4gCommunity

Telecom
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Update on 4gCommunity

I was puzzled, this morning, when I realized that I was only getting about 2.5 Mbps. There were even periods of time when I was only getting 900 kbps. Ouch! When I went to bed I was getting a steady 9-10 Mbps.

I went to the hidden menu (192.168.128.1/hidden) on the Franklin R850 and saw that I was connected to Band 26. Yesterday it had mostly stayed connected to Band 25 (typical, for our house). I disabled Band 26 so see if I could force it to connect to Band 25-- but it wouldn't make a connection to the network. No Band 25. No Band 41.

It was dead, Jim.

So I re-enabled Band 26 and it connected.

I did a profile and PRL update to see if that would make a difference. It didn't.

At this point I was convinced that I'd gotten a defective Franklin R850 or that I was somehow being throttled or limited by 4gCommunity or Sprint or some dark force in the universe that had it in for me.

Just to be sure, I grabbed my FreedomPop Netgear Fuse, because it is LTE-only and has similar specs to the Franklin. I also knew that it pretty much ALWAYS gets around 13 Mbps and connects to Band 25.

To my surprise, it connected to Band 26 and only got about 2.9 Mbps.

No grand conspiracies. No dark forces. Just some apparent network issues or maintenance going on that have Band 25 unavailable. (I don't think we have Band 41 available, around here.)

The moral of the story: sometimes there's nothing wrong with your stuff. The problems may be upstream and will probably go away without any action on your part.

22

This comment was in response to @joseph.

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@Legally-Speaking Thanks for that information.

@Chelle You haven't experienced deprioritization because you use less than 30 GB or T-Mobile hasn't throttled you even when you're over 30 GB?

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@joseph

I've been over 30GB lots of times and have never noticed any deprioritization.

We don't live in an urban area, though, so that could be working in our favor.

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With un-radio and Binge-On activated, it's rather hard to exceed 30 gb.

26

Another update :

I don't know how all the backend infrastructure works, but this is what I've noticed (for all my Sprint devices) since I wrote my previous comment:

  1. About 8 hours later, Band 25 showed up again.

  2. Instead of the 13Mbps that we usually see, we only got about 3.5 to 4. Not very fast, but sufficient for everything we do.

  3. When I went to bed we were getting around 5Mbps.

  4. This morning it's up to a pretty consistent 7Mbps.

I can only guess that they're doing some kind of maintenance or repair in our area. Strange that the most heavily used band would disappear for half a day and then, when it came back, the bandwidth would slowly but steadily be increased over the next day.

Overall, I'm still satisfied with 4gcommunity, even with the Sprint hiccup in my area.

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Did you ever have to do an income check? Do they have a max income? Someone on reddit said they did one and canceled the service as they earned too much. Taking it with a pinch of salt though.

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No income check.

Just paid my money and got the Wi-Fi.

My guess is that the Reddit person went through pcsforpeople, rather than 44GCommunity, which has income verification.

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Another Update:

I've had the Franklin R850 hotspot for 11 days and have used about 18GB of data, so far. We use it as our primary internet connection, at home.

When I first got it I saw roughly 9 to 10 Mbps speeds but, beginning the next day, only got speeds in the 2.5-5 Mbps range. Sometimes it went lower, sometimes it went a little higher. My other Sprint devices (Tello, FreedomPop) experienced the same thing, so it must have been network related, not 4gCommunity related.

There's only a 7 day return period and even though I didn't feel like I had a chance to really kick the tires and see what it could do, I decided to keep it.

On the 8th day I started seeing speeds in the 9-12 range and it has consistently stayed there, since.

I took it to a friend's house, a few blocks away, and got 16 Mbps for the entire evening.

Battery life is outstanding. It will easily last through an entire day of normal use. At home I leave the battery out of it, however, and only use it with power applied.

A note for Chromecast users:

Even though my Chromecast and laptop were both connected to the 4gCommunity MiFi they couldn't find each other on the network. It turns out that there's a "privacy" setting in the MiFi that's defaulted to "yes" that sandboxes the connections, making them invisible to each other. If you change that to "no" then the connected devices can "see" each other and you can cast to a Chromecast.

A note for Chromebook owners:

By default, Chromebooks will not update the OS over cellular connections because it assumes that they're metered and that data is expensive. Once you start using an unlimited hotspot you'll want to tell your Chromebook that it's okay to update over cellular.

Open up a Crosh shell by pressing ctrl-alt-t and type "update_over_cellular" (without the quotes) and it will probably tell you that it's disabled.

Type "update_over_cellular enable" (without the quotes) and it will keep itself up to date using your cellular connection.

Should you ever connect through a cellular device that has limited data you can press ctrl-alt-t and type "update_over_cellular disable" (without the quotes) and disable that function.

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Sprint isn't great in my area but I have been thinking of getting their service to save money after reading about them here. I am worried about losing money if they shut down though. So my question is - will it be possible to activate their hotspot on freedompop and get FP's free monthly service? That way at least the hotspot can be salvaged even if the money on the 4g service is wasted.

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Does this use the postpaid network? Seems like it from the coverage map. I didn't realize how bad the prepaid network is for coverage until I saw a map. Not that it matters if it works in the places you go.

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I doubt that one can activate FP on theses devices, but you can probably confirm this if you check out the following thread. http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1889378-4GCommunity-org-unlimited-Sprint-Hotspot-LTE-service

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We've been camping our way across the country and have had very few dead spots.

Right now we're camping in the New Mexico desert and are far enough from civilization that we had to switch to a Verizon 3g hotspot.

Our AT&T (Freedompop) devices are also working well, where we're at.

Our 4gcommunity hotspot was getting in the high teens on much of the interstate, however.

I like having the flexibility of multiple networks-- and the FP is free, Verizon is $5/mo, and 4gcommunity is $14/mo. Gotta love that.

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We checked into a hotel, in Las Vegas, that charges $15.95/day for internet. I took out our 4gCommunity hotspot and it's working like a charm.

It's the first time that I've connected to band 41, that I know of. Even with only 1 bar of signal I'm still getting 10 Mbps. Nice!

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Blazes, which hotels these days charges $16/day for internet?!

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It's ironic, but cheap hotels usually give free internet and parking and expensive hotels charge for both. Go figure!

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One thing I like about the Franklin R850 is that you can disable individual LTE bands.

In my area, band 25 gives about 10 Mbps and band 26 gives less than 2. Band 41 is not available.

By turning off band 26 I always get lots of bandwidth rather than relying on the luck of the draw.

Does anyone know if the ZTE has the same capability?

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Just wanted to mention the one time activation and shipping fee, when ordering the 4G hotspot and service, has gone up from $15 to $35. Quote from their website: " Yes, I want to join. I understand there is a one-time initiation fee of $35.00, charged at check out, that covers device activation and shipping." Still a great deal.

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It is still a great deal. That last little jump was enough to change my mother's mind, however. She got all the way to checkout and, when she saw the increased price, she changed her mind.

Everyone has their threshold.

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Yeah, that popping up out of nowhere will dissuade many people, given that most people on the forums think it's $15 and the website does not(I guess) forewarn people of the $35 in the initial description of costs, which seems a bit shady. Also, the fact that the trial period has been reduced a few times to the current 7 days will make the deal less attractive to some. But then 4GC has been good with refunds( which I hope would still include that $35) and I bet that some of the returned hotspots have scratches, etc., which has caused them to up the ante. Well, the $35 scenario will soon spread on the forums.