Future 600 MHz band & OTHER discussion thread (was "Sprint + 600 MHz?")

[gnoj]

Neither TMO not Sprint will get into a bidding war with ATT and Verizon. There will be an effective carve-out for non-ATT/VZW carriers but once that is consumed, the rest will be bid up, up, up by VZW/ATT...

 

That's why it's important for the FCC to listen to the DoJ and set aside enough (20 MHz each) for Sprint and T-Mo to bid on. Even if that brings in less revenue at auction, it's still in the public interest, as it will save the public money in the long run. The twin bells can have whatever's left. They don't need that much anyway once the 700 A block becomes usable, and they can use their AWS holdings (and the future AWS-3 auction) to grow capacity. By the time 600 gets deployed (2015 or later), probably the only regional left will be USCC (and SouthernLINC, which will be fine with refarming their SMR from iDEN), and I don't think they need the spectrum. Barring a carve-out, Sprint and T-Mo might be able to set up a shell company and go in to bid together like the cable companies did with 700, splitting the winnings 50-50 later.

 

I agree with T-Mo that the US gov should seek enough money to get what they need (pay off UHF holders incentives, build FirstNET), and not any more.

 

Now watch Charlie jump into the fray and introduce some chaos He might like to pair some 600 with his high-band holdings to start a 5th national network if T-Mobile doesn't want him either, but I'm not sure he has the wherewithal to do it. Would be fun to see him try though!

[Bob Newhart]

I don't think that the US government should auction the airwaves, the money should be spent by the cell companies on actually using the airwaves, building their network.

 

The government should give it away to companies that will use it, if they don't use it within a number of years, it should be taken back and given to someone else.

 

As it is now, a company owns frequencies in areas that it has no intention of using.

[maximus1987/lou99]

I don't think that the US government should auction the airwaves, the money should be spent by the cell companies on actually using the airwaves, building their network.

 

The government should give it away to companies that will use it, if they don't use it within a number of years, it should be taken back and given to someone else.

 

As it is now, a company owns frequencies in areas that it has no intention of using.

How would it raise money to move broadcasters off (of frequencies they didn't even pay)?

[maximus1987/lou99]

That's why it's important for the FCC to listen to the DoJ and set aside enough (20 MHz each) for Sprint and T-Mo to bid on. Even if that brings in less revenue at auction, it's still in the public interest, as it will save the public money in the long run. The twin bells can have whatever's left. They don't need that much anyway once the 700 A block becomes usable, and they can use their AWS holdings (and the future AWS-3 auction) to grow capacity. By the time 600 gets deployed (2015 or later), probably the only regional left will be USCC (and SouthernLINC, which will be fine with refarming their SMR from iDEN), and I don't think they need the spectrum. Barring a carve-out, Sprint and T-Mo might be able to set up a shell company and go in to bid together like the cable companies did with 700, splitting the winnings 50-50 later.

 

I agree with T-Mo that the US gov should seek enough money to get what they need (pay off UHF holders incentives, build FirstNET), and not any more.

 

Now watch Charlie jump into the fray and introduce some chaos He might like to pair some 600 with his high-band holdings to start a 5th national network if T-Mobile doesn't want him either, but I'm not sure he has the wherewithal to do it. Would be fun to see him try though!

This isn't Europe. As left-wing as Obama is, FCC is not gonna give non duo carriers a huge carve out.

 

I'll be ecstatic if FCC effectively "reserves" 20 MHz of nationwide 600 for non duo.

 

Like REALLY ecstatic. Laughing-crying ecstatic.

Edited July 28, 2013 by asdf190

[gnoj]

This isn't Europe. As left-wing as Obama is, FCC is not gonna give non duo carriers a huge carve out. I'll be ecstatic if FCC effectively "reserves" 20 MHz of nationwide 600 for non duo. Like REALLY ecstatic. Laughing-crying ecstatic.

Obama, left-wing/progressive? Don't make me laugh. Obama the candidate, sure, but not the president so much. So you've got a point there. The best we can hope for is not a direct carve-out so much as some modest limits on per-market low-band holdings by the duo. Who Wheeler will side with is still an unknown at this point.

[mhammett]

Sure, they can employ that all they like. But when you have "Time Division" and "Frequency Division", when a mobile device is connected continually, it's always taking up space that someone else can't use. You can traffic shape all day, but an abuser is still an abuser, as wireless is inherently shared. Even if traffic-shaped, an always-on "home user" who eats 50 GB of data a month from tethering is causing a negative experience for others on their site.

 

A poor RF quality user causes more damage than a 50 gigabyte user. Maybe the carriers will stop cheaping out on their infrastructure for once...

 

 

SoftBank and Sprint combined, which have a subscriber total of ~88M, are dwarfed by the combined strength of Vodafone (450M), Airtel (266M), SingTel (265M), América Móvil (252M), Telefónica (250M), Orange (230M), VimpelCom (215M), TeliaSonera (160M), Telenor (150M), and Deutsche Telekom (130M). All of those operators participate in the GSM/UMTS/LTE ecosystem, and all of them are doing GSM/LTE or GSM/UMTS/LTE with LTE FDD and LTE TDD with Bands 7+38 instead of Band 41 LTE TDD. That is an ecosystem of 2368 million (~2.4 billion) subscribers.

 

You said an awful lot of stuff that didn't really matter. If pure size dictated what happened in the telecom world, China would rule. However, Japan and the Americas accounted for over 50% of iPhone 5 sales. When one says the Americas, it's pretty much the United States. There aren't a lot of subscribers with enough money to buy an iPhone outside of the States in the Americas. Sure, Canadians have money, but there aren't many of them. There are a lot of people south of Texas, but the GDP of all of the Americas was about $21T, with the US making up $14.7T and Canada $1.34T. That's not an awful lot left for everyone else. If 88M subs isn't enough buying power, you're not likely to ever have enough buying power.

 

Lol. Well, to wrap up that previous discussion that was so unceremoniously terminated, let's hope the FCC doesn't require any EBS divestments in return for a 600 MHz carve-out. I could see the twin bells lobbying for that if they can't stop spectrum limits on them altogether. I want 160 MHz of TDD LTE (or however much Sprint would hold now after the Wi-Max shutdown).

 

Must have gigabit, must have gigabit... I know, totally overkill for cell phones, but maybe it'll force fixed-line ISP's to match Google Fiber and FiOS sooner.

 

Edit: Just noticed the previous discussion was moved here, if anyone got lost. Thanks lilotimz!

 

I am biased against the way the government has laid out the repacking of the TV stations, but I don't want any cellular carriers in the "600 MHz" band. Fixed services will go faster when there's a demand for them to do so.

[mhammett]

Don't you mean 100 MHz?

If 20x20 gets 150 Mbps, then 5 times that should bump up the bits/s/Hz.

 

No.

[maximus1987/lou99]

No.

 

Please elaborate.

[WiWavelength]

Don't you mean 100 MHz?

 

No, I mean hyperbole.

 

AJ

[koiulpoi]

A poor RF quality user causes more damage than a 50 gigabyte user. Maybe the carriers will stop cheaping out on their infrastructure for once...

Wait, are you really saying "If the carriers upgraded their infrastructure, rampant abuse of shared wireless resources would be acceptable"? o.o

[gnoj]

I am biased against the way the government has laid out the repacking of the TV stations, but I don't want any cellular carriers in the "600 MHz" band. Fixed services will go faster when there's a demand for them to do so.

 

Oh there's demand, just not at the exorbitant prices cable companies are charging for a tenth that speed. Otherwise in Google Fiber neighborhoods everyone would be signing up for the (almost) free 5 Mbps package, rather than the $70 gigabit. The price to deliver fixed-line services continues to drop, but all the telcos and cable companies can think of doing is instituting caps to protect TV revenues, under the guise of protecting the network.

 

Would you care to explain your dislike of the plan to repack TV stations? Would you prefer more OTA channels rather than wireless data service? I suspect they could make room in the lower bands for most if not all of the channels currently occupying 600 MHz.

[WiWavelength]

3GPP infrastructure will be much cheaper for Sprint to acquire now, since it can use the combined strength of Sprint and SoftBank, but 3GPP2+3GPP gear will continue to get more expensive. That is why SoftBank wants to convert Sprint to 3GPP-only by 2017. It doesn't want to fund what it considers to be a waste (which it does consider the 3GPP2 gear to be that).

 

Neal may need to be careful what he suggests.  If economic forces mean that Sprint must convert fully to the 3GPP side of things in the next few years, then it will likely just acquire Neal's beloved T-Mobile -- as many already think Sprint will do.  And that will present the easiest transition opportunity, since T-Mobile will bring to the table a preformed W-CDMA 1900, W-CDMA 2100+1700, and LTE 2100+1700 network.  Move Sprint subs to T-Mobile's W-CDMA network, then refarm CDMA2000 to W-CDMA and LTE.  Additionally, Sprint gets back into the AWS game, which Neal seems to think is so vitally important.

 

So, if we are making unpopular prognostications around here, well, there you have one...

 

AJ

[Nickel]

Neal may need to be careful what he suggests.  If economic forces mean that Sprint must convert fully to the 3GPP side of things in the next few years, then it will likely just acquire Neal's beloved T-Mobile -- as many already think Sprint will do.  And that will present the easiest transition opportunity, since T-Mobile will bring to the table a preformed W-CDMA 1900, W-CDMA 2100+1700, and LTE 2100+1700 network.  Move Sprint subs to T-Mobile's W-CDMA network, then refarm CDMA2000 to W-CDMA and LTE.  Additionally, Sprint gets back into the AWS game, which Neal seems to think is so vitally important.

 

So, if we are making unpopular prognostications around here, well, there you have one...

 

AJ

If Prepaid is the key then no one could stop a Sprint-T-Mobile merger/accquistion. I mean, how could Verizon and AT&T compete with Virgin Mobile, Boost Mobile and T-Mobile (that's a lot of mobiles) on the prepaid front?

[mhammett]

Please elaborate.

 

First off, 20x20 is really 40 MHz of spectrum, even if only 20 MHz is used for downloading. Also, any spectral efficiencies that may be theoretically possible through elimination of guards are eliminated by having reduced receiver sensitivity. Every doubling of the channel size is a 3 dB decrease in receive sensitivity.

 

Wait, are you really saying "If the carriers upgraded their infrastructure, rampant abuse of shared wireless resources would be acceptable"? o.o

 

No, I just said the carriers have been extremely lax in how aggressive they are with the roll out of technology in their access networks. Then because of this, they haven't had a need to really get serious about their backhaul either. There has been nothing to prevent the roll out of small cells to improve dense environments, but they've only done so a relatively few number of times. There have been many forms of advanced antenna technologies, yet even the most modern of roll outs still uses very dumb tech. Fixed wireless providers haven't been a whole lot better, but we are typically ahead of the curve relative to the mobile guys.

 

Oh there's demand, just not at the exorbitant prices cable companies are charging for a tenth that speed. Otherwise in Google Fiber neighborhoods everyone would be signing up for the (almost) free 5 Mbps package, rather than the $70 gigabit. The price to deliver fixed-line services continues to drop, but all the telcos and cable companies can think of doing is instituting caps to protect TV revenues, under the guise of protecting the network.

 

Would you care to explain your dislike of the plan to repack TV stations? Would you prefer more OTA channels rather than wireless data service? I suspect they could make room in the lower bands for most if not all of the channels currently occupying 600 MHz.

 

Apparently you have no clue what it takes to run a network. Google's Fiber network is most definitely a one-off, non-repeatable project. 1) They are cherry picking where gets the service to reduce expenses. There is no universal service like with cable or telco. 2) Google's network is also primarily a push network, so adding a ton of pull users has little to no effect on peering\transit. 3) Google isn't even recouping their fixed costs on the 5 megabit plan.

 

Their whole intent is to do just enough to pressure lawmakers into regulating existing providers do the same. The market has always delivered what the majority of consumers needed. There is no application on the horizon that requires more than 10 megabit per user. The only application that requires that much is Super HD video streaming. When broadband first debuted at several times faster than dial-up, what was the primary driver of that technology? The illegal downloading of music. There was nothing legal that required those magnitude larger connections for several years.

 

To back up my point, I have used my own money to build and maintain a fixed network. No government subsidies to taint the market. Not only do I have the knowledge of what it takes to build networks, but I also know what consumers want...  because they vote with their dollars.

 

In most markets, there is plenty of room to repack the channels. However, the mobile providers don't need any more sub-1 GHz spectrum. Leave it as originally intended as unlicensed. The cellular carriers have 194 MHz of spectrum under 1 Ghz. If that was all the same LTE that Sprint is using on their network, that's 1,435 megabit/s. Now I understand that some of that is reserved for uplink, but that can be reallocated for optimal usage. How much more speed do they need at penetrating buildings? PCS\AWS already do a pretty decent job of that. Not great, no, but in a top-down usage model like Sprint will supposedly have with LTE, there's not a lot left to use that. They have another 210 MHz in that range for another 1,554 megabit/s.Small cells, pico cells, WiFi offload, etc. will have the ability to take away a significant amount of the traffic and building penetration concerns. You don't always need a gigabit fiber ran to a tower, either. In the markets that EoC is available in, most small cells could use that or microwave for backhaul. 23, 24, 60, and 70 - 90 GHz work out great for the 1 - 3 mile shots that would be needed to go from small-cell locations to other backhaul. There is existing 24 GHz equipment that can do reliable 750\750 megabit PtP shots at up to 3 miles, further in better rain zones or throughput expectations. 60 and 70 - 90 GHz will soon be doing 10 gigabit.

 

How much spectrum do the fixed guys have below 2.5 GHz? 111 MHz and that's shared with Wi-Fi, baby monitors, garage doors, security cameras, food microwaves, geo-location, smart meters, etc. Quality and speed expectations are much greater for fixed networks than for mobile.

 

The TVWS was supposed to be given to unlicensed uses.

[Conan Kudo]

Neal may need to be careful what he suggests.  If economic forces mean that Sprint must convert fully to the 3GPP side of things in the next few years, then it will likely just acquire Neal's beloved T-Mobile -- as many already think Sprint will do.  And that will present the easiest transition opportunity, since T-Mobile will bring to the table a preformed W-CDMA 1900, W-CDMA 2100+1700, and LTE 2100+1700 network.  Move Sprint subs to T-Mobile's W-CDMA network, then refarm CDMA2000 to W-CDMA and LTE.  Additionally, Sprint gets back into the AWS game, which Neal seems to think is so vitally important.

 

So, if we are making unpopular prognostications around here, well, there you have one...

 

AJ

An even less popular suggestion would be that Sprint's subs would drain away, causing SoftBank to make a deal with Deutsche Telekom to do a spectrum sharing deal with T-Mobile and permitting Sprint to use the procurement JV that T-Mobile uses to buy equipment to expand and deploy faster and cheaper. Sprint would get immediate access to PCS WCDMA, AWS LTE, and it can have its spectrum used to fill in the gaps for PCS WCDMA service. With network sharing, T-Mobile's network and Sprint's 3GPP networks would be one and the same, while Sprint would maintain on ESMR its own CDMA1X network. The end result would be that Sprint would be effectively an MVNO, because a merger or business combination of any kind would probably not be permitted by the DoJ (and maybe still even the FCC).

 

You said an awful lot of stuff that didn't really matter. If pure size dictated what happened in the telecom world, China would rule. However, Japan and the Americas accounted for over 50% of iPhone 5 sales. When one says the Americas, it's pretty much the United States. There aren't a lot of subscribers with enough money to buy an iPhone outside of the States in the Americas. Sure, Canadians have money, but there aren't many of them. There are a lot of people south of Texas, but the GDP of all of the Americas was about $21T, with the US making up $14.7T and Canada $1.34T. That's not an awful lot left for everyone else. If 88M subs isn't enough buying power, you're not likely to ever have enough buying power.

China doesn't matter because it refuses to play in the global space. It doesn't do much in the 3GPP, and most of its operators just quietly use bits of it without really contributing. The infrastructure vendors contribute some, but not nearly as much as others do. The Chinese government also makes the state-run telecom industry incredibly insular by forcing the use of Chinese infrastructure gear and Chinese handset vendors. This makes China's use of Band 40 and 41 effectively irrelevant, because the vendors and suppliers that Chinese operators use aren't often playing the global space.

 

And strictly speaking, the iPhone is a luxury brand, which means that China is practically off limits for it. The iPhone doesn't sell well on China Unicom and China Telecom, because it costs too much. China Mobile won't ever sell it because of technology and because the customers won't buy it from the operator.

 

And while there's diminishing returns on scale larger than 200M subscribers, suppliers will still give priority to larger customers. When you can deliver one handset that works for over 2 billion subscribers, you can make a serious amount of money on the operator orders for even a fraction of that 2 billion.

 

Vendors know to make the assumption that around 25% to 40% of the subscriber base will adopt a new smartphone within 12 months (postpaid contract tenures mainly). This number is higher for cheaper handsets on prepaid, but lower for higher-end handsets on prepaid. This is where having a larger number of subscribers helps. The fewer the number of subscribers, the less likely the operator will order enough to break even. 

 

And strictly speaking, there is a bit of a balancing effect in the 3GPP. While some operators have more influence than others (VimpelCom, Deutsche Telekom, AT&T, etc.), they can't set policy because others smack them down (Vodafone, Telenor, Telefónica, etc.) and force a degree of reasonableness in global affairs. I wish they had with the US 700MHz affairs, but most didn't care since everyone knew that no one would be dumb enough to adopt the US band plan. Until some countries did... *sigh*

[bigsnake49]

Neal may need to be careful what he suggests.  If economic forces mean that Sprint must convert fully to the 3GPP side of things in the next few years, then it will likely just acquire Neal's beloved T-Mobile -- as many already think Sprint will do.  And that will present the easiest transition opportunity, since T-Mobile will bring to the table a preformed W-CDMA 1900, W-CDMA 2100+1700, and LTE 2100+1700 network.  Move Sprint subs to T-Mobile's W-CDMA network, then refarm CDMA2000 to W-CDMA and LTE.  Additionally, Sprint gets back into the AWS game, which Neal seems to think is so vitally important.

 

So, if we are making unpopular prognostications around here, well, there you have one...

 

AJ

 

AJ, you cut me to the deep, man! Unpopular indeed .

[bigsnake49]

An even less popular suggestion would be that Sprint's subs would drain away, causing SoftBank to make a deal with Deutsche Telekom to do a spectrum sharing deal with T-Mobile and permitting Sprint to use the procurement JV that T-Mobile uses to buy equipment to expand and deploy faster and cheaper. Sprint would get immediate access to PCS WCDMA, AWS LTE, and it can have its spectrum used to fill in the gaps for PCS WCDMA service. With network sharing, T-Mobile's network and Sprint's 3GPP networks would be one and the same, while Sprint would maintain on ESMR its own CDMA1X network. The end result would be that Sprint would be effectively an MVNO, because a merger or business combination of any kind would probably not be permitted by the DoJ (and maybe still even the FCC).

 

Don't count on that (the FCC or DOJ) not approving the deal.

[Conan Kudo]

I am biased against the way the government has laid out the repacking of the TV stations, but I don't want any cellular carriers in the "600 MHz" band. Fixed services will go faster when there's a demand for them to do so.

I'm actually not happy about the 600MHz efforts as well. I'd rather that the mobile operators be forced to rebalance sub-1GHz spectral allocations to get everyone on more even footing. And I'm rather horrified with how the current plans are structured for 600MHz.

 

While I'm not a member of a WISP, I do consider them to offer significant value, and I think 600MHz should remain mostly as-is. However, if it were possible, I'd like to see 450MHz reallocated for mobile services. Or perhaps reconfigure the 700MHz band plan to be less screwed up (though I'm not sure if that's possible).

[mhammett]

Well, I should say the demand for fixed services in rural areas is there, but no usable spectrum.

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[mhammett]

The problem with lower spectrum becomes the size of the antenna with sufficient performance in a mobile device.

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[Conan Kudo]

The problem with lower spectrum becomes the size of the antenna with sufficient performance in a mobile device.

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

That is true, but we've already got antennas that'll work well enough in a mobile device for the 450-470 MHz band in FDD. That's why Brazil auctioned it as part of the 2.6GHz licenses and mandated broad coverage requirements with the band. They also did the legwork to get the band approved in the 3GPP as Band 31. Right now, the band is allocated in the US for walkie-talkies on an unlicensed basis, but perhaps they can be shifted into 600MHz relatively painlessly along with other unlicensed operations.

 

600MHz on an unlicensed basis for fixed wireless operations would make rural WiMAX much more palatable. I mention specifically WiMAX because it is designed to operate on unlicensed bands. Technically, you can do WiMAX on 900MHz ISM, 2.4GHz ISM, and 5.8GHz ISM bands, too. If 600MHz was allocated on an unlicensed basis, the IEEE would enable it for WiMAX in short order. WiMAX is also relatively cheap to design and build, because of the provisions that the IEEE requires for standardization (which the 3GPP does not require).

[koiulpoi]

 

No, I just said the carriers have been extremely lax in how aggressive they are with the roll out of technology in their access networks. Then because of this, they haven't had a need to really get serious about their backhaul either. There has been nothing to prevent the roll out of small cells to improve dense environments, but they've only done so a relatively few number of times. There have been many forms of advanced antenna technologies, yet even the most modern of roll outs still uses very dumb tech. Fixed wireless providers haven't been a whole lot better, but we are typically ahead of the curve relative to the mobile guys.

Ohh, I get it. You weren't actually replying to my post, you were using it as a springboard to talk at everyone here about your own topics, those that hadn't previously been mentioned in the thread. Okay.

 

[mhammett]

Well, currently spectrum is available in different spots down to about 50 MHz. What happens after the repack is kind of up in the air, pun not intended. TV stations haven't locked into selling their licenses yet. WISPs can be flexible in what we can use, but contiguous spectrum is nice for larger channels.

 

802.11af and 802.22 are slated to be the standards in TVWS, but so far it is proprietary gear. Carlson and Adaptrum have been around the most, now that Neul has dropped out. Redline came out with a line this year. I'm sure there are others, but they haven't made as much of a splash.

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

 

 

[gnoj]

Apparently you have no clue what it takes to run a network. Google's Fiber network is most definitely a one-off, non-repeatable project...

 

..To back up my point, I have used my own money to build and maintain a fixed network. No government subsidies to taint the market. Not only do I have the knowledge of what it takes to build networks, but I also know what consumers want...  because they vote with their dollars...

 

In most markets, there is plenty of room to repack the channels. However, the mobile providers don't need any more sub-1 GHz spectrum. Leave it as originally intended as unlicensed. The cellular carriers have 194 MHz of spectrum under 1 Ghz. If that was all the same LTE that Sprint is using on their network, that's 1,435 megabit/s. Now I understand that some of that is reserved for uplink, but that can be reallocated for optimal usage. How much more speed do they need at penetrating buildings? PCS\AWS already do a pretty decent job of that...

 

I am actually well aware that Google did not design GF to be something that would be rolled out nationwide and are cherry-picking their deployments (for example, buying Provo's dark fiber for just a $1). I was citing them as an example that the demand for higher speeds does exist, at the right price point. We're not talking 10 Mbps being offered for $40, 50 for $50, 100 for $60, gigabit for $100, etc, with consumers "voting" for the $40 plan because that's all they need. They're signing up for whatever the cable or telco is offering them because it's the only speed offered at a rate that is affordable to them in their area. I suppose VZ won't see much demand for their new 500 Mbps tier, but anyone could tell them that.. not many in this economy would be willing to fork over $300+fees a month for internet, regardless of the want or need.

 

Peering and transit costs on fixed-line broadband have been dropping for years, and yet prices keep rising, with the use of caps growing. Data use is a poor measure of a detrimental effect on fixed networks, and the problems from sharing a fixed resource are not as acute as they are for wireless, since heavy use for an individual could occur at a time of day when broadband is plentiful (basically any time other than the early evening). ISP's are banking on people being accustomed now to the metered plans on their phones rather than the traditional flat billing at home.

 

There are plenty of current and potential applications that could take advantage of speeds over 10 mbps (particularly on the upload side as various services are moving to "the cloud"), but ignoring individual use, the number of internet-connected devices in family households is rapidly growing, so of course the more bandwidth shared the better. As average speeds to the home increase, I'm sure additional applications will arise that take advantage of the bandwidth.

 

So good for you for building your own network.. I applaud start-ups like sonic.net, but many of the larger incumbents are much more content sitting on their aging networks (or in the case of VZ, ripping them out altogether in favor of the even more profitable wireless sector), assisted by local regulations that protect them as the cable or telco monopoly without also further regulation treating them as such, leading to the worst of both worlds.

 

I agree that the current allocation of spectrum is rather inefficient, and won't be entirely fixed unless AJ is appointed spectrum czar.. but repacking broadcast TV if there's plenty of room for them elsewhere is one good step. The use of cellular broadband is booming while viewership of OTA TV remains flat, so it makes sense to dedicate more spectrum to cellular, as long as there are stringent build-out requirements to make sure it is not being wasted. Few here would argue with the idea that AT&T and VZW have too much sub-1 GHz spectrum, but many of the smaller players (most especially T-Mobile) would definitely stand to benefit from the 600 auction. I don't want the U.S. to end up like Canada, with only 3 major players that are all resented by the people and government of Canada.

 

LTE does not propagate as well as CDMA 1x or even Ev-DO, so lower band spectrum is more important now than before. In the middle of suburban Chicago less than a mile from the tower I cannot get LTE 1900 in my basement, and the signal is borderline (for VoLTE, assuming the cut-off is about -107 dBm RSRP) on the first floor, but the 1x800 signal is quite strong throughout. Unless you want public wi-fi everywhere (I'm guessing you don't), it will remain very important to have a cell signal that penetrates indoors.

 

TD LTE is great, but it's scope will remain limited to city streets and high-trafficked events (like sports stadiums), unless cell site density increases through the use of femtocells and other sorts of micro-sites.

 

I wonder if Sprint will reuse any equipment (mainly panels) from clearwire's current setup and move the equipment down to the sprint rack (on colocated towers) and install dual mode rru for TD LTE/WiMax installs. For cost savings on NV towers. Also will sprint build out more TD LTE to just more than the top 100 cities. Even if it is just a couple sites here and there in small towns?

 

My guess is no since WiMax is being shut down in less than two years. Regarding a wider buildout of TDD, I think it's just too early to say. Son has hinted that he wants to expand coverage to better compete with ATT/VZW, but usually SMR (or even 600) will be adequate for that. I hope he's pretty liberal with the deployment of TDD but the top 100 will definitely be the priority. Given the delays NV has encountered so far, that question is probably not one Sprint will get around to answering for a little while.

[iansltx]

A few notes here:

 

1. Sprint's subscriber base isn't going anywhere anytime soon. Maybe when T-Mobile actually starts serving areas with below-suburb population densities with WCDMA...heck, even with EDGE. But they refuse to do that. There's consolidation in the urban market (Leap, MetroPCS) because even at high densities there are only so many ways you can split that pie.

 

2. Once you have high quality wireline back haul to a site, the cost of additional bandwidth is marginal. I'm sure the interfaces to Sprint equipment...on both aides of the link...can do gigabit, and Sprint's AAV vendors will give them a decent deal because the cost for them is marginal as well...and Sprint has plenty of scale.

 

Now if we're talking about wireless fed sites there may be issues, particularly on longer spurs. But I would just expect those sites to be last on the list for TD upgrades. That, or if they need TD they will get fiber or short range, high cap wireless backhaul.

 

So, while I'm not sure how quickly Sprint will start expanding the fringes of their network to deal with an increasingly hostile roaming environment (1x on VZW, 95 percent of the time), they will have money to get that done in the $16B, even after NV2.0, I think. Though I wouldn't expect more than about 500 new sites to come of the first wave of expansion.

 

 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD