by Robert Herron

Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

Friday, June 29, 2012 - 8:59 AM MDT

The next market in our Network Vision/LTE deployment schedule update series is The City Beautiful...Orlando. The Orlando market has yet to be announced by Sprint, but is expected to be announced in the near future. Perhaps around the time of the first market launches.

The Sprint Orlando market encompasses all of the East Central portion of the Florida peninsula. Including the Orlando metro area, Melbourne/Palm Bay area, Port St. Lucie, Daytona Beach/Port Orange Area, Lakeland/Winter Haven, Palm Coast, Titusville/Cocoa Beach/Space Coast, Deltona and Vero Beach. Sprint's Network Vision OEM Ericsson is scheduled to begin mobilizing with its subcontractors in July. Completed Network Vision sites are scheduled to start coming online in September. However, if they mobilize in July, sites may start actually coming online in August.

Orlando Market Launch

It was Sprint's original plan to launch markets when they reached 50% of sites converted to Network Vision. However, it has now been determined that Sprint will move up launches sooner than 50% completion in several markets. This is likely to maintain a Mid 2012 launch in markets that have already been announced. However, in an unannounced market like Orlando, we don't know if they will resume pushing back market launches to 50%, or if they will now settle on a 40% completion to be the new normal for market launches.

If Sprint waits for 50% completion to launch this market, it would make the launch approximately January (should the OEM stay on schedule). If they plan on a 40% market completion for launch, that would be December. You may think that 40% - 50% site completion is not enough to launch LTE service, but it would provide pretty good coverage. Even Verizon doesn't launch on all sites in a market initially. Usually less than 50%, then filling in with more and more sites every few months.

Schedule details and the bottom line

We currently do not have a date that Sprint will formally "launch" LTE service in Orlando. It is difficult to try to pick a date now this far out, but we will take a stab at it. In looking at the schedule as of today, it would indicate a December or January market launch (going on a 40% - 50% completion for launch). But there is no way to know if Ericsson and their subcontractors will actually hit their schedule dates this early in the deployment for this market. We will be able to gauge better after a few months of production.

Ericsson will need to hit a production rate of 65 sites per month to stay on schedule. This is an achievable rate in our opinion. If properly prepared and equipped and if backhaul is ready timely, this market shouldn't have problems staying on time.

S4GRU has examined the schedule in great detail in this market and sees that most of the sites will be complete by May 2013. However, there may be a few sporadic sites that will linger past the completion.