gangrene

How is Sprint's 3G network going to be able to handle any sort large uptick in VOIP traffic until Network Vision passes through?

If you own an Android phone, you already have GPS + mapping software that is superior to anything offered by Apple. There are also a bunch of ways to have the iPad use your Iphone's GPS capabilities, especially if you're willing to Jailbreak. So that doesn't really change the value proposition in my mind.

I don't see anything particularly appealing about the models with built-in LTE support, it seems far better to avoid paying for mobile data twice and use wifi /bluetooth DUN tethering.

Which is all easy enough to check when someone is interested in acquiring the latest device from a vendor like Expansys.

The expectation for years was that Leap Wireless and MetroPCS were going to eventually going to combine their operations and form a fifth national carrier. What happens now?

That was the obvious meaning.

I'm assuming you're someone who gets bored and wants to change devices frequently. AT&T uses standard GSM global frequencies, so you can buy, sell, and trade international editions, T-mobile branded, ATT branded, and even some Verizon branded phones. No other carrier offers anywhere near that level of flexibility and compatibility, you're stuck with branded devices on CDMA based carriers, and T-mobile has the limitation of using non-standard frequencies like AWS (buy an international phone and you'll be stuck on edge, until their re-farming project is completed 1.5 years from now)

I forgot to post this, but these are typical of the speeds since I've been seeing since I started my trial period. However, I have a week left on my trial and Sprint retentions just came back at me with a crazy offer that I really have to consider. I'm also not crazy about the fact that all US SGS3s have Jelly Bean delayed until March and may just go without a phone for a while and see what happens with the LG Nexus.

Its honestly been working completely fine, but I've also been testing out an unlocked international galaxy S2 on Straight Talk and thats been working just as well. For $45 a month, taxes included or $37.5 if I pre-pay the entire year...I might as well just go buy an unlocked Iphone 4s for $250 off of craigslist and save $600 a year on service.

They probably should have known that building an entire data network on 2500-2600mhz was a bad idea in a country as spread out as the United States, but hindsight is 20/20. They probably should have just started pushing EVDO Rev B out the door and enhancing backhaul to support itl the moment it became available back in 2007 or 2008.

My point is that privately owned and operated businesses, whether sole proprietorships operated by a single person or a large company with 10,000 employees have the freedom to operate according to the wishes and priorities of their owners. The way that they operate are a true reflection of the ethics, beliefs, and agendas of the people that run them. So its possible to have a real reciprocal loyalty, whether person to person in the case of an individual customer and a local small business or between an entire community and a larger company. Ownership has the ethical capacity and freedom to make the needs of their customers and the well-being of their employees a real priority, instead of just trying to maximize profits at all cost. On the other-hand, public corporations are essentially sociopathic in nature, because the people that are hired to run them are legally bound to pursue a profits-first agenda ahead of anything and everything else and to not do so is actually considered a form of shareholder fraud. For example, if a CEO was hired to run any large public company and he decided to pursue a serious, egalitarian public service agenda and prioritize that along with the pursuit of profits OR if he showed more loyalty to his employees than his stockholders and decided to keep as many people employed in a bad economy as possible, instead of just cutting as many loose as he needed to in order to minimize losses, he could be fired and open to numerous civil and criminal penalties. So there is this huge inherent difference between private businesses and public companies, and the type and scope of behavior that they can engage in and its not just due to their size. Basically, all public corporations are the same and have the same sort of constraints on their behavior and follow a similar agenda, so there's no point in being especially loyal to any of them and don't expect any real sense of loyalty or sincerity from them in return.

I'll support family owned businesses over chains and avoid doing business with a corporation that engages in obvious anti-consumer practices, because obviously, you're at a relatively high risk of being victimized if you deal with them. But all large public corporations are essentially amoral entities that are legally required to put the interests of the shareholders over everything else, including customers and employees. Sprint and T-mobile behave like companies relative to their market position, they need to attract and retain existing customers so they offer favorable pricing and have consumer friendly policies. AT&T and Verizon operate relative to their dominant market position and have management that is convinced that they've maxed out in terms of potential customers, so they're focused on raising average revenue per user and in order to increase revenue they engage in practices that many people view as unfriendly, abusive "nickel and diming" etc. I have no doubt that if market positions were reversed T-Mobile and Sprint would act more like AT&T and Verizon. And if a revitalized Sprint and T-mobile start to place serious competitive pressure on the big two and they start to face an exodus of subscribers, most of the consumer unfriendly practices that AT&T and Verizon are becoming known for would be discontinued. I view consumer decision-making as reactive to the quality and nature of the products and services offered, its also the burden of the business to engage the consumer by informing and marketing to them. Sprint shouldn't just be touting unlimited and hoping that drives people through the door, they should be making a huge deal about voice quality relative to the GSM providers and should stress that their coverage is just as good as Verizon to the segment that travels a lot due to the various roaming agreements they have in place. And also, the decision of a huge international player like SoftBank to invest in the US industry is going to do far more to affect market dynamics than anything else.

They offered me that yesterday as a way to retain me, just act like you're upset and talk to retentions. or whatever, instead of arguing with retentions just port your number to google voice and port it back later.

The job of an educated consumer is to get the best value for their money and get the service that best fits their individual needs, however that individual consumer happens to conceptualize value. That obviously requires a decent amount of research, but to imply that fears over the future competitive balance of a multi-billion dollar industry ( that you as an individual consumer have absolutely no real control over) should be prioritized over more transparent, immediate factors like service quality, coverage, and price is ridiculous. If Sprint manages to execute well on Network Vision and get it fully deployed within a reasonable timeframe, it will have a competitive product, increase its customer base by a significant number of users and find itself in a much better position within a few years. If Network Vision has massive delays and technical/signal quality problems reminiscent of the WiMax deployment, it will most likely bleed subscribers and find itself in a very poor competitive position. Their continued survival as a company doesn't rest the continued patience/good will of an extreme minority of hyper-informed mobile users, it all rides on the execution of this one very large, very complex engineering project. As an individual consumer, almost all of that is beyond your control.

Public Corporations aren't human beings, so I have no particular loyalty to any of them. I give a large communications company like Sprint or Comcast my money and they provide me with a service. That is ultimately the full extent of my relationship with them. If another company offers me a better price, a better service or both I have no problems switching. Paying for a service that you're not particularly happy with out of some sense of loyalty to a very large for-profit corporation seems bizarre to me.

The pricing comes out to the same as my current Sprint bill dollar for dollar. The value plan requires a contract. From my understanding the only fundamental difference between the value and typical subsidized phone plans is that the device subsidy is separated out from the phone bill and billed separately instead of being hidden in the service charges. So the service becomes $20 cheaper a month when the device is paid off OR it becomes possible to pay off the remaining amount owed on the device and upgrade early. I don't believe in the concept phone companies having enemies, you simply choose what works best in your neck of the woods. I thought about getting an unlocked Galaxy Nexus and going with something like Straight Talk for $45 a month taxes included and to be honest, I still might, I'm only on my first day of the 14 day trial period. I could also potentially stay with Sprint, but only if retentions gave me an offer that was amazingly attractive like waiving data charges until the network is overhauled in my area. But as far as putting the GSM GNex on T-mobile, that isn't particularly attractive because it would only get half of the available speed on their network. Their carrier customized phones utilize a dual cell configuration which bumps up vanilla HSPA+ into something that gets better than WiMax but not-quite LTE performance.

After some thought, I've decided to return my phone to Sprint, pay the $15 difference between the buyback price and the ETF and move on. Three factors played into this. 1) According to the amazing resources made available on this site, LTE won't be reaching my area until March at the earliest and that deployment won't be completed (Long Island) until September of next year. After being hosed on the WiMax deployment (no town east of the Rockville Centre ever saw it) I've been waiting for years for improved data speeds, while watching people just up the road in Queens enjoy the benefits of having truly fast data. 2) T-mobile recently reintroduced truly unlimited data and pricing parity is 1:1 with Sprint. 3) I've tired of the iPhone and I've been wanting to get back into Android. My decision came down to either picking up a Galaxy S3 on Sprint and dealing with very slow 3G service for another 6 to 10 months (sometimes 1mbit but mostly .300kb and under) or buying the same phone on T-mobile and getting access to their extremely fast DC-HSPA+ network immediately (I borrowed an HTC One S and have been using it all day and have been averaging 15mbit down and 4 mbit up on this network with a ping of 50 or lower) This community has been very informative, and overall very interesting and fun.

The evolution path is pretty simple. T-mobile is going to gradually shutdown MetroPCS and transition customers over to its network, then use MetroPCS spectrum assets for its own LTE transition. T-mobile also gets listed on the stock exchange, and DT gets to spin them off and exit the US market.

I've been reading and seeing things on a bunch of different forums, but I'm still confused. What is going on with these phones exactly?

At this point, I'd settle for 3G that worked during the daytime and didn't constantly time out due to capacity issues.

Yeah, back home in Germany. A lot of people will go some place to work for a few years and don't intend to stay there forever.

A good product is even more important. Sprint should have never neglected its 3G network and let it fall into its current (mostly pre-NV) state.

Humm was brought on board by DT to guide the merger to completion. He's resigning in order to go back to Europe and live with his family, this meant to be a temporary assignment for him.

look on broadband reports. In many areas clearwire has been a disaster for home users due to dysfunctional network management and optimization protocols. I'd advise against it

Based on your usage, there's no real point in paying for an unlimited plan. You're in the 5% of users that would actually benefit from the metered plans available on other carriers.