bigsnake49

For those that think that if Sprint/T-Mobile merge the end of the wireless world is near, look what happened in Japan. Rakuten, the Japanese e-commerce giant is constructing a greenfield wireless network. Who says that some kind of consortium involving Dish won't be able to do the same here? https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/rakuten-builds-a-greenfield-wireless-network-japan

Basically what this means is you skip the first generation phones powered by the X50 chipset and go for phones with the X55 in them. Which means waiting for 2020. Which is OK since the 5G networks in this country will have minuscule coverage in 2019.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/carriers-struggle-to-make-business-case-for-5g It seems that the carriers are having a hard time making a business case for 5G, given the massive infrastructure costs to upgrade to 5G. I still believe that hotspot duty in high traffic areas should be all that the operators should invest in with much slower adoption rate than 4G.

No 2x capacity advantage for 5G over 4G over the same spectrum absent massive MIMO which can be used by both. Maybe 1.25x-1.5x? Now latency will be much lower for the tower to the handset portion of the network. Network slicing, virtualization, massive amounts of spectrum becoming available for 5G...

Money talks, Sprint does not have any. I also discovered a singe channel band 41 site and it is not a SC or an MM and the nearest full build tower was decommissioned and replaced by an MM. I can't wait till the merger is complete.

Everybody but Sprint would have taken care of it by now. Forget about 4xCA, why is a major tower on a major intersection in Melbourne still have only 2xCA?

Look, I am paying $15/month+taxes for a kickstarter line on Sprint. I am sure Sprint is not making any money on that line. There are other limited duration deals that other people have taken advantage of. But the trend has been to raise prices.

T-Mobile's rates have risen to almost Verizon/AT&T levels so him promising they will not rise is a rather empty promise.

Then it has never been updated. Mine never moves from WiFi. if I reboot, it never completes the boot up process.

My release numbers: 15.16.0.533, 60.9.83.0

There's nothing to optimize. You tell it which WiFi AP it should use, give it the password and off it goes. On LTE backhaul it has to optimize which Band 41 channel to use from which tower.

On WiFi backhaul?

What is your signal out of the MB? How about your release numbers? I wonder if mine did not receive the update. Mine shows me connected to Band 26 after I select WiFi backhaul. I am on the 100/10 tier but I usually get 120/12.

I did try it and my LTE signal on my phone went back to 110-114dbm instead of -85 at my favorite chair which means the Magic Box is not working on WiFi backhaul. Mine also shows limited connectivity. Have you tried doing a speedest?

So I guess we have to wait a little bit longer...

Maybe can be used in downtowns, malls, stadiums. I am more interested in CBRS, "C" band and 6GHz band.

Good luck on 5G on 28GHz penetrating my cement block building.

Well, if CDMA will go away, VOLTE will be enabled on all. If the merger goes through, T-mobile will sunset CDMA quickly. They might leave 1x800 on for a little while longer. I would not worry about it right now. I am sure they will offer generous incentives to purchase a new handset.

I am encouraged by the fact that they are spending money on their network. No matter what happens with the merger they are investing in it. I am sure they are spending wisely with an eye towards investments that won't be stranded. One question that was not asked is why they are not working with the other major cable operators on strand mounted small cells. A CBRS/2.5GHz small cell would be a win/win for both Sprint and Comcast/Charter.

Or bidding up the price of Sprint itself. Or driven up prices of AWS-3.

Prices will never be lower. Long gone are those days, whether or not the merger goes through or not.

It isn't political when we're just complaining about the shutdown of the government affecting the Sprint/T-Mobile merger. We're not assigning blame, we're just frustrated that it happened, not just this time but all the times in the past.

I have the same firmware version.

It's basically up to the FCC now. I expect it to be approved in the first Quarter of 2019 and close soon thereafter.

The EBS spectrum is a big boondoggle. In the 70s and 80s it was actually used for remote learning by actual educational institutions. For example in the Dallas area there were quite a few educational institutions that banded together and offered classes to students of other institutions and private companies via TV broadcasting. I remember attending couple of those classes. The majority of educational institutions and non-profits never implemented anything and have been squatting on the spectrum for 40-50 years. Others were obsoleted by the advent of the web. They need to clean up the EBS spectrum pronto. There is no reason for Sprint to be paying the Catholic Church billions of $$$ to lease the spectrum. I'd rather they paid the government.