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LTE Plus / Enhanced LTE (was "Sprint Spark" - Official Name for the Tri-Band Network)


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so LA and Florida, I am in NYC and haven't stumbled across it yet .... even though sprint says the bands are live and I enabled my band 41 and 26 on my nexus....

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so LA and Florida, I am in NYC and haven't stumbled across it yet .... even though sprint says the bands are live and I enabled my band 41 and 26 on my nexus....

I read that the Nexus needs a software update to get on band 41. I have heard G2 people have changed settings and get it but not so much on the N5. The update is due early next year for the Nexus 5 and LG G2.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/4989-lg-google-nexus-5-users-thread/?p=238753

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Sprint's Guide showing what icon means what, weird they don't have a just "4G LTE" one for non Spark markets.

 

http://eguides.sprint.com/support/eguides/htconemax/index.html#htc_one_max_ug/status_bar.html

 

I hate the new Spark LTE icon.  I really hope when the Sprint Spark OTA update comes for the LG G2 that it won't be too difficult to replace the Spark icon with the current 4G LTE icon in the LGSystemUI.apk.

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So basically, "Turbo" = gigabit fiber backhaul, since I doubt there's a reliable microwave solution available yet for such speeds.

Nah, there are a number of options for getting gigabit backhaul reliably over microwave. Plenty of gear from vendors like Ubiquiti or Dragonwave that are capable of that.

 

(That's not to say Sprint is using it, but they certainly could if they wanted to.)

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So how much carrier bandwidth are they using for Band-41 right now?

Currently, one 20 MHz TDD carrier. Everyone has found the same EARFCN, thus no second or third carrier yet.

 

AJ

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There definitely seems to be something missing from the nexus 5 that prevents it connecting to b41 at this time.

this makes me sad.... but good to know as well

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Currently, one 20 MHz TDD carrier. Everyone has found the same EARFCN, thus no second or third carrier yet.

 

AJ

What's the center frequency? I've been seeing two major 20Mhz spans here in NYC, one in the 2500Mhz range, and other in the high 2600Mhz.

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1.) I had interpreted your post to mean that the backhaul for "Turbo" sites would rely exclusively on fiber rather than microwave.. I apologize if I was mistaken. If Sprint needs to resort to microwave in some areas (probably only on more rural, and therefore non-Clearwire sites) later on, I'll be curious to see what equipment they use.

 

2.) Ok. I figured it must vary somewhat, but hopefully it's at least ~400 Mbps, or more for high-capacity sites. I think they'd be best off just upgrading all sites to 1Gbps backhaul and use the surplus capacity on underutilized sites for fixed wireless. Although that scenario probably wouldn't apply to most Clearwire markets.

 

3.) Yes, I misspoke re the current relevance of the 100 Mbps 4G backhaul requirement. 2014 is just around the corner, however, and "Turbo"-level backhaul to a regular 4G NV site should also end up qualifying as one heck of an upgrade.

 

There's a ton of urban\suburban microwave. At least in Illinois, fiber availability at towers isn't dependent upon location too much. I suspect this is the case across most of the country as there are a ton of FTTT providers spending a ton of cash building out.

 

A few things here.  Number 1...new microwave equipment with the proper conditions and enough bandwidth can run 1Gbps.  This is not a microwave limitation.

 

I explain more below, but yes, 1 gigabit is easily met.

 

Nah, there are a number of options for getting gigabit backhaul reliably over microwave. Plenty of gear from vendors like Ubiquiti or Dragonwave that are capable of that.

 

(That's not to say Sprint is using it, but they certainly could if they wanted to.)

 

Actually, Ubiquiti does not have any microwave equipment capable of one gigabit. The closest is the AF24 at 700 megabit. If the AF24 had the same modulation levels as the AF5, then it would be roughly gigabit capable. Dragonwave was the first to break into gigabit under 60 GHz. Their Quantum platform achieves up to 4 gigabit using various forms of compression and XPIC. Their Compact+ can also exceed 1 gigabit now. Exalt holds the crown with 6 gigabit using 11 Ghz up to about 15 miles. This uses a single dish per end, but 6 radios per dish. It just uses brute force. Ceragon and SIAE both have more advanced technologies enabling 2 or 4 gigabit (I forget which) per radio utilizing MIMO, compression and better processors. There are more, but I am not going to spend all day typing. 60 - 90 GHz radios will soon support 10GigE.

 

Even in the city too, easier to get microwave over fiber.

 

It's easier in most cases, but not all.

 

So basically, "Turbo" = gigabit fiber backhaul, since I doubt there's a reliable microwave solution available yet for such speeds.

 

Since the NV backhaul contracts & gear call for scalability up to 1Gbps, are you saying that Sprint will be taking full advantage of those and jumping straight from the standard 100 Mbps to 1Gbps for their backhaul, even though the initial TDD deployment only calls for one 20MHz carrier per sector (or 3 total carriers per site, rather than 9)? If so, that is wise forethought- it would allow the deployment of additional LTE carriers on 2600 or even PCS to occur much more quickly.

 

Microwave is reliable up to 6 gigabit/s at a range up to 15 miles on 11 GHz from Exalt. Well, pending the license coordinator can get the channels freed up. There are some congested areas such as metro Chicago and metro New York due to the low-latency HFT industry. Here's a kicker some of you won't believe. Microwave has a lower latency than fiber. There are at least a dozen independent diverse microwave networks going from CME-Aurora to various centers in the New York metro. They're at least 25% faster (latency) than the best fiber routes.

 

There's minimal reason to not be engineering the microwave sites for 1 gigabit of throughput. The cost delta is insignificant compared to coming back and doing it again in a couple years. As far as their fiber sites, they aren't carrying the capital expenditure with the site, so it just depends on the pricing that comes back. For the fiber sites, it makes sense to only buy as much as you need for recurring expenses. Buy the equipment to handle as much as you forecast needing over 3 years, but only buy as much service as you need at that moment. Even for small operators such as myself, most carriers will rip up an old contract as long as the new contract is for more money. You negotiate a 100 megabit pipe now for $5/meg, then in 1.5 years renegotiate a GigE for $2/meg.

 

Now, what kind of services are they getting? MPLS circuits or GigE waves? GigE waves have a much lower cost per megabit than MPLS circuits, but only go down to GigE whereas MPLS can literally be any size. GigEs are a simple PtP whereas MPLS can be many to many, treating the carrier as a giant switch. MPLS makes sense for 100 megabit sites, whereas GigE waves make sense for anything larger. 10GigE waves make sense for 7 or 8 sites or more.

 

Legacy Sprint sites may be fiber, but I can show you dozens of CLWR sites on microwave.

 

There are at least 11,283 active Clearwire microwave licenses. Now that's not sites as there are stars, rings, meshes, etc. of the licenses among the sites. Certainly more than dozens.  ;-)

 

The Sprint site is showing all of OC/LA covered in Spark. I highly doubt that considering WiMax was never fully deployed resulting in several holes and it is B41.

 

The Sprint site sucks when it comes to explaining coverage. Practically my whole county has been LTE covered on the Sprint site, but due to attenuation (free space and obstruction), it's only usable in a few areas. The most important sites for it to be available haven't been done yet.

 

I'd like 150 Mbps at home for the price I pay for my mobile plans. Don't really see the need for it on a phone even if it is a smart phone.

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk

 

Probably not for insane peak speeds to a single phone (no one needs 150 megabit to an entire house, much less single device), but to better handle tons of users using 3 or 4 megabit instead of 150 kilobit. MU-MIMO will be a God-send when it's available.

 

It basically means, "This area is served by a TD-LTE site with fiber instead of microwave backhaul. You're welcome."

 

As I said before, NYC basically had fiber on every site as microwave backhaul isn't very suitable for a place with tons of buildings. As a result, nearly the whole city is "Turbo".

 

Is that what it means? I'm not sure of the need for differentiation.

 

What makes microwave backhaul not suitable for a place with tons of buildings? 60 - 90 Ghz shine in those short-range high density environments.

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https://www.dropbox.com/s/sfece8fcn8w2y2k/Sprint%20licenses%20DeKalb%20County-edited.gif

 

That's a shot of the Sprint microwave licenses in my area.

 

Site #5 has AT&T fiber as it had LTE long before anything else.

Based upon sizes of the microwave links and fiber routes in the area, I can conclude that 1, 3 and 9 have fiber.

I don't recall off the top of my head what site(s) in the bottom cluster have fiber and I don't feel like looking it up.

Site #2 does not.

 

Based upon this view of the links in my county and the fiber that I have access to, I would put fiber to sites 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 8 and possibly 9. I would put a microwave link between the last site served off of #3 back to #2. There is a new site just slightly above #9 that I would link to #9 and #3.

 

Almost all sites in the county would have two routes back to fiber. Each microwave link could be kept at 1 gigabit and there would be little oversubscription, either normally or in the event of a failure. I could do some additional engineering based on other fiber networks I have ready access to, but well, I don't gain anything from doing this post, so I'm not. The primary fiber network I have access to also has a location a couple blocks from a Sprint fiber POP, so an easy drain point.

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What's the center frequency? I've been seeing two major 20Mhz spans here in NYC, one in the 2500Mhz range, and other in the high 2600Mhz.

From my testing of B41, the EARFCN is 40978 which translates to 2628.8 MHz.

 

Sent from my MB855 using Tapatalk

 

 

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It is pretty compelling when looking at these screen shots. Softbank really knew the direction they wanted to take when they insisted on Sprint buying the rest of Clear.

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Currently, one 20 MHz TDD carrier. Everyone has found the same EARFCN, thus no second or third carrier yet.

 

AJ

 

Considering the swatch of spectrum Sprint now has in the 2.5-2.6ghz range, why not throw a 20x20 carrier out there to really bedazzle people?  

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Considering the swatch of spectrum Sprint now has in the 2.5-2.6ghz range, why not throw a 20x20 carrier out there to really bedazzle people?

 

It is not paired spectrum. Licensees do not just get to choose between FDD and TDD.

 

AJ

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So far, maximum speedtest results yield 59mbps for Clearwire's 20mhz FDD LTE-A.  

I've seen my cousin on AT&T pull 71Mbps on a 10mhz carrier (I think?).

 

Are Clearwire's speeds slower due to the FDD instead of TDD or is there some other kind of configuration?  I'm pretty satisfied with the speeds but curious as to why AT&T/Verizon on 10mhz channels pulling the same, if not faster speeds than Clearwire's 20Mhz rollout.

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So far, maximum speedtest results yield 59mbps for Clearwire's 20mhz FDD LTE-A.  

I've seen my cousin on AT&T pull 71Mbps on a 10mhz carrier (I think?).

 

Are Clearwire's speeds slower due to the FDD instead of TDD or is there some other kind of configuration?  I'm pretty satisfied with the speeds but curious as to why AT&T/Verizon on 10mhz channels pulling the same, if not faster speeds than Clearwire's 20Mhz rollout.

Backhaul. 

 

These first spark sites are first and foremost Clearwire sites and developed, planned, and equipment purchased by the cash strapped Clearwire regime. New ordered backhaul by Softbank / Sprint regime takes time to be delivered and we know just how long that can take if Sprint wants Clearwire sites to be up to NV standards. 

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Backhaul. 

 

These first spark sites are first and foremost Clearwire sites and developed, planned, and equipment purchased by the cash strapped Clearwire regime. New ordered backhaul by Softbank / Sprint regime takes time to be delivered and we know just how long that can take if Sprint wants Clearwire sites to be up to NV standards. 

Cool.  I'm excited now.  I assume the current backhaul is mostly microwave?

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Cool.  I'm excited now.  I assume the current backhaul is mostly microwave?

 

Mostly though there are some Fiber / AAV sites here and there.

 

Their microwave chains are extremely long (6+ hops average) and there's no way in hell they can get the max speeds for multiple 20mhz carriers from one fiber air link after 2-3 hops so they'd need to actually order physical backhaul. 

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Mostly though there are some Fiber / AAV sites here and there.

 

Their microwave chains are extremely long (6+ hops average) and there's no way in hell they can get the max speeds for multiple 20mhz carriers from one fiber air link after 2-3 hops so they'd need to actually order physical backhaul.

this is why I'm glad my closest site is a colocated site so it'll be easy for clear to hook to sprints scalable backhaul
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