burnout8488

Does sprint still charge that $36 when you buy full priced phones from the sprint store?

Not that I've heard of.

http://www.sharpusa.com/ForHome/Mobile.aspx

If it's really only $240, I'll consider buying one for no reason prior to the iPhone 6 coming out. This Sharp really wouldn't be much of a downgrade from a Nexus 5 from a stats perspective, right? (I don't game, just heavy e-mail for work and SMS)

Complete.

I love the content in these threads the OP is creating, but should these South African LTE topics be moved out of the Sprint NV Deployment forum section, and into General?

At my old place of work, it was a few miles down the highway from where I am now. Ground mount NV conversion, 3G accepted, no LTE. I would hit 2.7Mbps all day on 3G and could do everything just fine. YouTube, Netflix, Hulu, you name it. It was probably very underutilized. And I would get these speeds with a -100 eHRPD signal too, pretty far away.

The population covered by this site in Owego must be a whole lot more despite having tons more backhaul hooked up, for the 3G to be this bad. Maybe it's everyone on Boost and Virgin mobile clogging it up.

Perhaps try lte only mode if you keep dropping t 3g?

I've got no issues with LTE dropping - it drops to 3G when the signal degrades further indoors, the way it should be.

But you has b25 right? I would love to have b25, or even those 3g speeds in my apartment complex. I can't even stream music at my gym, and the "wifi" doesn't reach it either.  They probably have some archaic POS router.

I haz it. Only in the outskirts of this building though. When I start walking down hallways, or to the cafeteria, it drops and the phone is somewhat unusable at times.

I guess I'll consider myself lucky to even have these speeds at the moment - that sounds rough for you!

I'm betting there are quite a few users stuck on 3G due to the buildings they're in in the area. Obviously I have no clue about your surrounding buildings, but that would make most sense to me.

Gotcha - thanks for the insight. In that case, B26 will be our savior when they get their little white truck here and pop the carrier card in. And I guess I really won't care about 3G performance at that point since I'll barely be on it.

Definitely connecting to the same site on both?

Yup, I'm out of range of any other sites. I can see the tower from my office.

Is your phone being dropped to 3G when it can't receive LTE or are you forcing it to 3G where you receive LTE? The reason I'm asking is, if your phone is dropping to 3G when the LTE signal drops, the quality of your 3G signal is deteriorating as well, which may be the reason you're seeing poor 3G performance.

 

The other possibility is similar to was jamisonshaw125 is talking about, if your signal is dropping to 3G in a populated area, others are probably dropping to 3G as well, which is crowding the 3G network.

 

There could also be other unknowns.

I only drop to 3G when it makes sense - i.e. deep in the building or when I'm far away from the site. I usually have good B25 indoor coverage here though, sitting at -100dBm at my desk right now.

If I manually force it to 3G outdoors, I get a -46 eHRPD signal! But the speed is still awful.

3g should definitely improve in time, because less and less devices will need to be on it. With b41, b26 and b25...there really won't be a need for 3g eventually except for a fall back.

That's what's confusing me. Even if all of the users in Owego have an old single band LTE device, they'd still be on B25 LTE which has totally adequate numbers right now. Is it possible that this town is just full of 3G phones, or everyone is deep indoors and can't grab LTE?

Maybe you're right and B26 will alleviate hundreds of the 3G campers indoors.

I connect to a single site in Owego, NY while at work, it is 3G/B25 LTE accepted.

Speeds on 3G are dismal, usually .2-.5Mbps. However, LTE seems completely unused - I regularly get 28Mbps down and 8Mbps up on this site.

Obviously, the backhaul is there. Will 3G ever improve on this site? Is this something a service ticket could fix, or can 3G be completely overloaded by other users despite having adequate backhaul?

Yes it can.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Awesome!

Just a status update for the Endicott/Endwell/Binghamton area....

1x800 seems to be popping up a lot more in my home in Endwell, however B26 LTE is still a few dBm weaker than B25 when it finds it. I wonder if 1x800 can be optimized separately from 800Mhz LTE? It sure seems like that's what happened.

1x800 used to be weaker than 1xRTT in my home, and now it is usually 10dBm stronger (as it should be) when it kicks in. So that seems complete now.

In any case, the whole Binghamton/Vestal/Endicott area is very well covered by B25 LTE now since I think they're all optimized. Driving around I don't see 3G much anymore. And eCSFB seems to be fine, finally. Just waiting for that B26 optimization and the remaining 8T8R panels to be popped on to the sites, as I'm only aware of the Skye Island Dr. site in Endicott having them installed at this point.

It seems like they are waiting to turn them on in clusters, un like lte on 1900. They don't seem to be allowing access to each individual site

September would be a good month for this. If Sprint activates 8T8R sites in a massive wave across the US, the iPhone 6 deployment (triband) will be buttery smooth and really take some load off of the B25/26 antennas when people upgrade from their old single and dual-band iPhones.

Maybe that's the goal - I never thought I'd see 8T8R in Upstate NY Central this year but they've really gone nuts with it.

You will fit in quite well here.

8T8R antennas aren't broadcasting yet nationwide, right? 

Or do NV2.0 sites require additional backhaul to run them, hence the delay? 

I think the 8T8R panels have been installed in Endicott @ Skye Island Drive. They do not function yet, however. Can't pick up B41, never have seen it. 

The second rack down is Sprint, am I correct in thinking those are 8T8R B41? 

Never thought our market was gonna see band 41, this is exciting. 

I'll be down at Bethany Beach at the end of August - I expect to have SCP open the entire drive through the state if nobody spots LTE800 by then.

It's probably not optimized yet. Before optimization the antennas will be at full downtilt and lower power levels. Once optimized, they get tilted up for a broader swath, and power increases. 

Right now, most of the upstate NY 800 acceptances are probably not very good. I know down in Binghamton the 1x1900 has far greater coverage. My phone barely ever hits 1x800, and certainly not at the fringe of 1900mhz service..... yet. Just a matter of time. 

Update: Both the Jabra "TALK" bluetooth headsets I purchased cannot maintain voice quality during a known HD Voice conversation. It sounds like a regular non HD voice call over these headsets, and if we switch back to handset-only, the quality is restored again.

Seems like they're using the term as marketing lingo only. Gonna return them and keep shopping for a headset that actually can maintain the quality of an HD voice call.

Great to hear! Hopefully ALU makes their way a lil bit north soon!

August will probably be a very good month for this thread. 

B26 LTE is everywhere in Broome County now. They must have gone around over the weekend popping in the carrier cards! I confirmed it in Kirkwood, Vestal, Endicott, and Endwell. Every site that is 1x800 enabled seems to have B26 running on it now. 

They are definitely not optimized yet though. B25 is stronger in some areas where the downtilt and power of 800 is still too low. 

Jabra headsets do from what I can tell.

They were only $23 each, and seem to only have one microphone, but the proof is in the pudding.