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Teaser: "X" marks the spot for the first Sprint CCA/RRPP fully compliant handset


WiWavelength

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by Andrew J. Shepherd

Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

Tuesday, September 9, 2014 - 12:21 PM MDT

 

As many of you know, Sprint recently established a partnership with members of the Competitive Carriers Association (CCA) as sort of a quid pro quo. This partnership is called the Rural Roaming Preferred Program (RRPP), and S4GRU wrote about the nascent RRPP in a recent article on The Wall.

 

In a nutshell, Sprint will gain pseudo native LTE coverage outside of its standard footprint, as RRPP members overlay Sprint's PCS 1900 MHz, SMR 800 MHz, and even BRS/EBS 2600 MHz spectrum on their existing networks. In turn, RRPP members will get access to Sprint's LTE footprint, and maybe even more importantly for many of these small scale operators, they will benefit from Sprint's and SoftBank's economy of scale in device procurement.

 

Going forward, Sprint will create a device ecosystem that supports not only its native CDMA2000 band classes and LTE bands but also its RRPP partner LTE bands, namely band 2 LTE 1900, band 4 LTE 1700+2100, band 5 LTE 850, and band 12 LTE 700. The Nexus 5 almost pulled off that quadruple play last year, but that last LTE band has been a sticky wicket for CCA members, since AT&T was able to get its boutique band 17 LTE 700 pushed through the 3GPP. It left many CCA members that hold Lower 700 MHz A block licenses out in the cold, as they lacked access to some of the most popular devices created by the AT&T economy of scale.

 

Today, that changes. Trumping a presumed iPhone reveal in the FCC OET (Office of Engineering and Technology) later this afternoon, Motorola unleashed the authorization documents this morning for the IHDT56QA3, the third variant of the 2014 Moto X to pass through the FCC OET. The big takeaway, as indicated in the title of this article, is that this Moto X with the expected model number XT1092 is the first Sprint/CCA/RRPP fully compliant LTE handset -- even if an iPhone variant possibly joins the group here in the next few hours.

 

In conclusion for this short Teaser, the FCC OET docs can speak for themselves. This table tells the whole LTE story for Sprint and its RRPP partners.

 

2hejcs4.png

 

We wanted to bring you the scoop as soon as possible, but stay tuned. S4GRU may expand this article as more information is gleaned from the FCC OET docs or becomes available elsewhere.

 

Source: FCC

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Looks to be a decent RF performer. Hopefully should be around Nexus 5 RF wise.

 

Those are merely conducted power figures -- they do not take into account positive/negative antenna gain.  We will add radiated power figures to the article once we have more time.  Or we can simply discuss them in the comments.

 

AJ

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After the Photon fiasco, it'll be a long time before I go back to Motorola. 

 

Samsung hasn't been even a tiny percentage of the problem that dealing with Moto was.  As far as I'm concerned, they still owe me a phone.

 

I paid good money for a "flagship" Photon and got a pile of completely unsupported junk.

 

For me, it'll be nice to see what Samsung manages down the road.

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Apple's LTE band information for 3 model number variants of the iPhone 6 (and the 3 model variants for the iPhone 6 Plus) now showing on Apple's website do not show support for band 12.  All three model number variants support bands 2,4,5,17,25 & 26;  variants A1586 (iPhone 6) and A1524 (iPhone 6 Plus) also supports band 41 (and is marketed as the C Spire, Sprint, USCC version).

 

I assume the biggest loser in the band 12 ommission is T-Mobile.

 

Regarding the moto X, there is an illuminating article on anandtech.com describing some of the engineering features embodied into the phone.  Of particular note to me, and likely to the S4GRU community, are the efforts made in the area of dynamic antenna tuning to improve real-world performance.

 

See:  http://www.apple.com/iphone/LTE/

http://anandtech.com/show/8491/the-new-moto-x-intial-impressions-and-hands-on

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I love the fact that Sprint LTE phones going forward are able to support 8 LTE bands.  Hopefully the Moto X, iPhone 6/6 Plus and Note 4 phones are going to be beasts this year.

 

@CrossedSignals = Nice confirmation that the iPhone 6/6 Plus contains all the CCA and RRPP roaming partners LTE bands as well.

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After the Photon fiasco, it'll be a long time before I go back to Motorola. 

 

Samsung hasn't been even a tiny percentage of the problem that dealing with Moto was.  As far as I'm concerned, they still owe me a phone.

 

I paid good money for a "flagship" Photon and got a pile of completely unsupported junk.

 

For me, it'll be nice to see what Samsung manages down the road.

 

Oh man...don't even get started with the Moto Photon.  Bad memories with the failed promised Android update..but that was the old Motorola.

 

The new Motorola is much better and to be honest the Moto X this year looks pretty nice.  Still not planning to get it since I am still under 2 year contract but I kinda moved on from Moto and have been happy so far with the LG G2.

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@CrossedSignals = Nice confirmation that the iPhone 6/6 Plus contains all the CCA and RRPP roaming partners LTE bands as well.

 

No they don't. They're missing Band 12.

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No they don't. They're missing Band 12.

 

Whoops...your right about B12.  I wonder why the AT&T/Tmobile/Verizon version of the iPhone 6 doesn't have B12 support either. 

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Whoops...your right about B12.  I wonder why the AT&T/Tmobile/Verizon version of the iPhone 6 doesn't have B12 support either. 

 

Same reason USCC had to deploy Band 5 to get the iphone.

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Looks like there's an error in the B26 frequency listing there; B26 should have different freqs than B5.

 

Anyway, the X v2 looks like a really solid device. Will have to see whether Google comes out with another Nexus handset this year. If not, I suppose I'll get the X as long as I can get an unlocked version like I've got with the N5.

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Does this device have carrier aggregation for multiple band 41 connections?

I couldn't find it, I thought it would say under the SAR reports. My best guess would be no.
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Why do they need to add bands 2 and 5?  Aren't bands 25 and 26 superset of those bands (ie, band 25 can access any frequencies in band 2)?

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Why do they need to add bands 2 and 5?  Aren't bands 25 and 26 superset of those bands (ie, band 25 can access any frequencies in band 2)?

 

A purely band 25 device will not acquire a band 2 network -- even though band 25 is a superset of all of band 2.  So, a band 25 device also needs to support band 2.  Or the network needs to support MFBI.

 

AJ

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I'm thinking it is not going to be released under the current Motorola X, 2nd generation moniker and perhaps a new naming just for Sprint. I'm thinking a person handling customer care Twitter account probably doesn't care, have this type of knowledge, or isn't a reader of S4gru.com! Lol!

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Why would @Motorola tweet that then? Maybe since they haven't officially released it for sprint, they might have to say that it is not available because that is the currently available info, and they do not want to give away the release date or promise something.  Is there something that might come with the phone that will differentiate it from the other versions of the phone?  Maybe carrier aggregation with peak speeds of 150Mb/s? Or something else?  Maybe a special branding like EVO or something else that we do not know of... 

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This could be a model for USCC.  It would also be usable on any Sprint RRPP member.  It would even be able to be used in Sprint if they were willing to manually add it to the whitelist, like AT&T does with the Nexus 5.

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Since it does not support SVLTE, I doubt that this variant is specifically for USCC.

 

AJ

 

Ahhh, so USCC does not have a CSFB capable network?  So are you holding out that this is still a Sprint Moto device?

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Ahhh, so USCC does not have a CSFB capable network?  So are you holding out that this is still a Sprint Moto device?

 

I wish I knew more about the USCC network.  You would think I should, especially as USCC, former WWC footprint starts just 15 miles from me.  But I do not have that much knowledge of the USCC LTE network.  I have used only its CDMA2000 network.

 

I can say, however, that USCC handsets have been consistent in supporting SVLTE -- for better, for worse.  We know that SVLTE has end user benefits and RF performance detriments.

 

But, to provide an example, we know that the Samsung Galaxy Note 4 "P" variant for Sprint is as expected this year:  tri band, single RF path e/CSFB.  The regional operator "R4" variant, which I commented on earlier today, is band 2/4/5/12/17 and supports SVLTE.  The latter seems to be a consistent feature -- iPhone excluded -- on USCC.

 

AJ

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AJ, can you explain why the B26 LTE frequency range stated in the FCC document states from 824.7 MHz - 848.3 MHz.  Shouldn't it say 817 MHz - 848.3 MHz since Sprint only has 800 MHz spectrum in the 817-824 MHz range?  Isn't this out of the range of Sprint's spectrum unless its a typo?

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