Sprint awards backhaul contracts based on regions within a market. Since the regions cover several ILECs in most cases, Sprint ends up using a backhaul vendor that is third party to the ILECs and arranges several types of backhaul, depending on the availability at each site within their contract area.
The successful backhaul bidder in an area will most likely need to mix fiber, AAV and microwave over many site locations in order to get enhanced backhaul at each that meets the minimum backhaul requirements outlined in the contract.
So if "Bidder A" wins the contract for the Northern part of the DFW market, they may have to provide the backhaul for every site between Carrollton and Sherman. In most cases, an ILEC wont bid on a backhaul region like that. Unless they already service most of that area. If an ILEC does bid, then they are agreeing to act as a third party to secure service of other backhaul vendors within their contract in the areas outside their service area. Or they may set up microwave links to serve the out of service areas. There are many options to skin the cat.
However, there are many regions where the successful bidder is not an ILEC. Some are third party companies who just arrange and manage backhaul over their region and do not provide any direct backhaul service themselves. Also, many of the backhaul contract winners are cable companies.
Its all very interesting and very complex.
Robert via Kindle Fire using Forum Runner