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So, now I am curious... I thought that Sprint still had a large portion of the US internet backbone? I could have read an article from someone who was an idiot, but I thought that the Embarq spin-off was just the home phone/long distance service. Not to mention I still think it was a good move because home phones will become even more irrelevant in the coming years, and they made a bet on the future. Sadly, they made a lot of bad decisions managing the company and are only now trying to fix their problems, but I'm excited for what the future might bring.

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So, now I am curious... I thought that Sprint still had a large portion of the US internet backbone? I could have read an article from someone who was an idiot, but I thought that the Embarq spin-off was just the home phone/long distance service. Not to mention I still think it was a good move because home phones will become even more irrelevant in the coming years, and they made a bet on the future. Sadly, they made a lot of bad decisions managing the company and are only now trying to fix their problems, but I'm excited for what the future might bring.

 

They do have a rather large "backbone" but they lack metro fiber.

 

If you wanted to measure sprint in size, they are a VERY large part of the internet. It's all long-haul though, not metro fiber.

 

It was actually good that they spun off their landline business. Frankly, Sprint doesn't have the size/scale to be competitive. It would have ended up being a cash drain.

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So, now I am curious... I thought that Sprint still had a large portion of the US internet backbone? I could have read an article from someone who was an idiot, but I thought that the Embarq spin-off was just the home phone/long distance service. Not to mention I still think it was a good move because home phones will become even more irrelevant in the coming years, and they made a bet on the future. Sadly, they made a lot of bad decisions managing the company and are only now trying to fix their problems, but I'm excited for what the future might bring.

 

It did have a large part of the backbone but now runs on CenturyLink (the old Embarq company that Sprint foolishly spun off). CenturyLink now supplies most of Sprint's backhaul and is making money hand-over-fist... it was a very bad idea to spin off the entire landline business. The long distance resell / local landline business would've been fine to dump, but they shouldn't have dumped the internet mainline backbone portion of the company along with it. Embarq was the consumer landline company that Sprint rightly didn't want AND the backbone company that they desperately need today. CenturyLInk has been making more money than Sprint has been losing lately!

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CenturyLInk has been making more money than Sprint has been losing lately!

 

That may be true. But CenturyLink is a lot more CenturyTel and Qwest than it is Embarq. So, even if Sprint had retained the landline division that became Embarq, the implication that Sprint would be making money from it is questionable.

 

Furthermore, Embarq may have been the largest ILEC after the RBOCs, but that was highly relative. Its incumbent market territory was really quite limited. See the map:

 

CenturyLinkCombinedCoverageMap.gif

 

Thus, Embarq backhaul could have been a nice asset to have in those few relevant markets; however, it would hardly have been a backhaul panacea across the Sprint national network.

 

AJ

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Sprint still owns their Tier-1 global backbone, just no metro loops.

 

Yup, they are still WAY bigger vs. AT&T and Verizon... but not the global titan they used to be.

 

Just look how they have changed since 2009:

 

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2009/12/a-bakers-dozen-in-2009.shtml

 

http://www.renesys.com/blog/2012/02/a-bakers-dozen-2011-edition.shtml

 

Granted, they are still HUGE... but it's worth noting the decline. This is just not a focus of sprint anymore.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Nope. Check it out. I thought it was kind of interesting.

 

Yeah deff cool...what's also cool is that you can see some of the active trouble tickets on the maintenance section...

www.sprint.net/maint_view.php

 

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk

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Yeah deff cool...what's also cool is that you can see some of the active trouble tickets on the maintenance section...

www.sprint.net/maint_view.php

 

Sent from my PG86100 using Tapatalk

 

Those aren't trouble tickets for Sprint's PCS Network. I wish we could see that though.

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Those aren't trouble tickets for Sprint's PCS Network. I wish we could see that though.

 

wasn't really trying to make that seem as it were that...If it was trouble tickets for the CDMA network then it would be much much longer than that list shown, and something we likely never will have direct access to...

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Great post!

It's topics and posts like these that keep me coming back, as they have really taught me a ton of stuff about not just Sprint, but the mobile phone industry in general and how things work.

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It did have a large part of the backbone but now runs on CenturyLink (the old Embarq company that Sprint foolishly spun off). CenturyLink now supplies most of Sprint's backhaul and is making money hand-over-fist... it was a very bad idea to spin off the entire landline business. The long distance resell / local landline business would've been fine to dump, but they shouldn't have dumped the internet mainline backbone portion of the company along with it. Embarq was the consumer landline company that Sprint rightly didn't want AND the backbone company that they desperately need today. CenturyLInk has been making more money than Sprint has been losing lately!

 

The thing that I can't get over is that in certain markets, Sprint can't even reach an agreement with Centurylink to get fiber access (but there were no problems with AT&T or Comcast??). All the sites that were originally slated for Centurylink fiber got switched to microwave backhaul instead. It's a different story in different areas, but that struck me as funny.

 

Also, from what I've seen throughout the Midwest and on the East Coast, Verizon doesn't use very much microwave. Clearwire is the by far the biggest proponent, AT&T uses their fair share, Verizon uses some, Sprint seldom uses microwave, and T-Mobile just uses whatever crappy backhaul is most readily available.

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EDIT:::: FAIL I just realised that i posted this post and the one under it in the wrong spot!! guess thats what happens when you have like 50 tabs open at once. If any mods see this can you move this post and the one under it to http://s4gru.com/ind...w/page__st__380

At present time I think its only Robert as Admin/Mod and is the only one that can probably put it in the right spot.

 

TS

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At present time I think its only Robert as Admin/Mod and is the only one that can probably put it in the right spot.

 

TS

 

Scott also can. I am currently mobile at the moment. I will move it when I get back to my computer later today, unless Scott does in the interim. Thanks!

 

Robert

Posted from my E4GT with ICS using Forum Runner

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Scott also can. I am currently mobile at the moment. I will move it when I get back to my computer later today, unless Scott does in the interim. Thanks!

 

Robert

Posted from my E4GT with ICS using Forum Runner

Got it. :)

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  • 8 months later...

Hate to resurrect an old thread here but I am on a mad hunt to understand Sprints backhaul situation.

 

The tower here was just recently upgraded with NV equipment but the data speeds are horrendously slow. In fact even slower then they were before. We were getting around 100 - 120kbps and now only 10 - 30kbps.. slower then dial up This is specially a problem for me since we use some ( 30 or so ) Sprint data cards at work and I work in IT. I get 30 people complaining to me.

 

SO.. I live in a rather rural area in Maryland.. Zip 21629. The Sprint tower is right outside our HQ building.. the tower actually has the same address as our building. The speeds from this tower have been getting slower and slower. A year ago we could pull down 1 - 1.5mbit, was is actually faster then our VZW equipment (VZW shares the same tower). We would get 600 - 800kbps through VZW.

 

For the last year however speeds via Sprint have been dropping dramatically to their low now of what I said.. 10kbps at times. I always blamed this, in my mind, on copper to the tower site being poor/over loaded. I know for a fact its a huge hassle trying to order t1's for our substations etc. In fact a T1 is the only thing available.. no T3's etc.

 

BUT.. then a few months ago VZW lit up LTE on this tower outside.. and I can regularly pull 16, 18, even 20mbit via VZW LTE equipment. So that blows my T1 theory out of the water. There is no microwave structures on this tower.. so how is VZW able to get those speeds? Why is Sprints equipment crawling from the same physical location?

 

When I start looking back at our helpdesk requests I find a pattern. The Sprint network started getting slower as VZW deployed more LTE sites on the shore here. Is big red perhaps prioritizing traffic to VZW sites?

 

Bottom line is I love Sprint.. and I really want to use them as our provider So far we have switched 30 or so data cards from VZW to Sprint out of 130 cards or so total.. but of course now I have hit a brick wall with these slow data speeds and we are actually going BACK to VZW to take advantage of LTE.

 

I have opened several trouble tickets with sprint and they are all promptly closed stating.. "A technician has verified the state of the cell site and everything it working as designed".

 

I guess I am on my own with this one... Just wanting some answers.

 

Thanks

-Matt

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Here in Austin TX, it looks like Sprint has chosen Time Warner Cable Business Class for their NV backhaul.

 

To clarify, TWC has two "Business Class" products. One is their HFC (Hybrid Fiber Coax) system, in either DOCSIS 2 or 3 flavors. AKA cable modem service. Sprint isn't using that. The other is fiber. Sprint *is* using that.

 

My question is, where did you hear that TWC is being used in Austin? I'm incluned to believe you, but Sprint could be using any of a number of carriers, depending on the area. Zayo (former AboveNet, plus I think some non-AboveNet stuff), Grande Communications, AT&T and Alpheus come to mind.

 

As an aside from a months-ago post, CenturyLink covers a lot of territory that never belonged to Sprint; Las Vegas is the largest market that was legacy Embarq. Everything comparably-sized or larger was Qwest. Who, by the way, was a Sprint MVNO not too long ago Also, Sprint owns its own backbone still, which they use exclusively as the backbone for their mobile network. As opposed to VZW (they use Level3 and maybe others in addition to alter.net), T-Mobile (Level3, AT&T and others), CricKet (Level3, XO, maybe others)...and the same as AT&T, which uses AS7018 for all mobile traffic.

 

Yes, Sprint is mostly out of the wireline game, but they're far from the cellular-only presence that is T-Mobile USA. There are actually cell sites out there that have honest-to-goodness Sprint fiber from them all the way to the nearest network peering point.

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Well yes I should clarify... on a few of the NV sites where I checked the base cabinets, I saw some new small cabinets that said Time Warner Cable Business Class. It's not like it's a dinky cable modem plugged into a coax line or something.

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