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IOwnCalculus posted:There's still huge cities not covered by Wimax at all, and they've been selling those for over two years. Sprint stopped rolling out WiMax over a year ago. I could see the point of waiting to sell LTE devices if Sprint was just going to flip a switch and turn on LTE everywhere, but it's a gradual rollout, and the people that have access to it should be able to use it. The LTE chip is turned off by default, at least on the SGS3, so it's not like it's affecting anything. I just don't see the problem in having a really nice phone that has a feature that most people can't currently use, as long as some people can.
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Sep 3, 2012 12:58
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Ender.uNF posted:How the gently caress do you think they are doing only completing 100 towers every week? I don't know enough information to decide how I think their doing hence why I was asking for more actual information which doesn't seem to exist. We have no idea what the state of the uncompleted towers are. They could just be starting, they could be changing how they test towers and are waiting to complete the majority prolior to testing, they may actually be done but are caught up in a stack of papers. Since we really have no idea about the whole complete process of upgrading, certifying, and launching a tower and where each one may be and the plan for the future I will choose to reserve judgement. Drawing a strait line off of a few data points and expecting it to be remotely accurate without a heavy dose of salt is a good way to make a lot of bad predictions.
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Sep 3, 2012 14:36
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Vykk.Draygo posted:Sprint stopped rolling out WiMax over a year ago. I could see the point of waiting to sell LTE devices if Sprint was just going to flip a switch and turn on LTE everywhere, but it's a gradual rollout, and the people that have access to it should be able to use it. The LTE chip is turned off by default, at least on the SGS3, so it's not like it's affecting anything. I just don't see the problem in having a really nice phone that has a feature that most people can't currently use, as long as some people can. You do get that you have to pay ten bucks a month for that "feature most people can't currently use", right? You also realize that many salesmen will not tell you that the S3 can't use Wimax - a lot of people don't get that there's a (pretty big) difference between Sprint's 4G and AT&T's 4G.
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Sep 3, 2012 17:51
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iCe-CuBe. posted:You do get that you have to pay ten bucks a month for that "feature most people can't currently use", right? You also realize that many salesmen will not tell you that the S3 can't use Wimax - a lot of people don't get that there's a (pretty big) difference between Sprint's 4G and AT&T's 4G. I don't think I've ever seen that the $10 premium data was for 4g service. Especially since it's required for a while bunch of non 4g phones. I always understood the $10 as people are just using more data than they used to and Sprint needed to cover the increase in cost.
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Sep 3, 2012 17:58
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It started out as a $10 fee for any 4g (WiMax) phone, they changed it to be pretty much all phones.
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Sep 3, 2012 18:27
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IOwnCalculus posted:There's still huge cities not covered by Wimax at all, and they've been selling those for over two years. Well to be fair to Sprint, they were relying on Clearwire to roll out WiMax. Sprint was in a use-it-or-lose-it position with the 2.5Ghz spectrum. My pet theory is they found some other suckers and dumped half the rollout cost on them as a spectrum-preserving move, knowing full well they'd have to switch to LTE (which wasn't ready in time to roll out). But that's just speculation. Giblet posted:I don't know enough information to decide how I think their doing hence why I was asking for more actual information which doesn't seem to exist. We have no idea what the state of the uncompleted towers are. They could just be starting, they could be changing how they test towers and are waiting to complete the majority prolior to testing, they may actually be done but are caught up in a stack of papers. Well the actual ramp up should have happened back in June (they did months of FIT testing in pilot deployments to work out equipment problems, deployment procedures, train installers, etc). I've been "reserving judgement" since then waiting to see some progress, and for all the reasons you mentioned... They might have had tiny issues like site cleanup or final adjustments keeping towers from showing up completed, backhaul vendors could be late, etc. But it has been months with no increase in rollout speed and I can say from experience and others' reports that the improvements fairly closely match the completed maps we have so there aren't thousands of completed towers we don't know about. At some point the backlog must eventually catch up, even if every individual site is slow to get done. How long do we have wait while they keep rolling out the towers at glacial speeds before we can declare they hosed it? It has been 2-3 months so far. One of their launch cities still has 15% coverage which is a marketing-only vaporware launch.
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Sep 3, 2012 20:10
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falz posted:It started out as a $10 fee for any 4g (WiMax) phone, they changed it to be pretty much all phones. It was effectively a 4G fee, but given that 4G wasn't (and still isn't) available in a lot of markets, they clearly couldn't call it that. Their justification for it was that as phones become more powerful and data hungry, people were going to be using a lot more data. And honestly, they kind of had a point. The fee was to offset some of that.
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Sep 3, 2012 20:57
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iCe-CuBe. posted:You do get that you have to pay ten bucks a month for that "feature most people can't currently use", right? You also realize that many salesmen will not tell you that the S3 can't use Wimax - a lot of people don't get that there's a (pretty big) difference between Sprint's 4G and AT&T's 4G. I forgot that wireless sales reps were reliable sources of information until now. Seriously, you have two main kinds of reps: sales oriented, and not great at their job oriented. People who care tend to either get weeded out or switch gigs on their own. My personal opinion is that WiMAX is worthless anyway, so I tell people there is no 4G, but whenever the hell is starts rolling out it'll be way better than WiMAX. Unfortunate they couldn't have done a tri band phone, but I doubt it was feasible cost wise.
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Sep 3, 2012 21:23
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Duckman2008 posted:I forgot that wireless sales reps were reliable sources of information until now. I want a tri-band Kyocera Echo! I bet that battery would last for minutes!
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Sep 3, 2012 21:33
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brc64 posted:Their justification for it was that as phones become more powerful and data hungry, people were going to be using a lot more data. And honestly, they kind of had a point. The fee was to offset some of that. I think there's a better argument for charging more per month for a smartphone vs a dumbphone on unlimited plans since, in practice, the smartphone users are going to use considerably more data. It's a bit more of a weird thing to do though when you have fixed data buckets. In reality, they're all just looking for a mechanism to extract $10/mo more from smartphone customers without changing dumbphone plans too wildly, as the cash is needed to
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Sep 3, 2012 22:49
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Anyone in the Chicago area having problems today? My voice service is literally unusable. I can't hold a call for more than a minute, and right now I'm unable to make any calls at all while at home. I am having to resort to Groove IP just to call people! This is the single worst day I've had, and I've been driving all over the western suburbs today.
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Sep 3, 2012 22:51
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X-post from the android phone thread, but: Thinking of getting Sprint's version of the SGS3. How's the signal strength on the device compared to other Sprint phones?
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Sep 4, 2012 08:41
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Mister Fister posted:X-post from the android phone thread, but: Pretty good. Personally I think it goes into roaming too quickly, but overall it's fine. Everything g else is fine as well, battery life, overall performance, etc.
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Sep 4, 2012 13:28
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Duckman2008 posted:Pretty good. Personally I think it goes into roaming too quickly, but overall it's fine. Everything g else is fine as well, battery life, overall performance, etc. Thanks!
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Sep 4, 2012 13:51
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All this talk about Sprint's delayed LTE rollout, i found this site, is this an official sprint site? http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-296-southern-connecticut-network-visionlte-deployment-schedule-update/ Edit: Durrr, just noticed it says they're not affiliated... just wondering where they get their info from though. Mister Fister fucked around with this message at 14:54 on Sep 4, 2012 |
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Sep 4, 2012 14:36
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brc64 posted:It was effectively a 4G fee, but given that 4G wasn't (and still isn't) available in a lot of markets, they clearly couldn't call it that. Their justification for it was that as phones become more powerful and data hungry, people were going to be using a lot more data. And honestly, they kind of had a point. The fee was to offset some of that. To be fair I'm sure most smartphone users opted for unlimited data so it is kind of understandable.
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Sep 4, 2012 14:55
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Mister Fister posted:All this talk about Sprint's delayed LTE rollout, i found this site, is this an official sprint site? He gets info from sources inside Sprint but doesn't reveal too much (for obvious reasons). I haven't given up entirely on Sprint, mostly because I hate ATT and VZW so much. Plus data caps are really stupid and don't help the problem the carriers claim - traffic management deals with that just fine. If you download your entire data cap during the busiest hours the network is still jammed. But if you use a fair scheduler to manage the traffic you can throttle the heaviest users down during those hours but let them consume unrestricted during off-peak times. It's just such an obvious money grab and no one in the media has enough network knowledge to call them on it. Anyway I digress... I am hoping some public pressure will get Sprint to unjam whatever is causing the slowdowns. If they can double the number of towers per week** they are completing this month that would be a good first step. It certainly won't be enough to meet their stated goals but it would demonstrate some kind of progress is being made. If Dallas comes in with anther 10 site week I may just lose it. ** Most of the 100 sites per week they are completing appear to be in Chicago, probably because of the handoff issues between the old and new equipment causing massive dropped calls. They are rushing to do all the towers even before backhaul is done.
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Sep 4, 2012 16:48
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Well given the delays I too was considering switching carriers when my contract is up in November, but looking at that map posted earlier and now looking at Sprint's coverage map for LTE (is it accurate?) it would seem I've lucked out. Both where I live and work have LTE, so does my parents' house. My sister lives in Kansas City, MO and she has an S3 but so far it doesn't look like she's used any 4G data (I turned on the LTE when she got the phone, might have reverted I guess) but she has managed to use 4Gb+ of 3G data every month since she got the phone. My mom has the EVO 4G LTE, so I guess I can just use SpeedTest on that thing in a few places to see if the map checks out in a few months. Edit: Haha, holy crap, if the coverage map is accurate, then my sister lives and works in 2 pockets of 3G only area that is surrounded by LTE, and each pocket is maybe 4~6 blocks in area. Brightman fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Sep 4, 2012 |
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Sep 4, 2012 17:01
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The LTE coverage maps Sprint has on their site are hilariously optimistic... They are not based on which towers are actually live, they seem to be based on what the coverage will be when NV is done or maybe they are using the originally deployment schedule... Whatever the case don't put any faith in them.
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Sep 4, 2012 19:34
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Ender.uNF posted:The LTE coverage maps Sprint has on their site are hilariously optimistic... They are not based on which towers are actually live, they seem to be based on what the coverage will be when NV is done or maybe they are using the originally deployment schedule... Whatever the case don't put any faith in them. I actually ended up turning LTE back off on my wife's Galaxy Nexus. She was having some weird network issues where it seemed like she was connected but nothing worked. I don't why exactly, but setting her back to CDMA only seemed to help. In other news, I went to North Park Mall this weekend and was able to use my phone indoors! Signal was low, but it was there, which is a big improvement over my typical experience there.
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Sep 4, 2012 20:11
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brc64 posted:I actually ended up turning LTE back off on my wife's Galaxy Nexus. She was having some weird network issues where it seemed like she was connected but nothing worked. I don't why exactly, but setting her back to CDMA only seemed to help. I had the exact same problem while I was in Atlanta this weekend. Updating my PRL seem to fix it
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Sep 4, 2012 21:18
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Ender.uNF posted:The LTE coverage maps Sprint has on their site are hilariously optimistic... They are not based on which towers are actually live, they seem to be based on what the coverage will be when NV is done or maybe they are using the originally deployment schedule... Whatever the case don't put any faith in them. Figured that was probably the case, I just don't have an LTE phone myself to check it with. I'll go with my plan to borrow my mom's phone to test with and see if the situation will be different in a few months when I'm up for renewal and go from there.
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Sep 4, 2012 21:22
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I think it's been a couple months since the earliest LTE sites have been switched on right? I remember seeing some 20-30 mbit speeds then. Have people seen the speeds taper off some since then?
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Sep 5, 2012 01:01
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Mister Fister posted:I think it's been a couple months since the earliest LTE sites have been switched on right? I remember seeing some 20-30 mbit speeds then. Have people seen the speeds taper off some since then? Doubtful, since the LTE footprint is so small that each tower is only shared by about 3 people at most. 
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Sep 5, 2012 01:51
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Random question about Sprint that maybe you guys can answer: I'm going to move off my parents' family plan and onto my own plan. I've been on Sprint for years and I've always been pretty happy with it I plan on staying with Sprint. Anyways, if anyone's been in the same situation before, I'm curious if 1) my parents will end up getting charged some kind of termination fee and 2) if I sign a 2 year contract on my own, if I'll be eligible to upgrade my phone even though I just bought one when my parents re-upped last year. I'd imagine that Sprint would want to have me get onto my own plan since net between the two of us we're going to end up paying more cash combined, but not sure if that's really the case. Would be nice to be able to get the new iPhone when it comes out.
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Sep 5, 2012 02:44
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So I'm currently on AT&T with an expired contract and considering making the jump to Sprint when the iPhone 5 comes out. The selling point for me is that, coupled with my company's Employee Discount with Sprint, I can save about $20 bucks a month AND get Unlimited Data. I tend to stream video and music a lot so I've been hitting the monthly limit very often lately. I plan on preordering when they open it up and hopefully landing one on launch day. I need to transfer my phone number and set up my discount, should I do it in a Sprint Store or will the website suffice? I also plan on taking advantage of Sprint's Buyback program and getting $160 credit for my phone. Anything I need to worry about? Sorry to be so  about it, but I definitely am sweating it since I've had my phone for 2 years and am ready to upgrade.
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Sep 5, 2012 02:58
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Adun posted:Random question about Sprint that maybe you guys can answer: I'm going to move off my parents' family plan and onto my own plan. I've been on Sprint for years and I've always been pretty happy with it I plan on staying with Sprint. Fyi its cheaper for you to just pay your parents whatever % of their plan your phone would be (IE if there are a total of 3 lines, 33%) then to go off on your own. if you go on your own you will be keeping your sprint number and with that the current sprint contract attached. So no termination fee for the parents, but no new phone pricing for you. There is no fee for this transfer (called the TOL). Fyi if you don't have credit yet you may have a $50 deposit (although it just depends on luck). Although you say two of us, so maybe you mean significant other. Either way, my personal recommendation is to pool between 4 people if possible, that's what I do and it comes out to just about $50 a line, which is way better than $75 a line.
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Sep 5, 2012 03:01
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Man I just got tagged for 72 bucks in upgrade fees. Didn't realize it is no longer waived. Especially didn't realize I have to pay it as a EPRP customer. Pretty lame.
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Sep 5, 2012 03:06
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Duckman2008 posted:Fyi its cheaper for you to just pay your parents whatever % of their plan your phone would be (IE if there are a total of 3 lines, 33%) then to go off on your own. if you go on your own you will be keeping your sprint number and with that the current sprint contract attached. So no termination fee for the parents, but no new phone pricing for you. There is no fee for this transfer (called the TOL). Fyi if you don't have credit yet you may have a $50 deposit (although it just depends on luck). Well I've been on my own a few years now so probably about time to get off the parents' plan. Plus I think they can just downgrade to a non-data plan since they're happy just to use the phone and text. No chance in getting an upgrade even if I resign a 2-year plan or whatever on my own? Maybe I can talk the guy at the store into something by asking about switching carriers
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Sep 5, 2012 03:22
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Another "I can't wait to ditch Sprint" guy here. I've been a customer with them since 1999, and they were actually pretty decent up until about a year ago. I stuck with them because the price was right, I love the GV integration, and I was fooled by the NV promises...but I can't take the AWFUL data speeds at work, and along most of my 45 minute drive to work each day. Throw in the fact that they've taken away every "perk" they had (unlimited data is a joke if you can't use it. Yearly upgrades were awesome...but no more. They sent me a message on Sprint.com saying I'd need to verify my Discount that I've been using for the last 10 years without question, etc.) I did the math, and I should be able to take my 3 lines and join someone elses Verizon Share Plan and pay no more (maybe even less) money each month. (All 3 of my lines combined us less than 1GB each month because the data speeds are so awful anywhere we go that isn't on WiFi...so even if I went to 6GB with Verizon, I'd pretty much break even). Have there been any ToS updates or any other ways to get out of your contract early, lately? I can wait until March (when one line is out of contract) and then pay $280 in ETF for the other two lines...but if I can ditch Sprint sooner, I would. I have an iPhone 4S...is there any way to force roaming? I get better data speeds roaming on Verizon than I do on Sprint 3G. I'm open to just about any suggestion.
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Sep 5, 2012 03:55
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Adun posted:Well I've been on my own a few years now so probably about time to get off the parents' plan. Plus I think they can just downgrade to a non-data plan since they're happy just to use the phone and text. Each line has its own contract that is extended 2 years every time you get a discounted upgrade. If you cancel before then, you get an early termination fee. If you do a transfer of liability, you'll keep the same contract period but you won't get any new phone until you're due.
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Sep 5, 2012 04:04
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I've been reading this thread for a while (and understanding about two-thirds of it) and I'm starting to get worried. My brother and I just ordered Sprint SGS3s. We live in NYC. Was this a mistake? I've had an AT&T dumbphone here for a while and their voice service is so abysmal I swore I'd never give them another cent.
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Sep 5, 2012 04:23
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pork minstral posted:I've been reading this thread for a while (and understanding about two-thirds of it) and I'm starting to get worried. My brother and I just ordered Sprint SGS3s. We live in NYC. Was this a mistake? I've had an AT&T dumbphone here for a while and their voice service is so abysmal I swore I'd never give them another cent. I use my phone in NYC all the time and never have a problem. There's plenty of free wifi around and voice and text work fine. I try to avoid using Sprint's 3G because of how abysmal it is in Jersey, but it's semi-decent I'd guess. If not, like I said, there's wifi everywhere.
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Sep 5, 2012 04:39
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Adun posted:Well I've been on my own a few years now so probably about time to get off the parents' plan. Adun posted:Plus I think they can just downgrade to a non-data plan since they're happy just to use the phone and text. Adun posted:No chance in getting an upgrade even if I resign a 2-year plan or whatever on my own? Adun posted:Maybe I can talk the guy at the store into something by asking about switching carriers 2. You'll have to pay a prorated ETF to switch carriers anyways. Seriously, you're not going to get a free upgrade subsidy, having yet paid the cost of that smartphone you got a year ago. ExcessBLarg! fucked around with this message at 06:41 on Sep 5, 2012 |
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Sep 5, 2012 06:23
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pork minstral posted:My brother and I just ordered Sprint SGS3s. We live in NYC. Was this a mistake? In any event, you have 14 days (which is one day less than two weeks) from the day you first activate to cancel your service and return your devices without being on the hook for huge ETFs. Please do take advantage of that time to determine if Sprint's service meets your expectation. If it doesn't, don't hesitate to cancel. pork minstral posted:I've had an AT&T dumbphone here for a while and their voice service is so abysmal I swore I'd never give them another cent. Every carrier, at one time or another, is going to be the "worst" carrier with regard to network infrastructure, since they tend not to upgrade the networks all at the same time. (Although Verizon might be an exception.) Five years ago when AT&T got the iPhone their network went to poo poo in major markets. It's all folks complained about for years. At that time AT&T was rolling out their 3G network, which took a while to deploy, but has been upgraded a few times since. Now they have a pretty darn decent HSPA+ network and their LTE (4G) network is coming along too. Meanwhile Sprint has been long overdue for a major network upgrade. Sprint's 3G service was pretty good at one time, but, technologically, can't compete with even AT&T's 3G network, let alone 4G. Sprint is basically just now rolling out LTE and is behind schedule. On top of that, Sprint one year ago started selling the iPhone, and (surprise surprise!) their network has gone to poo poo. Basically right now is a bad time for most customers to be with Sprint. If you have acceptable service with them, great! But if not, it's probably in your interest to switch. But I wouldn't write Sprint off in the future just because their network sucks now, much like it's silly to write AT&T off now for having had a lovely network in the past. Sprint's plan for their network upgrade is solid, if they can only pull it off. Assuming they do, and they probably will eventually, they'll be a pretty competitive carrier again.
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Sep 5, 2012 06:39
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I'm not sure sprint could do anything if the "gently caress sprint" train in general really is as heavily laden as this thread is. The delays to NV are probably structural, god knows what the gently caress they are doing with the Nexuses, they probably aren't going to make a grab at any Windows phone devices, etc. Yet here in Omaha the only possible alternatives are so loving unpalatable that Sprint is where I sit. ATT is nearly nonexistent, T-Mobile is wholly nonexistent, and Verizon can eat a bag of dicks, I've done my damndest to avoid Comcast my adult life and I am not about to take an identical loving-over under a different brand.
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Sep 5, 2012 07:16
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Well as a shareholder I really hope they sort things out and get the deployment on track. If they were meeting the original schedule there would be nothing to complain about.
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Sep 5, 2012 08:05
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Alright, seeing as this is the official sprint thread, can a Sprint employee shed some light on Sprints policy regarding rooted devices? Long story short, I had purchased an HTC EVO 4G LTE when it came out, and ran it on the stock ROM for about a month. I then rooted it, installed a custom bootloader, and then installed a custom ROM, and everything was sweet. Fast forward a month later and I start to have issues. I notice that my phone is turned off when I bring it out of my pocket on rare occasions, and have to turn it back on. No big deal. However this escalates to the point that just putting the phone in my pockets powers it off, BUT simply hitting the power button does nothing. I figure this is a hardware issue or some such and write it off, and then take the phone to Sprint to see if they can do anything with it. Sprint tech takes the phone apart and lo and behold it now works. He is reassembling it, and during the reassembly phase it powers off. He takes it apart again, and it works. Puts it back together again, and it turns off. IMO it SEEMED like a hardware issue, but Sprint declined to do any further work on because the tech noted that the phone had a root on it when he powered it back on. Sprint gave me back the phone and told me to contact their extended warranty dept. They also let me know that my Serial # had been recorded in the Sprint system saying that the phone had been rooted and any further warranty repairs are void. I take it home and disassemble it again, and remove the custom ROM (reverting back to stock HTC). This actually fixed the issue, surprisingly. Since it WAS the ROM that was (apparently) causing the issue, is my phone warranty up poo poo creek?
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Sep 5, 2012 08:44
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Sounds more like a loose battery problem to me. Have you tried stuffing a little piece of paper in there to make sure the battery always makes contact? That poo poo happened all the time to my Pre.
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Sep 5, 2012 09:49
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ExcessBLarg! posted:
I really wish I could print this out on a huge poster board and set it behind me at work. The Entire Universe posted:I'm not sure sprint could do anything if the "gently caress sprint" train in general really is as heavily laden as this thread is. The delays to NV are probably structural, god knows what the gently caress they are doing with the Nexuses, they probably aren't going to make a grab at any Windows phone devices, etc. I work 45 minutes west of Philly, and coverage is average. Sprint still does fine sales numbers wise. A decent amount of people won't look at verizon or Att due to perceived pricing or simply because of credit, and T-Mobile is sucking worse than Sprint in some areas (not data wise as much as coverage wise). Most people don't complain as much as people in this thread do, and those that do honestly don't connect the dots on data speeds. Some do, but most don't. Wicaeed posted:Alright, seeing as this is the official sprint thread, can a Sprint employee shed some light on Sprints policy regarding rooted devices? Man, a lot of people here are getting bad luck with the tech centers. That is a tougher one though, sprint policies right now really don't care much about rooted phones, but basically if its software related you are on your own (which I think is fair). I could see a tech thinking the rebooting is software. That being said, I don't know why he flagged it rooted (I didn't even know there was that's option), and I don't see why the warranty matters. Sprint doesn't care about warranty, its a repair center. You pay for the repair (exchange in this case) either with your insurance plan or a $35 fee if you don't have insurance. I don't see why they are making it so dramatic. Try going to a different tech center is always my recommendation. Some just have lovely employees. Duckman2008 fucked around with this message at 12:55 on Sep 5, 2012 |
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Sep 5, 2012 12:49
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