Android By Russell Holly Nov. 18, 2013 9:30 am
If you’re a Sprint customer eyeballing the LG G2, Google Nexus 5, or HTC One Max, you may want to hold off until you know how the new tri-band LTE phones will behave in your area.*The latest smartphones to come to Sprint’s network aren’t just cool because they offer the fastest processors, the brightest screens, or the best Android experience. They are cool because these smartphones are the first to support all three of Sprint’s LTE bands.
The company offers LTE service across their recently cannibalized iDEN and WiMax bands, combining them with an existing LTE band to create what looked like a potentially impressive Network Vision plan. Now that the first wave of tri-band LTE phones are here, however, it turns out Sprint chose to intentionally offer their customers a degraded service in areas where their network rollout was incomplete.
Click the image below to see it full size:
In the past, Sprint LTE phones operated using Simultaneous Voice and LTE (SVLTE) and everything was great. You could receive calls and use your data at the same time because these phones supported two separate transmission paths — one on CDMA 1xRTT and one on LTE. Sprint’s tri-band LTE devices do not support SVLTE currently, and can only handle one transmission path at a time. This means that when you are sending a text message or making a phone call, you don’t have access to LTE. Sprint has been aware that these new devices would not support SVLTE for a year now, but the company hasn’t been forthcoming about what this will mean for customers.
The solution to this particular problem is a pair of technologies called Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) and Enhanced Circuit Switched Fallback (eCSFB). These technologies are responsible for the seamless handoff from one network type to another. In a perfect world, when you get a text message your phone would disconnect from LTE for fractions of a second to grab the message and then switch you back once it was done. The same would happen for users who are making phone calls, disconnecting you from LTE during the call but putting you right back as soon as it was done. It’s not terribly different from how Verizon Wireless behaves in this situation, but unfortunately there’s a very real problem with Sprint’s CSFB and eCSFB deployment.
The problem right now is that not all of Sprint’s network currently supports CSFB and eCSFB. It’s part of their big Network Vision rollout plan, but it hasn’t happened yet. If you own a tri-band LTE phone in a market where these technologies have not been deployed, you’ll find that your LTE is practically nonexistent. Technically your phone is capable of connecting to LTE, but it is actively choosing not to in order to make sure you get phone calls and text messages.
The network isn’t capable of intelligently switching between the LTE and CDMA networks, so your phone defaults to the CDMA network to make sure it still works as a phone. If you force your phone into LTE only mode via the settings, you’ll find that it connects to LTE with no trouble at all. You just can’t make or receive phone calls and text messages anymore.
In some markets, this is a real problem because there’s no immediate plan to update to CSFB and eCSFB. If you choose to upgrade from your current SVLTE-supported LTE phone to one of these new tri-band LTE phones, your LTE connectivity will suffer until your market is upgraded. Even after that, according to the Sprint employee who shared this information with us, if you are on the fringes of these networks it is likely that your service will suffer the same fate. The phone is designed to make sure you have the ability to make calls before anything else, and unfortunately these devices are crippled without SVLTE.
Keeping in mind that there’s no current way to resolve this aside from waiting, Sprint customers should be wary about which phone they choose to update to for the time being. Even in supported markets, tri-band LTE phones will not offer the same experience as SVLTE supported devices. Current generation phones like the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 will offer a greater overall connection to Sprint’s network for the foreseeable future, until either SVLTE gets added to tri-band LTE phones or CSFB and eCSFB become standard across Sprint’s entire network.
Now read: Verizon points the finger at Google and Asus for Nexus 7 LTE issues
More...
The company offers LTE service across their recently cannibalized iDEN and WiMax bands, combining them with an existing LTE band to create what looked like a potentially impressive Network Vision plan. Now that the first wave of tri-band LTE phones are here, however, it turns out Sprint chose to intentionally offer their customers a degraded service in areas where their network rollout was incomplete.
Click the image below to see it full size:
In the past, Sprint LTE phones operated using Simultaneous Voice and LTE (SVLTE) and everything was great. You could receive calls and use your data at the same time because these phones supported two separate transmission paths — one on CDMA 1xRTT and one on LTE. Sprint’s tri-band LTE devices do not support SVLTE currently, and can only handle one transmission path at a time. This means that when you are sending a text message or making a phone call, you don’t have access to LTE. Sprint has been aware that these new devices would not support SVLTE for a year now, but the company hasn’t been forthcoming about what this will mean for customers.
The solution to this particular problem is a pair of technologies called Circuit Switched Fallback (CSFB) and Enhanced Circuit Switched Fallback (eCSFB). These technologies are responsible for the seamless handoff from one network type to another. In a perfect world, when you get a text message your phone would disconnect from LTE for fractions of a second to grab the message and then switch you back once it was done. The same would happen for users who are making phone calls, disconnecting you from LTE during the call but putting you right back as soon as it was done. It’s not terribly different from how Verizon Wireless behaves in this situation, but unfortunately there’s a very real problem with Sprint’s CSFB and eCSFB deployment.
The problem right now is that not all of Sprint’s network currently supports CSFB and eCSFB. It’s part of their big Network Vision rollout plan, but it hasn’t happened yet. If you own a tri-band LTE phone in a market where these technologies have not been deployed, you’ll find that your LTE is practically nonexistent. Technically your phone is capable of connecting to LTE, but it is actively choosing not to in order to make sure you get phone calls and text messages.The network isn’t capable of intelligently switching between the LTE and CDMA networks, so your phone defaults to the CDMA network to make sure it still works as a phone. If you force your phone into LTE only mode via the settings, you’ll find that it connects to LTE with no trouble at all. You just can’t make or receive phone calls and text messages anymore.
In some markets, this is a real problem because there’s no immediate plan to update to CSFB and eCSFB. If you choose to upgrade from your current SVLTE-supported LTE phone to one of these new tri-band LTE phones, your LTE connectivity will suffer until your market is upgraded. Even after that, according to the Sprint employee who shared this information with us, if you are on the fringes of these networks it is likely that your service will suffer the same fate. The phone is designed to make sure you have the ability to make calls before anything else, and unfortunately these devices are crippled without SVLTE.
Keeping in mind that there’s no current way to resolve this aside from waiting, Sprint customers should be wary about which phone they choose to update to for the time being. Even in supported markets, tri-band LTE phones will not offer the same experience as SVLTE supported devices. Current generation phones like the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 will offer a greater overall connection to Sprint’s network for the foreseeable future, until either SVLTE gets added to tri-band LTE phones or CSFB and eCSFB become standard across Sprint’s entire network.
Now read: Verizon points the finger at Google and Asus for Nexus 7 LTE issues
More...
