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Comment by djchen | Hacker News Reader

Boost also uses Sprint's LTE network.

Which doesn’t help because you still need a CDMA capable phone. That automatically means you both have fewer choices of phone on the network and most of the phones you get don’t work on GSM networks.

That also means it downgrades to a much slower network than GSM.

Comcast's Xfinity Mobile allows non-CDMA iPhones on its network (through Verizon). They will only connect to Verizon's LTE network and is unable to access its CDMA network.

I suspect Boost could do the same.

Which is also not a great thing when you travel outside of major cities.

Verizon, T-Mobile, and Sprint each have more LTE coverage than 3G/CDMA. (AT&T is the exception with more 3G coverage)

Source: https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Guides/sprint-coverage...

I agree that they have more coverage in aggregate but when you go out into the boondocks. You don’t get LTE. That “1%” makes a difference in rural areas.

> I agree that they have more coverage in aggregate but when you go out into the boondocks. You don’t get LTE. That “1%” makes a difference in rural areas.

For Sprint this is the case that they are relying on 1X to cover the sticks with 800mhz)

T-Mobile had to build a fairly dense network with towers broadcasting 1900mhz GSM back in the day. They had less spectrum and it was mostly mid-band (1900 and AWS).

T-Mobile can now broadcast 600mhz and 700mhz in most markets LTE-only. So uh yeah, rural markets you would only receive LTE or nothing. AWS and 1900 doesn't propagate as far nor does it penetrate obstacles like the low band does.

I actually cited a source above that Sprint alone has more LTE coverage than 3G coverage. The same is also true for T-Mobile.

I’m not disagreeing that they have more. I’m saying that when you are stuck without LTE in the boondocks. You’d much rather fallback to GSM/HSDPA than CDMA.

Why would you need to fall back if there is more LTE coverage than 3G/CDMA coverage?

> Why would you need to fall back if there is more LTE coverage than 3G/CDMA coverage?

More LTE coverage than 3G doesn't mean the LTE coverage area is a superset of the 3G coverage area, as long as there is any 3G coverage area that doesn't have LTE coverage, you might benefit from fallback to avoid no coverage.

You shouldn't need a CDMA phone for an LTE network, unless it doesnt support VoLTE, which Sprint uses.

Fallback to 2G/3G networks in areas without LTE is another issue though.

"CDMA" isn't slower than "GSM". That being said, those terms are very ambiguous. For example, the GSM (2G) group also came up with the UMTS (3G) standard, which uses W-CDMA. So, most "GSM" carriers were using a variant of CDMA a decade ago. Traditional "CDMA" carriers also saw improvements with CDMA2000 (aka 1xEVDO) and other enhancements.

> You shouldn't need a CDMA phone for an LTE network, unless it doesnt support VoLTE, which Sprint uses.

But you absolutely do on Sprint. There's only a handful of models (iphone XS models and Samsung S8 and variant models) that support voLTE on Sprint in a handful of markets. There's also some USCC roaming areas supporting voLTE. I am unsure if that allows for more models.

CDMA2000's 3G technologies are slower. None of the proposed improvements were rolled out stateside. Sprint/Verizon rolled EV-DO RevA topping out at around 2-3mbps on a good day. To contrast: HSPA+ was rolling with 21mbps and 42mbps peak downlink in markets (AT&T and T-Mobile)

While Sprint does not maintain a device list on their site detailing supported technology, one is maintained on Reddit ahowing just how small the voLTE list is: https://www.reddit.com/r/Sprint/wiki/deviceinfo

There is also the insane list of SIM card types for people bringing their own devices onto the network (not just physical size, the company couldn't standardize on sim card features for the network): https://s4gru.com/forums/topic/7833-the-s4gru-byod-sim-compa...

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