I think if the coverage of their LTE is better than their Wimax they will have a great chance of digging themselves out of their hole.

It will be much less. For a long, long time.

Robert, this blog post is top notch. So thoroughly detailed, it may be your best article yet.

AJ

Thanks. It probably should have been a two-parter. I had to remove lots of details.

- Robert

First Nextel then Clear...maybe Sprint needs to just stick to themselves.

First Nextel then Clear...maybe Sprint needs to just stick to themselves.

It seems like Sprint might have the last laugh IF they are able to repurpose the Nextel spectrum as planned.

It will be much less. For a long, long time.

so they are not converting each Wimax tower over to LTE then?

I would think they would tackle their current wimax towers and just convert each one of them over no? Or are you saying their conversion plan is very very very drawn out even though they are converting a fraction of the towers and a fraction of the work compared to even one of the 4 companies doing sprints NV rollout...?

It will be much less. For a long, long time.

I meant not being spotty as hell like Wimax is. Better penetration would help them too.

I meant not being spotty as hell like Wimax is. Better penetration would help them too.

penetration wont improve till the technology for the radios and antennae's improve as the freq they use is the main issue with that.

I was reading an argument between two people in a forum about this. They were arguing over whether 2500 mhz penetration improves when going from WiMax to TD-LTE. I don't know enough about it.. anyone know if the penetration/coverage improves based on the tech for the same given frequency (WiMax, TD-LTE, FD-LTE)?

from what i've read it makes no difference b/c the freq is the freq. only way itd improve is if the antennae is vastly improved...which is why if clear would of put out LTE instead of WiMax just as many ppl would of been complaining as there are about WiMax b/c coverage would be no different...

though someone feel free to correct me if im wrong there.

so they are not converting each Wimax tower over to LTE then?I would think they would tackle their current wimax towers and just convert each one of them over no? Or are you saying their conversion plan is very very very drawn out even though they are converting a fraction of the towers and a fraction of the work compared to even one of the 4 companies doing sprints NV rollout...?

Clearwire will not convert each tower to LTE initially. They said in their Q4 CC that they plan to launch 5000 towers with LTE by June 2013 and if all goes well, then another 3000 towers will be added with LTE shortly for a total of 8000 towers

Clearwire has about 16000 towers throughout the country so even by end of 2013, only half of the towers will have the LTE overlay. Of course this is their current plan based on the finances that they have. If Clearwire can get some major customer and minor customers from Lightsquared then things may change and they can cover all 16000 towers with LTE. 16000 towers is obviously not enough especially with 2.5 Ghz to deploy enough coverage nationwide and that is a problem Clearwire will have to deal with for future growth.

I was reading an argument between two people in a forum about this. They were arguing over whether 2500 mhz penetration improves when going from WiMax to TD-LTE. I don't know enough about it.. anyone know if the penetration/coverage improves based on the tech for the same given frequency (WiMax, TD-LTE, FD-LTE)?

Does the signal improve between WiMax and TD-LTE, all other things being perfectly equal? No. However, if they do a new deployment of radios and adopt a behind the panel RRU in the new LTE rollout, then this would provide a modest signal gain and thus a modest penetration and coverage gain over what was deployed with WiMax. But it has nothing to do with the difference between WiMax and LTE. The same improvement would occur if they were switching out to WiMax 2 now with new radios.

However, all this aside, it's my understanding that Clearwire is deploying its LTE directly within the WiMax ecosystem. No new radios. No new antennas/panels. All the changes occurring at the base cabinet only. Clearwire was touting this when they said it was only going to cost them $600M to rollout LTE. A price tag that I thought was suspect from the moment I heard it.

Supposedly, Clearwire said that most of their markets could have TD-LTE added to the base stations and broadcast over the same radios/antennas, coexisting with WiMax operations. This could occur in most of their markets. The original WiMax markets like Baltimore and Portland would need much greater work, as these older WiMax system will not accommodate the LTE additions.

So in this light, I would say that there is likely to be no noticeable signal difference between Clearwire's WiMax and the TD-LTE broadcast from the same site, using the same equipment.

But I am going to throw one caveat out there to you. Sprint is supposedly going to add Clearwire TD-LTE hotspots to some of its Network Vision towers starting in 2013. In markets where Sprint needs Clearwire hotspots for LTE capacity, but Clearwire does not have sites, then Sprint NV sites will host Clearwire LTE. And these sites would likely be deployed with new remote RRU's. These sites would likely have moderately improved propagation over other Clearwire sites. And even though there are some improvements in signal here, it is not because of the difference between WiMax and LTE.

Clearwire will not convert each tower to LTE initially. They said in their Q4 CC that they plan to launch 5000 towers with LTE by June 2013 and if all goes well, then another 3000 towers will be added with LTE shortly for a total of 8000 towers Clearwire has about 16000 towers throughout the country so even by end of 2013, only half of the towers will have the LTE overlay. Of course this is their current plan based on the finances that they have. If Clearwire can get some major customer and minor customers from Lightsquared then things may change and they can cover all 16000 towers with LTE. 16000 towers is obviously not enough especially with 2.5 Ghz to deploy enough coverage nationwide and that is a problem Clearwire will have to deal with for future growth.

It takes roughly five 2500MHz sites to cover the area of one 1900MHz site. That means in the most crudest estimate, it would take almost 200,000 Clearwire LTE (or the previous WiMax) sites to cover the entire existing Sprint coverage area. Of course, this is based on the maximum spacing allowed by each. You can see why with number like this, Clearwire was never going to make it as a nationwide 4G wireless solution.

The real number would be smaller, because in the densest urban environments, the cell size between PCS and EBS/BRS would be pretty similar. So maybe the final number of sites needed would end up being 125k or 150k. But it's a lot! And more than could ever be economical feasible. Especially now in a wholesale environment that Clearwire is pursuing, with lower margins.

Clearwire's new approach to convert its existing markets in the highest capacity areas and providing hotspot capacity adds for other wireless companies is probably the best shot they have. Clearwire will never be a seamless coverage carrier in any market, nor nationwide. To build that kind of network in a country like the U.S. is cost prohibitive and will never work with a business model designed to make money.

Robert, you alluded to this in your previous comment, but if Clearwire wanted to increase their footprint, couldn't Sprint host Clearire LTE on Network Vision sites? Network Vision was supposed to allow Sprint to do spectrum hosting. So maybe Sprint hosts Clearwire, while Clearwire wholesales back to Sprint? That would also give Clearwire a nearly nationwide footprint.

Robert, you alluded to this in your previous comment, but if Clearwire wanted to increase their footprint, couldn't Sprint host Clearire LTE on Network Vision sites? Network Vision was supposed to allow Sprint to do spectrum hosting. So maybe Sprint hosts Clearwire, while Clearwire wholesales back to Sprint? That would also give Clearwire a nearly nationwide footprint.

Wanna say Robert discussed this in the NV thread to an extent.

The original idea was that they would do what you state and toss the 2.5GHz on the towers as they are doing the NV rollout and knock it all out at once, BUT evidently discussions b/w Sprint/Clearwire didn't work out as planned and they couldn't come to an agreement on terms for it....So it in a sense left Clearwire by itself to do their LTE for most of it...

Funny the company you have majority ownership in, you can't "force" them into an agreement...lol

I will say it would be cool if they did what Verizon did in Indianapolis for the superbowl and used the repeaters and smaller antennae throughout the city to handle the traffic....least in the troubled areas.

I believe the iPhone is very possible on Clear's network. Apple is really trying to get their iphone on China Mobile's network with their 600+ million subscribers. Clear is working with China mobile to have their networks work together, plus the New Qualcomm Gobi Chip supports TD-LTE, LTE, TD-CDMA, CDMA, and GSM. Qualcomm makes the MDM6600 and MDM6610 which are in the 4 and 4s respectively.

Nokia Siemens created some technology for TD-LTE networks that increases their Capacity by 80% and coverage by 40%. Also reduce site costs to 1/3.

link to presentation by nokia

http://lteworld.org/presentation/cost-efficient-td-lte-6-pipes-remote-radio-head

Nice to see that Clearwire will be rolling out 20 Mhz TD-LTE carriers. Now if they would just roll out multiple carriers per site in the densest urban areas... we might have something here.

penetration wont improve till the technology for the radios and antennae's improve as the freq they use is the main issue with that.

Even outside Wimax can be pretty bad. If NV helps with coverage it could be better.