S4GRU

Yeah, Justin. I know when Sprint wants the NV OEM's to get to the Second Round, but in reality we don't know how fast they are going to get there. Preliminary anecdotal evidence is that Ericsson is slightly ahead of schedule.

Samsung is bogged down in SFO and ORD with their starts. Although, they may hire up and start new crews and start second round markets before they are complete in SFO/ORD. However, I don't think that Sprint is big on accelerating even faster, because of the cash burn that will occur.

A/L is the vendor I'm most concerned about. We will be watching them closely!

I think over the next 24 months, we are going to largely lose our external MicroSD support on new devices. It appears the trend is heading that way.

Yes, for you observant S4GRU members. I made a mistake in earlier comments about the LA Market. Ventura, San Bernardino and San Luis Obispo Counties are the North LA market, not the LA Metro market.

Turns out that LA Metro market is indeed LA County only. Once digiblur's map appeared in my inbox this morning, I was set straight. When I saw North LA in all my charts before, I misinterpreted that to be North Louisiana. Maps are wonderful things! It should have been obvious to me, as Shreveport is an Ericsson market, not an A/L market. I'm human, what you going to do?

- Robert

I just want to note to all of you, that I wrote the headline to Jeff's article, and added the final paragraph for the purpose of sparking conversation among S4GRU members in the comments section. Obviously that mission was accomplished.

- Robert, S4GRU

NV in NYC?mmm...yes. This I like.

I was thinking of you when I wrote this article. I thought you would especially would appreciate it.

- Robert

Part of me wants to be critical of Clearwire's roll out with WiMax. They do deserve some criticisms, certainly. However, I knew from the beginning deploying a nationwide network on 2500/2600 was going to be a huge challenge. The number of sites it would have taken to get a seamless comprehensive WiMax network over Sprint's existing footprint would have taken a whopping 100,000 sites. And the finances for that could have never penciled out to something profitable.

Add on top of that, FCC Minimum Coverage Requirements mandating deployments even well beyond Sprint's native coverage areas made a road to profitability for a nationwide WiMax network on 2600 a virtual impossibility.

But as I have said many times before in our forum and many others, 2600 is a very valuable spectrum to hold for extra capacity, only adding on top of an existing lower frequency spectrum comprehensive network. But a go it alone, national network...no.

Looking at the map, I was very surprised that NV was not stretched out farther on Long Island. I am looking at the Oct 7th presentation slides and for New York they showed most if not all of Long Island would get NV.Any insight on that? Does Sprint plan to come back to these huge markets and expand their NV in this example farther out on Long Island?

Long Island is getting NV. Just not at the same time as NYC market. That slide showed area coverage post Network Vision, not post NYC market deployment.

It's not really an issue of coming back. The OEM's bid based on Sprint markets. Sprint has their network broke up this way. The crews that are doing the NYC market NV work may not even end up working on Long Island. Or N Jersey, C Jersey, S CT or Upstate NY East for that matter.

We will be discussing Long Island deployment in the future. Sprint is not relegating LI out to the wastelands like Clearwire. Stay tuned.

so monday is the last of the first round of deployment markets and everyone after is the second round.

Yes. But note that not all first round markets have started in the field yet.

Gotta announce some Ericsson cities soon!

Ericsson already announced ( Dallas, Atlanta, San Antonio, and Houston)

All the markets that will start for Ericsson, A/L and Samsung by Midyear will have been released by S4GRU by Monday. These are for the most part the First Round deployments.

We will then announce the Second Round deployments starting on Wednesday next week. We will not be giving dates for these, because the starts will be very dependent on the conclusions of the First Round starts.

But if everything goes to plan, the Second Rounders will have start dates between October 2012 and January 2013, should no significant delays or issues arise with the first rounds of NV deployment. Stay tuned.

I thought they were going to roll out Network Vision in Long Island at the same time frame as New York City.

Who said that? I never did. I said in past posts there were several tri-state area markets. NYC/Westchester, Long Island, N Jersey, C Jersey, S Connecticut.

I have no idea, myself.

Starting deployment in Mid 2012? If you consider an August-October start to be Mid 2012, then yes. But not many. Come the end of 2012, the Non-WiMax market dam breaks loose. Assuming NV stays on schedule, of course. Stay tuned.

What's $4.5B among friends?

Oh I had no idea. I didn't discover s4gru until about a month ago and it was EXACTLY what I was looking for.I would say that you should try to make your website easier through google. Because even with very specific google searches this site is hard to find. I had been looking for any details I could about Network Vision updates for over a year and was only able to find small articles and occasional updates but this website exactly what I was looking for. I wish I knew what kind of 3G speeds we are going to see with Network Vision tho.Keep up the great work and keep the updates rolling!

It used to be much easier to find on Google, but with the migration to the new site, we have slipped quite a bit in search rankings. Hopefully we will recover and get back up to the top of Google soon!!!

I think a lot of the data I have would support that. I think Sprint will be live in a lot of the largest markets, complete or near complete around the beginning of October.

Spence...no. I haven't bothered, yet.

Artem at Android Police posted that after our article: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-34-new-network-vision-and-lte-deployment-info-released-in-sprint-webinar-today/

I have a really good rapport with Artem. I wouldn't quite say we collaborate, but he retweets our stuff and covers our articles on occasion, and we do the same back.

themuffinman...its one of the advantages of how Sprint is deploying Network Vision with three different vendors. But also keep in mind that each market is going to take 3 months to 8 months to complete depending on the number of sites.

Additionally, we are even announcing cities that work hasn't even started in, yet. I believe Sprint doesn't want to announce these themselves for a couple of reasons.

1. They are trying to under promise and over deliver as a strategy

2. They are giving themselves room for changes and or delays with their NV partners due to permitting or local deployment issues that may occur. Also, NV has a huge learning curve for its vendors

3. Sprint said in a conference call last year that they may speed up or slow down NV deployment based on cash on hand to make payments. If they get far ahead of themselves in announcements, it removes some of that flexibility they may need

Rawvega...Baltimore was the first A/L market announced.

Ha! It's like CRACK.

I feel that way when I am separated from my phone for more than 10 minutes!

Puerto Rico and the USVI should get a significant benefit from Network Vision if the cell site density is truly that low. The addition of 800MHz CDMA will be huge. One good thing is since Nextel never bothered to build out at all in P.R. and the USVI, hopefully that SMR spectrum can be put to full and immediate use and not have to be shared with any iDEN users.

That's a great point. There is nothing stopping Samsung and Sprint from a full 800 deployment now in this market.

I don't know if it's changed, however the front end cities are all WiMax markets. And now that I know Sprint's NV/LTE deployment order I am starting to see something of concern.

Note that Sprint said they were going to cover 56M Non WiMax POPs in 2012. They didn't say that they were going to cover 56M Non WiMax POPs that are in Non WiMax markets. For instance, the Chicago Sprint market has nearly two million Non WiMax POPs, even though the Chicago market does indeed have WiMax coverages. But the Sprint Chicago market goes just 30 miles short of the Mississippi River!

But rest assured, there are several Non-WiMax markets where Sprint is starting NV/LTE deployment in 2012. They just are not on the front end of deployment with the cities that we have already announced.

Stay tuned to S4GRU.com for the latest.

I'm not prepared to say at this point, ROBERT7. Stay tuned to S4GRU.com for announcements. It will be announced by us in the next few weeks.

- Robert, S4GRU

The PR/VI Sprint market has only approx. 250 sites. And most of these are in Puerto Rico. Samsung will pretty much do the entire market in one mobilization, not coming back several times. So, the Virgin Islands will likely get Network Vision and full LTE deployment at the same time as Puerto Rico. In fact, they may even start in VI because there are a lot less towers there.

Arizona is Alcatel/Lucent. And more specifically, you are in the Tucson/Yuma Sprint market.

- Robert, S4GRU