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Network vision & LTE rollout

Mr. Ed said:
It was a soft launch and it will continue to grow.

Sprint was in no way deceiving about it....thus why you did not see a ton of marketing behind it.

Plenty of discussion on this in the Sprint carrier thread
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Not to be argumentative, but a soft lunch IMO would be unblocking towers as they are ready while not releasing any information about a launch date. A soft launch is not producing coverage maps that show coverage areas. A soft launch is not having a news release saying that these 15 cities will now have LTE. Just my .02. It's up to Sprint to set expectations for their customers and potential customers. Releasing information 2 weeks ago that the LTE launch would be on the 15th set an expectation that if you go to the coverage map and it says you will have coverage that you will in fact have coverage. I was going to surprise my wife and get her upgraded to a white evo lte today, but I'm not even going waste my time until Sprint proves they know what they are doing.
 
falconey said:
Not to be argumentative, but a soft lunch IMO would be unblocking towers as they are ready while not releasing any information about a launch date. A soft launch is not producing coverage maps that show coverage areas. A soft launch is not having a news release saying that these 15 cities will now have LTE. Just my .02. It's up to Sprint to set expectations for their customers and potential customers. Releasing information 2 weeks ago that the LTE launch would be on the 15th set an expectation that if you go to the coverage map and it says you will have coverage that you will in fact have coverage. I was going to surprise my wife and get her upgraded to a white evo lte today, but I'm not even going waste my time until Sprint proves they know what they are doing.
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No I get your opinion. They never made any promises nor was there ANY advertising. They gave a press release and the media ran wild with it.

The coverage map says clearly it will not be available in all areas and coming soon.

There is even an option on there somewhere to click on towers and see improvements and such.

There have been some issues in launch cities that I can't get into...those issues will be corrected quickly and were expected..again the reason for a soft launch and why you did not, and will not see commercials etc like you did on wimax release
 
Here's another screenie showing my test history.... Duluth ga and Decatur ga

a808f9af-66d6-aae6.jpg
 
What's that...it's a bird..no
it's a plane...wait no.

ITS LTE!

Ironically, I decided to drive to my local sprint store to gripe, and get my phone checked. A block away from the store, zing..4G. So I walk in the store running speed tests, and inquire when the antennas near my home will be upgraded. They confirmed they aren't but will be soon. The speed isn't quite what I've seen from the Houston Market. More like 8 Mbps down,and 4-5 ish upload. See screen. I work in downtown ATL, anybody got any there? (LTE that is..:p) Also notice that pathetic 3G speed near the bottom. This is from the Mall of GA area Buford, GA. 2 antennas connected to there, both 4G. Anything north of that up 85 nada till I guess the Athens area.

Screenshot_2012-07-16-14-37-02.png
 
Mr. Ed said:
No I get your opinion. They never made any promises nor was there ANY advertising. They gave a press release and the media ran wild with it.

The coverage map says clearly it will not be available in all areas and coming soon.

There is even an option on there somewhere to click on towers and see improvements and such.

There have been some issues in launch cities that I can't get into...those issues will be corrected quickly and were expected..again the reason for a soft launch and why you did not, and will not see commercials etc like you did on wimax release
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I'm not sure if I'm just getting caught up in your terms or what, but I didn't say they promised anything. I make promises to my kids and my family. I don't expect promises from a company. And the soft launch term is a little weird, because nothing in what they say about the launch says it's a soft launch. I think you and I just have some very different definitions for both of those terms. Add to that, there is a coverage map on their site that says I should have coverage where I'm at and I don't have it. I'm also not the only experiencing this issue.

IMO

press release from a company = a promise(if that's the term you want to use)

soft launch = absolutely no expectation of receiving a service. in test phase. not officially released/launched.

Maybe this will help us see eye to eye. Maybe not :-)

On a side note, I love those speeds I'm seeing from emerilnut.
 
I sure hope this is going better than LTE. I've been with Sprint for at least 13 years too, even though they lost records of my first few years... But that's another gripe for a different thread...

If this isn't better than the WIMAX build out and Network Vision doesn't vastly improve 3G speeds, Sprint is done, in my humble opinion. I've been with them long enough to see millions of customers leave over stupid bungling on Sprint's part. And I've been around long enough to see a steady come back.

If Sprint pulls off LTE and Network Vision as stated, there will be no stopping Sprint. Their pricing just can't be beat. If their network blows away the competition once LTE and Network Vision are up and running and their pricing remains the same, expect for Verizon and AT&T to be sweating bullets.

If they disappoint customers yet again, expect Verizon and AT&T to be licking their chops ready to pick Sprint's bones clean. Sprint would be the perfect company to take over for either company to completely destroy the other company.

But, I do have some hope. I've been burned before so I'm mildly and cautiously optimistic about LTE and Network Vision. I'm not sure if I'd be willing to stay through yet another WIMAX-like debacle.
 
I live in the Houston surrounding area. I have had my eyes glued to my phone to see what areas had the lte on. Not that have traveled the whole of houston, but I drive allot of the main freeways and no 4g signal. I called sprint and complained. They give me a small list of direct areas in which a couple I was close to and nothing. I was told to go by a sprint store to have my phone checked. Sure enough, only while in the parking lot of the Sprint store did 4g come on. What the heck is that all about. Did a speed test that wasn't impressive at all. No better than wimax. Went to another Sprint store and same thing. Got signal. Do they have something in the stores to make this work like this. It's bizzare!! Speeds slightly better at this store while in the parking lot. Something funny going on here. I hope others are having better luck.
 
darynm said:
I live in the Houston surrounding area. I have had my eyes glued to my phone to see what areas had the lte on. Not that have traveled the whole of houston, but I drive allot of the main freeways and no 4g signal. I called sprint and complained. They give me a small list of direct areas in which a couple I was close to and nothing. I was told to go by a sprint store to have my phone checked. Sure enough, only while in the parking lot of the Sprint store did 4g come on. What the heck is that all about. Did a speed test that wasn't impressive at all. No better than wimax. Went to another Sprint store and same thing. Got signal. Do they have something in the stores to make this work like this. It's bizzare!! Speeds slightly better at this store while in the parking lot. Something funny going on here. I hope others are having better luck.
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Ya know I asked the very same question, and they just stared at me with blank looks on their faces. They then said do we have a transmitter in the store..haha no! Funny how the ONLY 4G near my home is within a 3 mi radius of that store. Yet I 85 from downtown Atlanta & 40 miles north there is nothing. Pretty stupid if you ask me.
 
simcha said:
If Sprint pulls off LTE and Network Vision as stated, there will be no stopping Sprint. Their pricing just can't be beat. If their network blows away the competition once LTE and Network Vision are up and running and their pricing remains the same, expect for Verizon and AT&T to be sweating bullets.
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Everything points to this being the case (otherwise I wouldn't have taken the huge pay cut I just took to go to work for them :p)

Network vision, customer service now a top priority (i wish you guys that have been around a while knew2 how much they are putting into this) and their huge strides in becoming a "green" company (currently in the top 3 green if I recall correctly, and number one in buybacks of old cell phones)


I went into this with the hopes that I was in the right place at the right time...fingers crossed :D
 
Mr. Ed said:
Network vision, customer service now a top priority (i wish you guys that have been around a while knew2 how much they are putting into this) and their huge strides in becoming a "green" company (currently in the top 3 green if I recall correctly, and number one in buybacks of old cell phones)
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Like Simcha, I've been with Sprint for 13 years now and I definitely remember the dark years in the mid-2000s. Right when they bought Nextel... OMG. I thankfully only needed to deal with customer service for a brief time during that period when I bought a new phone and had zero service for two days, but it was a nightmare. They have vastly improved since then, and I'm glad to hear they try to take it seriously nowadays.

Ultimately, though, what I need is good and reliable service. I have faith that NV will provide dividends in the near future, but if things don't improve by the end of the year I'll seriously consider paying my ETF and jumping ship instead of using my last early upgrade.
 
Can anyone else confirm whether Wichita, KS got LTE turned on? I know one person said they got it, but according to Sprint's map, it isn't turned on here yet. I had been pleased that my 3G speeds went up to 500k, but that lasted only a couple of days. I am back down to about 150k download speeds on 3G with my Evo3D. I'm not bothering to upgrade to the EvoLTE until I know for sure I will actually have LTE service.
 
Mr. Ed said:
The coverage map clearly states LTE rolling out soon. I don't believe sprint has made any promises or guarantees

"Sprint 4G LTE
Sprint 4G LTE is available in select cities." Is exactly what the coverage map reads.

As others have posted...the LTE network is max 50% completed right now..build out will continue with launch cities being completed by the end of this year and more cities being added as they move forward.


I also have seen nothing to persuade me into a belief that the Sprint customer base is an elite group of wealthy individuals or what not... concentration is more likely to be based on population of current and prospect subscribers.
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Mr. Ed, I have no idea what you're trying to say, but thought I'd acknowledge your reply to be polite. I read it, but I don't get it. Sorry. Thank you and have a great day.
 
Crimson01 said:
I tried everything yesterday to get a little stupid 4G symbol to pop up on my phone. Reboots, PRL, Profile, you name it, nothin. I gotta bad feeling about this. I'm starting to get a WiMax feeling...you know that feeling when you pay an extra $10 a month for 2 years for something can hardly ever use because it SUCKS so bad?

Anyone have a similar experience? I read on another forum a guy with an S3 called angry to Sprint, they reported the 2 nearest towers to him were completed and LTE good, and he drove to them, held his phone up in the air and nada zilch.
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I'm not in an area slated to get LTE any time soon, so all I can do is relate my WiMAX experience. To make a long story short, and to remain OT, I returned my WiMAX data dongle after a similar experience. I was going to try out the new LTE service that someone told me was going strong in Chicagoland, but when I went to the map it told me a different story.

My advice: if you're not getting LTE from Sprint, talk to Sprint and don't mention it here. Let the ones that have Sprint LTE slap hands and do their victory laps, and don't harsh the buzz. There's a place and time for everything; this isn't it for us.
 
Speed Daemon said:
Based on the telltale clusters of ostensibly reduced service in wealthy neighborhoods that I've noticed, I'm inclined to believe that the map is mostly fictitious. They're coloring in large swaths, being overly optimistic, and don't correct it until enough people complain that they can't get that service where they live.

Chances are slim that they'd shortchange their best customers on purpose, and the most privileged are most likely to complain. Therefore those dots aren't tiny house-sized drop-outs, they're the customers who said "I don't get your [EVDO | WiMAX | LTE] service where I live!" That means that a lot more of that big orange area shouldn't be orange.
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Mr. Ed said:
The coverage map clearly states LTE rolling out soon. I don't believe sprint has made any promises or guarantees

"Sprint 4G LTE
Sprint 4G LTE is available in select cities." Is exactly what the coverage map reads.

As others have posted...the LTE network is max 50% completed right now..build out will continue with launch cities being completed by the end of this year and more cities being added as they move forward.


I also have seen nothing to persuade me into a belief that the Sprint customer base is an elite group of wealthy individuals or what not... concentration is more likely to be based on population of current and prospect subscribers.
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I got what he was saying. And I like the way he put it :)
 
Speed Daemon said:
Actually the "Clear" brand is used by a company called Clearwire that is the same company that Sprint partnered with for their mutually owned and operated WiMAX network. BTW, WiMAX as it's deployed by Sprint/Clearwire is not 4G; it's considered "3.5G", just like all of the TDMA carrier's so-called "4G" pre-LTE data systems.


I do understand enough to know that your claim is totally false. The 1900MHz band is way too crowded by everyone, the 2.5GHz band is incumbered by Clearwire, and the 800MHz band that's used by iDEN is going to the police. In reality, Sprint is very spectrum-poor.

Wrong again. See above. LTE will be at 700MHz, and Sprint didn't even bid when it was up for auction.

I believe that there are technical reasons why the 700MHz band isn't going to work nearly as well as most people just assume it will. I could be wrong, but time will tell. If Sprint does get its hands on sub-gigahertz spectrum, it will be because it's a white elephant that the other LTE carriers want to dump. I predict that it will ultimately be used for wireless to the home Internet services like Canopy.
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EarlyMon said:
The iDEN band is not going to the police.

It's going to be used for 1x Advanced coverage.

Unlike the previous roll-out, the coverage for the entire country to get full 3G service and 4G to all major metropolitan areas is established, documented and being worked, including upgrading 38,000 towers and the entire infrastructure, where things were previously quite slow.

It's called Network Vision, it's been accepted and backed by the financial community, and those in opposition to Dan Hesse (Sprint CEO) and his plans have been recently outvoted by the shareholders.

The engineering layout has satisfied the FCC and watchdogs that when the network is complete, it will be able to support more subscribers than either ATT or Verizon without the service degradations we're accustomed to, and the full national coverage buildout will complete before Verizon finishes even though they started it.

You are welcome to your opinions but please don't pass opinions as facts. Everything I just posted is a matter of public record.

The police aren't getting the iDEN band and infinite frequencies are not required to support Network Vision. I don't know what to call them but those are not facts at all.
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I hope this clears up the 800Mghz the link you posted was from 2004
FCC clears Sprint to run CDMA, 4G LTE on 800MHz iDEN airwaves -- Engadget
 
Speed Daemon said:
Well the FCC and DHS disagree with you. No offense intended, but when it comes to "Moderator" vs. 3-letter federal agencies, I'm going with the word of the 3-letter agencies. I don't know why they keep chipping away at the 800MHz (and 700 for that matter) bands, but they say they need more for "public safety" and I don't think they're lying.

800 MHz Public Safety Spectrum


Sounds sweet. The problem is that it reads like it was taken almost verbatim from Sprint's marketing releases. The thing is that marketing materials are rarely the God's honest truth. You're free to put your full trust in Sprint's ad agency if you wish. But please don't present marketing materials as if they were factual.


What watchdogs?

I don't know where you got the idea that the FCC needs to be "satisfied" with Sprint's business plans, but as a real-life FCC licensed radio engineer I can tell you with authority that that's not how things work in this age of deregulation. Perhaps you meant FTC?


Again it sounds great. But talk is cheap, and Sprint's record with data service rollouts don't support this rosy outlook. I'd be pleasantly surprised if it does come true, but for now it's only a promise with long odds.


With all due respect, please don't insinuate that things I've written is less than above-board. If you disagree with a specific thing I've posted, feel free to challenge it with a quote. But please, no ad hominem.


No, those are not facts. But they're your words not mine.

The fact is that that there is no "iDEN band". IDEN is a technology developed by Motorola that has been operating on the SMR business bands after Motorola and others bought out all of the SMR band licenses and devoted it to iDEN.

I'm guessing that you're making your "infinite frequencies" claim as hyperbole to try to put false words into my mouth in an effort to discredit what I actually said. That's dishonest, and you should know better. I hope this doesn't become a pattern.

It is a fact that there is a physical limit to how much data can be sent over any given bandwidth. For example, the absolute limit of phone modems over the PSTN topped out at 56kbps, and even that was more theory than reality. The 54kbps number comes from the net data rate of a digital basic rate interface (BRI) that a POTS phone line ultimately gets turned into. When it comes to radio frequency bandwidth, there's always the chance that someone can come out with another more clever way to cram more Mbps per MHz over the air, although in real world conditions stuff like natural interference limits the usable data rates due to error correction.

Like it or not, but nobody I know of has managed to build a radio system that's capable of supporting hundreds of simultaneous data sessions at hundreds of Mbps (what LTE claims to do) in 20MHz of RF bandwidth. If you can show me a system that does, I'd love to see it. If I do, I will promptly revise my figures.
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This is the 2004 link I was talking about not the one I posted...
 
EarlyMon said:
No link.

If you're wondering if I was using info from 2004, back then I couldn't spell LTE.
I became aware of the plans from Sprint's CTO as quoted here, linked from s4gru.com -

Network of the future? Sprint Nextel’s upgrade plans could unlock carrier’s potential | Mobile Technology | Wireless Broadband | Wireless Carriers | RCR U.S. Wireless NewsMobile Technology | Wireless Broadband | Wireless Carriers | RCR U.

I trace everything blogged to its original source before considering any statements as information.
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No EarlyMon I was not quoting you. Read the post from speed
Originally Posted by Speed Daemon
Well the FCC and DHS disagree with you. No offense intended, but when it comes to "Moderator" vs. 3-letter federal agencies, I'm going with the word of the 3-letter agencies. I don't know why they keep chipping away at the 800MHz (and 700 for that matter) bands, but they say they need more for "public safety" and I don't think they're lying.

800 MHz Public Safety Spectrum
I was agree with you it was Speed that posted the link from 2004
 
SurrealOne said:
This is the 2004 link I was talking about not the one I posted...
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Thanks for your reply.

You are quoting me, but I don't get what you're getting at. What does "2004 link" mean? The only link in my post is to an FCC website that's kept current. It's not a news article or a non-living document. The links on that page have all the latest releases, right up through this year, 2012. Did you click the links? If not, try it. Thanks!
 
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