Sprint and Clearwire possible LTE network update info

[Rasta Cheesehead]

" Dr. John Saw, Clearwire's CTO, and Iyad Tarazi, Vice President of Network Development & Engineering at Sprint, will conduct a panel presentation titled "Carrier Point of View" at the Wells Fargo Securities 2012 Wireless Spectrum Symposium on Wednesday, July 18, 2012, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern in New York, NY."

 

 

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/clearwire-and-sprint-to-present-at-wells-fargo-securities-2012-wireless-spectrum-symposium-2012-07-11

[lynyrd65]

Nice

[supert0nes]

My dream announcement - "From here on out we will be putting LTE 800 and 2600 in every phone we make, especially those 5 Nexus phones you keep hearing about for the fall. Apple, however, will not be supporting LTE 800 until the Iphone 6".

[irev210]

My dream announcement - "From here on out we will be putting LTE 800 and 2600 in every phone we make, especially those 5 Nexus phones you keep hearing about for the fall. Apple, however, will not be supporting LTE 800 until the Iphone 6".

 

why burden the handset with such additional costs if there is no capability?

 

You can future-proof all you want, but the costs involved typically tend to out-weigh the benefits. Anyone that is that into having the "most" antennas will probably upgrade handsets every two years anyway.

 

Even if you have LTE only on Sprint's PCS band, old handsets still get the benefit of other people upgrading as they end up getting offloaded onto other bands.

[supert0nes]

That's nice, but it would be pretty sweet if there were no Iphone users on 800. They already crippled the legacy network. I think the benefits for the end user definitely outweigh the costs. Cell phone radios are some of the cheapest parts of the phone anyway. It's not about the most antennas. It's about coverage where you need it like 800 can deliver. I don't really have any reason to upgrade phones every 2 years and Sprint knows exactly what they are going to do wit that spectrum. Might as well future proof them as much as possible.

[kkstp09]

That's nice, but it would be pretty sweet if there were no Iphone users on 800. They already crippled the legacy network. I think the benefits for the end user definitely outweigh the costs. Cell phone radios are some of the cheapest parts of the phone anyway. It's not about the most antennas. It's about coverage where you need it like 800 can deliver. I don't really have any reason to upgrade phones every 2 years and Sprint knows exactly what they are going to do wit that spectrum. Might as well future proof them as much as possible.

 

Some of Sprints most loyal customers now have iPhones...

[pyroscott]

That's nice, but it would be pretty sweet if there were no Iphone users on 800. They already crippled the legacy network. I think the benefits for the end user definitely outweigh the costs. Cell phone radios are some of the cheapest parts of the phone anyway. It's not about the most antennas. It's about coverage where you need it like 800 can deliver. I don't really have any reason to upgrade phones every 2 years and Sprint knows exactly what they are going to do wit that spectrum. Might as well future proof them as much as possible.

 

Manufacturers have little to no interest in future proofing devices. One of the biggest reasons they stop updating the software is so that people have to buy a new device. Why would they go out of their way to lower their profit margin AND entice people to keep their device for more than a year?

[supert0nes]

Yes all these reasons make sense for all other parties except me. It's obvious I'm being a selfish little android Sprint end user

[themuffinman]

That's nice, but it would be pretty sweet if there were no Iphone users on 800. They already crippled the legacy network.

 

Sprints network was shot well before the iphone was released for sprint. The phone most responsible for destroying sprints network was the OG Evo.

[lynyrd65]

I think that the main motivators for pushing out the 800 radios is to reduce roaming costs associated with fringe users and may be a reason Sprint "future proofed" most of their latest phones with 800 CDMA. There is a large financial incentive for it.

 

The greatest benefit I could see for 800 LTE is a change in reputation of the carrier from having a network with weak spotty coverage to one with strong and widespread coverage.

 

From a business perspective the second doesn't help them as much with the bottom line as their reputation for supporting unlimited data outweighs their bad reputation for their network.

 

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk 2

[Cpeatridge]

 

 

Some of Sprints most loyal customers now have iPhones...

 

Yeah, you know since 8th grade

[Rasta Cheesehead]

I think that the main motivators for pushing out the 800 radios is to reduce roaming costs associated with fringe users and may be a reason Sprint "future proofed" most of their latest phones with 800 CDMA. There is a large financial incentive for it.

 

The greatest benefit I could see for 800 LTE is a change in reputation of the carrier from having a network with weak spotty coverage to one with strong and widespread coverage.

 

From a business perspective the second doesn't help them as much with the bottom line as their reputation for supporting unlimited data outweighs their bad reputation for their network.

 

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

 

 

 

Reduced roaming, better in building coverage and better coverage are the number 1 benefits for 800 1x advanced and Network Vision oh and this little thing called LTE, for the company reduced cost all around, which adds to the bottom line.

 

[4GHoward]

Is anyone following this presentation tomorrow?

[lynyrd65]

I hope it gets posted on youtube like that other interview with Iyad.

[xenadu]

If you go check out the Sprint Investor area I believe it is listed as a webcast.

 

Sprint should keep the iPhone users happy - they paid $$ for the subsidies, if they don't improve the network for those folks soon it will end up being a waste of money.*** Fortunately that is happening right now... I just tested at the grocery store down the street and I get 2 Mbps on whatever tower I'm connecting to over there. Still get <100kbps at my house. The wife was trying to download a song as we were driving today and it was hilarious to see the estimated time to complete as we went in and out of NV tower range... 1 minute to 10 minutes remaining to 15 minutes back down to 1 minute.

 

Apple and Google (Motorola) are the only ones who earn money post-sale via App Stores and Apple much moreso via the iTunes store (Google is trying to catch up via Play). Apple also continues to sell their older devices as the low and no-cost options. So both have at least some incentive to support older devices even before you count things like goodwill and brand reputation.

 

I wouldn't expect anyone else to give a crap... once the hardware leaves the shelf, pushing updates is nothing but pure un-necessary expense to most of the handset makers. Apparently Microsoft agrees because none of the current Windows Phones will be able to run Win Phone 8 either.

 

 

 

*** We know from Qualcomm filings that their new WTR1605L has some additional ports to support more frequencies. Three <1Ghz ports, three 1Ghz-2Ghz ports, and one 2.5Ghz port. We know the iPhone currently supports AWS and PCS and AWS has a range that overlaps the US and Europe so that's two medium ports taken. Where the third goes doesn't matter to the US, maybe it does to other countries.

 

The high port seems like a natural fit for Clearwire - no idea what else it could be used for and I think Clearwire is the only one deploying anything significant on that band world-wide right now, so it seems highly likely that the next iPhone will support Clearwire LTE TDD which fits with Sprint's offloading plan quite nicely.

 

Of the low ports, one is going to 850Mhz Cellular A/B no question - that's ATT and VZW (and I think a bunch of places worldwide as well but I can't recall). We can also assume that one is going to to the lower 700Mhz band where ATT is deploying LTE.

 

The interesting thing is VZW trying to dump their upper 700Mhz blocks... it makes me wonder if Apple was shopping that last low band port around and Sprint paid the 20 billion to secure it for 800 SMR instead of upper 700, which would also make sense as to why VZW suddenly wants to dump it in favor of AWS. They paid a lot for it and there must be some reason they want to dump it.

 

Just my own theory mind you - I could be completely wrong.

[iansltx]

Not completely wrong, but here are some corrections:

 

1. The iPhone doesn't support AWS. At all. Yes, this means that in some CricKet markets they can't sell the iPhone. But the iPhone currently has no AWS support.

2. VZW is keeping their upper-C 700 block. They paid a ton to get the same frequency across the entire country, so they're holding onto this competitive advantage. That said, any iPhone that has LTE on their network may not have LTE on lower 700 or SMR, since my guess is that Verizon will never allow LTE roaming on low frequencies except onto participants of their LTE in Rural America program, where they make the rules. AWS is a different story, but then again VZW won't have LTE on AWS for a while yet...none of their devices support it and none will until they get the SpectrumCo spectrum.

[xcharles718]

Live now.

Investors.sprint.com

 

Seems like their network cores will mesh over when moving from one to another(so you should keep your IP).

 

"Go over 5GB and then you'll have to take out a second mortgage."

[marioc21]

Listening now. Sounds like Sprint is saying they are giving up on the wifi offload strategy that others are using and relying on Clearwire to provide that excess capacity. I wonder if that's directly related to the Cable/VZW deal.

[jefbal99]

 

Seems like their network cores will mesh over when moving from one to another(so you should keep your IP).

 

awesome

 

"Go over 5GB and then you'll have to take out a second mortgage."

 

confused is that 5gb for capped devices like hot spots or 5GB on unlimited smart phones?

[xcharles718]

confused is that 5gb for capped devices like hot spots or 5GB on unlimited smart phones?

Less on the "5GB" aspect, but more just on overage cost in general.

[iansltx]

Listening now as well. CLWR will start with 20MHz TD-LTE channels. 40MHz (2x20 adjacent TD) will be coming in early 2014.

 

Also, Sprint just said that the equipment on the tower right now allows for what sounds like both 800 and 1900 LTE without going back up the tower again.

 

On Clearwire's side, a number of their radios can already do TD-LTE. So it's just a line card upgrade to add TD-LTE to those sites.

 

Re: Low vs. High band spectrum, in capacity constrained markets, due to self-interference issues, you might actually see MORE cell sites on the low band due to self-interference issues.

 

Clearwire just reiterated that they just want to augment capacity for other carriers using their huge spectrum portfolio.

 

Re: LTE-A, Rel 10 will be deployed in Sprint's network (small cells and carrier aggregation are a couple of focuses) early next year.

[xcharles718]

TD-enabled devices on Sprint next year.

Softbank(which uses the same band class as Clearwire) will have handsets by years end.

[iansltx]

LTE will address handshake/interconnection issues between CLWR and other carriers who want to buy wholesale capacity on Clearwire's network. Versus the CDMA-WiMAX shaky handover process.

 

Re: uplink on low-band and downlink on high-band with carrier aggregation, it works on paper but "the devil is in the details". AT&T is trying to do that with WCS as the downlink, but that's somewhere in the 2017 range.

 

Re: capacity improvements -> more usage, transitioning from pre-WiMAX to WiMAX with Clearwire more than doubled usage, all else equal.

 

Re: WiMAX vs. LTE on Clearwire, interoperability/seamless handoffs are huge here, specifically when dealing with CLWR's use of TD-LTE as an offload mechanism. If you can push traffic over to Clearwire's network seamlessly when your own cells get hammered, that's a very good thing...but it's not possible unless everything is running on the same standard (as folks with CDMA/WiMAX phones can attest).

[imex99]

Very excited to see how this progresses...

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

[ericdabbs]

Listening now. Sounds like Sprint is saying they are giving up on the wifi offload strategy that others are using and relying on Clearwire to provide that excess capacity. I wonder if that's directly related to the Cable/VZW deal.

 

This is interesting. I wonder why Sprint is giving up on the wifi offload strategy so soon? I think its still a great strategy to have wifi offloading with the sprint optimizer too. I get that Sprint wants to offload excess capacity to Clearwire but I'll be honest with you...with only 5000 sites initially upgraded to TD-LTE by June 2013 and possibly up to 8000 sites upgraded shortly afterwards, I don't think Clearwire has enough of a TD-LTE footprint nationwide to supply Sprint with enough capacity offloading capability that Sprint desires. Even if they filled up all of Clearwire's 16000 Wimax sites with a TD-LTE overlay it would NOT be enough since it still doesn't cover a lot of the major markets.

 

IMO, Clearwire at some point will need to go out and create more small patches in the downtown areas of these bigger markets they missed in the Wimax rollout like San Diego, Phoenix, Detroit, New Orleans, Oklahoma City, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, Memphis, Alberquerque, etc to provide capacity relief and would bring in a lot of money to Clearwire. Maybe this won't happen until Sprint buyouts Clearwire but it does need to happen.