Verizon Wireless' LTE Advanced technology

A few months ago, I saw a press release from Verizon Wireless saying that they supported LTE Advanced (true 4G) in two cities near me, giving much, much, much faster speeds.  You know how they were ridiculing Sprint for being good around Kansas City, and all that?  Then, they started using technology that was even better than what they had to trounce Sprint.

I've been using a Verizon Wireless hotspot for over two years, after the previous hot spot couldn't connect to Sprint for more than 6 hours--something Sprint couldn't explain--but my phone on Sprint was working perfectly.  Back around May, I got the latest, greatest hotspot from Verizon that would support LTE Advanced, XLTE, and allow international roaming.

I was in Modesto, CA today, waiting for someone, and I decided to download something to my phone because iTunes app updates are limited to 100MB over the air.  Beyer Park has a tower and Sprint's service is the best there, of all Modesto.  I hoped that it would work out that way with Verizon--only much bigger.  I regularly get 40-50 Mbps with Sprint there.  I'm sure I read that Verizon Wireless was suggesting hundreds of Megabits per second.

I was so disappointed.  I do better at home without LTE Advanced.  I tested it with three apps and my download of 1.2 GB took a very long time, unfortunately.

I'm guessing that it's similar to when Verizon Wireless was first implementing LTE.  A friend lived in a small town that they claimed had LTE.  She tried to show me something.  After a few minutes of churning and getting nowhere, it dropped to 3G and instantly the results were shown.

Does that make it a lie or an exaggeration?  In advertising, I believe it's known as fraud, but it looks like an overstatement to claim a city name without covering the whole city.

Update 2019.03.05: Sprint apparently has LTE Advanced in most locations now, as well as having 3 band LTE in some locations.  It really is amazing to see 100 Mbps on a phone.  5G may be coming, but we still don't have Voice over LTE available, so that they can ditch GSM and CDMA services.

FreedomPop for home

I've been using a phone or a mobile hotspot for my computer's internet connection from late 2006.  It started with a Samsung A900--Lex Luthor's phone in Smallville.  It was a lousy phone but the 3G connection was reliable, and the speed was better than my 3 Mbps DSL connection.

Lately, I've been using a Novatel Wireless MiFi device with Verizon.  Service was really good at my last location, but just acceptable here.  I gave up on Sprint around March of this year when the Sierra Wireless (now Netgear) device wouldn't connect for 6 hours.

Earlier this month, I was coming close to my full monthly allotment of 10 GB on the 10th day into my billing period.  Uggggh.  I'm currently about 4 GB ($40) over it.  I haven't noticed anyone else using it, but DirecTV seemed to be using a lot, even though I wasn't streaming anything.  I've been working on creating videos lately, but there wasn't that much I was uploading.  In any case, paying loads for extra use, and not knowing how it was happening was difficult.

I looked for FreedomPop after seeing an article about it.  Freedom Hub Burst is a home product similar to a mobile hotspot but without the mobile part.  It needs an AC electrical outlet.  They've been using ClearWire/Clear connections for quite a while.  The only problem with this is that I have some spotty service with Sprint at home.  Both ends of my apartment have LTE but my living room and part of my bedroom are a transition zone between 3G and LTE, so I end up with 1xRTT on my phone too often.

At $21.99 for 10 GB per month, it seemed reasonable, compared to $10 per 1 GB for an overage on Verizon.  Normally, FreedomPop hasn't been charging for the service, but this home service is a bit different, and I'm okay with it.  Like buying a phone with prepaid service, I needed to buy a device.  They supposedly included an extra USB-attached mobile modem but it wasn't included in the box.

Setup

Receiving the package on Christmas Eve seemed gift-y.  Opening the package and not finding useful instructions didn't.  Actually, there was a little pamphlet that fell between the cracks, and I found it afterwards.  It would have helped a lot but I already had a connection, read the instructions, and managed to find the page to get everything set.  Looking at the pamphlet, it neglects to tell you the default password for the connection to the device itself, so how do you connect without a current connection?

Connecting

It has been simple enough to get online, once I set everything.  Speed is reasonable, though not extremely fast, nearly 5 Mbps.  Perhaps, the LTE will improve as Sprint/Clear finish their deployment in this area.  Response time seems minimal and it feels like a good connection.  Unlike my phone, I can leave the device near a window on the edge of the apartment where the connection is better.

Having an extra 10 GB for about the same as 2 GB overage isn't bad.  I can connect the TV and Blu-Ray player to it and they can update firmware to their CPU's content, even when I'm not home.  I'm thinking that I shouldn't connect my DirecTV receiver, as it will take advantage of the connection in big ways.  Now, my mobile hotspot can once again be mobile, and I can even update those extra iPhone apps without having to look for a WiFi connection elsewhere.

Update 2015.01.13: Saturday, I received a WiMAX/3G modem, like the one Sprint discontinued quite a while ago.  I couldn't download the connection manager software from FreedomPop, so I downloaded it from Sprint.

It connected but then told me that there was no free 4G service available and that 3G service wasn't free.  I only have one question--why send me this unusable piece of technology, to clear the warehouse?

Update 2015.03.27: The other day, the company offered me an upgrade for the useless WiMAX modem.  For $29.99, I could get a Franklin brand LTE modem.  It sounded great, but then, they wanted me to take a premium 2 GB data package for $21.99 per month.  It's not horrible, when you consider AT&T and Verizon and I could cancel later.

However, they're counting on someone missing that, and I missed the data rollover option that they slipped into the WiMAX modem package, and they've been charging me $3.99 + tax until I checked practically every option on the web site.

Verizon, don't !@#$ with me, okay?

It's been a month.  I'm in for the long haul with a company I barely trust.  The positive about it is that they're not as bad as the new AT&T/SBC.  Almost two years ago when I got a refurbished mobile hotspot shipping from AT&T in Texas, I was charged for the three days it was in the mail.  Verizon isn't that bad.

Now, here is a huge tip.  If you change your plan because you want to not exceed the data allotment, make the change retroactive to the beginning of the current billing cycle so that it claims the whole amount for the whole month.  Do not let the change be immediate.

Why?  I got overages, even though I changed from 5 GB to 10 GB and only had 9 GB used.

When I made the change on the web site, instead of seeing 10 GB as the limit, they gave me 3.871 GB, even though I hadn't yet crossed 5 GB.  They divide the number of remaining days to calculate how much data you should receive, rather than just dumping the full amount into it and they use pro rata calculations for the price to you equally.

Therefore, at the point where I crossed the 4.86 or whatever + 3.871 GB, I was in overage land.

I'm still not sure what I'll be charged but I certainly have a headache about it now.  Then, there is part 2.

Sunday, after the overage message, I called customer service.  Someone friendly answered my question and explained how I was over.  She told me that I should switch to the 12 GB plan instead of the 10 GB plan and that would eliminate the overage.  Besides, it was only $70 instead of $80, so I would be saving money and getting a bigger allotment.

I had seen the "Share" plans and they all had a $20 fee for the line.  I asked precisely "are there any other charges, other than for the government?"  She said that there were no other charges and that an extra 2 GB of data would be $10 instead of the 1 GB per $10 with the current 10 GB plan.  I agreed.

Part 3 came today in an e-mail about the changes.  $70 + $20 = $90.  What?  That's not cheaper than $80.

I called customer service and tried to calmly explain the situation.  I'm back on the $80 plan with no $20 fee for the line.  It may be older but I don't have another Verizon device and it seems rather expensive if you have more than one.

I'm wondering now if the person got a commission for the switch to a new plan that would "help" me.  I had a similar experience with a cable company (Time-Warmer or BrightHouse Networks, which took over the area), and I called back and told them that they could rip out the changes or rip out their cable lines to my house because I wasn't paying extra.  Oops.  They liked to play games, though.

I can' imagine how this is going to look when I get the bill, but whatever.  It's difficult any time you start with a new contract.  It's just too bad I couldn't have bought the device outright and gone contract-less.

Besides all that, I sent the rebate form without the labels from the box.  Damn.

iOS 7.1 hasn't made things worse...yet

At 238 MB, it seemed rather small for the length of time waited for performance fixes.  I was expecting something three times the size.  Then again, when I first downloaded iOS 7, I was on my iPhone 4s and now, I have an iPhone 5c.

The brand new iOS 7 really downgraded the performance of the 4s--no, not to the sad level of the iPhone 4, but it was truly disappointing.  I had a game at a critical point and the phone was lagging badly, trying to run the game, and there was no chance of succeeding.

For those using an iPhone 4, it's likely safe now, but not a final step.  I was remembering my second generation iPod touch and how iOS 5 had killed the performance.  iOS 5.1.1 brought the device back to life, but I think it wasn't until 5.2.1 that it was actually almost as good as the previous 4.x version.  It never fully recovered.  I suspect more performance enhancements to make it before iOS 7.x is finished.

It looks as though there were a lot of little tweaks that they didn't quite finish before sending iOS 7 out the door and they've included those now.  I don't recall anything in particular but it looks a bit more integrated already.  Performance seems enhanced but not supremely fast.  At least, nothing seems to have become worse...yet.

Update 2014.03.19: I guess I'm lucky.  I'm new to using iOS 7.1 as a mobile hotspot and it seems to be just fine.  I guess I spoke too soon.  If I don't leave the hotspot functionality active, it isn't so good.  There is trouble with the MacBook Pro finding it after a few times, and I have to re-boot the phone.  It seems to occasionally connect, if I go back to the Personal Hotspot display, without re-booting. Those who were using the functionality prior to 7.1 are experiencing issues.  In an episode of He said-She said, Apple is not taking responsibility, and naturally, the carriers are not.

At least, there will be another update before iOS 8.0.

Do carriers boost the mobile hotspot data usage numbers?

Back in mid-2012, when I was looking for a mobile hotspot, I noticed that at almost unusable speeds, I was tearing through the Verizon Hotspot's 10 GB data limit.  It didn't make any sense.  Except for the trip from the Verizon store, I didn't have access to LTE.  At home, I was barely able to get e-mail.  Yet, most of the allotment was being used very quickly.

Saturday, I bought one of their newest hotspots and I'm already more than 33% through my monthly allotment of 5 GB.  The firmware update was surely included in the usage, since obviously, that wouldn't go to the company.  (Why put out a device that is updated when you can charge for the update indirectly?)  I had 12 GB with Sprint, and even when I had 5 GB, it didn't go this quickly, though they seem to count all of their overhead as part of my usage.

3 full days

Since there aren't a lot of alternatives here, I will be using the mobile hotspot, either the hardware device from Verizon, or the software functionality on the iPhone 5c from Sprint.  I'm guessing that I'll be close on data at the end of the billing period.

The salesperson told me that Verizon charges $10 per 1 gigabyte over the limit, which doesn't seem horrible.  I expected something more like $1 per extra megabyte.

To be clear, I had already stopped the automatic update of tablet applications.  People often seem upset than Apple take so long to authorize an update to an application, but the other side is annoying.  I see developers on Android updating their applications daily.  I don't develop mobile software, but unless there is an emergency, why not get several updates into the app every week?

Of course, Google applications on (Mac) OS X can't be stopped.  These days, I rarely find that Chrome hasn't been updated ahead of a notice on a news site, unless of course, I don't have a connection while I'm out.  Picasa is the Google exception, and the company has major problems there.  The Update menu item doesn't work.  It never finds an update, even when there is one.  When there is an update, I receive a pop-up dialog box asking me to run the installation.  I do that, and when I go to one of normal user accounts (as opposed to Administrator), it asks that I download and install it there, also.  Obviously, it's the same software across user accounts, download it once.

1 full week

Update 2014.03.09: I'm about 40% through my monthly allotment in about 1 week.  That's scary.  I hope it isn't repeated the next month.

2 weeks

Update 2014.03.16: I'm about 80% through my monthly allotment, with half a month to go.  I can only wonder as to what is using all the data, since I'm not watching videos.  It looks as though Verizon doesn't count the same way as Sprint did.  I would rarely go beyond 6 GB in a month.  I'm going to end up using my Sprint phone as a hotspot, which could last me the rest of the month, but who knows?

Funny that ABC News was running a story about prepaid phone calls and how AT&T and T-Mobile charge you for the operational length of the call, rather than the talk time of the call.  They said that Verizon only charged for the talk time.  I hope that they're not making up for it here.

Update 2014.03.17: I've apparently used 0.765GB in almost exactly 48 hours.  This will be the second time I've tried to update this blog entry with the addition of the graphic.   Well, the graphic was still being held by Google, even though Blogger did not update this blog entry--small favors.  In any case, I can only imagine that Google Maps is responsible for using so much data.  I watch videos on my Unlimited Data phone, not through the hotspot.

Update 2014.03.19: I turned off the Mifi hotspot just after I read the total usage.  When I went to the local affiliate to pay my first bill, I asked them about the current number and he had just switched from that page, but he said that it seemed to be what I mentioned.  I was half-hoping that it would have still increased with it completely off, to prove that there was a problem.

Since I've been using the phone on Sprint as a hotspot for two days, usage has been minimal.   I also noticed that MacRumors was mentioning a problem with iOS 7.1 and hotspot functionality, but since I didn't use it prior to 7.1, I am probably not having any issue.

Update 2014.03.21: I've been using my phone as a hotspot and it's been a bit troublesome if I stop the hotspot functionality.

The next morning after turning off the MiFi hotspot

2.5 days after the first Sprint measure

It seems very different in usage but that may be because it's so slow most of the time, and in frustration, I leave the computer or tablet without achieving much, though it might be some other reason.  I still find it humorous that Sprint wants to confuse the issue by measuring in KiloBytes.  Maybe, it confuses them, too.  It's sadly amusing that on their Sprint-labeled Speedtest.net page, they mistakenly identify the results in MegaBytes per second instead of MegaBits per second.  I'm sure Sprint would have more customers if their data services were 8 times as fast.  With the Tri-Fi hotspot, I often had trouble getting e-mail.  Isn't that pathetic?  I always thought that a dedicated device would be so much better than a phone doing double duty but not so with the Sierra Wireless/Netgear devices, especially since they offer cradles to boost the signal gain.

I caved and changed from 5 GB on Verizon to 10 GB per month.  It's an extra $30, which is better than $10 per 1 GB or $50.

It's still easier to remember the phone than the mobile hotspot when I leave town for a quick trip.  It's still important to watch the usage, as I could suddenly exceed 10 GB.  e.g., I have the Asphalt 8 game on the phone and the Nexus 7 tablet.  It's 1.5 GB on one and 1.3 GB on the other.  Since they'll likely charge for their overhead, that 2.8 GB will probably balloon to 3.5 GB easily.  Try finding some free WiFi source to let you update that much easily.  I know of places but I'll have to drive 25-45 miles to go there.

How does adding an extra 5 GB get to 3.871?

Gaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh!

 I had not used 5 GB and I changed to 10 GB so, they gave me a lot less than 5 GB.  For the sake of clarity, I should have had it start on the next billing period, don't you think?

I think Verizon may have a problem

I tried to call customer service but the sound was so awful, I couldn't really hear the menu options well.  Was that a tactic to get me to change my phone to Verizon?  I don't remember the problem in 2012.  I don't make many phone calls, so who knows?

Update 2014.04.04: I needed to back date (retroactive) the plan to the first day of the period.  They took my change on the 21st day of the month and used pro rata math to give me 3.871, which knowing my situation, no one knowledgeable and in their right mind would have done because it caused an overage.

Update 2015.01.31: This hit hard today, though I haven't been keeping track of my usage strictly.

Most of the month I've been using a FreedomPop home internet connection over LTE.  If I go over 2 GB on Verizon, it's pretty much the same as 10 GB on FreedomPop.  When I went over by 4 GB, uploading my new video work, I had to do something.

So, I didn't use the Verizon mobile hotspot until the 21st really.  I was updating the computer and phone and it showed 2.2 GB, which is a lot from 10 GB monthly.  Today, I got a message that I was over 75%--or over 7.5 GB.  In the last 3 days, I've been working on a few videos from skateboarding, and a musical performance the other night.  I find it difficult to believe that I used 6 GB, and only have about 1.4 GB remaining.  Thankfully, that was after the latest group of videos were finished and up on YouTube.  I was uploading to YouTube and Vimeo, so that's part of the problem, but Vimeo let me upload the full load of the second video and told me that it wasn't HD because I need to pay extra for more than a certain small amount.

In any case, it's going to be back to zero on the 2nd, but in the meantime, I have to be a bit more frugal.

No more Sierra Wireless/Netgear mobile hotspots

Is this odd that it follows my "No more Panasonic lenses" blog entry?  It's been a week.

I've been fighting with my Sierra Wireless Tri-Fi mobile hotspot for quite a while.  I got it in June 2012, after auditioning similar LTE devices from AT&T/SBC and Verizon Wireless.  (N.B. you can't buy Sierra Wireless-named devices now--Netgear bought the company, so everything is labeled Netgear now.  At the Sprint store there was another Netgear mobile hotspot with a cradle, this one a tri-band (Spark) LTE device.  If it needs a cradle to work correctly, it's a poor design.  Don't buy it!  By the way, I'm not against Netgear networking equipment otherwise.  In fact, I use it.)

At the time when I bought the hotspot in 2012, there wasn't much LTE coverage, and what was there was already overwhelmed.  WiMAX was more likely to be available.

AT&T/SBC enabled HSPA in town, not HSPA+ but merely the so-so topology that was similarly constrained like EVDO Rev. A or B.  Since most people were accustomed to GPRS or EDGE, it was reasonably fast.  Today, it's likely bogged down with all the extra traffic, and there is no LTE.

Verizon offered LTE in town a couple of months after I took their device back to them but at the time I got the device, their 3G data speeds were worse than Sprint (getting e-mail was a problem), and their LTE speeds weren't great in an area that had already matured.

Today, the reality hit the fan.

I couldn't get a connection with the mobile hotspot at all.  The device sat there between 15 and 30 minutes and wouldn't connect.  I went to the store, which is about 2 miles from home.  I tried to check-in with Yelp on the phone and even that didn't work outside or inside the store.  (They're upgrading the towers for LTE, but if the phone doesn't work well, what's the point?  The Sprint store and Verizon affiliate store are very close to the tower but so are the shopping centers.  At Christmas, I could hardly get any service.)

In the store, I waited and waited, as Saturdays are busy.  When someone talked to me, I tried to be calm.  In the end, he told me to call customer service, and demand that my contract be canceled and that the ETF be credited so that I would pay nothing.

I drove near the Verizon Wireless affiliate, near the tower, so I could hope to make a clear call.  I called and navigated the menu system to "end contract" or some such menu item.  Janelle answered within the 30 seconds that they stated and we did a little dance.

In the end, she ended the contract, credited the account, so that I would pay nothing.  I also had her turn on the Personal Hotspot feature on the phone, so I could at least get e-mail.  She was extremely pleasant and took care of me well.  They've increased the prices for the hotspot add-on.  I think the 6 GB hotspot add-on was $49.99, instead of $29.99 for 5 GB previously, and I selected the 2 GB add-on for $19.99.

I walked into the Verizon Wireless reseller after the call.  They had one beat-up mobile hotspot on display.  When I got to talk to someone, I learned that they only had two others in the store.  I chose the Novatel Wireless device.  I'm trying to be a good American, okay?  The other device was the ZTE (890L?) mobile hotspot I tried in 2012, and I would rather have a newer, less intensive chipset for better battery life, especially since the batteries were half the size (1800 mAh vs 3600 mAh) of the Sierra Wireless unit I'd been using.  I read my initial blog entry and I had problems with that ZTE brand device but lots of firmware changes have probably fixed everything.

About $120 got me out the door, will 2 years of walk-in-trade-in insurance on the device.  $60 for insurance seems okay considering that it would have been $8 per month with Asurion, which would be $192 over 2 years.

Sprint LTE in Trotwood, OH

Verizon LTE in Richmond, IN

When I arrived home, I got connected with the computer.  I got 12.79 Mbps down and 4..25 Mbps up.  Unfortunately, it hasn't worked since then.  It went to do an update and it froze at 48%.  I powered off and powered on, and selected the update and it was downloaded completely, and took a very long time to do the actual update.  It still isn't working for me.  I just checked the tablet again.

Thankfully, while I was terminating the Sprint mobile hotspot, I had the representative enable the Personal Hotspot feature and that is working exceptionally well, as I would expect the connection to be.  Unfortunately, their add-on prices were enormous and I only went to 2 GB, Sprint overhead and all.  It's an emergency substitute and of course, when the Verizon mobile hotspot is close on data.  Verizon charges $10 for an extra Gigabyte which seemed very reasonable, as Sprint has been a pain for overages, not that I've had any for a long time, but they really promote you going with a heavy plan.

So, now, back to the Verizon store to see what the !@#$ problem is.

Who knows?  I took my laptop computer, my 2013 Nexus 7 tablet, and the MiFi mobile hotspot.  Everything worked perfectly in the store and here at home now.  I hope there are no further problems.

It's still fine, although it hasn't been quite as fast.  I suspect that as the evening progressed, more people headed to this side of town where more restaurants and shopping exist.  When the winter storm hits, I would imagine speeds will be increased--or not decreased as much as when things are busy.

I also returned to the Sprint store to tell them how much better the iPhone 5c handled hotspot duties than the dedicated hotspot device.  Isn't that sad that the device wasn't better?  They were surprised also.

Update 2014.03.02: The lack of the Tri-Fi hotspot seems to have left the iPhone 5c in a better state of communication.  It seems to be faster and smoother in communication with the towers.  Could the Tri-Fi have been interfering with this (and the previous iPhone 4s) phone over 1.5 years?   That's just scary that one device could be so disruptive, especially since it was meant to be so helpful by granting access to three different topologies/technologies.

3 full days

1 full week

Update 2014.03.04: As I wondered back in 2012, I wonder if Verizon cheats on their usage numbers.  It has been 3 full days, and I've already used over 1 GB (20%) without any video.   I've always felt that Sprint charges me for their overhead, as well as my traffic, but this seems ridiculous.  I didn't check to see how much the firmware update cost me, but I'm sure they didn't do that for free.

I tried to write a review of the Tri-Fi mobile hotspot and I was careful to only use the truth, but Sprint don't approve of service-related talk.  How can you discuss an item's connectivity without touching on how well it connects?

Update 2014.03.29: Thankfully, the Novatel Wireless MiFi-5510L has performed well.  Its touch-capable buttons are not very responsive, but what counts is the connectivity between the computer, tablet, and the internet.  That works.  Even the iPhone 5c as a mobile hotspot is quite good, though it can be stubborn connecting to the computer, another Apple product, at times.

I extended the Verizon plan to 10 GB, and at the switchover on the 21st, instead of saving 10 GB, it gave an odd, seemingly-unrelated number.  I checked earlier and it was just over 9 GB, even though it had several days away.  It is now completely off and disconnected.  Verizon's $10 per 1 GB isn't so much but I'd rather not use it since I also have the phone for overages, and for those trips where I forget the mobile hotspot device.  That gives me the original 12 GB I had on Sprint, but with two devices which hopefully will not be down at the same time.  Since Sprint didn't discount anything, I expect the cost to be about the same.

Sprint is testing the waters with LTE in town, so the phone seems to be much better even on 3G/EVDO.  At some point in the next few days, LTE will supposedly be deployed on Sprint towers.

Still considering another phone

July 1st has come and gone.  Its only real significance is that it opened up my new phone upgrade window.  It's a long time until my contract ends in November, so Sprint has made things available much earlier than their previous 22 month period.  My two previous phone switches happened around 12 months from the prior change, as I was part of their Premier programme.

Apparently, they weren't making enough money but they made a lot of customers happy.  Of course, smart phones have an ETF of $350 and feature phones are at $200, I believe, but they weren't getting enough of that within 1 year, so the price of happiness was too high, indeed.

I currently have an iPhone 4S with 32 GB of storage.

I'm thinking about:

• LG Optimus G(2)
• HTC One
• Apple iPhone 5S

Of course, the iPhone 5S won't be out until October or so.  Apple has just revealed that they've added the iPhone to the university sale that they do in autumn, so until the current supplies are gone, no one gets the new products.  This also explains why the MacBook Pro wasn't revised at WWDC, as all products they feel are desired by students will be discounted and after stock runs out, the revised models will be announced.

In any case, I want something fairly current but I'm not sure how far I would want to go.  The displays of all three will be high density displays.  I'd like a tablet but it's too much extra to carry, especially with the laptop computer.  A high density display on a phone will allow me to read and write Japanese, Chinese, and Korean more easily.

Update 2013.07.08: About 1 month from now, there is an announcement from LG, which is expected to be the Optimus G2.  I noticed that Sprint has reduced the price of the Optimus G from US$199.99 to US$99.99, according to my contract upgrade.  It's still a quad core phone and it sucks battery life as with all the rest--will the new one need a humongous battery and still suck the life out of it?

One thing that concerns me is that Android always has a problem where some app doesn't work with some phone.  These two phones are well known but will all apps work with them?  They have a good chance, but is that enough?

Of course, it has taken time for various apps on iOS to support the iPhone 5 and newer iPad displays.  It matters but there may not be a problem by the time October/November arrives.

Speaking of app compatibility, the HTC One lacks the menu button.  This seems a major flaw, even though some developers have gone out of their way to provide a solution in their applications.

I have a fourth option: do nothing and let the contract expire.  I'm not 100% enamoured of Sprint's service in this area, and my mobile hotspot (Tri-Fi!) regularly has trouble, probably because it doesn't support the lower frequencies and neither WiMAX nor LTE are available at home.  I doubt they'd appreciate losing a 13 year customer, although it would just be the loss of my phone at the moment, as the mobile hotspot has until July of 2014.

It seems to me that they could put better technology into a place that suffers from more trouble, rather than putting poorer, cheaper technology into place.  The signal used to be quite good, but their current technology leaves the mobile hotspot hanging by a 1 or 2 bar thread, where the phone will have double that.  The lower frequency counts, apparently.  Of course, how many times have you seen the number of bars change when you actually started to use the device?  Then again, one the phone, the number of bars represents the voice signal, which could always be fine, while the data signal would be in the toilet.

It's sad to return home from a trip where I was getting around 10 Mbps on WiMAX or LTE to see the connection struggle with e-mail.

I seriously doubt the deal with SoftBank will help in that department.  They'll still consider a small town unworthy of investment, even though the Sprint executives probably live far enough out of Overland Park, Kansas/Kansas City to be consider rural.  I doubt that they have a problem anywhere they go.

Update: 2013.09.10: iPhones 5s and 5c have been announced for September 20th availability.  Could I do with the 5c, which is mostly a warmed-over iPhone 5?  I suppose so but the extra power of the 5s sounds better.  I still haven't seen the LG Optimus G2 available, but Motorola's Moto X is.

Sprint LTE seems to work

I was in the Indianapolis area today, and as I had checked the Sprint coverage page last night, saw that they had gone live with LTE.  The funny thing about their data maps, unlike their voice maps, is that they don't show relative signal strength.  It's all covered in orange, when in reality, it might not be covered at all.

My current home coverage is like that.  It' shows up as a blanket of 3G goodness when, in fact, I often get unusable service.  The voice coverage shows me on the edge of great voice signal strength.

I took my mobile hotspot (Sierra Wireless Tri-Fi, as they call it), into the pizza place where I went to eat lunch, along with my laptop computer.  It connected slowly, then disconnected, then connected again.  As I was trying to actually use the connection, the hotspot disconnected from the computer.  C-R-A-P.  This is the second device, as the first one was confused about whether it was fully charged or not, and disconnected regularly.

My guess is that the disconnections happen when the towers are overloaded.  Despite their assurances, I think their capacity upgrades only minimized the horror and they needed 6 or 7 more to put things back to where they were before they started selling Apple's iPhone.  They've been selling smart phones like crazy.  Apparently, nearly half of people in the U.S.A. are using smart phones.  I saw almost great speeds on Christmas Day, so it makes sense.

There was a handy Sprint store around the corner, so I stopped to talk.  I casually asked why it wouldn't connect to LTE and the representative told me that the towers were only about 30 % of the buildout.  That seems consistent with Verizon and AT&T boasting LTE coverage when there wasn't much.  Sad, isn't it?  Still, some is better than none, as long as it works.

After I'd finished my regular shopping, I headed to Sam's Club for gasoline and to see if there was anything else I desperately needed.  $3.079 wasn't bad for regular, since I'd seen up to $3.219 on the way there.

I tried the mobile hotspot again, and it showed the 4G symbol.  Since I knew Indianapolis didn't have WiMAX, I was quite pleased to be connected to LTE for the first time with the device.  I'll upload the screenshot but the PING came back as 70 ms, with a download speed of 4.65 Mbps, and an upload speed of 3.81 Mbps.  Considering the technology, it's slow, but if I'd checked my 3G connection, the LTE speed would look wonderful.  I'm hoping to see much better.  I tried Verizon's LTE in West Carrollton, Ohio and the download speed at that time was ~5.8 Mbps but it was a more mature buildout by that time.  I considered it too slow for the money Verizon charged, and considering that I had minimal coverage in my own town at the time, it didn't make sense.  Since then, they added LTE but it's only good if you happen to be where it works.

Now, I'm thinking that Sprint may try to compete with Verizon since the two have this town sewn up.  T-Mobile doesn't even have 3G service here and there is no MetroPCS or Cricket.  AT&T has 3G service but that could collapse at any moment once their customers upgrade to 3G data phones.  It's not likely they'll have LTE here until the end of the century.  I don't even think that they had EDGE here until 2006 or 2007.

If nothing else, the pizza and breadsticks were good.

Update 2013.11.11: It's going on 10 months since I wrote this.  I see Sprint covering more of the state of Indiana, but service in Indianapolis is anything but exemplary.  Downtown, near where they showcased LTE for the SuperBowl, I've seen service as low as 0.75 Mbps and the other day, it was running at 1.0 Mbps down.  I also got 2.88 Mbps in the suburbs where the buildout didn't seem to be finished.  However, service in the mall was better near the Sprint kiosk, and often dropped to 1xRTT elsewhere.

I'm on my third hotspot now, and this one doesn't seem to be better.  Why doesn't the equipment for their towers work well?

I'm interested to see how Verizon is doing.  About a year ago, I went to visit someone in a small town to deliver a few things.  She was showing me her Verizon Samsung Galaxy S III and I noticed that LTE was lit.  She tried to look up something and it paused for over 1 minute, switched to 3G/EVDO, and returned results finally.  So much for more coverage.  Putting LTE on one tower just doesn't do more than stake a claim.  It has to work.

Oh, and I just had pizza and breadsticks there again the other day.

Mobile Hotspots and Me

I've been using a mobile internet connection since late 2006.  I got a new mobile phone, the Samsung SPH-A900 or Blade.  (This was later Lex Luthor's phone on Smallville.  I felt so evil.)  The one feature that intrigued me was the "phone as modem" capability.  I did some checking and got it to work using Sprint's 3G EVDO technology.  It was faster than the 3 Mbps DSL line from BellSouth that I'd been using, except in PING response speed.

Once I had things set, I discontinued my DSL service and never looked back.  Then, I moved again to a rural community (to help with my parents) where Sprint had no 3G service.  Often, their 1.5G speed was worse than dial up.  They were slated for 3G service the month before I arrived, but something wasn't working and the technicians didn't understand what was happening.  In the middle of a freezing, snowy January they figured it out.  I would go from 2 Mbps to dial up speeds about once every 6 weeks, call customer service who told me that there was nothing wrong, but they would send me PRL updates, etc. and the phone would work better for 6 weeks.  There was "nothing wrong with their network" over an LG Musiq, LG Lotus, LG Optimus S, and finally the iPhone 4S.  I didn't draw the same conclusion about their network.

In these last 3 years, it's become slightly more stable, and with an iPhone having EVDO Revision A technology, I'd seen downlink speeds of 3 - 4 Mbps fairly regularly and I'd once or twice seen downloads through Firefox exceed 500 KB/sec.  Someone in the neighbourhood apparently got connected to Sprint recently and my numbers dwindled to unusable--shutting off the phone unusable.  Besides that, Apple's iOS 5.x mobile hotspot is unstable.

Back on June 6th, I decided to do something about the situation.  I ordered a Sierra Wireless Elevate from AT&T.  I'm not very trusting of the company since they were Southwestern Bell + PacBell + AmeriTech + BellSouth and who knows what other baby Bells.  I went against my feelings.

The device arrived on the 8th and it arrived with the SIM card installed and I just needed to tailor it to my needs.  Despite the slick marketing, it wasn't very fast using HSPA/HSPA+.  Granted, it was much better than unusable but for all their hype, it was barely faster than Sprint at best and it rarely achieved the best time, despite a lack of users.  Once they had as many users as Sprint, they'd be in trouble.  Then, they gave me the first bill and I was a bit shocked that they charged me for data usage while it was being shipped to me.  It wasn't that the money was so high, but that I was paying for time when I didn't have access to it.  Several times, it wasn't connected for whatever reason and a power cycle (power off/power on) was necessary.  This was a refurbished unit, so it should have been working much better.  I returned the whole thing and cancelled the contract.  I must pay for the usage but supposedly, I shouldn't have to pay for anything else--supposedly.  The usage was rather high.  In 10 days, I'd used slightly more than 2.5 GB--half my monthly allowance, and overages were $10 per 1 GB.

I went to a corporate Verizon store in the same town and bought a hotspot.  This was made by ZTE.  I was uncomfortable with all the complaints about the latest Novatel Wireless MiFi LTE device.  Verizon has a 10 GB plan for $80, as well as the typical 5 GB plan for $50.  This ZTE device (#890L) has been out about a month, so it might not be so foolproof, and I'm definitely a fool.  By the way, all of these devices support LTE, where you can find it available.  The ZTE device does not keep track of data used, so you're on your own to look for overages.

Unfortunately, I didn't take the computer with me, so I didn't get to experience LTE right away.  However, I wouldn't be returning to a house with LTE available so, did it really matter?  When I returned home, I set it to charge and connected and personalised it.  It worked fine but Verizon's EVDO/3G service is slower than Sprint's and it's just as overloaded as Sprint's.  Oops.

I had a download of over 800 MBs waiting that I wasn't going to ignore and since I was on the last day of the billing cycle (last day to start?), I tried downloading.  It showed 2 hours, 15 hours, 3 hours, 1 day, and levelled off at 6 hours and change.  Whoa!  I went to another location closer to the main road and it was just as bad.  (Since I wrote this in June, Verizon Wireless has implemented LTE service in town. I don't know if it's good or bad, but a friend has a Samsung Galaxy S III and it shows up as having LTE service available.  I guess I should have been more patient.)  I headed back toward the town where I bought the device, where LTE was active, and the download finished the final ~700 MB in 20 minutes.  I tried speedtest.net just after that and it recorded something a bit over 5 Mbps--not blazing speed in my experience, though there was a peak of 25 Mbps for maybe half a second.  That's not exactly what I'd expect from the nation's fastest 4G network but better than what I'd seen from their 3G network, of course.

One problem I've noticed with the ZTE 890L is that connected to EVDO/3G and using battery only, once disconnected it needs a power cycle to be usable again.  It doesn't happen connected to a power outlet.  Another odd thing I've noticed with the Verizon network in town is that they seem to be on EVDO Revision 0 instead of Revision A, even though they claimed years ago that their whole network was faster than Sprint's because they were on Revision A.

My exploration and experimentation is complete.  Sprint had the best speed in town and perhaps after their capacity and data speed upgrades, they'll be faster than Verizon here.  They'll probably be faster than AT&T, if AT&T actually get some customers and therefore, get the congestion.

I ended up returning the Verizon device about a week from when I bought it.  I'm now using another Sierra Wireless device from Sprint with a huge (over double the size) 3700 mAh battery for long life (and long charging) that cost $99.99 after rebate.  They call it "Tri-Fi", as it supports EVDO/3G, WiMAX, and LTE; the latter two being considered casually as 4G technologies.  I like that it keep track of data during the session, as well as overall usage.  I'll see how it works in a WiMAX environment since I'm planning a trip to Philadelphia.

Update 2014.03.02: This ended badly overall, and I've changed again.