Sprint has decided to hide coverage deficiencies on the map with 100% LTE, then Spark

I came to this area about five months ago.  I noticed that the majority of this city of 70,000+ people were covered by 3G, while the adjoining city of 22,000+ had strong LTE.  I also noticed that Sprint seemed to be working their way up California SR 99, but skipping this area north of Modesto and resuming near Sacramento.

As time progressed, they added LTE capabilities and they've slowly crept into my apartment, but I'm still at many times seeing 1xRTT as LTE and 3G/EVDO fight over my phone.

I mentioned this to @sprintcare a while back, noting the huge roaming area encompassing the shopping area on the east side of the city.  I was told to look at AIRRAVE as an option.  It isn't a portable option and it doesn't fix the lack of coverage.  It could only cover it up.  Since that conversation, I started another with @sprintcare, as I noticed that the map showed LTE coverage while the behavior of the network had not changed.

They told me that there were no towers in the area.  I told them that the maps didn't show that any longer.  They told me to look again and again.  I finally made screenshots of the map at the cross streets I told them, and the map near my apartment, on the edge of the roaming area.  They never replied.

What roaming area?

What roaming area?

It's apparent that marketing is more important than truth.  I assume my previous conversation about the roaming area caused them to falsify results on the coverage map.  What else (and where else) have they modified the truth?

Update 2015.01.23: Two days ago, there was almost no service and my phone spent almost the whole day on roaming, not only near home, which wouldn't be unusual, but in other areas where LTE is usually strong.  According to an acquaintance on Sprint, service was also bad there, so apparently, it was up and down California SR 99, not just where I live.

What was naturally amusing is that @sprintcare told me that there were no reported problems.  Cable company, much?  I made the comment that since September 2000 when I became a Sprint customer they only admitted to one problem.  Later, they decided that there was an outage.  They didn't mention that it was over multiple cities.

Turbo 1xRTT? Spark? I wish.

3G map shows roaming area

Voice is fair but data is 100%?

I was shocked to find that they updated the map to show Spark, not only over my city, but the highest performance over my apartment.  It was amusing to see 1xRTT while viewing the new coverage map details.  I believe that they might have a plan for Spark here, but I think they're jumping the gun with their marketing efforts.  With the roaming hole, they shouldn't be able to claim coverage anyway but their map legend has no extra provision for Spark or LTE roaming.

Wouldn't it be wonderful to have three frequency LTE coverage?  I haven't exactly seen it working yet, although parts of the San Francisco Bay Area are working quite well.  I've seen something upwards of 30 Mbps on occasion.  I'd be really impressed to see upwards of 70 Mbps, especially since Verizon is working on two frequency LTE coverage, on capable devices, which my MiFi 5510L is not.

Update 2015.05.16: Spark is apparently working in parts of this town.  I saw 30+ Mbps a couple of miles west of my apartment.  I'm still struggling to keep a signal at home, and end up with 1xRTT or No Service far too often.  I've been told that I should take my phone to be serviced.  This is like "The problem is in your set." responses from the cable company that won't acknowledge their problems.

I would imagine that my service would be just fine here, if they had the other tower emplacement.

Update 2015.11.13: They apparently removed the new equipment about a month after it was working and restored the old equipment.  I'm guessing that they wanted to show that they had the coverage, but only planned to map it and remove it, probably so that they could help the area around the headquarters in Overland Park, Kansas.

It is a good idea to give their employees good service, especially since they aren't paying full price for services.  That way they can claim that there is no problem with service, because they have no problem with service.  It's a bit like Congress--if the executives had to live with our poor conditions, they'd probably be willing to do more for the everyday people.

Parts of the San Francisco Bay Area are very good, but there is no consistency there.

Sprint LTE: +40 = 340 locations

Sprint continues to make progress on LTE implementation, adding 40 more locations.

The locations seem odd but it looks as though they're just on the way to converging with other implementation paths.  The University of Oregon and Walmart central country (Northwest Arkansas) have Sprint LTE now.

I'm amused that the person who wrote the press release missed the mistake with Mobile, Alabama.  Besides that, where are they finding these new state abbreviations?

At least, a few of the smaller metro areas have gone live.  Hopefully, they're able to learn from the implementations and make the upgrades go more smoothly.  It would be good if they could make them go more quickly but accuracy is more important.  What good is a quick implementation if it's down after they go live with it?

I'm still expecting this area to go live in 3-4 months with Dayton and Eaton, Ohio already showing some LTE (even where the cows and horses roam), along with parts of the Cincinnati area but with the bitter cold (-14 to -18 degrees F tonight), I doubt much is being done.  Hopefully, they installed the new antennas/antennae during the summer, since it's much easier to work in the climate-controlled electronics room.

Even after they go live, they need to finish what they started, as it's hardly complete.  If they can go live and issue a press release on only 30% coverage, they certainly need to do a lot to finish.  Still, with the data upgrades on network.sprint.com it's easy to see that they're making quick progress before they are ready to go live with anything.  As I've seen in certain locations, they seem to be re-distributing old equipment in order to increase 3G/EVDO coverage instead of remaining with 1xRTT in certain backwoods locations.

Update 2014.03.15: I've seen more of Indiana and Ohio lit up with LTE, at least in test mode.  Coverage is mixed, meaning a few feet can mean a huge difference.  I was trying to use Yelp in a parking lot and couldn't get anything and it was showing 3G on the phone.  As I was leaving, at the stop light on the main road, I had LTE and while it was slow, it was responding.  I was surprised that I had a call dropped yesterday, but of course, it was at a critical time and the indicator showed 1 bar and 1xRTT.  I can count the number of dropped calls in 13+ years on one hand, and most of those were on the other end.  This time, the other end was a land line.  I wonder if most of Ohio will have LTE by summer.  It looks as though southwestern Ohio and the adjoining areas in Indiana will, although coverage will be variable, as always.  There aren't enough towers.

I checked coverage for two areas I have frequented in Indianapolis since LTE went live there.  One is in a strong area with several tall buildings.  Performance is bad.  The other area, including the Sprint store, is in a weak part of the coverage for some reason and it's only a few miles apparently, but it's bad enough if you happen to shop in the area.

Holy shhh...WiMAX!

Having just written about 4G or faux G this week, it's interesting to see WiMAX work well here in the Orlando, FL area.

I ran a test at speedtest.net last night and got over 10 Mbps (I've even recorded over 13.5 Mbps).  This is exceptionally good considering that I'm inside a motel room and the 3G connection is fluctuating between 3G and 1xRTT.  10 Mbps is also faster than I've seen from Verizon LTE, by about 4.8 Mbps.  What Verizon has here, I really don't know.  Sprint apparently doesn't have LTE here, as that would have connected.  I may find it somewhere else in the metropolitan area.  Hmm...Oviedo, FL certainly doesn't have access to WiMAX--it barely has 3G service in my friends' house.

It's great to see a download that would take hours, take just minutes instead.

I must say that it's great (sarcasm) to be home where the service barely works at all--and Sprint doesn't think there is a problem.

Love/Hate Sprint

Why do some people just not care?

Thursday, I called customer service because, after weeks of poor data connections, everything was failing.  I could not use my data connection on the mobile hotspot or on the phone, and even voice calls were distorted.

The person was remarkably interested and was working to help me.  He said that they had tower problems in the area (a first! well, the admission, anyway) and that engineers were working to resolve the situation within 72 hours, though those were working week hours.  (If you have problems on the weekend, there is no problem?)  I was really having trouble understanding the conversation because it was distorted but we got through it.

This person called several days in a row, asking about my connection and last night, another person called.  She mentioned that the work on the tower had been completed and wondered how things were.  I mentioned that it was mostly back to the way it was a week ago, but with some distortion during the phone call.  I mentioned that things had taken a turn for the worse about 6 weeks ago, so she looked into the tower information further.  She was seeing a lot of problems with requests being rejected and proceeded to open another ticket for that matter.

I got a call this morning and this third person wanted nothing more than to close the ticket.  Nothing I said mattered and she wanted yes/no answers to everything, as though asking "does this fit into our easily-achievable brand of marketing happiness?" actually works for people subscribing to their services.

After my recent trials of AT&T and Verizon, I know I'm better off with Sprint.  I just have to wonder how some people keep their jobs.

For a while, I've been in contact with another Sprint customer service representative, this time from the social media team.  He responded to an e-mail from a few days ago, and I updated him on the situation with "go-away-girl" from this morning.  He called later, apologized and said that her supervisor would be noted on the situation, and that he was able to see the outstanding problems and that there was an internal ticket open on the situation, but that the tower is due for at least one capacity upgrade on August 4th.  That goes with what I was already told the previous evening.  I can only hope that things come together.  When I joked that they could just drop in LTE connectivity, he didn't laugh, but said that they had a strict roll-out plan.

The company's ticket on my most-used tower must still be open.  Some of the day time speed is up there again, but Sunday/Sunday night/Monday morning, it was unusable again.

Update: I'm in the Philadelphia, PA area and I'm trying WiMAX, their original 4G technology.  It's used extensively in South Korea, Taiwan, Russia, and parts of Japan.  The trouble with Sprint's WiMAX is that it's in a higher frequency that makes it difficult to penetrate buildings.

So, I tried it in York, PA and it connected but that's all.  It didn't really work in the motel room, next to the window on the second floor.  Here I am now in Christiana, Delaware and it's working better than the 3G/EVDO or the motel's WiFi connection.  It's only registering average download speeds of about 2.8 Mbps but I just got 4.65 Mbps down with only 0.56 Mbps up and that's higher than the previous test.  I get that much from EVDO on the upload and I've exceeded 2.8 Mbps on download.  4.65 is almost as good as I was getting from Verizon's LTE in West Carrollton, OH and they're supposed to be sooooo amazing, right?

I haven't heard anything from Sprint, so I assume that they finished and my "it's working okay but not as great as it was" was enough to say goodbye.  Okay, whatever.