Sprint schedules iDEN sunset for June 30, 2013

[4GHoward]

Looks like Sprint already got rid of all the Nextel/iDEN phones from their website. At least I don't see any for sale.

 

Boost Mobile still has a few Nextel iDEN phones for sale on their website.

[bigsnake49]

where did you hear that from?

 

It's been floating around the Cricket indirect dealers network. Could be hot air. Cricket stock has lost 2/3 of its value since last year and that's with it bandied around as an acquisition target. Something is going on with Cricket finances, but unless I dig deep down, I can't tell at first glance.

[4GHoward]

Can you see a new deal with MetroPCS and Leap Wireless merging together after it failed several years ago?

 

http://leapwireless....3383&item=20731

http://leapwireless....3383&item=20726

[bigsnake49]

Can you see a new deal with MetroPCS and Leap Wireless merging together after it failed several years ago?

 

http://leapwireless....3383&item=20731

http://leapwireless....3383&item=20726

 

Both of them are for sale. Sprint almost acquired MetroPCS. The time to have merged was couple of years ago. Now if USCC, Metro and Leap/Cricket as well as CSpire and some smaller regionals were to merge, they might be viable.

 

My bet is that by the end of this year, neither Metro nor Cricket will be around.

[ChadBroChillz]

If the regional carriers all merged together to make one large 5th National carrier, that would be sweet, but if that is not possible, I would rather Sprint and Tmobile buy up the rest of the regional carriers, so we have 4 Strong National Carriers.

 

I agree with Randall Stephenson, that we have too many players and we need some consolidation, but I do not agree that the consolidation needs to come from the national guys. The regional guys have so much spectrum being unused.

[Josh]

The national carriers have unused spectrum as well. I know that there was an article here a while back about how t-mobile and sprint could make a spectrum hosting and LTE sharing deal with their combined unused spectrum (the article went into much more detail) but basically they both had about 5-10Mhz unused in most markets, which are not very usable as it would not provide enough spectrum individually to each company. But when you added the unused spectrum from each company, it allowed for a decent amount of spectrum (at least enough for one 5x5Mhz LTE carrier) in many of the cities!

 

I am just wondering if any of the regional carriers would have spectrum that matched up with sprints unused spectrum so that they would be able to offer extra LTE in the major metro areas? Especially if the spectrum is in the 800Mhz block as it has much better propagation characteristics (and we all know sprint could use better service in buildings &rural areas)

[Deval]

 

 

I am just wondering if any of the regional carriers would have spectrum that matched up with sprints unused spectrum so that they would be able to offer extra LTE in the major metro areas? Especially if the spectrum is in the 800Mhz block as it has much better propagation characteristics (and we all know sprint could use better service in buildings &rural areas)

 

I could be wrong, but I believe all the regional carriers have specturm holdings in 1900, 1700 (AWS), and some 700, none in the SMR (800mhz) that Sprint uses.

[ericdabbs]

If the regional carriers all merged together to make one large 5th National carrier, that would be sweet, but if that is not possible, I would rather Sprint and Tmobile buy up the rest of the regional carriers, so we have 4 Strong National Carriers.

 

I agree with Randall Stephenson, that we have too many players and we need some consolidation, but I do not agree that the consolidation needs to come from the national guys. The regional guys have so much spectrum being unused.

 

+1 on this. I would rather have Sprint and Tmobile buy up the rest of the regional carriers than to have a 5th national carrier. With 4G technology requiring larger chunks of spectrum, it doesn't seem as feasible to have super regional carriers with 20 MHz of spectrum nationwide to operate with. I would like to see Sprint acquire Clearwire and Clearwire and have Tmobile acquire MetroPCS. Don't know what to do with US cellular though.

[ChadBroChillz]

The national carriers have unused spectrum as well. I know that there was an article here a while back about how t-mobile and sprint could make a spectrum hosting and LTE sharing deal with their combined unused spectrum (the article went into much more detail) but basically they both had about 5-10Mhz unused in most markets, which are not very usable as it would not provide enough spectrum individually to each company. But when you added the unused spectrum from each company, it allowed for a decent amount of spectrum (at least enough for one 5x5Mhz LTE carrier) in many of the cities!

 

I am just wondering if any of the regional carriers would have spectrum that matched up with sprints unused spectrum so that they would be able to offer extra LTE in the major metro areas? Especially if the spectrum is in the 800Mhz block as it has much better propagation characteristics (and we all know sprint could use better service in buildings &rural areas)

 

I am not sure about the accuracy, but here is a nice site for spectrum of the some regional and large carriers.

 

http://specmap.sequence-omega.net/

 

I know the national carriers have unused spectrum, I was more talking about the fact that they have way more spectrum that is not being used at all, as in no native coverage. Metro has a sizeable amount of spectrum that is not being used at all, especially in the AWS block. I feel like that spectrum would be better utilized by the national carriers compared to keeping the regional guys around.

 

here is a photo that shows the combined spectrum of Metro and Cricket and their cities they have service.

 

 

Sprint and SouthernLINC are the only two carriers I know of that have any 800SMR spectrum.

[Josh]

I went to the site that you suggested, and I am surprised how few companies actually have continuous coverage in ANY spectrum band. And it was very hard to see exactly what the best fit would be for any M&A activity, but if anyone was smart, they would carve up the smaller carriers by spectrum type. I am sure that sprint would most probably not want to try and offer service in the AWS band since they do not currently have any spectrum in that band to match. (that and their tower set up is barely usable at 1900Mhz in the country where I live, so the 2100Mhz uplink band would suffer)

 

If sprint was able to purchase the smaller regional carriers, migrating customers to their network while they re-banded the PCS band to CDMA and LTE. They could then try to swap or sell the AWS spectrum to T-mobile.

Whichever the case, the idea would be to purchase the companies and gain a blanket nationwide coverage, and sell the other spectrum to another company that could do the same. Swaps might be the only way to get continuous coverage for launching LTE nationwide, and while there is still spectrum that is unused sitting in reserve, the companies should think of how to swap them before they get used for something else.

 

They could presumably also buy just the spectrum and then allow the regional carriers to run a virtual network, allowing sprint to gain native coverage and access to additional spectrum, and the regional carrier would gain additional coverage & national roaming. This would not be as good as just gaining the customers outright, but might be a cheaper option for sprint that will allow them to expand coverage area and quality of service.

 

The last thing I will say is that the best (and probably most expensive) option would be to buy the spectrum from both Echostar and Qualcomm for the 700Mhz spectrum, because qualcomm has a nationwide coverage from 716-722Mhz and the missing pieces from Echostar's 722-728Mhz nationwide coverage. Neither company can do much with the spectrum either of them has, they are just waiting for the right price and regulatory permission to sell it for a profit.

With both pieces sprint would get 12Mhz continuous spectrum in the premium spectrum band to offer another 5x5 LTE Advanced carrier and a CDMA 1x Advanced carrier. This, along with the upcoming SMR frequencies, would all but eliminate any coverage problems across the country. It would also give them the best LTE position once aggregation is introduced with LTE release 10.

 

I know that sprint is not in a position to even think of buying spectrum at this point as they are spending heavily on NV and everyone is waiting to see if they can really pull off a turn around. If they do pull off the turn around (and I think they will), we can re-visit these ideas (provided the big 2 don't just buy everything and hoard it) lol.

[ericdabbs]

I went to the site that you suggested, and I am surprised how few companies actually have continuous coverage in ANY spectrum band. And it was very hard to see exactly what the best fit would be for any M&A activity, but if anyone was smart, they would carve up the smaller carriers by spectrum type. I am sure that sprint would most probably not want to try and offer service in the AWS band since they do not currently have any spectrum in that band to match. (that and their tower set up is barely usable at 1900Mhz in the country where I live, so the 2100Mhz uplink band would suffer)

 

If sprint was able to purchase the smaller regional carriers, migrating customers to their network while they re-banded the PCS band to CDMA and LTE. They could then try to swap or sell the AWS spectrum to T-mobile.

Whichever the case, the idea would be to purchase the companies and gain a blanket nationwide coverage, and sell the other spectrum to another company that could do the same. Swaps might be the only way to get continuous coverage for launching LTE nationwide, and while there is still spectrum that is unused sitting in reserve, the companies should think of how to swap them before they get used for something else.

 

They could presumably also buy just the spectrum and then allow the regional carriers to run a virtual network, allowing sprint to gain native coverage and access to additional spectrum, and the regional carrier would gain additional coverage & national roaming. This would not be as good as just gaining the customers outright, but might be a cheaper option for sprint that will allow them to expand coverage area and quality of service.

 

The last thing I will say is that the best (and probably most expensive) option would be to buy the spectrum from both Echostar and Qualcomm for the 700Mhz spectrum, because qualcomm has a nationwide coverage from 716-722Mhz and the missing pieces from Echostar's 722-728Mhz nationwide coverage. Neither company can do much with the spectrum either of them has, they are just waiting for the right price and regulatory permission to sell it for a profit.

With both pieces sprint would get 12Mhz continuous spectrum in the premium spectrum band to offer another 5x5 LTE Advanced carrier and a CDMA 1x Advanced carrier. This, along with the upcoming SMR frequencies, would all but eliminate any coverage problems across the country. It would also give them the best LTE position once aggregation is introduced with LTE release 10.

 

I know that sprint is not in a position to even think of buying spectrum at this point as they are spending heavily on NV and everyone is waiting to see if they can really pull off a turn around. If they do pull off the turn around (and I think they will), we can re-visit these ideas (provided the big 2 don't just buy everything and hoard it) lol.

 

You do know that AT&T has already bought the Qualcomm spectrum. Also the Echostar spectrum is worthless. Its 6 MHz of unpaired spectrum and not worth Sprint's time to integrate antennas on it. To be honest, the FCC screwed up the entire 700 MHz spectrum band. I wouldn't want Sprint to acquire any of the 700 MHz spectrum because its so incompatible and diced up way too much. Sprint should only be focusing on Network Vision, acquiring the PCS H block spectrum when its up for auction and working on a network hosting deal with Dish Network.

[ChadBroChillz]

You do know that AT&T has already bought the Qualcomm spectrum. Also the Echostar spectrum is worthless. Its 6 MHz of unpaired spectrum and not worth Sprint's time to integrate antennas on it. To be honest, the FCC screwed up the entire 700 MHz spectrum band. I wouldn't want Sprint to acquire any of the 700 MHz spectrum because its so incompatible and diced up way too much. Sprint should only be focusing on Network Vision, acquiring the PCS H block spectrum when its up for auction and working on a network hosting deal with Dish Network.

Completely agree. FCC really fudged up. I remember reading( prior to the auction) how 700mhz was going to make us like europe, and that networks would be open. You would be able to take your phone from one carrier to another and it would still work. Fast forward to now, and almost no 700mhz network works with another.

 

Europe somehow can have every country have all their networks work together, but we cant even get 2 networks to work together.

 

sprint's focus should be on expanding coverage, PCS H block, and buying Clearwire. Sprint already has a ton of PCS nationwide, and Clearwire's spectrum would be perfect for spectrum crunch.

[bigsnake49]

I would like for Sprint to either acquire or host the regionals' spectrum. It will much cheaper for everybody involved and will allow for much better spectrum utilization. I would also like for Sprint and everybody else to cooperate and spectrum swap within MTAs or BTAs to consolidate disparate spectrum into contiguous bands. For example, Metro owns 1895-1900 and 1900-1905 MHz blocks while Sprint owns 1905-1910 and 1910-1915 in my area . Sprint also owns 1865-1870MHz. If they agree to spectrum share in my area, they could probably accomodate all 1x Advanced voice in the 1865-1870 block and have a contiguous 20MHz data block between 1895-1915Mhz. I know that carrier aggregation will allow them to virtually consolidate their spectrum holdings, but you can avoid intermediate guard bands.

[bigsnake49]

I would like for Sprint to either acquire or host the regionals' spectrum. It will much cheaper for everybody involved and will allow for much better spectrum utilization. I would also like for Sprint and everybody else to cooperate and spectrum swap within MTAs or BTAs to consolidate disparate spectrum into contiguous bands. For example, Metro owns 1895-1900 and 1900-1905 MHz blocks while Sprint owns 1905-1910 and 1910-1915 in my area . Sprint also owns 1865-1870MHz. If they agree to spectrum share in my area, they could probably accomodate all 1x Advanced voice in the 1865-1870 block and have a contiguous 20MHz data block between 1895-1915Mhz. I know that carrier aggregation will allow them to virtually consolidate their spectrum holdings, but you can't avoid intermediate guard bands by just using carrier aggregation.

[Josh]

You do know that AT&T has already bought the Qualcomm spectrum. Also the Echostar spectrum is worthless. Its 6 MHz of unpaired spectrum and not worth Sprint's time to integrate antennas on it. To be honest, the FCC screwed up the entire 700 MHz spectrum band. I wouldn't want Sprint to acquire any of the 700 MHz spectrum because its so incompatible and diced up way too much. Sprint should only be focusing on Network Vision, acquiring the PCS H block spectrum when its up for auction and working on a network hosting deal with Dish Network.

 

Sorry, the site still had qualcomm spectrum separated which voids the argument for echostar... I agree that they sliced it up wrong, but then I think that they screwed up on the PCS spectrum as well because it is broke into such tiny pieces that trying to make a continuous nationwide coverage is very difficult. And they are the ones that want the companies to offer rural broadband, lol.

Anyway I agree that the hosting deal with Dish will be nice, but I would like to see some more low spectrum because of the propagation characteristics, even if they just offer voice and EVDO on it, it will be nice to have some extra capacity at the low levels.

[ericdabbs]

Sorry, the site still had qualcomm spectrum separated which voids the argument for echostar... I agree that they sliced it up wrong, but then I think that they screwed up on the PCS spectrum as well because it is broke into such tiny pieces that trying to make a continuous nationwide coverage is very difficult. And they are the ones that want the companies to offer rural broadband, lol.

Anyway I agree that the hosting deal with Dish will be nice, but I would like to see some more low spectrum because of the propagation characteristics, even if they just offer voice and EVDO on it, it will be nice to have some extra capacity at the low levels.

 

I agree that I would like to see Sprint acquire more lower spectrum in the future but the only lower spectrum that I would want Sprint to pursue if it ever became available is to obtain the 806-817 MHz spectrum that is currently held by public safety as well as others like SouthernLinc that uses iDEN still.

 

I think for now the amount of 800 MHz available to Sprint with 14 MHz for a 5x5 LTE carrier and a 1x carrier is going to help a lot especially since 1x Advanced can allow up to 4x the amount of users which is great for capacity.

[Josh]

I agree that I would like to see Sprint acquire more lower spectrum in the future but the only lower spectrum that I would want Sprint to pursue if it ever became available is to obtain the 806-817 MHz spectrum that is currently held by public safety as well as others like SouthernLinc that uses iDEN still.

 

I think for now the amount of 800 MHz available to Sprint with 14 MHz for a 5x5 LTE carrier and a 1x carrier is going to help a lot especially since 1x Advanced can allow up to 4x the amount of users which is great for capacity.

 

I thought there was a trade off in the new 1x carrier... from the report I read, it could either be set up for the 4X increase in capacity, or be set up for higher data transfers. I took this to mean that sprint would be using the latter set-up of the technology so that they were able to offer the HD voice that the new phones will be capable of...

I might not have perfect information because I also thought that they said something about increased range with the new 1x technology, but I could be wrong altogether. What are your thoughts?

[Josh]

Also, what spectrum and how much of it, does southern link have? Also, is it strictly in the south, or do they have a national license? I would like to see sprint make a play for them if their spectrum would compliment sprint's portfolio. If it is only in the south, and not continuous spectrum, then leave it alone... Sprint has had enough problems with re-banding, unless they would be able to use it to swap in a future government spectrum sale, as it seems that the government wants to keep everything else in that band for public safety.

[S4GRU]

Sprint is mostly deploying 1xAdvanced for capacity gains. Except in rural, edge of service sites where they are deploying for coverage gains in some circumstances.

 

Sprint would be very interested in SouthernLINC if they can be scooped up. Currently, Sprint is unable to put a full size 800 LTE carrier in places SL has service. If they are able to buy them out, they could put in a 5x5 800 LTE carrier throughout the South. I think SL already has a rebanding plan.

 

Robert via Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

[bigsnake49]

Sprint is mostly deploying 1xAdvanced for capacity gains. Except in rural, edge of service sites where they are deploying for coverage gains in some circumstances.

 

Sprint would be very interested in SouthernLINC if they can be scooped up. Currently, Sprint is unable to put a full size 800 LTE carrier in places SL has service. If they are able to buy them out, they could put in a 5x5 800 LTE carrier throughout the South. I think SL already has a rebanding plan.

 

Robert via Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

 

I wonder if they can interest them in some prime 900Mhz spectrum? I heard it's relatively unoccupied:).

[imex99]

Update from http://insidesprintnow.wordpress.com/2012/06/04/nextel-network-coverage-changes-cincinnati-cleveland-columbus-east-kentucky-west-kentucky-pittsburgh-and-west-virginia/

 

Nextel Network Coverage Changes – Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, East Kentucky, West Kentucky, Pittsburgh, and West Virginia

 

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The weekly iDen Thinning update:

 

In preparation for Network Vision, Network Ops will continue decommissioning a number of existing iDEN towers throughout the country, the evening of 6/6/12, in the following markets: Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, East Kentucky, West Kentucky, Pittsburgh, and West Virginia.

 

Markets scheduled:

 

Tower decommission of the following markets is scheduled : 6/7/12: New York City, Northern Conneticut, Northern Jersey, Southern Conneticut, Long Island, and Central Jersey Tower decommission continues every Monday and Wednesday evening through July.

 

Network Vision:

 

Decommissioning eliminates excess capacity and has minimal customer impact. Retuning/decommissioning towers WILL NOT shutdown the iDEN market service in 2012. Customers who rely on in-building coverage near a decommissioned tower may experience in-building signal strength changes but street/in-car coverage should remain the same.

 

Does this mean anything for starting NV?

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

[digiblur]

I know they did this already in the New Orleans market. It is just sprints way of saving money as they really don't need the towers as close together anymore since there are not as many customers on the network now.

 

Sent from my C64 w/Epyx FastLoad cartridge

[S4GRU]

 

Does this mean anything for starting NV?

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

Not a thing.

 

Robert via Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

[xcharles718]

I wonder if they'll start pushing the remaining iDEN users up onto 900MHz.

[Josh]

I wonder if they'll start pushing the remaining iDEN users up onto 900MHz.

 

I am not as familiar with this spectrum holding, as I am just someone that is interested as a customer and not involved in the industry, but I have not heard that they even had spectrum in the 900Mhz block. So my question is how much do they have and what areas do they hold the licenses?

I would assume that they do not have software defined antennas for the iDen towers, so even if they have access to that spectrum in a given area, they would not find use in replacing equipment on a tower/technology that has less than a year to live. Now if they are already broadcasting in 900Mhz and it can handle the current load, then they could shut down the 800Mhz and clear it for at least CDMA 1X-Advanced coverage ahead of LTE.