moosemanmoo

I'm sure the reasoning is that the footprint in the suburbs is over 40% POPs. That's great if I pass through for 10 minutes on my way to the mountains or something, but the mind boggles to think it was logistically easier to light up LTE in the middle of nowhere compared to upgrading the very busy downtown, inner SE, and inner NE areas.

I think it's pretty ridiculous to launch Portland when there still isn't a single site broadcasting LTE... not in Gresham, Beaverton, or Vancouver, but in downtown Portland. If I'm in a tall enough building I'll pick up a weak signal from a site in SE, over 2 miles away. At least the legacy network is holding up pretty well in most places, with sub-100ms ping times more often than not. I'm hoping the story is very different 6 months or a year from now, with ESMR's building penetration, hopefully a TDD rollout as large as the existing WiMax footprint in town, and 100% sites NV complete.

I have also noticed sites that perform like this. Keep in mind that there are often two completely independent teams of contractors that handle the legacy and the NV equipment and infrastructure. It's entirely within the realm of possibility that the site in question has recently received a few more T1s but is suffering from some sort of airlink bottleneck. It's also my understanding that LTE is broadcasted from individual towers as soon as technically possible, while the NV equipment's EVDO/1x is inactive and left to the legacy equipment (usually backhaul as well) until the geographic area is sufficiently upgraded to allow for smooth handoffs between sites.

You're in Philly? Go to the Apple store, see if they'll replace your phone. If they can reproduce your issue, they most likely will. Turn LTE off in the settings before you go, since 3G/1X is where your problem is happening. If the Apple store gives you a new iPhone and you're still having problems, it's a network issue. Call 611 and Sprint will take it from there.

Happy to oblige. I barely get LTE service in my office, hope this helps.