Band 38 and MFBI

[Thomas L.]

Hi all,

 

I know AJ responded to this question about a year and a half ago, but I wanted to see if anything had changed, especially considering the SoftBank acquisition, etc, etc. 

 

Since I know Softbank places a premium on international roaming ability and seems to be more open to more device support, I was wondering if people thought there might have been changes in terms of Sprint being willing to support Band 38 devices and enabling MFBI. What do you all think? There seem to be a good number of band 38 devices out there that aren't band 41 compatible, and at least some level of data roaming might be beneficial if it could be offered in the US.

 

Thanks for your thoughts,

 

Tommy

[Rawvega]

Good question, Thomas. I've wondered about this myself. Generating incoming roaming revenue could only be beneficial to the bottom line. For that matter, perhaps they should also enable Band 2 LTE via MFBI when they inevitably begin to re-farm their PCS spectrum for LTE.

[WiWavelength]

No, enabling band 38 MFBI would be largely ineffectual.

 

Compared to band 41, which is 2496-2690 MHz, band 38 is only 2570-2620 MHz.  Even then, only 2572-2614 MHz in the BRS/EBS bandplan is available to Sprint.  So, subtract 8 MHz.  Moreover, take away any BRS/EBS licenses in that 42 MHz range that Sprint does not hold in a given market.

 

At best, two band 41 carriers could be also band 38 MFBI compatible.  More likely, though, only one or zero band 41 carriers would fall entirely within that range.  Not a good solution.

 

Instead, the right solution is for other network operators and device OEMs to start supporting band 38 as a subset of band 41 capability, too.  That would be easy peasy.  If they do not, then they are just being AT&T like stubborn or stupid.

 

AJ