Official Chit-Chat Thread

[QLR1]

I've had Sprint, I know better now. Verizon is slowly getting more reasonable as other companies are starting to challenge them in some markets. Until now I've never needed their service, now I'm hoping their spectrum hoarding works out in my favor.

I had Sprint a decade ago; I was disconnected for nonpayment. I LOVED those dropped call credits. I have AT&T and T-Mobile phones lying around.

PHONE UPDATE: My phone will arrive by Wednesday!

 

[digi7alph0enix]

I had Sprint a decade ago; I was disconnected for nonpayment. I LOVED those dropped call credits. I have AT&T and T-Mobile phones lying around.

PHONE UPDATE: My phone will arrive by Wednesday!

I've tried to like Sprint many times. They always fail at something. Even back in the Nextel days before iden was turned off it never worked most of the time.
All the phones I have lying around make me money.

 

[QLR1]

I've tried to like Sprint many times. They always fail at something. Even back in the Nextel days before iden was turned off it never worked most of the time.
All the phones I have lying around make me money.

I have prepaid accounts with TMo and a AT&T MVNO. Will likely just let them lapse; hell, I can't even find the T-Mobile phone.

I only know a couple of folks with Sprint here. Most fled to AT&T or Verizon eons ago.

 

[digi7alph0enix]

I have prepaid accounts with TMo and a AT&T MVNO. Will likely just let them lapse; hell, I can't even find the T-Mobile phone.

I only know a couple of folks with Sprint here. Most fled to AT&T or Verizon eons ago.

The biggest problem Sprint faces is the wide gaps in the spectrum they own. The smart (read: rich) companies figured out early on that to offer the best service they needed low frequency, contiguous blocks of spectrum. They bought most of it up and left the scraps for the smaller companies. Sprint owns a ****load of spectrum but its all spaced out across different frequencies because they acquired it mainly from buying up smaller competitors and not buying it directly from the FCC when they had the chance (they couldn't afford it then anyway but that's another story). The reason that's a problem is that phone OEMs don't just make phones that work for every provider, that's more expensive. So they try to make phones that work with specific carrier bands to help keep costs down to the retailer and the customer. For Sprint that's a huge undertaking. They have spectrum all over the place from stuff like the old nextel iden network, super high frequency stuff from buying clearwire, stuff they've bought from smaller companies, etc etc etc. The hardware inside their phones has to be able to access all of those different bands at any given time since they could be anywhere in the nation. It's expensive, and it isn't reliable. Now that everyone is pushing carrier aggregation (or LTE-A, Sprint Spark, etc) it's becoming less of an issue since phones will be able to pool whatever resources they have access to, but for Sprint that's still a much harder thing to do than for others. On top of that they tried to revamp their entire network while changing CEOs with "Network Vision" and its just a matter of too little too late. They've had so many people at the helm with no sense of direction for so long that they are left with a fragmented and decaying network and no way to remedy it but spending ridiculous amount of money, which translates to higher costs to their customers.

And that's how they've dropped to the #4 carrier in the nation.

 

[QLR1]

And that's how Sprint phones are almost worthless on the resale market. Sprint had so much spectrum and they jsut now trying to do something with it. When the Big Two locked onto LTE instead of that WIMAX, it was a checkmate. Around these parts, Sprint has LTE, but as a region, it has been tough sledding for them.

Damn, @digi7alph0enix, I feel like some damn nerd

 

[digi7alph0enix]

And that's how Sprint phones are almost worthless on the resale market. Sprint had so much spectrum and they jsut now trying to do something with it. When the Big Two locked onto LTE instead of that WIMAX, it was a checkmate. Around these parts, Sprint has LTE, but as a region, it has been tough sledding for them.

Damn, @digi7alph0enix, I feel like some damn nerd

I'd pin the WiMax failure on Clearwire as much as Sprint. They knew going in that wimax wouldn't keep up with LTE in the long run, but they thought beating everyone to the punch would draw in enough cash to flip the switch on lte fast enough that they wouldn't piss people off. What happened is that the other carriers saw that tactic and bought up every panel capable of carrying wimax/lte bands, leaving sprint holding the bag with a tech they knew wouldn't last long. With that trap set, they sat on their hands and waited to see what happened. The only carrier that went for LTE right out of the gate was MetroPCS and they didn't have the cash to build it out nationwide, just in a few key cities. My understanding is that based on the throughput they were seeing in small scale testing with LTE, the other carriers gave the green light to building out LTE instead of wimax.

The wimax vs lte thing was clearwire's fault. They knew it wasn't as good and did it anyway.

Joining clearwire was all on Sprint. Instead of building their own network they piggybacked off another company and added some of their own and got burned. Serves them right IMO.

 

[digi7alph0enix]

Decent downloads at least
Check out my Ookla Speedtest result. What's your speed? Speedtest.net by Ookla - My Results

 

[digi7alph0enix]

May finally have to use the new Tapatalk. The old Tapatalk pro crashes when uploading pics on the latest version of Android. Oh well.

Tested across 3 different servers.

 

[Dieseltech]

May finally have to use the new Tapatalk. The old Tapatalk pro crashes when uploading pics on the latest version of Android. Oh well.

Tested across 3 different servers.
View attachment 170277

Looks pretty fast.

 

[digi7alph0enix]

Looks pretty fast.

That's at home though