When Sprint enables Carrier Aggregation...

[EmeraldReporter]

Will Sprint be isolating a single carrier block with single-band devices?

 

Say the HTC One M8 uses 2500-2519Mhz. When the Samsung Galaxy S6 is enabled with 3x CA, will that 3x CA overlap with 2500-2560? Or will it use the frequency ahead of it (2520-2579) and ignore the 'single-band' devices frequency?

Edited August 6, 2014 by EmeraldReporter

[Destroyallcubes]

Could be wrong but I thought CA justbcombines the pipe, using the bandwidth from each carrier and basically allowing data to travel in x number separate channels instead of just the one.

[Jones]

Yeah I think the CA will be backwards compatible with older devices similar to USB 1.0-3.0. The older spec's just wont be able to take advatange of that speed

[chamb]

Yeah I think the CA will be backwards compatible with older devices similar to USB 1.0-3.0. The older spec's just wont be able to take advatange of that speed

A good question here on this subject:    When Sprint sets up CA, will the current bandwidth used by the older NON-CA phones be included in the CA group??  Will the older phones be competing with the new CA phones for some of the bandwidth.

Sprint has enough spectrum to build a CA group that would be completely separate from the original 2.5 LTE spectrum.  Will they do that?

[S4GRU]

The two answers up top are correct. A separated, single carrier only piece will not need be isolated for Non CA devices.

 

In 3x CA, you have three separate LTE carriers, that can be connected to with a single carrier device, a 2x CA device or a 3x CA device. The single carrier device can only use any one of the three carriers. The 2x CA device could run on two carriers at the same time. And the 3x CA device can run on all three LTE carriers at the same time.

 

In LTE Advanced using Carrier Aggregation, the tower splits the data stream over more than one LTE carrier to get to your device, when your device is connected to more than one carrier at the site. It's like a truck that can deliver items to your house, can deliver two or three times as much in the same amount of time if two or three trucks came at the same time.

 

That's what's happening with carrier aggregation. Two or three times the data can leave the site antenna to your device each second than without CA. This causes a speed boost of 2 to 3x on top of the single carrier's performance.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[S4GRU]

A good question here on this subject: When Sprint sets up CA, will the current bandwidth used by the older NON-CA phones be included in the CA group?? Will the older phones be competing with the new CA phones for some of the bandwidth.

Sprint has enough spectrum to build a CA group that would be completely separate from the original 2.5 LTE spectrum. Will they do that?

This will not be a problem. Single carrier devices will not be effected, as they will run on each individual carrier installed that will be aggregated. It's the beauty of CA. To a non CA device, it just sees the individual carriers and can run on any of them.

 

And with CA, the carriers do not even need to be contiguous. They can be anywhere in the band. And if they deploy inter band carrier aggregation, it can aggregate carriers from different bands.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[chamb]

This will not be a problem. Single carrier devices will not be effected, as they will run on each individual carrier installed that will be aggregated. It's the beauty of CA. To a non CA device, it just sees the individual carriers and can run on any of them.

 

And with CA, the carriers do not even need to be contiguous. They can be anywhere in the band. And if they deploy inter band carrier aggregation, it can aggregate carriers from different bands.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

OK, you verified what I THOUGHT I knew.  This brings up another question.  If the phone is using 2 or 3 carriers, what happens to your battery?  I would ASSUME that in an idle condition, your phone would not be using any more bandwidth and would not be using any more battery.  But if you were streaming something that would use CA, like a movie, wouldn't the phone be eating power to keep 2 or 3 carriers active?   With a long data session, would the cell site be splitting the data between the carriers from start to finish or only when it needs to??

I do realize that for a short data burst, it might not matter much, but something like a movie might use 3 channels for quite a long time.  CA could be a battery killer.  If you are going to download a movie, would it use more battery power to download it quickly over 3 carriers than it does to download it slowly over one channel?

[Flompholph]

OK, you verified what I THOUGHT I knew.  This brings up another question.  If the phone is using 2 or 3 carriers, what happens to your battery?  I would ASSUME that in an idle condition, your phone would not be using any more bandwidth and would not be using any more battery.  But if you were streaming something that would use CA, like a movie, wouldn't the phone be eating power to keep 2 or 3 carriers active?   With a long data session, would the cell site be splitting the data between the carriers from start to finish or only when it needs to??

I do realize that for a short data burst, it might not matter much, but something like a movie might use 3 channels for quite a long time.  CA could be a battery killer.  If you are going to download a movie, would it use more battery power to download it quickly over 3 carriers than it does to download it slowly over one channel?

Do you mean downloading a movie not streaming? Netflix only uses 20 Mbps for 4k streaming meaning only 1 carrier would need to be active. To download a file I am sure that the watt/byte would be the close to the same. I think it would largely be on the device software on how many carriers they have on at a time. And if it is smart enough to know if it needs to open another connection to speed the connection up or turn off an antenna to save power.

[S4GRU]

OK, you verified what I THOUGHT I knew. This brings up another question. If the phone is using 2 or 3 carriers, what happens to your battery? I would ASSUME that in an idle condition, your phone would not be using any more bandwidth and would not be using any more battery. But if you were streaming something that would use CA, like a movie, wouldn't the phone be eating power to keep 2 or 3 carriers active? With a long data session, would the cell site be splitting the data between the carriers from start to finish or only when it needs to??

I do realize that for a short data burst, it might not matter much, but something like a movie might use 3 channels for quite a long time. CA could be a battery killer. If you are going to download a movie, would it use more battery power to download it quickly over 3 carriers than it does to download it slowly over one channel?

Battery drain is the biggest problem with CA. But it's not as bad as it used to be. Current CA devices idle on one carrier, and don't move to two or three carriers combined until data demand is high enough to warrant it.

 

Only during large active data transfers does the per minute battery consumption go up. And since your data will arrive sooner, it can shut down the extra carrier activity much sooner, leaving very little difference in battery consumed. In most usage patterns, the difference will be negligible for most customers.

 

If you were moving very large files for hours, or some types of streaming, it could reduce battery life in a more noticeable way. But most streaming types would not require CA to meet their maximum streaming speeds. But some network optimization may be needed to fine tune that.

 

Also, if you think about it, when you look at how much battery items consume on your Android device at the end of its battery, cell radios don't take up the lion share of battery usage. For most of us it is screen and some intensive apps. Cell radios are typically in the bottom third.

 

In a streaming a situation, the screen is what is going to be taxing your battery the worst. Even if cell radio battery consumption doubled in total for the discharge cycle, it wouldn't move up in the battery stat rankings very much. It may jump from 6% to 12% in the worst usage situations. I think most of us would notice a 2 to 3 point difference.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[darickster09]

Battery drain is the biggest problem with CA. But it's not as bad as it used to be. Current CA devices idle on one carrier, and don't move to two or three carriers combined until data demand is high enough to warrant it.

 

Only during large active data transfers does the per minute battery consumption go up. And since your data will arrive sooner, it can shut down the extra carrier activity much sooner, leaving very little difference in battery consumed. In most usage patterns, the difference will be negligible for most customers.

 

If you were moving very large files for hours, or some types of streaming, it could reduce battery life in a more noticeable way. But most streaming types would not require CA to meet their maximum streaming speeds. But some network optimization may be needed to fine tune that.

 

Also, if you think about it, when you look at how much battery items consume on your Android device at the end of its battery, cell radios don't take up the lion share of battery usage. For most of us it is screen and some intensive apps. Cell radios are typically in the bottom third.

 

In a streaming a situation, the screen is what is going to be taxing your battery the worst. Even if cell radio battery consumption doubled in total for the discharge cycle, it wouldn't move up in the battery stat rankings very much. It may jump from 6% to 12% in the worst usage situations. I think most of us would notice a 2 to 3 point difference.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

 

If a person is so concerned with battery drain they can buy either a spare battery or extended battery.  I use my phone a ton throughout the day and battery drain is imminent.  I would only get 4 to 10 hours out of the OEM battery on a full charge in the Galaxy S5.  But once I got the extended battery from Zerolemon I get about a day and a half of strait use out of the phone.  But Ihave had the phone in standby or rather in minimal use for up to 8 days without a charge!  So I think worst case battery drain could always result in you shelling out a little extra and getting an extended battery

 

But to each their own.  I have known guys to get 2 days out of a single charge on the OEM battery in the GS5.  But not sure how they do it.

 

Kevin

[S4GRU]

Also, there's a good chance that there will be a way to disable CA on the device side.  So if you start doing streaming activities and one carrier is more than plenty (which it almost always will be), then hopefully customers could turn off CA and experience some battery savings.

 

Robert

[estarkey7]

Battery drain is the biggest problem with CA. But it's not as bad as it used to be. Current CA devices idle on one carrier, and don't move to two or three carriers combined until data demand is high enough to warrant it.

Which devices are currently CA capable? Is this true for any Sprint Spark device?

[S4GRU]

Which devices are currently CA capable? Is this true for any Sprint Spark device?

 

Any LTE Advanced capable device supports CA.  Very common in Korea now.  Sprint CA devices will not be out until near the end of the year.

 

Robert