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


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The price difference between 225 of backhaul and 675 of backhaul is minimal. Over 150 or 200, just get a GigE.

 

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Thanks for breaking the price down for us! That totally makes me wonder what's the reason behind their ~80Mbps rate limit on unloaded cells, day or night, city wide. Could be rate limiting, but why would they do that?

 

For T-Mobile it makes much more sense as their backhaul is still 50Mbps in many markets, which used to be alright in their 5Mhz markets, def not cool in 10Mhz FDD LTE markets.

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Total LTE = ~444 Mbps/sector under optimum conditions

So then lilotimz (or however you spell it) is incorrect. The largest single dish microwave link could do 12 sites at ~500. The largest single radio could do... 4? Maybe 8. Cut in half if doubling up carriers. Once you have all of that, cut in half for crappy connections to handsets.

 

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Total LTE = ~444 Mbps/sector under optimum conditions

 

Corrected:

Total LTE = ~444 Mbps/site under optimum conditions

 

So then lilotimz (or however you spell it) is incorrect. The largest single dish microwave link could do 12 sites at ~500. The largest single radio could do... 4? Maybe 8. Cut in half if doubling up carriers. Once you have all of that, cut in half for crappy connections to handsets.

 

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk

 

Oops:  I meant per site, not per sector.  That actually makes the numbers better as far as backhaul is concerned.  Also, backhaul doesn't care about crappy airlinks, attenuation, distance, radio frequency interference, etc., because all it is forwarding is the traffic that actually makes it through the various radios (which will always be fewer Mbps than the theoretical maximums).

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Oops:  I meant per site, not per sector.  That actually makes the numbers better as far as backhaul is concerned.  Also, backhaul doesn't care about crappy airlinks, attenuation, distance, radio frequency interference, etc., because all it is forwarding is the traffic that actually makes it through the various radios (which will always be fewer Mbps than the theoretical maximums).

Right, I read it as per site. Well, but crappy links to the mobile devices reduces your need for backhaul. On that 444, you may really only need 300 or 400 because of poor airlinks. Enough so that you could probably just count on it.

 

FYI: I built and run my own network consisting mostly of microwave.

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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.

That surprised me too. If you had asked, I would have even said that southern OC never had a lick of wimax. I also remember checking the clear website a couple months ago and it didn't show wimax in many areas. Did sprint get busy after buying the rest of clear or did they just drink the kool-aid because I want some of that.

 

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That surprised me too. If you had asked, I would have even said that southern OC never had a lick of wimax. I also remember checking the clear website a couple months ago and it didn't show wimax in many areas. Did sprint get busy after buying the rest of clear or did they just drink the kool-aid because I want some of that.

 

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I have a feeling they add some sites, because it is the same way in chicago too.

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That surprised me too. If you had asked, I would have even said that southern OC never had a lick of wimax. I also remember checking the clear website a couple months ago and it didn't show wimax in many areas. Did sprint get busy after buying the rest of clear or did they just drink the kool-aid because I want some of that.

 

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I don't think it's totally clear what "Spark" is supposed to mean on those maps. Sprint is coloring places around Chicago that never had WiMax as "Spark" as well.

 

I do think that the "Turbo" (I hate the way they show that, so hard to see) areas are definitely Clear WiMax-now-LTE sites with upgraded backhaul.

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I don't think it's totally clear what "Spark" is supposed to mean on those maps. Sprint is coloring places around Chicago that never had WiMax as "Spark" as well.

 

I do think that the "Turbo" (I hate the way they show that, so hard to see) areas are definitely Clear WiMax-now-LTE sites with upgraded backhaul.

 

Pink, slightly pink, a little purple, more purple.... very clear.....  :lol:  :rofl:  :td:

Yep, very bad colours for voice and data.

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That surprised me too. If you had asked, I would have even said that southern OC never had a lick of wimax. I also remember checking the clear website a couple months ago and it didn't show wimax in many areas. Did sprint get busy after buying the rest of clear or did they just drink the kool-aid because I want some of that.

 

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For me personally Wimax was in the areas I was usually at. However, there were a lot of wholes and in building was aweful being on jusr 2600. My max download speed I got at home was 11megs on wimax.

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so article out on sprint spark in NYC tested on HTC one max.... the jist of the article all 5 lauched markets... launched at 25% coverage... NYC is at 35%... ave speeds on a loaded network will be 5-12mbps...

 

http://gigaom.com/2013/11/19/testing-sprints-new-spark-network-in-nyc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+jkOnTheRun+%28GigaOM%3A+Mobile%29

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so article out on sprint spark in NYC tested on HTC one max.... the jist of the article all 5 lauched markets... launched at 25% coverage... NYC is at 35%... ave speeds on a loaded network will be 5-12mbps...http://gigaom.com/2013/11/19/testing-sprints-new-spark-network-in-nyc/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+jkOnTheRun+(GigaOM%3A+Mobile)

I haven't been this happy in a while. Sprint is showing people how you do LTE! Just posted to Google+.

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I noticed how there aren't a bunch of comments bashing Sprint at the end of this article. I guess the results left a lot of people speechless. Looks like Spark is the kryptonite to Internet trolls.

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I noticed how there aren't a bunch of comments bashing Sprint at the end of this article. I guess the results left a lot of people speechless. Looks like Spark is the kryptonite to Internet trolls.

 

The article is only an hour old. You have to give the trolls some time....

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So for anyone that stated that the Nexus 5 is definitely being blocked from accessing bands I believe this is a true statement because I am down on 47th between 5th and 6th and I am NOT able to connect to band 41... it's my day off so I went to investigate

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The article is only an hour old. You have to give the trolls some time....

They're just figuring out their angle of attack. It will be two things...

 

1. Sprint will not be able to maintain their network and 50-60Mbps will drop to 100kbps in a month

2. This is an unburdened network. Sprint's speeds will be lower than 3G soon.

 

But it's a new day with Softbank. Sprint will maintain its network. Also, the one 20MHz TDD "Spark" carrier has more capacity than an AT&T or VZW 10MHz FDD carrier, and that capacity grows exponentially when you consider that it will be deployed more densely. And Sprint has half the customers. No sweat.

 

And Sprint can deploy up to an additional two more of these mondo capacity/speed TDD-LTE carriers. And in many markets, even more than three.

 

Now it will all be about results. The entire WiMax network needs to be converted, stat. And with the proper supporting backhaul. That will really right the ship. And then they can take a steady approach to adding Band 41 to all the NV sites. And they should prioritize them in traffic order. The busiest sites first, all the way down the line until they are all complete.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

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I'll be that guy.  To the people who aren't in a spark area and have been waiting since the wimax rollout for 4G this is just more of Sprint's promises that likely will not be delivered as they are presented.  It is the number of years Sprint takes to do anything that seems to wear on people even if they are actually working fast.  It just doesn't seem like they are really delivering on all of their NV/LTE announcements when you have been waiting years for better data speeds.  I am sure "by the end" Sprint's network will be in fine shape.  Let's just hope there are enough people around to enjoy it.

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I'll be that guy.  To the people who aren't in a spark area and have been waiting since the wimax rollout for 4G this is just more of Sprint's promises that likely will not be delivered as they are presented.  It is the number of years Sprint takes to do anything that seems to wear on people even if they are actually working fast.  It just doesn't seem like they are really delivering on all of their NV/LTE announcements when you have been waiting years for better data speeds.  I am sure "by the end" Sprint's network will be in fine shape.  Let's just hope there are enough people around to enjoy it.

Between Sprint towers, converted iDen towers and Clear towers, there are over 50,000 towers to be converted and upgraded from the ground up. This is permitting, equipment, backhaul and testing. Add to that the many small cells, DAS, etc being deployed. Additionally, the time and expense of decommissioning all those iDen and Clear towers along with removing legacy equipment for every tower. Taking all this into consideration along with the many acquisitions that were made in the past year, I don't see how anyone could be critical of the rate that Sprint is completing their Network Vision plan. In the last 3 months alone, I have seen the signal strength and data speeds in my town go from barely there 1x and 0.1 mbps EVDO speeds to solid 1x even deep inside brick buildings and 2+mbps EVDO/30+mbps LTE speeds. It's coming. It's literally getting better every day.

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Internet trolls will also point out that Spark is using the 2.6 GHz frequency and that won't Spark work in buildings. 

 

In reality that's one of the easier points to debunk, 2.6 has advantages like being much less prone to interference and better for high capacity applications.  It's like the same people who say that 700 MHz spectrum is perfect when clearly it is more prone to interference and also has much deeper issues with channels crowding due to the distance it travels. If anything, LTE is more advantageous toward higher band spectrum when it comes to capacity. 

 

I would say the biggest direct comparison would be to compare a Verizon 20x20 AWS channel to Spark. I'd guess that Spark would compare favorably when you consider the disadvantages of using FDD at 20x20 MHz compared to TD at 20 MHz asymmetrically. 

 

Also, when you compare that Verizon relies on 2100 MHz for the downlink on AWS, that's not such a large gap between the Spark frequency and AWS, now is it?

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http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/FCC-13-122A1.pdf

 

This will help a lot with the permitting excuse. I say excuse because it takes them a lot longer to do things than what it actually takes for permitting. They also blame permitting when the new gear is clearly already on the structure.

 

 

Also, GigaOm is mostly written by fools or those advocating some cause that they admit really isn't that bad.

 

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http://www.howardforums.com/showthread.php/1700496-T-Mobile-s-Chief-Hopes-to-Overtake-Sprint-by-2015?p=15286379#post15286379

 

I set a little troll bait out, it's going to be fun to see what happens. I've already got one who said "what's going to happen when the network is loaded?" and I pointed out that T-Mobile wasn't loaded.  :lol:

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Wow they act like tmobile is the holy grail of wireless. If these fools would learn some business 101 they would understand that John Lengere was hired to turn around tmobile and make it atractive for a potential sale.

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