by Robert Herron
Sprint 4G Rollout Updates
Saturday, June 30, 2012 - 2:02 PM MDT

The next market in our Network Vision/LTE deployment schedule update series is The Crossroads of America...Indianapolis. The Indy 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 Indianapolis market encompasses all of Central Indiana, including the Indianapolis Metropolitan Area, Bloomington, Lafayette, Anderson, Muncie, Kokomo and Columbus. Sprint's Network Vision OEM Samsung is scheduled to begin mobilizing with its subcontractors in August. Completed Network Vision sites are scheduled to start coming online in September.

Indianapolis 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 Indy, 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.

It doesn't much matter in this market if Sprint launches at 40% or 50% completion. Samsung is scheduled to hit both the 40% and 50% milestones in the month of December (should they stay on schedule). It may seem 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 Indy. 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 market launch (going on a 40% - 50% completion for launch). But there is no way to know if Samsung 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.

Samsung will need to hit a production rate of 35 sites per month to stay on schedule. This is an easy to achieve rate in our opinion. If properly prepared and equipped and if backhaul is ready timely, this market shouldn't have any problems staying on time. They may even be able to get ahead of schedule here.

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.