Network Vision on 1x Only Towers

[bigsnake49]

Actually, SouthernLINC is quite a bit more spectrum constrained than that. For example, in the Atlanta BEA, which is by far SouthernLINC's largest market, its rebanded SMR 800 MHz spectrum is contiguous but limited to 3.75 MHz x 3.75 MHz. In some of its smaller markets, SouthernLINC does retain up to 4.5 MHz x 4.5 MHz, but what SouthernLINC can do in Atlanta will almost certainly dictate what it does in all markets.

 

So, despite any oddly placed admiration for the Southern Company in this thread, SouthernLINC is in a bit of a pickle. It cannot stick with iDEN long term. Roaming agreements are expiring as Sprint shifts entirely to CDMA2000 and LTE and Nextel International reportedly intends to transition to W-CDMA. Furthermore, iDEN has effectively reached its end of life, such that even maintenance will become a challenge; thus, SouthernLINC cannot simply stay the course with iDEN for its somewhat backwards, simplistic internal/external communications service.

 

On the flip side, SouthernLINC really has relatively little spectrum for a transition to CDMA2000 and LTE or even LTE alone. Such a transition would likely require dual or even tri mode iDEN/CDMA2000/LTE handsets or a flash cut with overnight replacement of devices. Good luck with either one of those approaches.

 

In the end, SouthernLINC is a bit of an annoyance to Sprint in the Southeast region. But SouthernLINC may need a spectrum sharing agreement more than Sprint does.

 

AJ

 

It would definitely be beneficial to both Sprint and Solinc if they cooperate on the buildout of an LTE network. They could also swap spectrum, Sprint's 900MHz for Solinc's 800Mhz.

[Bob Newhart]

It would definitely be beneficial to both Sprint and Solinc if they cooperate on the buildout of an LTE network. They could also swap spectrum, Sprint's 900MHz for Solinc's 800Mhz.

 

What has Sprint done with their 900 Mhz spectrum? And how much do they have and where?

[jonathanm1978]

I foresee them(SoLinc) handing out new phones overnight since they don't mind handing out free phones to employees and paying the entire bill for those employees. My wife just got a brand new i 576 last week, and never left the plant when they handed it to her. They activated, setup and gave her the phone right there at the steam plant. I don't see them having a problem finding a solution rather quickly...they tend to throw money at a problem until it goes away (they don't have many problems). Last year after the April 27 tornado outbreak, this company had money left from the disaster area funding that FEMA gave them because they restored power so quickly, so with the extra money what did they do? They sent every employee a check for $1500. No warning, just a check came in the mail saying thanks to all and "here is some extra money for the hard work". Sounds like I'm bragging on them but they are really a good place and they won't think twice if they need to sink a million or 5 into securing a new method of two-way communication. Operating expense.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

[bigsnake49]

I think they average about 3MHz per market nationwide. They used it for the overflow during rebanding. It is not contiguous. It would be great for IDEN or two way type communications. Or Sprint could give it back to the FCC and try to get some credit towards 1900Mhz Block H.

[JeffDTD]

Anyone know how many towers they are maintaining? Considering the value of spectrum, is there anything stopping them from putting the network/ spectrum assets up for sale or just swapping them with one of the two major players in return for mvno access or just really good rates for their employees? att is hawking its new ptt solution in hopes they can get these kind of customers no doubt instead depending on sprint while in transition. My point is.... does bothering with a network modernization make sense for any small carrier in a carrier saturated market? ( cspire is a competitor in ms/al/some of tn)

 

There is a southern linc store here... its a graveyard. Considering its location, id be shocked if it didnt cost more to operate than their operations profit here

[Deval]

What has Sprint done with their 900 Mhz spectrum? And how much do they have and where?

 

If I remember correctly, Sprint was to turn over the 900mhz as part of the rebanding.

[shmget]

I just read this post today. We were in the area the OP mentioned last year. Some family let us stay in the Lake Wallenpaupack area. I was not thrilled that after we crossed into PA on I-84, my Sprint coverage went to 1X, but as was mentioned, my wife's AT&T phone dropped to EDGE.

 

Is one reason the towers are still 1X in rural areas also because the company figures there aren't that many subscribers? I also figured it is because of backhaul, as has been mentioned in the thread. The terrain on I-84 from NY into PA has quite a few hills, and I would imagine they don't really run fiber up mountains very often :-)

 

Where I live, we have cells every few miles. In suburban/urban areas, there are usually a combination of micro cells with a macro cell for an area, right? When in a rural area, is it mostly a macro cell in between mountains? I live in New England, and radio-wise (I'm saying this as an amateur radio operator) it is quite challenging, due to the terrain.

[zodiac12345]

Is one reason the towers are still 1X in rural areas also because the company figures there aren't that many subscribers? I also figured it is because of backhaul, as has been mentioned in the thread. The terrain on I-84 from NY into PA has quite a few hills, and I would imagine they don't really run fiber up mountains very often :-)

 

I believe that for the most part the problem was Cellular One and negligence from Sprint and At&T. Remember that Cellular One was the main provider for this region. Sprint, in my belief, probably had a rural partner deploy towers here. I believe the partner was iPCS, which is owned by Sprint now. Sprint relied on the native towers (1x Voice AND Data) as well as roaming on Cell One (VOICE ONLY, NO 1x). AT&T, being the main GSM player in the US, deployed their own towers and neglected the region, similar to Sprint.

 

Verizon has now bought out Cell One, and is converting towers slowly into their main network. Last time I was in the region, my phone would roam on Verizon's 1x when Sprint didn't have service. I am not sure if Verizon has converted all towers in this region yet, or if they are still converting it. I assume they are still converting the towers. However, unless Verizon adds towers to fill in some gaps, service will be terrible on CDMA phones. That, or Sprint deploys Network Vision.

 

On the note of why the towers are 1x only is probably a mix of reasons (these are my opinions, I am making assumptions). The first reason is that this wasn't a Sprint Corporate market initially, but an affiliate market (iPCS i believe). Even though Sprint bought out iPCS, most iPCS towers are still 1x only. I believe an admin mentioned how most Sprint markets that were affiliates originally are still not entirely converted to EvDO. The second reason as to why the towers are 1x only is probably because of low population, and there was no reason to invest here for about a few more customers.

 

When Network Vision is complete here, and hopefully it will be, Sprint will have the best service in the region. I personally wouldn't be surprised if Sprint was the first to deploy LTE here, even if it is on 1900 PCS initially. If Network Vision does indeed impact all the current Sprint towers in the region, Sprint's 800 SMR spectrum will produce service everywhere. Sprint's current 1x service gives a usable voice connection everywhere, albeit hovering around -105 dBm deep inside the forests.

[WiWavelength]

Maybe the Southern Company and SouthernLINC are not as golden as they seem. See this Seeking Alpha comment:

 

SouthernLINC has been operating its ESMR at a loss for quite some years now. With the only intention of waiting out rebanding to realize the value of the licenses. I could see Sprint acquiring those assets to complete its footprint in the Southeastern portion of the U.S.

 

http://seekingalpha.com/article/880171-sprint-is-enjoying-strong-iphone-5-sales-and-sees-potential-wireless-consolidation?source=msn

 

The comment comes from seispr, a technology and spectrum analyst whose comments have impressed me with their insight.

 

AJ

[Boosted20V]

Maybe the Southern Company and SouthernLINC are not as golden as they seem. See this Seeking Alpha comment:

 

 

 

http://seekingalpha....tion?source=msn

 

The comment comes from seispr, a technology and spectrum analyst whose comments have impressed me with their insight.

 

AJ

 

Saw this yesterday as well. Was suprised to see an analyst on Seeking Alpha with pretty thorough knowledge of the wireless landscape.

[Deval]

I really like reading seeking alpha, they've done a great job breaking down things and sticking to facts.

[Boosted20V]

I really like reading seeking alpha, they've done a great job breaking down things and sticking to facts.

 

All authors on that site are not created equal. I've read pure garbage there as well.

[Rawvega]

All authors on that site are not created equal. I've read pure garbage there as well.

 

1000% agreed. At least the authors disclose what their current and future positions are in the stocks that they're writing about (though I'm curious as to how Seeking Alpha verifies that). It'd be nice to know what that clown, Craig Moffet's, positions are when he bashes certain stocks and ballwashes others.

[WiWavelength]

It'd be nice to know what that clown, Craig Moffet's, positions are when he bashes certain stocks and ballwashes others.

 

Moffett works for Sanford Bernstein. I worry less about his personal positions than those of his company and its clients. Moffett can use his bully pulpit to manipulate the market in their favor.

 

On the other hand, Moffett does seem to hold a grudge against Sprint, so maybe it is personal. Sprint probably turned him away because he had bad credit.

 

 

AJ

[S4GRU]

Sprint probably turned him away because he had bad credit.

 

 

Robert

[cjg144]

How about vision on nextel only towers...no sprint CDMA. Is that part of the 100? I'm curious if anyone has information or prediction on what they might do with locations like these when they shut down IDEN?

[lilotimz]

How about vision on nextel only towers...no sprint CDMA. Is that part of the 100? I'm curious if anyone has information or prediction on what they might do with locations like these when they shut down IDEN?

 

Word beforehand was that all of the towers will be scrapped. Now we have no clue but we're hoping that the investment by SB will allow sprint to use these tower locations in order to increase coverage or service in areas that dearly need em.

[Josh]

 

 

Word beforehand was that all of the towers will be scrapped. Now we have no clue but we're hoping that the investment by SB will allow sprint to use these tower locations in order to increase coverage or service in areas that dearly need em.

 

I really hope that is the case that the Softbank investment allows them to really challenge the status-quo of the duopopoly that exists... And I hope it means huge subscriber growth & the continuation of unlimited, with Clearwire offering 100Mb/s service in cities. I believe that was the thought when they bought them... Crush Verizon & AT&T w/speed! Lol.

anyway, I have to thank AJ for that post, I nearly spilled my drink! I read and comment on Seeking Alpha a lot, so I know exactly who you are talking about. Most people are just investors worried about the stock price with no regard for the underlying company, but it is a good reference for news about the company, as well as the market opinion.

[Feech]

I will parrot what Robert said. Pretty soon its not gonna matter they will have to do something and neither option according to us so called experts is good..Sell it off or construct a new network. They may have money but they are not going to spend a billion on a new network either. If they were building a new network, then they should be starting to ramp up construction about a year ago

[Tomas]

I saw the responses, and to that I say they would upgrade before selling. Like I mentioned, a company that pays for the cellular service that it also provides to its employees isn't going to just let that go away. Not sure hope many thousands have southern Linc but they are available to non southern company employees, they just have some very stringent credit requirements(worse than what Nextel used to be before acquired by Sprint). I never heard of any other company that bought its own cellular towers so it could provide two-way radio operation to its employees. The cellular side isn't monitored either, they don't care what minutes their employees use on minutes used. They only own southern Linc because they didn't have a radio option that would fill their needs as a Nextel-type solution would, considering they have smokestacks that are a couple thousand feet tall to have their mini towers mounted at every plant.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk 2

 

One thing that most folks beating the drum for other-than-iDen push-to-talk networks repeatedly seem to miss is the last-ditch performance when the towers fail: iDen devices can be used as point-to-point walkie-talkies even without the tower. None of the other types of service offer that.

 

In any mission-critical communication system, the ability of folks at a site to maintain communication when everything external fails is very much a desired feature.

 

This is one reason why emergency services or companies that work to restore utilities prefer iDen over anything else.

 

They are walkie-talkies that can also make PSTN calls so long as the towers are working. They have their own built-in backup that NONE of the CDMA or GSM variants can match.

 

BTW: Motorola still has a viable worldwide market in iDEN for this very reason...

 

Sent from Photon Q LTE - Tapatalk

 

 

[Bob Newhart]

DirectTalk is a great feature of the iDen phones, maybe one day that will be on regular phones.

 

My guess is that the cell operators do not want that as a feature. It would be so handy for when we're not in the coverage area or on a cruse ship... or in the middle of nowhere.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOTO_Talk

[Tomas]

DirectTalk is a great feature of the iDen phones, maybe one day that will be on regular phones.

 

My guess is that the cell operators do not want that as a feature. It would be so handy for when we're not in the coverage area or on a cruse ship... or in the middle of nowhere.

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MOTO_Talk

 

It is not so much that the CDMA "DirectConnect" isn't allowed to do this by the carriers, but more simply that this is not allowed by FCC R&R, and the CDMA mobiles are not allowed to use the fixed base frequencies (and vice versa). This is as it should be, because of the totally different types of services authorized in the two bands.

 

IIRC (been many years) one band (Specialized MobileRadio [sMR], an analog or digital trunked two-way radio service) is primarily for push-to-talk, point-to-point communication with or without fixed repeaters while the other (Personal Communications Service [PCS] an advanced cellular type system) is mobile telephone service intended for connection to the PSTN.

 

That is obviously a vast oversimplification, and years old, but it would take vast changes to get actual PCS phones to work phone-to-phone without going through the towers and the rest of the system. They simply are not walkie-talkies that can in addition access the PSTN as iDEN units can through their fixed repeaters.

[lynyrd65]

 

Now that is an SMR build out! This is what I want to see in a few years with CDMA/LTE 800 coverage

[digiblur]

I am sure it will happen the day I open the coverage map and see this.

 

 

[nahum365]

I am sure it will happen the day I open the coverage map and see this.

 

 

 

I'm guessing you're talking about the towers on the map? I'm really tired right now... But I would love an implementation of that. Along with some real coverage maps. Clear's coverage map is how to do it correctly...