Sprint and Regional carriers LTE tie-ups

[twospirits]

I wanted to get the members views on this article about Sprint thinking about partnering/having agreements with regional carriers for LTE sharing/roaming.

 

Pros or cons?

 

TS

[omega]

I wanted to get the members views on this article about Sprint thinking about partnering/having agreements with regional carriers for LTE sharing/roaming.

 

Pros or cons?

 

TS

 

I hope this turns out to be true I never understood why us cellular and c spire didn't join up with sprints NV plan.

[S4GRU]

I wanted to get the members views on this article about Sprint thinking about partnering/having agreements with regional carriers for LTE sharing/roaming.

 

Pros or cons?

 

TS

 

I'm all for it. I think it's all pros, if it is structured right. I wouldn't want to see anything structured like it was with Pioneer. We all know how that went down.

 

Robert

[lordsutch]

In principle it's a great idea. In practice I have to wonder if anyone will build phones to take advantage of all these different frequency bands (700, 800 SMR, 1700/2100 AWS, 1900 PCS, 2500...); pentaband UMTS phones still aren't widespread (iPhone, for example, still doesn't do AWS 1700), and so far everyone's being provincial in their LTE phones - Sprint in PCS G only, AT&T and Verizon in 700 only, other countries' LTE phones running in AWS only - so even if you wanted to roam on LTE there's no way to do it. If everyone's serious about rolling out VoLTE that has to be fixed in the next phone upgrade cycle.

 

Certainly I think the regionals, super-regionals (I'd put US Cellular and Cricket/Leap here), Sprint, and T-Mobile are going to have to work together to have any shot at having similar national LTE coverage to Verizon and AT&T and to ensure that the halo phones like the iPhone and Android flagships get built for their networks.

[S4GRU]

Good points. It would only be practical for PCS operators looking to expand into LTE and possibly looking to exploit some 800 spectrum with Sprint.

 

Getting device OEMs to support a carriers native spectrum plus all of Sprint spectrum seems too tall a feat at this time. They would need to share some frequencies already.

 

Robert - Posted from my E4GT with ICS using Forum Runner