't think using a ton of data is the problem or abusive because what happens if you are using that on a cross country road trip? You aren't abusing any 1 tower for that long at all. I think the an abuser is someone who is using 1 tower and trying to stream constantly because it is causing that 1 tower to not function as well.

I don't think we can consider wireless a commodity until they are reliable. Think of this as a water company. Everyone pays for how much water they use. Great. But would you be happy if one day your water comes out of the faucet at a steady stream and the next day it just drips when you turn it on? Sure it still works, but will you be really happy if it takes you 5 minutes to fill up a pot to boil water? People complain that the people who abuse the network causes it to not work right. What happens if they pay to use that much data? Can the wireless companies really make it so those people don't cause the network to crumble? There is only so much spectrum that can be used. So if someone is paying to use a lot of it and the companies are getting extra money, what can that money be used for? They can't buy more spectrum right? They can't have their towers pump more out if they don't have anymore right? I think buckets cause more data to be used. I am on unlimited right now and with a family of 3 average 4.5 Gb a month. If I pay for a bucket of data, you better believe I would try and use that all up because I paid for that much and I would feel like I would be throwing money down the drain.

Until you go over the bucket and pay overages vs having speeds slowed. I would take unlimited with a cap vs bucket any day.

From what I have been told on this forum, the eastern Iowa market is not going to be where sprint shines.

Since you haven't seen the clarification, here you go:"Speaking yesterday at Re/code's Code Conference, Claure said that "you can expect in the next 18 to 24 months--hopefully you'll invite me two years from now--that our network will be ranked No. 1 or No. 2 in every single market." He later clarified that he meant No. 1 or 2 in the United States' major markets, according to CNET." http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/sprints-claure-18-24-months-well-be-no1-or-2-network-performance/2015-05-28 Here is the cnet article it was referencing: http://www.cnet.com/news/sprint-ceo-give-us-two-years-and-our-network-will-blow-past-rivals/ My question is how can they add B41 to an area where they don't own much 2.5 spectrum and some other company does? That has been my question. I never said they aren't improved in a lot of area and the area that I visited l said I loved. I am just questioning if there really is much they can do in my area. That is what everyone needs to be asking. Will it work where I live. It is great to hear that they are winning Denver and are one of the best in Chicago and other markets as well. But in my area, I don't know how much they can do with the little spectrum they own here.

They don't test our market at all. Even our local wireless provider doesn't even give us good coverage. I would really like to see data on all carriers for the area, but even sensorly doesn't give us much information. It appears that the only data that is there is for sprint in which I am constantly running speed tests.

I live in an area that spans 2 states and has 5 cities that make up a large metropolitan area.

They don't enough of the spectrum here. We have a company that provides people with LTE data to be their home internet provider (Speed Connect) which owns a lot of the 2.5 spectrum here. I don't even know why they are here (just sprang up in the past year) as we have DSL and broadband from our cable company.

That 1 or 2 in performance was later edited to only mean in major markets right? If so, that is the part that worries me. I don't consider my area rural or not that big (we have over 500,000 people living here), but it isn't one of Sprint's major markets. I am worried that my area is just about done in Sprint's eyes. And data performance has degraded big time here. I have also heard that we are one of the few areas that Sprint can't deploy band 41. I really don't want to look elsewhere as I have been with sprint since 1999, so I am hoping that they can do more here. I have been to Chicago and Cincinnati and love what they have done.

So besides the second carrier, is there really anything else they can do to help the area? I wonder if there are plans for more densification here. We aren't data hogs at all (family of 3 averaging 4 GB), but I prefer to have unlimited for the piece of mind and because we don't know what the future holds. And for that reason alone I would prefer to be with Sprint. I just want piece of mind that our area will be useable in the foreseeable future instead of being in a park in the middle of town and not able to pull up the weather map to see if a storm was coming our way.

So is it safe to assume that a second carrier could theoretically double the speed of it was put on? When I called tech support, they mentioned that all the towers are missing a second sector. Do you know what that means? Is that the second carrier? The other oddity that I have noticed is that there is a lot more roaming near zip code 61264. That was never roaming before, but the coverage maps are showing a lot of roaming. Does that seem right?