article claims that Sprint LTE launches with "3G speeds"

[pii100]

Is it just me or was the article already stealth edited?

[iansltx]

Yeah, looks like the article got a minor stealth edit. But the backhaul inaccuracy remains.

[pii100]

Truth in journalism disclose your edits! Plus I think I've seen it referenced as 2X5Mhz only once before.

[KaoMinerva]

Great Article....

 

Lol, just kidding

[Rawvega]

Was just reading another article from the same author: http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/131241-t-mobile-makes-great-progress-on-network-upgrade-begins-lte-trials

 

This guy's a real winner...

[WiWavelength]

Was just reading another article from the same author: http://www.extremete...gins-lte-trials

 

This guy's a real winner...

 

I have been quite impressed with the quality of the comments following the inherently flawed ExtremeTech article. I firmly believe that the showing today demonstrates that S4GRU is both serving an important educational purpose and attracting an already learned membership. If you posted any response to the article, I encourage you to copy and paste it in this thread, so that current and future S4GRU members can benefit from your well thought out rebuttals.

 

That said, please keep character assassination out of the issue. No matter how vehemently you disagree, ad hominem attacks never logically strengthen your counterarguments. I know Neal Gompa reasonably well -- as well as one can truly know an online colleague. He is a genuinely intelligent, definitely knowledgeable observer on the wireless industry, and I value his input. While he made several mistakes in publishing the current article, address his errors, not his person. That he is a strong T-Mobile supporter is no character flaw in and of itself -- unless many of us are willing to indict ourselves for being what most others would deem staunch Sprint supporters.

 

So, I ask that we do not let the debate devolve into a holy war, a bunch of Sprint users ganging up on a T-Mobile zealot. We have all seen those types of exchanges, and they almost never serve any productive purpose. Rather, maintain the focus on facts and logic on both sides. Then, all participants have greater opportunity to come away from the discussion better informed.

 

Thanks...

 

AJ

[Sgt. Slaughter]

Can't agree more there....could tell this site filled those comments with more info than the article itself....

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

[pyroscott]

My comments on the article.

 

Thanks for setting the record straight irev. It's a shame that AT&T and Verizon can do whatever they want and everyone thinks the move is golden, but Sprint "never does anything right." They have a plan set forward to bring LTE to every single tower in their network and collect together enough spectrum to provide the building penetration of 800 SMR, the available nationwide coverage of 1900 G Block PCS and the utterly massive capacity of Clearwire's 2500 and 2600 mhz spectrum for hot spots in dense population areas. As long as irresponsible journalism doesn't cause everyone to mash the panic button, Sprint will soon have the best network of any American carrier, not to mention unlimited data. It won't have the rural coverage that Verizon acquired, but once they clear Nextel off the SMR band, it will allow them to expand their footprint much more efficiently.

 

Then in response to a comment that Verizon AT&T and T-Mobile were installing 10Gbps at base stations and were upgrading to 100Gbps while Sprint was only deploying 250Mbps at the base stations.

 

Do you have any idea what that would cost monthly? 100Gbps? No carrier would need that much bandwidth at one site. You would be burning money at that point. If Sprint is contracting 250Mbps at every cell site, and what is in the ground is capable of more bandwidth, they are set indefinitely. No way they didn't learn their lesson with the T1 lines they ran for backhaul for their 3G network.

[WiWavelength]

My response to the article:

 

Bad show, Neal. You know that I generally respect you and your knowledge. But this article is irresponsibly speculative, not at all grounded in fact. If you want to know the real scoop, S4GRU has the info.

 

My response to cameron b's comment:

 

Thumbs down. Your post is as anti factual as is the article. HSPA+ 21 is empirically slower than 5 MHz x 5 MHz LTE. And HSPA+ 42 is an irrelevant comparison, as it is a spectrum hog, requiring twice the bandwidth, 10 MHz x 10 MHz.

 

My response to Neal's comment about backhaul capacity:

 

In 2012, arguing for 10 Gbps (let alone 100 Gbps) backhaul per base station is a ludicrous proposition. It is basically akin to claiming that the two lane street in front of my suburban house is inadequate; instead, a 10 lane road would be much better.

 

The massive backhaul premise is also a vestige of that dinosaur of a deployment model that VZW and especially AT&T want to sell the public and regulators, that macrocellular architecture with potentially hundreds of MHz per cell is the only way to meet growing capacity demands.

 

Nonsense. Small cells (within overall heterogeneous network architecture) are the future. Those small cells will be the equivalent of cell splitting to the nth degree and will significantly reduce the need for huge backhaul and spectrum outlays on macrocells.

 

My response to Neal's comment about Sprint's spectrum resources:

 

Neal, your assertion that Sprint cannot refarm or utilize its traditional PCS A-F block spectrum until Sprint has deployed LTE nationwide is patently false.

 

As someone who has researched Sprint's spectrum holdings for better than a decade and has access to current CDMA1X/EV-DO carrier channel deployment levels, I can assure you that Sprint has adequate spectrum in most/all of its PCS A-F block 30 MHz markets (e.g. NY, LA, BOS, PHI, DFW, SEA, etc.) to deploy a second 5 MHz x 5 MHz LTE 1900 carrier with minimal, if any refarming.

 

Indeed, a second LTE 1900 carrier where additional capacity will be required is already on Sprint's roadmap for the near future.

 

AJ

[Rawvega]

In light of AJ's irrefutable logic, I decided to delete the comment that I was just about to submit lol

 

Sent from my PG41200 using Tapatalk 2

[xcharles718]

I love this site...so much.

 

As for that article...

in my humble opinion of course.

[Conan Kudo]

Perhaps so, AJ.

 

But would people please stop calling me anti-Sprint? I'm fair to all carriers, domestic and international. I'm not stupid by any means. And that article was written with what I knew. Honestly, people! I can't write about what I don't know!

 

Most of my information comes from the few people I've been able to talk to about Sprint, and the research I managed to scrounge up for when I wrote my other Sprint articles. Yeah, I've written articles about Sprint before. And no, they weren't "anti-Sprint."

 

I get no credit at all for that, though. Then again, I'm not surprised. Hardly anyone noticed that I wrote those.

 

And insulting me by calling out the fact that I'm an undergraduate student! That was a low blow.

 

The only carriers I truly dislike on a philosophical basis are AT&T and Verizon Wireless. And much of it has nothing to do with mobile networks (business practices, really)! And AJ, I don't have a spectrum scanner like you do, so I have literally no idea how spectrum is actually utilized in the many markets I've visited. Never mind the fact that pretty much all carriers hate my markets and refuse to bring the latest upgrades.

 

Only when I visit other states do I get a chance to check out what these carriers are really bringing to the table. And you know what? It's pretty awesome!

 

I'm impressed with all four carriers. T-Mobile for pushing W-CDMA technology further than anyone else in the world, Sprint for designing a truly modern and advanced infrastructure architecture, AT&T for its broadly deployed Wi-Fi access points, and Verizon Wireless for being one of the first carriers to try to bridge CDMA2000 with LTE on a large scale and managing to largely succeed (brittleness excepted).

 

Do they have bad points? Sure. I'm seriously upset that Sprint is continuing the awful practice of embedding subscriber identity modules instead of making them removable like VZW did. T-Mobile isn't moving fast enough to upgrade its 2G footprint to 3G. AT&T is lying to the public too much about its 4G deployment and firmly backs killing net neutrality. Verizon Wireless' shared data plans are a bad value unless you max out the service options. And CDMA carriers (aside from VZW) need to move faster to deploy HSPA/LTE. VZW needs to get off its butt and finally deploy VoLTE instead of putting it off again.

 

Considering this is literally the first time I've had to deal with the S4GRU community (AJ excepted), I'm not very encouraged.

[xcharles718]

Perhaps so, AJ.

 

But would people please stop calling me anti-Sprint? I'm fair to all carriers, domestic and international. I'm not stupid by any means. And that article was written with what I knew. Honestly, people! I can't write about what I don't know!

 

Most of my information comes from the few people I've been able to talk to about Sprint, and the research I managed to scrounge up for when I wrote my other Sprint articles. Yeah, I've written articles about Sprint before. And no, they weren't "anti-Sprint."

 

I get no credit at all for that, though. Then again, I'm not surprised. Hardly anyone noticed that I wrote those.

 

And insulting me by calling out the fact that I'm an undergraduate student! That was a low blow.

 

The only carriers I truly dislike on a philosophical basis are AT&T and Verizon Wireless. And much of it has nothing to do with mobile networks (business practices, really)! And AJ, I don't have a spectrum scanner like you do, so I have literally no idea how spectrum is actually utilized in the many markets I've visited. Never mind the fact that pretty much all carriers hate my markets and refuse to bring the latest upgrades.

 

Only when I visit other states do I get a chance to check out what these carriers are really bringing to the table. And you know what? It's pretty awesome!

 

I'm impressed with all four carriers. T-Mobile for pushing W-CDMA technology further than anyone else in the world, Sprint for designing a truly modern and advanced infrastructure architecture, AT&T for its broadly deployed Wi-Fi access points, and Verizon Wireless for being one of the first carriers to try to bridge CDMA2000 with LTE on a large scale and managing to largely succeed (brittleness excepted).

 

Do they have bad points? Sure. I'm seriously upset that Sprint is continuing the awful practice of embedding subscriber identity modules instead of making them removable like VZW did. T-Mobile isn't moving fast enough to upgrade its 2G footprint to 3G. AT&T is lying to the public too much about its 4G deployment and firmly backs killing net neutrality. Verizon Wireless' shared data plans are a bad value unless you max out the service options. And CDMA carriers (aside from VZW) need to move faster to deploy HSPA/LTE. VZW needs to get off its butt and finally deploy VoLTE instead of putting it off again.

 

Considering this is literally the first time I've had to deal with the S4GRU community (AJ excepted), I'm not very encouraged.

I don't believe anyone is trying to call you "anti-Sprint"(or anything near that). It just that the article that doesn't fully present the facts that are what NV is about, it's scale, outlook, and in your particular case, the total backhaul to a NV'd tower.

 

I welcome you to S4GRU, and welcome you with open arms.

[WiWavelength]

In light of AJ's irrefutable logic, I decided to delete the comment that I was just about to submit lol

 

And Rawvega, while I quoted your post, I did not do so with any intent to single you out. My immediate reaction upon reading Neal's article was to call him out for his well known T-Mobile allegiance, to dub his article nothing more than a T-Mobile slanted downpour on Sprint's shiny new LTE parade. But I know that I can do better, that we all can do better.

 

Cheers...

 

AJ

[S4GRU]

Perhaps so' date=' AJ.

 

But would people please stop calling me anti-Sprint? I'm fair to all carriers, domestic and international. I'm not stupid by any means. And that article was written with what I knew. Honestly, people! I can't write about what I don't know!

 

Most of my information comes from the few people I've been able to talk to about Sprint, and the research I managed to scrounge up for when I wrote my other Sprint articles. Yeah, I've written articles about Sprint before. And no, they weren't "anti-Sprint."

 

I get no credit at all for that, though. Then again, I'm not surprised. Hardly anyone noticed that I wrote those.

 

And insulting me by calling out the fact that I'm an undergraduate student! That was a low blow.

 

The only carriers I truly dislike on a philosophical basis are AT&T and Verizon Wireless. And much of it has nothing to do with mobile networks (business practices, really)! And AJ, I don't have a spectrum scanner like you do, so I have literally no idea how spectrum is actually utilized in the many markets I've visited. Never mind the fact that pretty much all carriers hate my markets and refuse to bring the latest upgrades.

 

Only when I visit other states do I get a chance to check out what these carriers are really bringing to the table. And you know what? It's pretty awesome!

 

I'm impressed with all four carriers. T-Mobile for pushing W-CDMA technology further than anyone else in the world, Sprint for designing a truly modern and advanced infrastructure architecture, AT&T for its broadly deployed Wi-Fi access points, and Verizon Wireless for being one of the first carriers to try to bridge CDMA2000 with LTE on a large scale and managing to largely succeed (brittleness excepted).

 

Do they have bad points? Sure. I'm seriously upset that Sprint is continuing the awful practice of embedding subscriber identity modules instead of making them removable like VZW did. T-Mobile isn't moving fast enough to upgrade its 2G footprint to 3G. AT&T is lying to the public too much about its 4G deployment and firmly backs killing net neutrality. Verizon Wireless' shared data plans are a bad value unless you max out the service options. And CDMA carriers (aside from VZW) need to move faster to deploy HSPA/LTE. VZW needs to get off its butt and finally deploy VoLTE instead of putting it off again.

 

Considering this is literally the first time I've had to deal with the S4GRU community (AJ excepted), I'm not very encouraged.[/quote']

 

Neal...welcome to S4GRU. I've followed you on Twitter for awhile and I appreciate your thoughtful posts. I certainly wouldn't characterize you as anti-Sprint. I do not support any character assassination that you have experienced.

 

I was very surprised though by this article today. This seemed very uncharacteristic of your previous articles I have read. I'm sure it was not intended as a Sprint hit piece, but because it was quite negative and suffering from proper perspective and missing critical details on some key points, many of our members just jumped to conclusions that your reporting was akin to the overtly negative and non objective pieces they have seen all too common in tech journalism these days.

 

I wanted to also take exception to your point about Sprints Network Vision backhaul comment. Sprint put out Network Vision backhaul RFP's last year. Vendors are required to supply a minimum of 250Mbps to each site initially (and many vendors are supplying 400-500Mbps), and that it must be scalable for additional bandwidth as required and requested from Sprint.

 

This is a good solution now and for future needs. 250Mbps is more than ample for one 5x5 LTE carrier and 6 EVDO carriers. Heck, it can even support a few more LTE carriers without issue. Having a right sized backhaul solution that is scalable for the future minimizes capital investment up front and allows for the ability to add more in the future easily, as demand increases. I don't see how this can be construed as negative at all.

 

Robert via CM9 Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

[JeffDTD]

But would people please stop calling me anti-Sprint? I'm fair to all carriers, domestic and international. I'm not stupid by any means. And that article was written with what I knew. Honestly, people! I can't write about what I don't know!

 

Most of my information comes from the few people I've been able to talk to about Sprint, and the research I managed to scrounge up for when I wrote my other Sprint articles. Yeah, I've written articles about Sprint before. And no, they weren't "anti-Sprint."

 

 

If your expectations of Sprint are rooted in how it performs on average in your home state of Mississippi, well, I can empathize with your opinions. I live in Hattiesburg and of the general opinion that Sprint has historically neglected everything but Jackson, Hattiesburg and the coast. I've always lived in good coverage and value the C-spire voice and 3G roaming we get down here, but I don't live rural. MS has historically been neglected by big telecom....its a terrible place to root your opinions. I tried Tmo here years ago and ATT in January. Too much "no service" with Tmo then and too many dropped calls/static in "excellent coverage" areas with ATT. You also have to remember C-spire eats a good deal of market share here and would naturally be a deterrent to expansion when considering potential customers. Even Verizon struggled here(didn't sell native coverage) as you probably remember, prior to acquiring Alltel.

 

A lot of people here become very defensive of Sprint because they are very informed about the details of Sprint's modernization plans and agree with the direction the company is headed. While it now seems we all agree the article is a misinformed error, it is an all too familiar stab in a chorus of negativity that tech sites have lobbed at Sprint over the last few years. Despite having the highest rated customer service scores, Sprint catches more negativity now online that I ever remember before. Entire forums have devolved into slam rants. If you're going to write negative leaning or critical pieces on Sprint, there are two types you should expect a response from: 1) Those who are informed and may defend Sprint if the data isn't accurate 2) Sprint haters who will agree and are excited by anything negative they read on the company "sprint sucks... bankruptcy is coming! Hesse is an idiot, they wronged me so bad bla bla bla".

 

Anyways, northern MS is considered part of the Memphis market and 'apparently' is slated to begin receiving NV treatment as a 2nd round/3rd round market. You will probably get network vision up there before any of us down here

[pyroscott]

Considering this is literally the first time I've had to deal with the S4GRU community (AJ excepted), I'm not very encouraged.

 

Well today was also the first time I've read an article on "extremetech" and I am also not very encouraged. How is it that the article still stands without a formal edit? Is there no fact checking for that blog? Or is it entirely predicated on the freedoms that the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States of America guarantees?

[usguyver]

I would love to be wrong. I really would. But the information I have shows that Sprint isn't putting out enough to offer what others are or will offer.

I'll freely admit that I'm a huge T-Mobile advocate, but I regularly use all four carriers (as well as one regional carrier).

I'm still angry that T-Mobile doesn't have 3G deployed where I live, and AT&T data performance is mostly acceptable nowadays in Starkville. In my hometown of Clinton, it has issues though. Sprint performance stinks here. Verizon's performance on CDMA is equally bad, while its LTE performance is fantastic. In Jackson (the capital city, right next to my hometown), Sprint performance is pretty good, Verizon CDMA stinks, AT&T HSPA stinks, T-Mobile HSPA+ is excellent, and Verizon LTE is fantastic.

If there's information that S4GRU has that is better than what I've got, I would definitely like to know. Until then, I work with what I have.

if you became a sponsor for the site then you can see what I can see and its all really good stuff sprint us going to have just as good of a network as version by the end of 2013 to the end if 2014 when they are finished with nv

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

[Conan Kudo]

If your expectations of Sprint are rooted in how it performs on average in your home state of Mississippi, well, I can empathize with your opinions. I live in Hattiesburg and of the general opinion that Sprint has historically neglected everything but Jackson, Hattiesburg and the coast. I've always lived in good coverage and value the C-spire voice and 3G roaming we get down here, but I don't live rural. MS has historically been neglected by big telecom....its a terrible place to root your opinions. I tried Tmo here years ago and ATT in January. Too much "no service" with Tmo then and too many dropped calls/static in "excellent coverage" areas with ATT. You also have to remember C-spire eats a good deal of market share here and would naturally be a deterrent to expansion when considering potential customers. Even Verizon struggled here(didn't sell native coverage) as you probably remember, prior to acquiring Alltel.

 

A lot of people here become very defensive of Sprint because they are very informed about the details of Sprint's modernization plans and agree with the direction the company is headed. While it now seems we all agree the article is a misinformed error, it is an all too familiar stab in a chorus of negativity that tech sites have lobbed at Sprint over the last few years. Despite having the highest rated customer service scores, Sprint catches more negativity now online that I ever remember before. Entire forums have devolved into slam rants. If you're going to write negative leaning or critical pieces on Sprint, there are two types you should expect a response from: 1) Those who are informed and may defend Sprint if the data isn't accurate 2) Sprint haters who will agree and are excited by anything negative they read on the company "sprint sucks... bankruptcy is coming! Hesse is an idiot, they wronged me so bad bla bla bla".

 

Anyways, northern MS is considered part of the Memphis market and 'apparently' is slated to begin receiving NV treatment as a 2nd round/3rd round market. You will probably get network vision up there before any of us down here

 

I believe Starkville is still part of Central MS, which is why we don't have anything really good yet. I know Tupelo is considered part of Northern MS, and it has everything! Great Verizon LTE, good T-Mobile HSPA+, decent AT&T HSPA, decent Sprint 3G, and crappy Verizon CDMA. But that's almost 70 miles north of me. I don't particularly want to drive an hour and a half every time I want to have good cellular performance.

 

If Northern MS is slated for Network Vision upgrades as part of the Memphis market, then I guess I'll see it in Tupelo over the next year...

 

As for the critical writing of Sprint part, I think I now know what to expect. I wish people had noticed my Network Vision piece[1] like they did this. I put a hell lot more work into that one and it really wasn't noticed... The month of May was my Sprint spree. I wrote three articles about Sprint and all were hardly noticed...

 

[1]: http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/129198-network-vision-sprints-path-to-domination

Edited July 17, 2012 by Det_Conan_Kudo

[Rawvega]

The article that you linked had 21 comments. This one: http://www.extremetech.com/electronics/129995-fcc-approves-3g-and-4g had 18 comments. I think "hardly noticed" is a bit of an overstatement.

[irev210]

I believe Starkville is still part of Central MS, which is why we don't have anything really good yet. I know Tupelo is considered part of Northern MS, and it has everything! Great Verizon LTE, good T-Mobile HSPA+, decent AT&T HSPA, decent Sprint 3G, and crappy Verizon CDMA. But that's almost 70 miles north of me. I don't particularly want to drive an hour and a half every time I want to have good cellular performance.

 

If Northern MS is slated for Network Vision upgrades as part of the Memphis market, then I guess I'll see it in Tupelo over the next year...

 

As for the critical writing of Sprint part, I think I now know what to expect. I wish people had noticed my Network Vision piece[1] like they did this. I put a hell lot more work into that one and it really wasn't noticed... The month of May was my Sprint spree. I wrote three articles about Sprint and all were hardly noticed...

 

[1]: http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/129198-network-vision-sprints-path-to-domination

 

My issues with your comment in the comment section in the article was this:

 

Fiber is definitely good, but what is the aggregate amount of backhaul to a given base station? Because from what I've heard, Sprint's not giving even half as much as what T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon are putting up.

At the very least, T-Mobile is beefing up to 10Gbps of aggregate backhaul with a combination of several types of backhaul links. And that's per base station.

I've already heard rumblings of 100Gbps of aggregate backhaul being connected to base station equipment on AT&T and Verizon in areas where they plan to dual-band LTE really soon. So far, I've only seen 10Gbps on the stations now, though.

It's great that Sprint is introducing 250Mbps of backhaul to its base stations, but that's not enough. In the beginning, Sprint users will probably be very pleased, but as more LTE users come on board, it'll get strained.

Network topological density will have to increase because Sprint will not be able to cannibalize the CDMA2000 network until after LTE is deployed nationwide and the entire stock of devices are LTE enabled. If Sprint gets a huge influx of users (which I bet it will), then Sprint will quickly have to ensure the network load is distributed out more in order to relieve network pressure and to maintain stability.

 

 

When I said (and confirmed by robert)

Minimum backhaul speeds required by Sprint are 250mbit (with the ability to increase as demand increases).

 

250mbit is a starting point - why pay for more bandwidth than you need? When you need more, it's easy to order more. I guess I am just confused as to why that wouldn't be enough for the current amount of Spectrum sprint is deploying for CDMA and LTE.

 

My second issue was the 10Gbps and 100Gbps backhaul to towers. I have never ever heard t-mobile claim that they are deploying 10Gbps to any tower. Maybe I am wrong, but I try to keep up on backhaul news. Can you share some information on why/how you think carriers are moving to 10/100Gbps to towers?

[Deval]

Amen. Had my fill of that over on SprintUsers.

 

THIS!!

[S4GRU]

 

I believe Starkville is still part of Central MS' date=' which is why we don't have anything really good yet. I know Tupelo is considered part of Northern MS, and it has everything! Great Verizon LTE, good T-Mobile HSPA+, decent AT&T HSPA, decent Sprint 3G, and crappy Verizon CDMA. But that's almost 70 miles north of me. I don't particularly want to drive an hour and a half every time I want to have good cellular performance.

 

If Northern MS is slated for Network Vision upgrades as part of the Memphis market, then I guess I'll see it in Tupelo over the next year...

 

As for the critical writing of Sprint part, I think I now know what to expect. I wish people had noticed my Network Vision piece[1'] like they did this. I put a hell lot more work into that one and it really wasn't noticed... The month of May was my Sprint spree. I wrote three articles about Sprint and all were hardly noticed...

 

[1]: http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/129198-network-vision-sprints-path-to-domination

 

At Sprint, the Golden Triangle area is in the Memphis market. Network Vision deployments are starting in this market soon. But the Mississippi parts will be at the tail end of the market because of the backhaul issues in that part of the market. Will take more time.

 

Robert via CM9 Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

[Deval]

I think what gets a lot of the users into an uproar is the sheer amount of bad blogger press that Sprint gets. Every site I'm a member of, or browse, is full of Sprint haters and such. It seems like no one is rooting for Sprint at all, other than the folks on this site.

[centermedic]

 

As for the critical writing of Sprint part, I think I now know what to expect. I wish people had noticed my Network Vision piece[1] like they did this. I put a hell lot more work into that one and it really wasn't noticed... The month of May was my Sprint spree. I wrote three articles about Sprint and all were hardly noticed...

 

[1]: http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/129198-network-vision-sprints-path-to-domination

I read it and it was a pretty solid piece....which makes me wonder what went wrong with your more recent article.