Certain Phones Won't Work after 7/1/16?

[WiWavelength]

It's a work in progress but as Sprint joined in the spectrum swapping party years after the others began a lot of the juicy big metro areas are already realigned for the other three. 

Once again Sprint was late to the party and missed out on a great opportunity for realignment on their main spectrum band.  I guess I attribute that to the poor Sprint management with Hesse or Claure for not thinking ahead.

 

You guys are unfairly negative toward Sprint.  You cannot compare VZW, AT&T, and T-Mobile spectrum swaps, which were almost exclusively AWS-1, to Sprint spectrum swaps, which are entirely PCS.  Apples to oranges.

 

That AWS-1 was largely overflow spectrum.  For years, VZW and AT&T had put it to use minimally, at best.  And even in the case of T-Mobile, some of that AWS-1 was excess from the spectrum it received in the failed AT&T-T-Mobile merger and the consummated T-Mobile-MetroPCS merger.

 

Horse trading and rearranging AWS-1 was easy.  Doing likewise with PCS is difficult -- because that is Sprint's primary band for current operations.  Sprint's overflow spectrum is BRS/EBS, but CDMA2000 operations cannot be shifted to that band.  So, in any spectrum swap, Sprint has to reduce CDMA2000 or relocate it on the fly.

 

Furthermore, beware what you wish for.  Say that Sprint has a PCS A/B block 15 MHz FDD (30 MHz) license in a given market, as it does in many markets nationally.  Should Sprint give up a 5 MHz FDD (10 MHz) disaggregation just so that it can get the PCS C5 block 5 MHz FDD (10 MHz) disaggregation to combine with the adjacent PCS G block 5 MHz FDD (10 MHz) license?  What about five years from now?  That PCS A/B block could be a 15 MHz FDD carrier.  But you rather would trade away some of that valuable spectrum?

 

AJ