Dish and Sprint?

[dweber]

It's apparently the greed of the content owners. As an example, if somebody is fortunate enough to get an OTA signal for free I can't figure out why their neighbor should have to pay $1, $2 or even $3 a month for the same channel delivered over satellite.

So according to your logic Dish should not charge anything for locals despite the cost that they have for the uplink, downlink from the satellite, and the cost that they pay the local broadcaster.
Providing locals with PTAT and Autohop is a service that I am willing to pay for. This is despite the fact that I already receive my OTA locals from both Columbus and Dayton on both of my Hopper3 receivers.


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[Juan]

So according to your logic Dish should not charge anything for locals despite the cost that they have for the uplink, downlink from the satellite, and the cost that they pay the local broadcaster.
Providing locals with PTAT and Autohop is a service that I am willing to pay for. This is despite the fact that I already receive my OTA locals from both Columbus and Dayton on both of my Hopper3 receivers.


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Then that's a wasted $12 a month...to pay for crappy over compressed locals when you can get them in their full ota glory

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[comfortably_numb]

Then that's a wasted $12 a month...to pay for crappy over compressed locals when you can get them in their full ota glory

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If picture quality is the only concern, then I agree 100% as nothing compares to the raw OTA signal

 

[dweber]

Then that's a wasted $12 a month...to pay for crappy over compressed locals when you can get them in their full ota glory

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My locals cost $10 per month since I am grandfathered at the local cost. With the exception of the local Fox channel, I have seen very little difference between the Satellite locals and my OTA channels. The PTAT allows me to sample new OTA content without setting up a lot of timers. The convenience is worth the $10 per month. Occasionally I have had 3 or 4 OTA programs that were recorded at the same time that I later watched. Since I have 2 Hopper3 receivers equipped with 2 OTA tuners, I could drop the locals but again the convenience is worth the $10. Of course each person has to make that decision for themselves.


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[Juan]

If picture quality is the only concern, then I agree 100% as nothing compares to the raw OTA signal

You can get a TiVo to record them with no monthly fee

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[Juan]

My locals cost $10 per month since I am grandfathered at the local cost. With the exception of the local Fox channel, I have seen very little difference between the Satellite locals and my OTA channels. The PTAT allows me to sample new OTA content without setting up a lot of timers. The convenience is worth the $10 per month. Occasionally I have had 3 or 4 OTA programs that were recorded at the same time that I later watched. Since I have 2 Hopper3 receivers equipped with 2 tuner OTA tuners, I could drop the locals but again the convenience is worth the $10. Of course each person has to make that decision for themselves.


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There is no grandfathering..mine went from $5 to $12... you are probably under contract...no worries they will get you when it expires

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[dweber]

You can get a TiVo to record them with no monthly fee

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So I can get a TiVo for free with a lifetime Guide. I don’t think so.


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[JSheridan]

So according to your logic Dish should not charge anything for locals despite the cost that they have for the uplink, downlink from the satellite, and the cost that they pay the local broadcaster.
Providing locals with PTAT and Autohop is a service that I am willing to pay for. This is despite the fact that I already receive my OTA locals from both Columbus and Dayton on both of my Hopper3 receivers.


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That's not what I meant at all! I meant I don't think it's fair that the locals charge Dish so much per customer for the same content they broadcast for free over the air. Sorry if that wasn't clear but I clearly referred to the greed of the content owners not the providers.

 

[osu1991]

So I can get a TiVo for free with a lifetime Guide. I don’t think so.


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So your Hopper 3’s were free?

 

[EarDemon]

Somebody once posted here that VZW and ATT were considered "primary" carriers while TMO and Sprint were "secondary." There are many areas here where the latter have zero cells on towers that are otherwise occupied by VZW and ATT. TMO tries to get around these physical limitations by adding frequencies that carry farther, but they still lack an actual cell presence. Sprint hasn't tried at all, IMO.

Meanwhile, over the past year, I have seen Verizon actually adding cells in areas that formerly had a gap. Verizon spends the money and does it right. That's why I am loyal.

Not sure I understand that. Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile and Sprint all have CONUS presence and more, they all have their own equipment and they are not MVNOs, although each has a prepaid MVNO arm. All four are 'primary carriers' in my opinion, it's just the first two have better coverage then the second two. Verizon and AT&T were able to grow their wireless brands by buying out smaller carriers, it also does help both are tier 1 internet providers with large fiber networks. Verizon and Verizon Wireless used to be Bell Atlantic and Bell Atlantic Mobile around here. Prior to that the landline operation was NYNEX, which was a RBOC from 1984. In 1997 NYNEX and Bell Atlantic merged, in 2000 Bell Atlantic and GTE merged to form Verizon and Bell Atlantic teamed up with Vodafone to form Cellco aka Verizon Wireless. It was only in 2014 that Verizon bought Vodafone's share of VZW. So for a brief period of time AT&T was the only 100% American owned carrier.

Here's a pretty nice write up on the consolidation of the teclos and cellular providers. Both Verizon and AT&T are descendants of the old Bell System, T-Mobile and Sprint are not.

T-Mobile entered the US market in 2001 by purchasing Voicestream which was in existence since the early/mid 90s.
Sprint, while it's existence dates back in the very early 1900s with the Southern Pacific Railroad [Internal Network Telecommunications] got into cellular in the early 90s by forming a partnership with regional provider Centel
Verizon Wireless' roots are with a Baby Bell and a partnership with the British
AT&T Wireless was bought out by Cingular, which was bought by SBC (a Baby Bell) and re-branded themselves as AT&T

A Brief History of the Rise and Fall of Telephone Competition in the US, 1982-2011

As for spectrum, Sprint has some pretty low spectrum, so they are trying. They have 800 MHz, not as good as T-Mobile's addition of 600 and 700 MHz, but 800 MHz should provide a nice coverage boost for areas that were previously 1900 MHz only.

For a full summary of LTE bands by carrier this is a nice summary

Cheat sheet: which 4G LTE bands do AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint use in the USA?

 

[comfortably_numb]

Not sure I understand that. Verizon Wireless, AT&T Mobility, T-Mobile and Sprint all have CONUS presence and more, they all have their own equipment and they are not MVNOs, although each has a prepaid MVNO arm. All four are 'primary carriers' in my opinion, it's just the first two have better coverage then the second two. Verizon and AT&T were able to grow their wireless brands by buying out smaller carriers, it also does help both are tier 1 internet providers with large fiber networks. Verizon and Verizon Wireless used to be Bell Atlantic and Bell Atlantic Mobile around here. Prior to that the landline operation was NYNEX, which was a RBOC from 1984. In 1997 NYNEX and Bell Atlantic merged, in 2000 Bell Atlantic and GTE merged to form Verizon and Bell Atlantic teamed up with Vodafone to form Cellco aka Verizon Wireless. It was only in 2014 that Verizon bought Vodafone's share of VZW. So for a brief period of time AT&T was the only 100% American owned carrier.

Here's a pretty nice write up on the consolidation of the teclos and cellular providers. Both Verizon and AT&T are descendants of the old Bell System, T-Mobile and Sprint are not.

T-Mobile entered the US market in 2001 by purchasing Voicestream which was in existence since the early/mid 90s.
Sprint, while it's existence dates back in the very early 1900s with the Southern Pacific Railroad [Internal Network Telecommunications] got into cellular in the early 90s by forming a partnership with regional provider Centel
Verizon Wireless' roots are with a Baby Bell and a partnership with the British
AT&T Wireless was bought out by Cingular, which was bought by SBC (a Baby Bell) and re-branded themselves as AT&T

A Brief History of the Rise and Fall of Telephone Competition in the US, 1982-2011

As for spectrum, Sprint has some pretty low spectrum, so they are trying. They have 800 MHz, not as good as T-Mobile's addition of 600 and 700 MHz, but 800 MHz should provide a nice coverage boost for areas that were previously 1900 MHz only.

For a full summary of LTE bands by carrier this is a nice summary

Cheat sheet: which 4G LTE bands do AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint use in the USA?

I wish I could find that post on here. It was basically stating that ATT and Verizon were the core or primary networks of some sort, as established by a gov't entity a long time ago perhaps, while Sprint and TMO were the secondary or lesser of the two. I believe the poster was an industry insider, but now for the life of me I cannot find it.

 

[navychop]

I’d love to read about THAT.


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[bobvick]

I wish I could find that post on here. It was basically stating that ATT and Verizon were the core or primary networks of some sort, as established by a gov't entity a long time ago perhaps, while Sprint and TMO were the secondary or lesser of the two. I believe the poster was an industry insider, but now for the life of me I cannot find it.

Could it have something to do, perhaps, with AT&T and Verizon both having some vestiges of the old Bell System and the surviving RBOCs and their early cellular networks.


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[ncted]

As for spectrum, Sprint has some pretty low spectrum, so they are trying. They have 800 MHz, not as good as T-Mobile's addition of 600 and 700 MHz, but 800 MHz should provide a nice coverage boost for areas that were previously 1900 MHz only.

For a full summary of LTE bands by carrier this is a nice summary

Cheat sheet: which 4G LTE bands do AT&T, Verizon, T-Mobile and Sprint use in the USA?

What I've found interesting about T-Mobile's 600MHz spectrum is it apparently won't really be all that great, since the wavelength for 600-699 MHz is ~50cm-42cm. That means the antenna in a device receiving those wavelengths needs to be between 12.5-10.5 cm or 4.9-4.1 inches. Most modern cell phones' antennas barely fit in this range. Certainly using frequencies any lower than 600MHz we out of the question without large, protruding antennas, which people probably won't want. At best, it is about as good as 700MHz spectrum, at least for cell phones anyway. Other devices might benefit from it more, if they can be outfitted with large antennas.

 

[Justy5]

Just my $0.02: I like that Charlie at least tries to keep the content costs down. The content providers have built a house of cards they struggle to pay for without huge price increases to the people who subscribe to their channels. They created new channels almost no one watches, populated with shows almost no one is interested in, so why should we be forced to pay for them just because they want incremental revenue increases to show their stockholders? They apparently cannot achieve that by delivering good content for which they could charge more for advertising, so they try to get the money out of us, the people who don't watch their crap. I say let them deal with Charlie, who is interested in fighting the idiocy.

Is he perfect? No, but you take the bad with the good. Do I wish I still had HBO on Dish? Absolutely, but I am willing to go without to keep AT&T from making everyone pay for the fraction of Dish subscribers that actually watch HBO. I know Dish has the stats, so I'd be curious to know how many Dish customers who subscribed to HBO actually watched a single HBO show in a given week. I'll bet it wasn't anywhere near the total number of HBO subscribers, and I suspect that is one reason Dish wouldn't commit to a minimum number of subscribers.

Thanks everybody for your responses. I got a clear idea of what's going on with these disputes and Charlie Ergen. I thought it was him exclusively but It is a combination of things.

 

[Pere845]

Verizon is the way to go for me, had the other three and I can tell you that T-Mobile has a long way to go when it comes to rural coverage especially after my trip from Idaho to Texas. For some reason AT&T does horribly here in the Boise metro but as soon as you go into the countryside crystal clear and fast. And Sprint... Just be prepared to have no service once you get off the interstate or a city.

 

[dare2be]

I've even had no service with Sprint on long sections on the interstate. Unacceptable.

 

[NYDutch]

Then that's a wasted $12 a month...to pay for crappy over compressed locals when you can get them in their full ota glory

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That $12 Dish OTA channels fee is only wasted if you choose to pay it and don't need it. Not everyone gets OTA signals in their full glory. At least Dish gives you a choice...

 

[EarDemon]

What I've found interesting about T-Mobile's 600MHz spectrum is it apparently won't really be all that great, since the wavelength for 600-699 MHz is ~50cm-42cm. That means the antenna in a device receiving those wavelengths needs to be between 12.5-10.5 cm or 4.9-4.1 inches. Most modern cell phones' antennas barely fit in this range. Certainly using frequencies any lower than 600MHz we out of the question without large, protruding antennas, which people probably won't want. At best, it is about as good as 700MHz spectrum, at least for cell phones anyway. Other devices might benefit from it more, if they can be outfitted with large antennas.

I never thought about that, makes sense through. Love to see if that holds up in practice. I have never connected to the 600 MHz bands so it would be a fun experiment for me. There is no 600 MHz yet in my area or much of anywhere in New York, I was in areas that had it in Pennsylvania last year, but I had the Pixel 2 XL which did not support Band 71. I haven't looked at a tear down or schematic of the Pixel 3 XL, but it's a pretty large phone, so I would think a bigger internal antenna, but I could be wrong.

 

[comfortably_numb]

What I've found interesting about T-Mobile's 600MHz spectrum is it apparently won't really be all that great, since the wavelength for 600-699 MHz is ~50cm-42cm. That means the antenna in a device receiving those wavelengths needs to be between 12.5-10.5 cm or 4.9-4.1 inches. Most modern cell phones' antennas barely fit in this range.

The silver lining here is that we won't have to worry about the cell phone companies wanting to snag any more OTA spectrum after the current repack, since all of that falls below 600 MHz