
State of LTE Advanced - milan03
http://cellularinsights.com/state-of-lte-advanced/
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highd
I love detailed, niche technical blogs like this. Another one I really like is
Image Sensors World: [https://image-sensors-
world.blogspot.com/](https://image-sensors-world.blogspot.com/)

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milan03
Thank you, Sir.

I'll try to keep up :)

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mdip
Very interesting read, particularly in where the service providers are
expanding their network. It speaks a lot to the each company's priorities and
confirms a bit of my personal thoughts on each of the companies.

Verizon - I had Verizon service from 1996 through 2008 and the one thing you
couldn't really complain about where I lived was reception. Billing issues and
customer hostile behavior were the reason I ditched them [0] but there wasn't
a moment I can recall grabbing my phone and not having a solid signal
everywhere I traveled in the US. They were laser focused on providing a
modern, reliable network. Quickly moving to increase capacity - they've always
had a pretty solid focus on providing a solid network.

AT&T - I have a personal hatred for this company after numerous problems with
services _other_ than mobile. Their attitude was best summed up by a Saturday
Night Live skit[1], "We're the phone company. We don't care." I've never used
their services if I had a choice (that was probably the single biggest reason
I didn't purchase an iPhone, originally) because every time I've been forced
to use one of their offerings, a variety of service related issues (not helped
by their customer service department) has made them unavailable for long
periods of time. It's disappointing to me that they seemed to think it would
be a good idea to halt wireless expansion and redirect that money to the
DirecTV acquisition. It seems that couldn't have come at a worse time
considering the rapid expansion of wireless.

T-Mobile - This was a little surprising and appears to have not been
intentional. They had no choice but to setup a large number of cell sites due
to the limits of their spectrum. I was a T-Mobile customer (and, technically,
still am one now that I'm on Fi) and I've never had real problems with their
service outside of 4G taking a while to get coverage in all but the most
densely populated areas.

Sprint - As a Fi user, that's as close as I've gotten to Sprint service. They
had an interesting network in Michigan. The coverage is spotty in areas that
most other networks are well covered and good in areas that aren't covered
well by anyone (there's an area of the thumb off of M-25 that is dead to AT&T,
T-Mobile and Verizon but works on my Fi phone). Legacy equipment is all over
their network, likely because replacing it is beyond their financial means at
the moment. I don't see it getting any better. They're a fourth player in a
market with barely enough room for three. In a healthy market, you'd expect a
player with poor service to be substantially cheaper but last I checked (and
I'll admit it's been a year or two), there wasn't much of a price incentive
for accepting the lower service quality.

[0] Technically, I was an AirTouch customer in 1996 until whenever Verizon
purchased them. Back in the day, they had the best network in the area I lived
in. My bill was around $150 and this put me on the high end for their already
expensive service. At some point they put people above a certain service plan
into an arrangement where dialing 611 resulted in being connected, within five
rings, to a human being. The first time I did this after they switched it
around, I stammered a bit due to not getting a seven-layer phone tree. Dealing
with their perfect English speaking CSR staff was a delightful experience and
it was gone shortly after Verizon took over.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw)

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akulbe
With Sprint so bad, it makes me wonder why Google uses them for Fi?

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mdip
Bear in mind that Sprint is one of the options. Fi uses both T-Mobile and
Sprint and intelligently selects between the two based on network reception
and performance (the latter being the coolest feature -- my 4G speeds are
consistently fast).

Sprint was probably cheaper than Verizon and AT&T, making them a more
economical choice.

The second reason I have no solid data on and have been meaning to investigate
further since the anecdotal experiences I have had with Fi support it (but
have no idea how to get good data on this[0]). I think T-Mobile's and Sprint's
networks are complimentary and Sprint has reach in places where nobody else
provides good coverage. The concrete example of this is my parents' home in
the thumb area of Michigan. Every other provider has a dead zone near Fort
Gratiot going for about 2 miles on M-25...except Sprint. Every provider has
service in the city the home is located in, but only AT&T and Sprint cover it
well (4G in most parts of the city except for low lying areas where only
Sprint and AT&T seem to get _any_ service). My travels through the thumb with
T-Mobile resulted in several areas where coverage dries up but the same travel
with my Fi phone yields good service in most places[1].

[0] The provider maps are notoriously terrible, indicating theoretical service
where it isn't from a real-world standpoint. There are crowd-sourced apps like
OpenSignal that measure actual coverage, as well, but they had no good data
for this area because it requires one to run the app, which is already a
fringe "geek" thing, and the app has to be polling at the time you enter the
area. I'd spent almost every day of an entire summer up there with my phone
and there was no data on signal quality for T-Mobile. This is beyond the fact
that some areas reported data that was plain wrong (likely outdated or
resulted from a phone model having a different/significantly better radio than
mine).

[1] I checked the same month I switched since I had been used to having no
data for about half of the drive, causing Pandora to quit. To my surprise it
worked for all but a couple of miles and in those spots, I still had 3G. We
also have friends up there who run AT&T (which gets 4G almost everywhere
except our property) and my family is on Verizon (which has reasonably good
service when it's confused about being a Canadian -- a problem Fi has as
well).

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voltagex_
Anyone know what app they're using to show the cell info? Can it be used on a
consumer phone?

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mmoya
Any TL;DR available?

