Sprint's LTE Network Finally Arrives > Only 20% coverage to start with

Only 20% coverage to start with

You should come on over to S4GRU...or are you already over there under a different username?

VZ, AT&T etc. announce markets at 50% deployment or so, so 70% is well above industry standard. Sprint kinda rushed to get the first bunch of markets out (as you said, the percentages are really low right now) but my guess is they had to have something to show for their LTE hype, and they're working quickly to bring additional sites online in those markets.

My bet is that the next round of markets will be launched at a higher completion percentage, since deployments will get quicker as time goes on and Sprint hasn't bound themselves to a completion date for any more new markets yet.

Heck, Chicago already has 35% of its cell sites online, albeit many only with 3G...and that market is probably two months away from launch. If things keep up the way they are, I wouldn't be surprised if it launched at 50-60% complete.

If you look at their coverage map for San Antonio, their site actually shows >100% of the san antonio area (it goes WAY past where I would expect it would start at / coverage past anything most would consider a suburb and covering some very rural areas and nearby cities that I think most would not consider as part of the San Antonio area). I got the S3 on saturday and LTE was already active, although in the default startup of device LTE on the phone was disabled in the settings. However, in driving around doing speedtests, I would estimate 800MB data from it from 30 tests or so (in the areas with the faster LTE, other tests in slower areas but those would use less data)

Hopefully their towers aren't all upgraded yet that it shows on their coverage map, otherwise the poor coverage (if it's the end scenario) would be very disappointing and similar to wimax. Guess I have 10 of 14 days to decide to stick w/ them or not. Overall considering that probably almost no one using it yet and only a few places with the really high speeds... looks poor compared to initial wimax rollout that gave consistent 6-12Mbps everywhere I tested, although the LTE works somewhat better in buildings. That said, if they can even keep it at >3Mbps it would still blow away the competitor's offerings with unlimited vs the tiny caps. The speeds on V/ATT make little sense, you pay $1(100MB at $10/GB) to use 30Mbps for 27 seconds.

The coverage maps show the end target state of LTE rollout, not the current rollout state. San Antonio could be more complete though.

LTE will get better coverage than WiMAX since LTE is on the same band as voice. After rollout is complete, if you get a voice signal, you'll get LTE - not the case with WiMAX. LTE latency is also a lot better than WiMAX.

Good to know, their website seems to give the impression that's the current state not the end state... what use is the end state when looking if you're covered at your house/etc?

I'm not sure I see a large latency difference but maybe the towers I connect to are far away or they have them routed strangely? I see 90ms/100ms now on LTE from speedtest.net app on the SIII (and have seen higher/lower) and I'm in the city/probably less than a mile from a tower. On wimax I think I was usually at 110 or so from 5mi+ from the tower where my fixed modem is at, and saw both higher and lower from my Evo. My fixed modem with Clear Wimax routes me through WA with most websites like speedtest.net, and I'm guessing Netflix/etc, (because the IP range/location is linked to there) and was always under 110ms unless there were bad network problems.

The 5Mbps upload IS nicer than ever was on wimax, and if they can maintain that will make using dropbox/uploading photos/videos much more useable... Now if only there were an easy workaround to prevent the horrible compression to a tiny fraction of the MMS size limit if you send an MMS with a photo.

Workaround: use e-mail

Seriously though, my guess is that Sprint's LTE coverage will match their map in San Antonio in a week or two.

As for latency, check which speed test server you're using. I'd try testing to SoftLayer in Dallas rather than the default, since not a lot of networks in central TX are directly connected to SprintLink.

Yes the problem with email is OTHER people dont use email on their phones but MMS/texts rather than attaching photos to email. (at least in my experience)

I tried some various alternate servers... the Softlayer Dallas was the same. But, Houston/Comcast reported 50ms/58ms/49ms but curiously with lower throughput (limited by the server I assume)--> all these tests were with 3/4 of 6 "4g bars" signal quality; -100dBm 39-41 asu.

ok, I can confirm firsthand seeing lower latency in tests in SA (50ms!) than the wimax.

The additional tests pushed the speedtest.net mobile data since saturday to 1.3GB...

Heh, lots and lots of mobile data usage

Then again, I'll be surfing up a storm come Wednesday, when I touch down in Fort Worth. I'll be away from WiFi (unless it's of my own making) until Sunday, so my phone, iPad and T-Mobile Rocket 3.0 will be getting a workout.