theg00ds0n

Looks like eHRPD went live today.

I had one of these, but I doubt it's what you were looking for...

I have not experienced true NV upgrades yet in Milwaukee, but 3G has definitely improved here. Inside my building it's not so great, but when I step out my front door I have greatly improved signal strength and speed. I'm starting to think some NV upgrades have been completed ahead of the real work. (Hoping anyway...)

New to the forums here. I know I've learned more in the last month that I have in all my years prior! Love all the info here and am extremely optimistic about the future of Big YELLOW!

Anyhoo, my question is about handoffs between towers on LTE vs EvDo (Not LTE to EvDo but LTE to LTE). I use most of my data streaming audio. Generally I'm only using <2Gb/month to do so listening to 128-192kbps streams, usually on my way to work (but also when I travel). My commute from home to work is from urban downtown Milwaukee to suburban SW Milwaukee County, roughly 15 miles. On some days I make the drive without skipping a beat. On other days, I lose the stream 5-10 times. Sometimes I have trouble in the morning, other days in the evening. When I travel to my parents place (125 Miles to the NW in the middle of BFE), I generally make the drive without skipping a beat.

It seems I'm losing data switching from tower to tower in urban areas, but not always. I do not seem to have this issue switching on rural towers over long stretches of highway. I would think that 128kbps should not be terribly affected by overall saturation of the network, especially since this happened both prior to and after MANY band-aid improvements Sprint has made here over the last year.

I know this may seem a trivial annoyance, but streaming audio (ie not being constrained to increasingly terrible terrestrial radio), is my favorite feature of owning a smartphone. Since Sprint is deploying LTE across it's existing tower footprint, does NV and everything that comes with it greatly improve the handoffs between towers so that a consistent stream of data can be reliably delivered to end devices without interruption?

Thanks for your input!

3G speeds have vastly improved in central parts of the city recently. Previously I considered 300kbps down a "good" 3G speed. Now I'm getting about 1.5mbps pretty consistenly. Voice is generally good, except when you're in my apartment. Hopefully the Airave they're sending will help with the voice & txts, I alway use WiFi at home.