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Sprint Organic Network Expansion Discussion Thread


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Google? Haha. But, seriously, this is old news. 

 

Here's one: http://ipcarrier.blogspot.com/2013/11/at-to-deploy-40000-small-cells-as-part.html

 

AT&T said on their recent conference call they are ahead of schedule. And it's 40,000 small cells and 10,000 new macros for Project VIP (the 2014-2015 network investment)

 

The point is that Sprint's investment is very welcome--and will help a great deal---but it's not going to alter the landscape materially when their competitors are doing even more.

 

Sprint still has half the customers and needs to densify a significantly smaller footprint.  And Sprint has more spectrum in B41 than AT&T has total, so it needs less sites just for capacity.  The difference is not startling at all.

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I hope this is great news for Alabama. They are plenty of holes in coverage in my state...and more-so in my area.

I remember when I first found that 1 LTE tower that went live back August of '13....speeds were around 30mbps down, and 15mbps up. And now, I'm barely getting 15mbps down, and 7 or 8 mbps up....

Plus, where I live...still no native.

BIG plus for me...there's a tower 1 mile away from me. Right now, it's AT&T leasing with VZW colocated...but I fully expect Sprint to say "hey, there's an alternative to a new site right here...we can add our NV equipment, access to fiber is there, and expand without too much initial investment beyond the equipment on the tower"

 

I'm pretty sure it'll hold another rack, but I can obviously take photos of the nearby tower to let someone see for sure if I'm correct.

Best believe if I start seeing Ericcson trucks rolling down that road, I'll be bugging them...and find out what's happening.

Maybe it won't be long before it happens.

Would give me a -60 signal or so..literally.

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Small cells cost $2-3k a pop each but because they're so compact and low profile you don't have to drag it through city zoning or permitting and etc or need people with extensive training to install it as they're plug and play.

In comparison,a typical network vision antenna or 2.5 antenna cost $3000-$5000 each alone.

The initial costs are one thing, and I'm sure they need some type of permission to put up small cells, even if it's much easier... but the real benefits may be the recurring costs! They are probably significantly lower to operate, fill gaps in coverage that occurred due to new technology propagation limitations (or at least usefulness at edge of cell coverage) and give pinpoint capacity to alleviate stress from the macro network, this is why everyone is jumping on the bandwagon.

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No. Small cells are strictly data only.

 

But remember that 1X Advanced on 800Mhz will still have the best coverage compared to other technologies, so once everything is deployed and tuned perfectly there should not be many areas that need voice on a small cell site. Also, eventually within the next few years many phones will be able to use VoLTE and have seamless hand-offs so it will technically help voice coverage.  

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But remember that 1X Advanced on 800Mhz will still have the best coverage compared to other technologies, so once everything is deployed and tuned perfectly there should not be many areas that need voice on a small cell site. Also, eventually within the next few years many phones will be able to use VoLTE and have seamless hand-offs so it will technically help voice coverage.

I don't think seemless handoffs between cdma and volte is possible.

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He's taking about seamless hand offs between small cells on VoLTE.

-Anthony

Thank you, I was talking about hand offs between 2 different LTE bands with VoLTE, specifically handing off to a TDD-LTE pico site from FDD-LTE macro site. But I have heard that they can now hand off from a WiFi call to the macro network, so who knows what technology will be available when Sprint finally goes VoLTE as priority for voice.

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Thank you, I was talking about hand offs between 2 different LTE bands with VoLTE, specifically handing off to a TDD-LTE pico site from FDD-LTE macro site. But I have heard that they can now hand off from a WiFi call to the macro network, so who knows what technology will be available when Sprint finally goes VoLTE as priority for voice.

From what we know, VoLTE will use FDD bands only because voice doesn't play well with TDD.
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From what we know, VoLTE will use FDD bands only because voice doesn't play well with TDD.

No. VOLTE, whenever it is activated, will run on both FDD lte and TDD LTE with FDD lte being prioritized.
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For the dual-band sites (assuming no 41 due to not needing the capacity?) it would be awesome to see them refarm some of the PCS to potentially make 10x10 B25 to up the speeds. I would think that would be possible on the sites with lower usage, and hopefully could be done without a tech visit on sites that already have B25.

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For the dual-band sites (assuming no 41 due to not needing the capacity?) it would be awesome to see them refarm some of the PCS to potentially make 10x10 B25 to up the speeds. I would think that would be possible on the sites with lower usage, and hopefully could be done without a tech visit on sites that already have B25.

 

The PCS G block is 5 MHz FDD.  The original band 25 carrier there basically has to remain 5 MHz FDD -- because of spectrum licensing and device compatibility.  So, that is a no go for a 10 MHz FDD carrier.

 

Instead, Sprint would have to deploy two band 25 carriers:  5 MHz FDD in the PCS G block and 10 MHz FDD in one or more of the PCS A-F blocks.  And that would be in addition to the 5 MHz FDD band 26 carrier.  It would seem possible in some markets with at least 15 MHz FDD contiguous PCS, but I would deem it unlikely.

 

AJ

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The PCS G block is 5 MHz FDD. The original band 25 carrier there basically has to remain 5 MHz FDD -- because of spectrum licensing and device compatibility. So, that is a no go for a 10 MHz FDD carrier.

 

Instead, Sprint would have to deploy two band 25 carriers: 5 MHz FDD in the PCS G block and 10 MHz FDD in one or more of the PCS A-F blocks. And that would be in addition to the 5 MHz FDD band 26 carrier. It would seem possible in some markets with at least 15 MHz FDD contiguous PCS, but I would deem it unlikely.

 

AJ

Isn't Sprint more likely to just do 2 5x5s, one in PCS G and one in PCS A-F and possibly aggregate them later for higher speeds? IIRC they have enough spectrum for this pretty much everywhere. Even without aggregation average speeds would be higher when people are spread over 2 carriers. A 10x10 would be cool but impractical for the reasons you stated.
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Isn't Sprint more likely to just do 2 5x5s, one in PCS G and one in PCS A-F and possibly aggregate them later for higher speeds?

 

I would say doubtful.  For LTE, intra band carrier aggregation is rare.  Nearly all carrier aggregation is inter band.

 

AJ

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Isn't Sprint more likely to just do 2 5x5s, one in PCS G and one in PCS A-F and possibly aggregate them later for higher speeds? IIRC they have enough spectrum for this pretty much everywhere. Even without aggregation average speeds would be higher when people are spread over 2 carriers. A 10x10 would be cool but impractical for the reasons you stated.

 

I'm making an assumption here that the places where dual-band 25/26 (and not 41) are used will primarily be rural areas.  Meaning the capacity needs are less per site; so without CA, the multi-carrier B25 would only help an unneeded capacity strain (I say unneeded because if there was not enough capacity, they would add 41), but not improve peak speeds.

 

Thanks for the info though everyone.  One can hope for B25 CA then (I live in a rural area not likely to see B41 unless for that Dish/Sprint ISP).

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I would say doubtful. For LTE, intra band carrier aggregation is rare. Nearly all carrier aggregation is inter band.

 

AJ

Yet Sprint is exclusively using intra-band aggregation for band 41, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.
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Yet Sprint is exclusively using intra-band aggregation for band 41, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Intra-band is remarkably easy to do with TDD compared to inter-band, due to the additional complexity of potential temporal issues and differing propagation making it harder to do inter-band aggregation (which isn't really as much of an issue with FDD because it's a "dumber" airlink compared to TDD since it just pumps out all the time on dedicated frequencies for uplink and downlink).

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Yet Sprint is exclusively using intra-band aggregation for band 41, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Remember Sprint is also thinking of using B41 as a downlink only.

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Not a 100% correct characterization: it will aggregate b41 with b25 which effectively becomes b41-DL only when b41 uplink fails.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Also not true. In FDD+TDD aggregation, uplink time will be filled with blank frames on the TDD channel, ensuring that the uplink isn't used. There's also no real easy way to fix this and enable full FDD+TDD aggregation without introducing a lot of complexity.

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