gangrene

Sorry, but Verizon is busy covering its entire footprint with LTE and plans to be finished by the end of this year.

Sure, but why even let a completely overhauled network be tainted by past baggage (essentially the reputation created by the lackluster old network)? Its a completely new and amazing product, it might be worthy of a re-brand. Appearing as a completely new corporate entity in the minds of the casual consumer, completely free from all past baggage and any negative association from previous failures might be the way to go. It's usually easier to start over completely fresh than to repair a damaged reputation. Most people have smartphones, but most of those people don't follow this industry closely. People do talk to their friends, especially when they have complaints about service. And Sprint is just coming out of a long period of time where the network performance was suffering etc. It *MIGHT* be the optimal business strategy.

A complete rebrand with an extensive marketing campaign following the network vision rollout and the buyout is hardly the worst thing that could happen. I mean, if you're looking to erase several years of negativity surrounding the company, the botched WiMAX rollout, and completely overhaul the public perception regarding of Sprint in short order, that is definitely the way to do it. The main downside is that a rebranding is very expensive, especially on the retail side, it would put a rather large burden on their retail partners and franchises. Softbank USA?

Close, but not quite right. I live on Long Island and one of my lines is a Nexus 4 with T-mobile's $30 "internet only special" 100min/1000text/5GB pre-paid plan. I average 16mbit down 4mbit up and my ping is between 40-80 whenever I test it. The markets that T-mobile "faux-4G" is actually in, it works great. They've also committed to converting every GPRS/EDGE only coverage area over to HSPA+ within the next year, part of the 1900mhz overhaul involves drastically increasing their overall coverage area.

It isn't abuse when a Sprint executive goes out of his way to post all of the information required to sign up for the program, including his referral code.Thats explicit approval, if not outright encouragement from management. At that point program changed from something that was meant for friends of employees, to something that was made available to everyone. What I'm really sensing is sour grapes from the people who weren't on board and missed out on the original sero pricing. Two other thoughts on SERO: Why would SERO customers be unprofitable when pre-paid customers on super low price points from Virgin Mobile/Boost Mobile obviously are? People *HAVE* seen Voyager Mobile price points right? Regarding what happens to the cost of service when device subsidies are removed from the equation? Ting? Even Republic wireless, who only collects $19 a month from their users is obviously profitable to Sprint or they would be forced to raise rates/shut down. The other issue with eliminating SERO and forcing those customers onto modern plans, is that doing so is likely to create a great deal of offense. A majority of those people will probably leave for other carriers regardless of how revolutionary Network Vision is for their area. It is also an action that will appear very AT&T/Verizon-like and generate negative publicity, very anti-consumer, which isn't the image you want to project when trying to attract new customers.

So you want Sprint to turn its back on thousands of loyal customers that helped sustain it through a very dark period in its history? Preferential rates and grandfathering are generally a reward for long term customer loyalty in all sorts of different industries, nobody is being cheated and nobody is cheating. Sprint decided to offer plans at those rates and customers decided to sign up, its as simple as that. Sprint decided to open it up and allow access to SERO plans to everyone with a referral code in an effort to attract more customers, while retaining their savviest ones and they had every right to do so, Are bulk customers, (large corporate customers with hundreds of lines) who pay nowhere near what an individual pays for a normal plan w/ unlimited data cheating? lmao.

You don't see the advantage of being able to take your device overseas, pop in a local pre-paid sim while on vacation or business? Instead of having to buy a phone specifically for your trip OR getting bet over on international roaming/data charges? thats ridiculous.

I would contact Apple customer service, the situation with the 4s might very well be different than the situation with the iPhone 5. Sprint also needs to stop the ridiculous practice of using embedded SIM cards in their Android-based LTE devices. It really ruins the appeal of their phones for people who travel overseas frequently.

I rooted my S3 and switched to CM10. If you look on XDA, a *TON* of people across all carriers are complaining about the 4.1.1 introducing a lot of lag, and generally performing poorer than ICS. Samsung really botched this update, with a series of poorly optimized releases.

There is a difference between the causal multimedia usage that most people engage in and utterly abusing the network. What happened was the transition where smartphones went from being in the minority to representing 90% of all new phone sales. During which, Sprint seriously neglected its 3G network because management was focused on the ill-fated WiMax build out. Then they added the 3G only iPhone last october, which brought in a bunch of new customers and sparked a reverse migration of traffic from existing users off of the WiMax network and back onto the 3G network. People complain because the network is overloaded and performance is poor in many, many markets, those complaints are legitimate even if it annoys some of the kool-aid drinkers on this site. The good news being that the Network Vision initiative is a complete rebuild of their entire network from the ground up, designed to turn Sprint into a top performing carrier and resolve all of those issues. So everybody should be happy, and all of the complaining should stop in due time.

There's a difference between the casual multimedia usage that most people engage in, and utterly abusing the network. What happened was the transition where smartphones went from being in the minority to representing 90% of all new phone sales. During which, Sprint seriously neglected its 3G network because management was focused on the ill-fated WiMax build out. Then they added the 3G only iPhone last october, which brought in a bunch of new customers and sparked a reverse migration of traffic from existing users off of the WiMax network and back onto 3G network.

*double post* Delete.

Okay then, so lets all go back to using T9 devices. Smartphones are for easily distracted children, and the regular stream of complaints coming from areas using legacy equipment have nothing to do with the fact that Sprint failed to properly scale its 3G network to meet rising demand in many, many markets prior to the Network Vision initiative.

It isn't, and the accusation that people looking to use their mobile broadband connection for multimedia consumption (which IMO represents the bulk of smartphone users) are vacuous morons, is a very interesting rationalization.

A good chunk of it is probably legitimate and reflective of the state of the 3G network in non-network vision areas. I don't think most people would take it upon themselves to register on Sprint.com and complain for absolutely no reason.

The price of service without a device subsidy has traditionally been reflected on the pre-paid side. This doesn't really change much except make the true price of the device and the true cost of the service transparent to the consumer, and give the consumer the freedom to pay off his device early, upgrading even more often. However, the value plan also aligns pretty nicely with the strategy of making their network 100% compatible with AT&T devices, in a bid to lure unhappy customers from that carrier. And the availability of the Nexus 4 for just $299-350 from the Google Play store.

Exactly. It wasn't impossible or too expensive to wire the entire country and achieve 100% penetration in terms of electric and copper landline phones nearly a century ago. "Last Mile" issues are *BS* and a symptom of a weak regulatory environment. They only exist because the government is in bed with industry lobbyists and allows modern telecommunications companies to behave in a way that we wouldn't have tolerated from our utilities in the past. If the electric and landline rollouts were done in the same kind of political environment that we have today, we'd have 10%+ of the country without electric or any phone access at all, in perpetuity. The federal government could have built or contracted people to build an end to end fiber network, covering every home in the country with the money that the incumbent ISPs have stolen over the last two decades. Australia is busy building one now and they're aiming for 100% penetration, even in the remote interior towns.

RW/T-mobile UMA won't enable (you'll get a red icon) if you're on a bad WIFI connection that doesn't meet minimum performance standards, there's some sort of connection testing going on when the feature is initiated. A warning pops up that the user is about to leave the WiFI coverage zone and the call ends. Seamless hand-off is pretty much an impossibility as I understand it, but regardless the feature is so useful, you're more or less talking about the complete elimination of all indoor coverage gaps.

I fail to see how carrier implemented WiFi calling takes control out of their hands anymore than using an AirRave would, which in itself is a clunky, round about way of routing calls over a third party internet connection. An AirRave isn't immune to those same kind of external network performance issues. When talking about control, ultimately it would be Sprint's implementation, using Sprint approved encryption schemes and ultimately connecting to Sprint approved VOIP servers. T-mobile has had it for years through various implementations of the UMA standard, but quality issues are minimal on the Sprint side. I've had a Republic Wireless phone that I've been using as a second line for almost a year and its been outstanding, the feature set is absolutely mature enough to be implemented on the post-paid side.

No carrier on the planet has perfect indoor coverage. Sprint should license the technology from its MVNO Republic Wireless and have it built into all of its future Android handsets. Its absolutely awesome, it completely eliminates the need for an AirRave and more importantly, its like taking your own AirRave with you to OTHER places that have poor indoor coverage. Brownstone apartment buildings, homes near unfortunate geographic features, sports stadiums, industrial or office settings, lower levels of a shopping mall. etc. There are tons of places that have poor indoor signal penetration and an available wifi network, it really is that good of a feature, you quickly start to view it as indispensable once you get used to having it on your phone.

My device is definitely slower since upgrading to Jelly Bean OTA. Even after 2 factory resets. It feels like a previous generation device, a performance downgrade, rather than the upgrade I thought would take the S3 to the next level. definitely disheartening.

Most people update through KIES rather than wait for the OTA to roll through their region.

Jelly Bean OTA turned my phone from something fast and sleek to a complete lagfest. 4.1.2 can't come quick enough!

All cell phone networks went down along with the electrical grid at around the same time (8pm on the night that Sandy made landfall) and stayed down for at least a week in the immediate aftermath. I spent duration of the storm in a house on high ground with 9 people and every network except MetroPCS was represented. Today is the first day that service is somewhere near normal, with data actually working and calls going through somewhat reliably. Its been like living in 1892/1992 depending on whether your block got power back relatively quickly, or you're still without power after almost two weeks. Always keep an NOAA radio somewhere in your house with an extra pack of batteries, whether you live somewhere that's prone to natural disasters or not, you never know.

http://9to5mac.com/2...4-99-for-300mb/ Existing sprint customers can get 100MB for $10 or 1GB for $15. Sprint's new LTE tablet data plans (no contract required) $14.99 / 300MB of data $34.99 / 3GB of data $49.99 / 6GB of data $79.99 / 12GB of data 20% more data than the other carriers offering the iPad, but overall pretty underwhelming. IMHO, they could have given users a much more serious incentive to buy the Sprint version, considering the nascent state of the LTE network, by doing better and offering double the allotments of their competitors. Pricing like 2GB/$15, 5/$30 and 10/$60 would have given customers who plan on picking up the other versions of this device some serious pause. Wifi tethering off of an existing device with an unlimited plan still looks like the way to go.