State of LTE Advanced
Very interesting read, particularly in where the service providers are expanding their network.  It speaks a lot to the each company&#x27;s priorities and confirms a bit of my personal thoughts on each of the companies.<p>Verizon - I had Verizon service from 1996 through 2008 and the one thing you couldn&#x27;t really complain about where I lived was reception.  Billing issues and customer hostile behavior were the reason I ditched them [0] but there wasn&#x27;t a moment I can recall grabbing my phone and not having a solid signal everywhere I traveled in the US.  They were laser focused on providing a modern, reliable network.  Quickly moving to increase capacity - they&#x27;ve always had a pretty solid focus on providing a solid network.<p>AT&amp;T - I have a personal hatred for this company after numerous problems with services <i>other</i> than mobile.  Their attitude was best summed up by a Saturday Night Live skit[1], &quot;We&#x27;re the phone company. We don&#x27;t care.&quot;  I&#x27;ve never used their services if I had a choice (that was probably the single biggest reason I didn&#x27;t purchase an iPhone, originally) because every time I&#x27;ve been forced to use one of their offerings, a variety of service related issues (not helped by their customer service department) has made them unavailable for long periods of time.  It&#x27;s disappointing to me that they seemed to think it would be a good idea to halt wireless expansion and redirect that money to the DirecTV acquisition.  It seems that couldn&#x27;t have come at a worse time considering the rapid expansion of wireless.<p>T-Mobile - This was a little surprising and appears to have not been intentional.  They had no choice but to setup a large number of cell sites due to the limits of their spectrum.  I was a T-Mobile customer (and, technically, still am one now that I&#x27;m on Fi) and I&#x27;ve never had real problems with their service outside of 4G taking a while to get coverage in all but the most densely populated areas.<p>Sprint - As a Fi user, that&#x27;s as close as I&#x27;ve gotten to Sprint service.  They had an interesting network in Michigan.  The coverage is spotty in areas that most other networks are well covered and good in areas that aren&#x27;t covered well by anyone (there&#x27;s an area of the thumb off of M-25 that is dead to AT&amp;T, T-Mobile and Verizon but works on my Fi phone).  Legacy equipment is all over their network, likely because replacing it is beyond their financial means at the moment.  I don&#x27;t see it getting any better.  They&#x27;re a fourth player in a market with barely enough room for three.  In a healthy market, you&#x27;d expect a player with poor service to be substantially cheaper but last I checked (and I&#x27;ll admit it&#x27;s been a year or two), there wasn&#x27;t much of a price incentive for accepting the lower service quality.<p>[0] Technically, I was an AirTouch customer in 1996 until whenever Verizon purchased them.  Back in the day, they had the best network in the area I lived in.  My bill was around $150 and this put me on the high end for their already expensive service.  At some point they put people above a certain service plan into an arrangement where dialing 611 resulted in being connected, within five rings, to a human being.  The first time I did this after they switched it around, I stammered a bit due to not getting a seven-layer phone tree.  Dealing with their perfect English speaking CSR staff was a delightful experience and it was gone shortly after Verizon took over.<p>[1] <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=CHgUN_95UAw</a>