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What is verizon doing with 800MHz? (fcc website)


stuckinohio1

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Verizon having another 5MHz channel on top of existing 10MHz channels is a better experience than not having it at all.

 

What's better? Having one 10MHz channel running at 1-3Mbps by itself or one 10MHz channel running at 1-5Mbps and 5MHz channel running at 2-3Mbps at the same time? It's a no brainer. Adding the additional 5MHz channel will help increase speeds slightly or allow the same speeds to continue without further degradatation longer. It also allows more capacity, serving more customers from the same site.

 

Let's be serious. Verizon adding an additional 5MHz channel would really only leave a bad experience in an unburdened network. Where people may get stuck on 5MHz at 37Mbps instead of 10MHz at 75Mbps. Verizon is not likely to add the PCS 5MHz channels to sites that are under burdened. They will be adding it to sites with capacity issues. Sites currently running under 5Mbps. Sites where an additional 5MHz will likely perform equal or better than the existing condition.

 

Every additional LTE carrier you can add will improve the network condition and capacity. Peak speeds are not the norm, folks.

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First, you have to include Sprint's PCS holdings that currently are being used for CDMA instead of LTE, which alone can be more than 35 MHz in some markets.

 

That is not really true.  For Sprint, typical PCS A-F block spectrum holdings are 30 MHz (15 MHz FDD).  That allows for up to 11 CDMA1X/EV-DO carriers.  But outside of stadium DAS and racetrack sites, you will find very few Sprint sites with that many CDMA1X/EV-DO carriers deployed.  Most sites run half to a third that many.

 

AJ

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That is not really true. For Sprint, typical PCS A-F block spectrum holdings are 30 MHz (15 MHz FDD). That allows for up to 11 CDMA1X/EV-DO carriers. But outside of stadium DAS and racetrack sites, you will find very few Sprint sites with that many CDMA1X/EV-DO carriers deployed. Most sites run half to a third that many.

 

AJ

Then they should refarm some of that 30mhz if half is free
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Then they should refarm some of that 30mhz if half is free

What about the customers that don't have smart phones. The ones on feature phones that are 3G that sprint still sells. People keep forgetting about that part of the public.

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What about the customers that don't have smart phones. The ones on feature phones that are 3G that sprint still sells. People keep forgetting about that part of the public.

 

Well, if half the band is free then refarming the unused half shouldn't affect customers that don't have smartphones anyway.

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i have been thinking about this for a while now. if you take away B41 (2500MHz) from sprint they actually have like no spectrum what so ever. if they could only deploy 5x5 on B26 and 25 they effectively have less spectrum than T-Mo.

 

I know they license some 2500MHz from schools and such so lets hope they dont get any ideas to take the spectrum from sprint and try to sell if for a profit. considering a 20 or 40MHz Block of spectrum would get them a boat load of money.

 

On the other hand i have no idea why verizon is even deploying LTE in 1900MHz as a 5x5 carrier. they have so many customers that their 700MHz 10x10 is slower than sprint in alot of places so whats the point of a 5x5 carrier. all they would do is give their subs slower speeds and miff em real good.

 

They would be better off selling that small sliver of spectrum since T-mo/spint/AT&T/ would probably be highly interested in adding it to their own holdings for wider channels.

1) Sprint owns far more than 10MHz of PCS, they could refarm more spectrum from CDMA if they needed it.

2) Verizon probably owns little PCS in select markets where 5x5 band 2 is live. There are variables present.

3) They would have band 13, 4 and 2 live. This means a lot of capacity for their subscribers to use. 5x5 isn't bad necessarily. It might just fit the bill.

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That is not really true. For Sprint, typical PCS A-F block spectrum holdings are 30 MHz (15 MHz FDD). That allows for up to 11 CDMA1X/EV-DO carriers. But outside of stadium DAS and racetrack sites, you will find very few Sprint sites with that many CDMA1X/EV-DO carriers deployed. Most sites run half to a third that many.

 

AJ

Is there any way to tell how many evdo carriers a site has?
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Is there any way to tell how many evdo carriers a site has?

if i were sprint i would start shutting down EVDO and leaving only 1 or 2 carriers for MVNOs (for their 3G phones) and migrate everyone who is actually on sprint to 4G phones (for all smart phones) and 3G/1X for dumb phones. and use the rest of the spectrum for either more carriers or larger carriers.

 

I would think they would have at least 4 EVDO carriers in cities and less in rural areas. this would free up tons of spectrum. this would be better than buying other cellular companies and adding new spectrum that way sprint can get a nice chunk of 600MHz when its time to look at the current holdings.

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It's only a matter of time before 850 is refarmed for mostly LTE.  Get most of your 1X and EVDO users off, or move them to a limited band in 1900, and there ya go.  Just like 700, the 850 range is prime lower frequencies which work well inside buildings, etc.  We'll probably see VZW LTE on 600, 700, 850, XLTE bands, and PCS bands all at once before it's over.

 

There's a lot of embedded stuff using 1X and EVDO still; just like the AMPS and TDMA transition from 2008, the stuff will eventually just have to be replaced when the providers kick 1X and EVDO to the curb. 

 

Man, I miss the 850 A/B system days.  I thought it was crazy when they launched the block PCS A-G, and at the time, wondered how they were going to have that many providers.  (A-C were 30mhz, I think, and D-G were 10mhz).  Now, it's all over the map with 600, 700, 1800/2100, 2500, plus the "old school" 850 and slightly newer 1900.  And it's not a 1-1 provider to frequency relationship like it was back in the day; multiple providers have multiple blocks now.  If someone ever did like XFF did a long time ago and actually created a spectrum map with all the bands we have today and who has them, I guarantee it would be a very difficult undertaking.

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It's only a matter of time before 850 is refarmed for mostly LTE.  Get most of your 1X and EVDO users off, or move them to a limited band in 1900, and there ya go.  Just like 700, the 850 range is prime lower frequencies which work well inside buildings, etc.  We'll probably see VZW LTE on 600, 700, 850, XLTE bands, and PCS bands all at once before it's over.

 

There's a lot of embedded stuff using 1X and EVDO still; just like the AMPS and TDMA transition from 2008, the stuff will eventually just have to be replaced when the providers kick 1X and EVDO to the curb. 

 

Man, I miss the 850 A/B system days.  I thought it was crazy when they launched the block PCS A-G, and at the time, wondered how they were going to have that many providers.  (A-C were 30mhz, I think, and D-G were 10mhz).  Now, it's all over the map with 600, 700, 1800/2100, 2500, plus the "old school" 850 and slightly newer 1900.  And it's not a 1-1 provider to frequency relationship like it was back in the day; multiple providers have multiple blocks now.  If someone ever did like XFF did a long time ago and actually created a spectrum map with all the bands we have today and who has them, I guarantee it would be a very difficult undertaking.

You mean like this http://specmap.sequence-omega.net/ ?

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When Verizon and AT&T finally decides to deploy LTE at 850 MHz, is there any reason for them to add support for B5 over B26? I know if more carriers support B26 devices that would increase economies of scale and lower costs. Yes I know Verizon and AT&T don't have ESMR spectrum but does that really matter? Carriers have to abide by the spectrum that they are licensed to anyways so I don't see a problem with this. I guess the only issue I see is if they have rural partners who already have B5 devices already released and want to be compatible with them. I just think any sort of superset LTE bands should be preferred over the constrained set. Maybe I am totally off.

 

Perfect example is B17 and B12. AT&T was supporting B17 for the longest time but is now supporting B12 to increase economies of scale so it is compatible with both AT&T and Tmobile. Now Sprint is joining that group to support B12 due to the CCA/RRPP. Also after the AWS-3 auction, I see Tmobile, Verizon and AT&T will start to support B10 for the AWS LTE since it is a superset of B4.

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When Verizon and AT&T finally decides to deploy LTE at 850 MHz, is there any reason for them to add support for B5 over B26? I know if more carriers support B26 devices that would increase economies of scale and lower costs. Yes I know Verizon and AT&T don't have ESMR spectrum but does that really matter? Carriers have to abide by the spectrum that they are licensed to anyways so I don't see a problem with this. I guess the only issue I see is if they have rural partners who already have B5 devices already released and want to be compatible with them. I just think any sort of superset LTE bands should be preferred over the constrained set. Maybe I am totally off.

 

Perfect example is B17 and B12. AT&T was supporting B17 for the longest time but is now supporting B12 to increase economies of scale so it is compatible with both AT&T and Tmobile. Now Sprint is joining that group to support B12 due to the CCA/RRPP. Also after the AWS-3 auction, I see Tmobile, Verizon and AT&T will start to support B10 for the AWS LTE since it is a superset of B4.

I was thinking about this in a discussion on fierce a few days ago. This is probably the reason Sprint hasn't yet all phones unlocked when they started using LTE the way VZ did. Sprint phones are (and were, with the notable former exceptions of B17/12 and current/future exception of B13 LTE) actually almost universally compatible with other carriers with bands 25 and 26 being supersets of 2 and 5, and the recent OEM requirements for B4 and 12. If Sprint made their phones domestically unlockable now, the other carriers could just enabled MFBI and they could let anyone bring in their old Sprint phone and enjoy full access to the networks (the exception is obviously big red and B13). The problem for Sprint is that the reverse is not true. In their typical anticompetitive manner, the other carriers opt to include only their specific subsets in their carrier versions of their phones. Sprint phones would work on other networks, but other network phones would not work on Sprint.

 

I wish that the FCC would just require all future certified devices to include supersets of any subset they support (I could see AT&T and Verizon only including bands 2, 4, 17 or 13 in their carrier varients as a way to sort of bypass the new unlocking laws), but thanks to radio tech advancements and OEMs starting to do single-SKU flagships, this might not actually be an issue going forward.

 

TL;DR If they don't plan on doing LTE roaming and want to be anticompetitive a-holes, they might use band 5. But hopefully that won't happen.

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I was thinking about this in a discussion on fierce a few days ago. This is probably the reason Sprint hasn't yet all phones unlocked when they started using LTE the way VZ did. Sprint phones are (and were, with the notable former exceptions of B17/12 and current/future exception of B13 LTE) actually almost universally compatible with other carriers with bands 25 and 26 being supersets of 2 and 5, and the recent OEM requirements for B4 and 12. If Sprint made their phones domestically unlockable now, the other carriers could just enabled MFBI and they could let anyone bring in their old Sprint phone and enjoy full access to the networks (the exception is obviously big red and B13). The problem for Sprint is that the reverse is not true. In their typical anticompetitive manner, the other carriers opt to include only their specific subsets in their carrier versions of their phones. Sprint phones would work on other networks, but other network phones would not work on Sprint.

 

I wish that the FCC would just require all future certified devices to include supersets of any subset they support (I could see AT&T and Verizon only including bands 2, 4, 17 or 13 in their carrier varients as a way to sort of bypass the new unlocking laws), but thanks to radio tech advancements and OEMs starting to do single-SKU flagships, this might not actually be an issue going forward.

 

TL;DR If they don't plan on doing LTE roaming and want to be anticompetitive a-holes, they might use band 5. But hopefully that won't happen.

 

I totally agree that any supersets of several LTE bands should be the ones to support regardless if their network actually supports. This benefits all carriers since it increases economies of scale that supports all the different LTE networks that are being deployed out there.  Also your observation that Sprint handsets seem to be compatible to other carriers while the converse is not true is spot on.

 

I hate the fact that Sprint has some odd LTE bands like B25, B26 and B41.  For B41, I understand since Sprint has pretty much exclusive rights to the 2.5 GHz spectrum so the other carriers have little interest in it.  For B25, I wish VZ, AT&T and Tmobile would support that band since they will eventually convert their PCS spectrum band to LTE.  As for B26, it only makes sense for VZ and AT&T to support this band since they dominate the 850 MHz Cellular spectrum.  If at least the other major carriers support B25 and B26 that would help with economies of scale and also create a standard set of LTE bands that should be in a handset. 

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I totally agree that any supersets of several LTE bands should be the ones to support regardless if their network actually supports. This benefits all carriers since it increases economies of scale that supports all the different LTE networks that are being deployed out there. Also your observation that Sprint handsets seem to be compatible to other carriers while the converse is not true is spot on.

 

I hate the fact that Sprint has some odd LTE bands like B25, B26 and B41. For B41, I understand since Sprint has pretty much exclusive rights to the 2.5 GHz spectrum so the other carriers have little interest in it. For B25, I wish VZ, AT&T and Tmobile would support that band since they will eventually convert their PCS spectrum band to LTE. As for B26, it only makes sense for VZ and AT&T to support this band since they dominate the 850 MHz Cellular spectrum. If at least the other major carriers support B25 and B26 that would help with economies of scale and also create a standard set of LTE bands that should be in a handset.

Exactly how much cheaper would sprints phones become? If this were a REAL issue then softbank would synchronize its phones and sprint phones to be identical. But they don't do this. Because they wouldn't save money.
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Exactly how much cheaper would sprints phones become? If this were a REAL issue then softbank would synchronize its phones and sprint phones to be identical. But they don't do this. Because they wouldn't save money.

 

HUH  :blink:?  This has nothing to do with syncing Japan handsets with Sprint handsets.  The only band class that Sprint and Softbank share is B41 for LTE.  It would be completely useless to support another countries' band classes just because of that and not only because it would be silly because it will rarely/never be used but the FCC wouldn't be able to approve the use of it in the US anyways since they wouldn't be able to test Japan's UTMS and LTE band classes since those frequencies probably overlap other band classes.

 

 The US carriers are not synced on LTE with any parts of the world due to the way the US breaks up their spectrum. I am talking about if the major US carriers like Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint all support the different superset bands for the flagship phones it could make phones cheaper to make for everyone as well as support all the different LTE networks in the US.  Right now Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint each need to have their own model of the same phone because of the unique LTE band classes that they support.  It would be a win-win for all carriers and the OEMs since the OEMs don't have to make 4 or 5 models of the same phone for just the US like they do now.  The hardware could be the same for all carriers but just the software would be unique to support each carrier's bloatware.

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HUH :blink:? This has nothing to do with syncing Japan handsets with Sprint handsets. The only band class that Sprint and Softbank share is B41 for LTE. It would be completely useless to support another countries' band classes just because of that and not only because it would be silly because it will rarely/never be used but the FCC wouldn't be able to approve the use of it in the US anyways since they wouldn't be able to test Japan's UTMS and LTE band classes since those frequencies probably overlap other band classes.

 

The US carriers are not synced on LTE with any parts of the world due to the way the US breaks up their spectrum. I am talking about if the major US carriers like Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint all support the different superset bands for the flagship phones it could make phones cheaper to make for everyone as well as support all the different LTE networks in the US. Right now Tmobile, Verizon, AT&T, and Sprint each need to have their own model of the same phone because of the unique LTE band classes that they support. It would be a win-win for all carriers and the OEMs since the OEMs don't have to make 4 or 5 models of the same phone for just the US like they do now. The hardware could be the same for all carriers but just the software would be unique to support each carrier's bloatware.

The iPhone 6 already supports overlapping bands and CDMA and td-scdma and that seems to work out fine so don't see the problem there.

 

So why can't softbank and sprint just have all their phones support all each other's bands and technologies? That would be equivalent to att vzw TMO supporting sprint bands.

 

The fact that softbank and sprint don't pursue this option shows that the cost savings are significant enough to justify this effort

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The iPhone 6 already supports overlapping bands and CDMA and td-scdma and that seems to work out fine so don't see the problem there.

 

So why can't softbank and sprint just have all their phones support all each other's bands and technologies? That would be equivalent to att vzw TMO supporting sprint bands.

 

The fact that softbank and sprint don't pursue this option shows that the cost savings are significant enough to justify this effort

All this would be possible if the Qualcomm tax would be lowered or abolished. Right now, as long as that stands, that can't be done.

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I'm speaking of the CDMA/3GPP2 royalties. Those could be reduced.

I didn't know that was an issue. But wouldn't sprint/softbank be able to negotiate lower royalties if # of phones with CDMA double?

 

Though again I'd like to see some kind of data that indicates sprint phones cost significantly more because of CDMA.

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I'm speaking of the CDMA/3GPP2 royalties. Those could be reduced.

I thought Qualcomm had basically stopped charging a premium for CDMA capability. Thought the Qualcomm pitch was now something like "you can buy from no-name semiconductor over there, or you can pay only a few pennies more and get a genuine Qualcomm chip, and as a bonus, it is also CDMA capable."

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I didn't know that was an issue. But wouldn't sprint/softbank be able to negotiate lower royalties if # of phones with CDMA double?

 

Though again I'd like to see some kind of data that indicates sprint phones cost significantly more because of CDMA.

 

CDMA is going the way of the dodo in the next 5-10 years. It's not worth it. Once carriers have more LTE coverage that comes really close to their existing 3G/HSPA networks, then VoLTE becomes the standard, and CDMA will eventually be phased out. When the time comes for economies of scale between Softbank and Sprint, then it'll happen, or it'll be non CDMA devices.

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