avb

Robert - can you comment on battery life of all the phones you're testing? No need to get into detailed tests for each phone, but just general impressions as to how the phones compare to one another.

Pick up your GS3 while you still can, according to Florian Mueller, the GS3 is next in Koh's crosshairs. He said there's a good chance this could get an injunction. S Voice might be an even bigger infringer than Google's voice search was.

Mueller is a paid shill and hates everything google.

 

 

There are 54 live LTE sites in the Houston Sprint market. However, Sprint is actively blocking connections to the LTE network at the moment. I have seen a couple of reports where people have been able to connect around Houston, but then they get blocked after a couple of days.

 

It is unknown when Sprint will stop blocking LTE connections. Since there will be a couple of market launches in June, you think they will have to stop blocking around that time.

 

Robert

Just for reference sake, how many sites are there total in the Houston market? I want to get an idea of what percentage of towers have been completed.

Yes go with an LTE phone. Like Robert just said, tower to tower hand off is pretty much nonexistent.

So I'm thinking about switching from Verizon to Sprint. I am in the Denver Colorado market, so we have not been announced for any LTE in the near future. I will be out of my verizon contract on May 16th, and am trying to decide on phones. I'm kinda wondering if it may be better to get a Wimax phone since it doesn't look like we will be getting LTE soon. The maps show that the WIMAx is pretty good in the Denver area. Is there anybody on here that lives in Denver and can comment on Wimax coverage? I'm new to the whole smartphone thing. This will be my first and want to enjoy it. If I do get a Wimax phone should I get a galaxy 2 or a photon or a HTC EVO. If people think I should go LTE phone I'll probably wait for the EVO LTE or the Galaxy 3.

WiMAX coverage is horrible. I'm in Houston which was one of the first WiMAX cities, and for the most part I left WiMAX off when I had the evo and the photon. It's only decent if you're stationary, when driving around it would always disconnect and take timei to reconnect.

Thanks for the responses. I've learned so much more about Sprint's network on this site than any other source.

With backhaul upgrades being a major component of Network Vision, I want to ask a few questions.

1. Prior to the upgrades Sprint is using T1/bundled T1. T1 can transmit 1.5Mb/s, so how many T1 lines does a typical tower have? If a tower has 10 T1's, that's about 15Mb/s. It doesn't take that many EVDO users to use up that capacity since EVDO rev A can transmit 3.1Mb/s.

2. With Network Vision switching to fiber, microwave, or aav for backhaul, how much of an improvement is Sprint expecting to implement? With the bundled T1 example above, an improvement 10 times that amount would be 150Mb/s.

3. Will only the new LTE phones see the enhanced backhaul? I'm not clear on eHRPD/EVDO, but it seems like the new LTE phones will use eHRPD when not in a 4g LTE area. Will that be separate from the existing EVDO network? It seems like all of Verizon's 4g outages are always blames on their eHRPD network.

4. What type of backhaul is/was Clear using for WiMAX?

I'm in Houston, so I'm hoping to see backhaul relieve the 3G issues sooner rather than later.

With Network Vision towers having their radios(?) installed up high near the panels instead of on the ground in the cabinets, what does this mean to signal strength? I've read there should be a 20% increase in signal strength, but what exactly does that mean? If I currently get 90 dbm signal reading, what should I expect after Network Vision upgrades are complete?