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Jan

T-Mobile Turns Attention To Network Quality After AT&T Deal Falls Through

Posted by Liam Spradlin in AT&T, News, T-Mobile

Following the collapse of T-Mobile's planned $39 billion deal with AT&T, the magenta carrier has turned its attention to network quality and performance to draw new customers. Chief Executive Philipp Humm provided comment on the situation Wednesday:

We have a very clear spike on value compared to everyone else. Now it's about bringing the quality phase alive. That's something that during the transition phase kind of suffered.

Magenta lost more than 467,000 contract customers over the 10 months it worked with AT&T on the ill-fated takeover, focusing not on network enhancements, but instead on completing the deal. Humm noted that T-Mobile will have a more clear business plan later this month, but said that the company may consider asset sales.

Jan

[CES 2012] T-Mobile Serves Up A Slew Of Announcements – Introduces Samsung Galaxy S Blaze 4G, Bobsled Messaging Enhancements, And Expanded 4G Network

Posted by Liam Spradlin in 4G, Galaxy S, Galaxy S Blaze 4G, News, T-Mobile

Last Updated: February 22nd, 2012

At CES today, T-Mobile, in an effort to outline "the company's ongoing efforts to fuel consumer adoption of mobile data," revealed a handful of announcements, ranging from the introduction of a new 4G-capable device, to Bobsled Messaging, to expanded 4G networks.

You may remember that T-Mobile announced updates to its Bobsled Messaging service back in October. Well, T-Mo today announced further enhancements, including free unlimited messaging to Android users worldwide. Bobsled, for those who don't know, is essentially a service which allows users to communicate using mobile devices (through messaging or calling), regardless of platform or network, requiring only an internet or data connection.

Jan

[Updated] First Alleged Sprint LTE Speed Tests Surface - Yeah, It's Pretty Fast (At Least For Now)

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in 4G, News, Rumors, Sprint, Videos

As we already know, Sprint is going to roll out its next generation 4G LTE network in four U.S. cities somewhere around mid-2012, and it would only make sense that they already have some of the towers undergoing testing. The first of such alleged tests surfaced online today:

While I can't promise you it's 100% legitimate, here's my analysis:

The device used is more than likely a dedicated LTE hotspot and not a handset (like the LTE Galaxy Nexus). If you remember, such was the case with Verizon's LTE network, and it's easy to understand why - building a complicated phone with a new chip and having it available for testers this early would be a lot harder than a dedicated device with only one job - being a hotspot.

Jan

[Updated: Video Hands-On] Quick Look: Network Monitor Mini Is A Small, Unobtrusive App That Monitors Bandwidth In Real-Time

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News, Videos

There are many reasons why you may need to keep an eye on what's going with your bandwidth at any given moment, especially while on a cell network. Perhaps you need to monitor a download that's going on in the background, or maybe you just need to make sure that no apps are hogging data without permission. Whatever the reason, if you've been searching for an easy to way to address this issue, we've found the solution: Network Monitor Mini.

Network Monitor Mini is one of the simplest, yet most useful apps we've ever used - it displays both upload and download speeds on the screen at all times.

Dec

Sprint Announces Major 3G Network Enhancements For San Francisco Bay Area, Takes A Step In The Right Direction

Posted by Liam Spradlin in News, Sprint

Sprint announced earlier today that customers in San Francisco's Bay Area "can have happy holidays this year with increased 3G coverage." For those who haven't been obsessively checking the enhancement tracker on Sprint's network site, the Now Network has implemented 130 capacity upgrades in the Bay Area over the past 90 days alone, with 62 more enhancements planned for the next 90 days.

Christopher Brydon, Sprint's Northern California Area Director, had this to say about the recent improvements:

Not only can customers in the Bay Area enjoy a better network experience, they can do so without worrying about their bill.

Nov

Did Sprint's October 31st Network Updates Turn Out To Be Real? We're Seeing Massive Improvements In 3G Speeds In Some Areas - How About You?

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in EVO 3D (Shooter), News, Sprint

Over the past week, I've been in contact with Sprint about the demise of their network's data speeds, especially in the 3G department. As many of you were also in the same boat, we saw quite a bit of interest and started collecting information on the situation, which resulted in this knowledge dump on Sunday - read it if you haven't yet done so.

Among the tidbits of info Sprint techs let out, one was especially interesting - a round of tower upgrades that were supposed to be completed on October 31st. We were skeptical. Many of you were as well.

Oct

What I Learned About Sprint's Past And Current Data Problems As Well As Future Upgrade Plans After Reaching Out To CEO Dan Hesse

Posted by Artem Russakovskii in 4G, News, Sprint

Last Updated: January 13th, 2012

Sprint has network problems. Major problems. And they've gotten a lot worse lately. Really, really bad. Not all areas are affected - and in fact some have improved already, but more and more areas are getting so bad that Sprint's 3G data is completely unusable there, especially since the introduction of the iPhone. Troubleshooting and update my phone's "profile" and PRL didn't help, as evident from the screenshot #2 you see below.

Earlier this week I contacted Sprint's customer service, followed by an email to an executive and CEO Dan Hesse himself (or whoever fields his emails). The former told me there was a tower outage in my area, and a fix was incoming the next day (as you've guessed nothing is fixed as of today, 5 days later).

Oct

Sprint Plans To Deploy LTE-Advanced In The First Half of 2013, Has Plans For Voice Over LTE, Says Iyad Tarazi

Posted by Liam Spradlin in 4G, News, Sprint

There's been a lot of buzz over Sprint's LTE plans lately, but the company's vice president of network development and engineering, Iyad Tarazi has just added more fuel to the fire, indicating that Sprint plans to deploy LTE-Advanced in a 10x10 configuration by the first half of 2013, using its 800MHz spectrum, offering download speeds of around 12-15 MB/s.

Meanwhile, Sprint's deployment of LTE on their 1900MHz spectrum is still on track for commercial launch by mid-2012. By the end of 2013, the company plans on having LTE coverage more expansive than their current CDMA network, covering 250-277 million POPs.

Tarazi also indicated plans to move voice service from CDMA 1x to LTE, launching the first VoLTE devices in the first quarter of 2013.

Oct

How Bad Is Sprint's 3G Network Post-iPhone Launch? 45 Pages Of Complaints Bad

Posted by David Ruddock in News, Sprint

If there's one thing the iPhone 4S seems to be screwing up after its very successful debut, it would seem to be Sprint's 3G. Since the launch of Apple's newest iThing, Sprint 3G speeds have absolutely tanked for users in many areas. How widespread is the problem? Well, this 45-page (and growing) thread with nearly 700 replies over on the Sprint Community forums would seem to indicate the answer is "very."

The problem has affected everyone - as shown by lackluster results from some of our own Sprint devices of late while on 3G.

Samsung Epic 4G:

DL: 370kbps

UL: 306kbps

Ping: 165ms

Motorola Photon 4G:

DL: 214kbps

UL: 542kbps

Ping: 963ms

iPhone 4S users are reporting speeds even lower than these, sometimes much lower (like 50kbps).

Oct

[Update: Pulled From The Market] Want To Easily Boot Users Off Your Wi-Fi Network? WiFiKill Can Take Care Of That For You

Posted by Cameron Summerson in Applications, News

Update: Looks like WiFiKill was in violation of Google's terms and conditions, as it "could be used in a way that is harmful to devices, networks, or users," per Google itself. No worries, though -- the dev has the free version available on his forum, and if you want to show some donation love, you can grab the ad-free version from SlideMe.

Have you ever wanted to evict someone from your Wi-Fi network for whatever reason? Maybe your roommate is hogging all the bandwidth? Wife spending too much time on Facebook? Kids playing too much WoW? Now you can easily knock them off of the network thanks to an app called WiFiKill.