by Robert Herron

Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

Thursday, June 14, 2012 - 12:59 PM MDT

S4GRU keeps rolling on with our Network Vision/LTE deployment schedule update series. Now we want to tell you what we know about the Kansas market, which makes up the KC Metro Area, Western Missouri and the State of Kansas. Back in February, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse told us all how the Kansas market will be launched with Network Vision and LTE in Mid-2012.

Sprint's Network Vision OEM Ericsson has been steadily deploying around the Kansas market. As of this week, there are approximately 30 Network Vision sites broadcasting a LTE signal. These sites are all around the Kansas City area and extending out to St. Joseph and Sedalia, Missouri.

Network Vision Sites in the Kansas market. Thirty sites are complete in the market. All of these broadcasting Sprint LTE, but being blocked from accessibility by Sprint.

30 Live LTE Sites, but still being blocked by Sprint

Despite the good news of these live LTE sites, Sprint is still actively blocking LTE connections. They originally planned to allow sites converted to Network Vision standards to go live immediately upon completion by the OEM Contractor. This is still the case with 3G EVDO and even CDMA 800 sites when they are completed. In Sprint's original Network Vision plans, they were also planning to allow 4G LTE signals to be handled the same way. Turn them on and allow them to be discovered prior to the formal market launch at 50% site completion.

Market Launch and Remaining Schedule

In recently seen correspondence, Sprint has decided to move up launches sooner than 50% completion. This is likely to maintain a Mid 2012 launch in markets that have already been announced...like Kansas City. If they waited for 50% now, it would delay launch until September. In the case of the KC market, should Sprint launch by Mid July, they would only be complete with approximately 25% to 30% of all NV sites. This doesn't sound like a lot, but it would provide pretty good coverage. A little known item is not even Verizon launches on all sites in a market initially. Usually less than 50%, then filling in with more and more sites every few months.

At market launch, some areas will be well covered with LTE, and others may be kind of spotty. However, more sites will come online every week until the whole market is complete. And even with one or two bars of LTE signal on your device, you will still get speeds that are double to triple that of well performing 3G EVDO in most instances.

And speaking of 3G EVDO, Sprint is not reporting any of these live Network Vision sites are currently broadcasting EVDO, only LTE. According to the NV schedule, these should have started coming online in May. However, none have shown up as NV 3G active to date. We know the new backhaul is in place at these sites since they are broadcasting LTE. That most likely means that the Switch Center is not ready for these sites. A huge backlog of 3G sites will probably come online in this market suddenly when the network is ready.

The bottom line...

We currently do not have a date that Sprint will formally "launch" the Kansas market. We believe they are targeting a launch month of July based on reports internally within Sprint. However, we hope that they will actually remove LTE blocking before the launch, since there are quite a few active LTE sites that can be used now in this market.

Sprint's Network Vision schedule for this market currently has 30 Network Vision sites complete. Ericsson is plotting continual progress from here with production ramping up to a rate of almost 60 sites per month. S4GRU has poured over the schedule in this market and sees a December 2012 completion date. In our estimation of the schedule, it appears that Ericsson is behind in the market. But with the rate the schedule is supposed to pick up in June, Ericsson can certainly finish on time.

We don't know how much longer Sprint LTE device holders will be denied access to active sites. However, we hope that Sprint lifts the connection ban for you soon.