[rcraft]

The problem is, in most cities, it's impossible to take advantage of Sprint's "unlimited data plans" because their data speeds are abysmal. I would love to go back to sprint eventually, but for now I'm happy with T-mobile in Denver/Chicago.

[warfangle]

Their coverage map shows solid 100% 4G coverage for me. I live in one of the most populous cities in the US.

I'm lucky if I get two bars of 3G.

Looking to move to T-Mo soon.

[morganvachon]

Here on the outskirts of Atlanta, Sprint and T-Mobile have more or less equal coverage, with one picking up where the other doesn't most of the time. The issue with T-Mobile is that it's more difficult to get a signal indoors, depending on the building material.

For example, at my job we're in a large warehouse with metal walls and framing, lots of pipes, and suspended ceilings. That makes the building difficult but not impossible for radio waves to penetrate. All four major carriers saturate the area; stepping outside you get full service on all of them. But of the four, only T-Mobile has zero coverage once you step inside the building. The rest are usable to varying degrees, with AT&T and Verizon the two best, and Sprint is decent inside.

And just so this isn't purely anecdotal, T-Mobile has acknowledged issues with using their service indoors:

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2014/10/t-mobi...

[warfangle]

Yeah, it's because of their high frequency signal.

Luckily, most of my time is spent within 20 feet of windows in brick buildings, so I don't think it will impact me that much.

On the other hand, have you looked at getting a femto cell for your warehouse (or using a service like Google Voice to get wifi calling)?

[morganvachon]

> On the other hand, have you looked at getting a femto cell for your warehouse (or using a service like Google Voice to get wifi calling)?

I'm the only employee using a T-Mobile compatible phone so it wouldn't be worth doing. We've put WLAN access points throughout the warehouse (one of my first projects when I went full time there) so it's saturated with Wi-Fi. I can't use Google Voice or Hangouts for receiving calls, since I mainly use a Windows phone, but I do have that set up on my Nexus and it works well there.

Basically, 99% of what I use my cellphone for at work is covered by Wi-Fi, and if anyone needs to reach me they can just call the company.

[noselasd]

Coverage != speed. You can have excellent signal strength, sharing the bandwidth with thousands of other mobile devices.

[drewinglis]

They're saying that they doesn't even have the signal strength part.

[Dylan16807]

Phones have a clear indication of whether they are connected to 4G or not. What basis do you have to say that warfangle's signal strength is good in the buildings they spend the most time in?

[Havoc]

Nose's point is that signal strength does not necessarily imply good Internet connectivity. Kinda like you can have great WiFi signal because you're sitting next to the router but unless the router is connected to a good ISP its still going to suck. Ie you can have 4G connectivity and it can still crawl if the backhaul sucks.

[warfangle]

My point was that I usually don't even have 4G connectivity :) Even outdoors.

[rayiner]

It's almost as if bandwidth isn't free.

[duaneb]

Bandwidth itself is impossible to value. The infrastructure providing the bandwidth is not free, no, but the idea of data caps to provide some sort of artificial value it fairly laughable, not to mention irrational. If they want to make this argument, charge me WHAT IT IS ACTUALLY VALUED (i.e. charge me for what I use based on a variable rate derived from maintenance costs), not some made up cap that likely has to do with what they'll estimate people might be willing to put up with.

[rayiner]

No it's not. The amount of bandwidth available on a wireless network is a function of the amount of spectrum ($$), the sophistication of the cell equipment ($$), and the density of the cell sites ($$$).

Sprint's network is slow because it spends a fraction of what AT&T and Verizon do,[1] while trying to get the same nationwide footprint. It's a simple math problem.

As for prices--every company charges what they estimate people might be willing to put up with.

[1] Last year, $6 billion versus $17-20 billion. These are combined CapEx, but most of it goes into wireless.

[zanny]

You are describing the costs of total network capacity. The poster above is describing marginal costs of bandwidth.

If there is infrastructure in place that is going underutilized and I want to download a megabyte of data, the marginal cost of that data transfer is incredibly negligible. But that infrastructure exists to meet the conditions of peak utilization, when at capacity, and that is what is expensive.

If anything, Sprint should give flat rate mobile data and have fixed funding campaigns to increase capacity for each residential block around a tower. If the speeds are too slow end users would then pay to upgrade the infrastructure themselves, or more specifically heavy and business users would subsidize network upgrades.

[forrestthewoods]

It's not artificial if the network is overloaded by users. It's not like fiber where an optical running from user end point to the ISP can be fully saturated all the time without affecting other users.

[duaneb]

Yes, but that's an entirely different problem. It's not like imposing fees after a certain point of use will help that problem at all, it would make more sense to a) absorb it and raise the monthly subscription when necessary, b) charge per byte, c) charge based on your % of network, or charge maintenance or service fees and don't charge for bandwidth at all. The current, tiered model only makes sense to use "overloading the network" as an excuse to abuse monopolies and overcharge customers.

[adventured]

The US mobile network system has plenty of competition presently. In fact, it's competitive enough that it has evolved faster faster and better than most European mobile networks. It took nearly all of Europe a very long time to get 4G adoption above even 50% of the population.

[msh]

But they needed it less. Verizon and sprint only had slow evdo 3G while Europe had fast hsdpa.

[forrestthewoods]

Monopoly? Who has a cell network monopoly? Prices are going down and features up due to ever increasing competition.

[duaneb]

Maybe in some places, but the competition in the US is a joke. You either go with a decent plan but terrible service (Sprint), or you go with good service with virtually no control over your use (Verizon/AT&T).

[venomsnake]

I was able to get in austria in 2006 3g for 1 EUR/GB . How are prices falling down?

[rhino369]

The actual bandwidth the tower has actually costs a lot of money.

65Mhz of highband bandwidth was worth 40 billion at the last auction.

[Zigurd]

Or it could be worth $0 if shared by smart radios. Fixed reservations of spectrum is technologically obsolete and economically very sub-optimal.

Spectrum "ownership" will be the taxi medallion of the 21st century.

[anon4]

If they charged you on usage percent times maintenance cost plus future upgrade plans, they wouldn't make nearly enough for buying golden yachts. You'd be paying like 20$/month for 10Mbit unlimited data.

[djb_hackernews]

I have no fight in the game but I've been a Sprint customer for a long time and have never had any problems with service or speed. I've lived in 2 major cities and EBF fly over country and travel frequently.

For the month of December I used over 10GB of data and 8GB of that was Youtube, Netflix and streaming music.

[warfangle]

Lucky!

When on 4G, I'm lucky to get 1mbps; even just browsing the web is an exercise in, 'what is this, a 512kbps satellite link?'

When on 3G, I can pretty much forget about doing anything other than email.

[brandonmenc]

Here's my anecdote: Sprint took too long rolling LTE to Phoenix - a major market - so I switched to Verizon.