mozamcrew

So is the LTE 800 going to be on a 5x5 MHz carrier or a 3x3? Still unsure after reading a bit in this thread. Edit: also, if it's 3x3, what's the maximum speeds it'll allow?

If my understanding is correct, it will be a 5x5, except in the SE (where SoLinc has some of the 800 spectrum) and the IBEZ (near the boarders with Canada and Mexico, due to interference with iDen and public safety in those countries). In SoLinc areas, I think they will be limited to 3x3 unless they can get the spectrum from SoLinc. In the IBEZ areas it will depend on what Canada/US and Mexico/US agree to in terms of moving the public safety channels and rebanding that spectrum, but right now they can't roll out voice or LTE on 800 Mhz in the IBEZ. I THINK I saw a chart on this thread with the proposed US/Mexico plan. US public safety to a 6x6 at the bottom, Mexico took a 6x6 in the middle, and there was a 5.5x5.5 shared at the top (This is all from memory, so someone correct me if I'm wrong) I assume the shared area will be just like PCS between the US and CANADA, where providers on both sides can use it without too much interference, since it won't be high power or narrow bands. You need about 6.5 by 6.5 to do a 1.25x1.25 CDMA and a 5x5 LTE (due to guard bands) So I'm guessing Sprint will be doing a 3x3 LTE and one CDMA 1xA carrier let in IBEZ areas as well. Could they squeeze a second CDMA 1xA carrier in the IBEZ areas, or will there not be enough space if you include guard bands? I thought there were some already built in in certain spots?

It was 119.99 and $10 add on for each line due to premium data. So, $140. And if you received a discount, it was taken off $100. So a 20% discount would get you $20 off as well.

 

New plan, employee discount is applied to each data fee of $30. So, at 20% discount, you will take $6 off per phone

I think it was 129.99, not 119.99. Here are the old individual plans: http://shop.sprint.com/mysprint/shop/plan_details.jsp?tabId=pt_individual_tab&planCatId=EverythingData&planFamilyType=&flow=AAL

And here are the old family plans:

http://shop.sprint.com/mysprint/shop/plan_details.jsp?tabId=pt_shared_tab&planCatId=EverythingDataFamily&planFamilyType=null

Remember to add $10 premium data for each smart phone to the old plans, as that is not included in the pricing. You are correct about the discounts though. 

Do you think any PCS divestitures would be required? And would FCC allow Verizon to participate to outbid Sprint?

In my opinion, the FCC should require divestiture so that:

• They should not have more than 30Mhz of AWS in any one market upon completion of the merger.
• Their combined PCS + AWS in any market should not exceed 60Mhz upon completion of the merger.

And finally my blanket rule for all mergers involving ATT and VZW: Require them to divest any Cell 850 spectrum so they own no more than half the Cell 850 spectrum in a given market. They can do this through spectrum swaps or sales if they'd like. It's just stupid to have ATT or VZW owning both the A and B sides of the spectrum in a given market (or even all of one side and part of another). 

For wireless companies it is all about arpu (average revenue per user). It doesn't matter to them is one line is ten bucks and another is 200 what matters is the average. They want to increase that average like all carriers do. The problem is that they also need to grow market share and to try to increase arpu through a price rise is counter productive to that goal .

I'd say their goal isn't just revenue, it's profit from each customer (or at least not losing money on them). If people having 3,4, and 5 smart phones on these everything plans takes them from being profitable at 2 lines, to money losers at 4-5 lines, then I expect Sprint to raise it's prices on the additional smart-phone lines accordingly. That sucks for those of us with 3-5 smart-phones on a plan, but I understand why they would do it.

I believe this is what is going on.  Sprint has realized they do not make money on the additional lines (3+ lines) for the Everything plans. 

I think you are right PARTICULARLY on plans with more than 2 smart-phones, because the new plans are a better (or at least no worse) deal for those with 1-2 lines. For the same cost as Everything Data 450 or Everything Data Family 1500, you are now getting unlimited minutes too. They get you in two places, adding a third line is now $30 instead of $20, And they now charge each smart phone a $20 (1GB) or $30 (unlimited data) fee instead of a $10 Premium data fee. 

If only two of your phones were smart-phones, that's a $10 increase from the 1500 minute plan, but it's much cheeper than the 3000 minute plan that it also replaces, so that part of the price increase is kinda a wash, IMHO. What really gets you is the additional $10-20 for smart-phones number 3-10, since they all need to pick a 1gb/$20 or unlimited/$30 data plan instead of just a $10 premium data fee. 

For Leap PCS or AT&T-Leap PCS?

 

AJ

Maybe you could do a stacked chart of them (with ATT one color and Leap another) for an assortment of markets.

4 smartphones on an everything data plan for ~220$/month. I could get 4 smartphones on AT&T for 230$/month before a discount with 6gb

Yup, it's currently almost a wash, if you exclude the discounts of course. In your case, you might as well stay on your current plan. These new plans seem to be most competitive with heavy phone data users. (hot spots on sprint are extra since phone data is unlimited), and users with either a small or large number of lines on their plan. Only a small minority of people with 3-4 lines who were using a lot of anytime minutes will be the same or better off under the new plan. 

I think the fantasy is that there can be 4 viable competitors, the reality is that there can be only 3. Verizon and AT&T had the 850 Mhz spectrum as well as the landline business to subsidize their wireless expansion in the beginning. I would not be surprised if the feds actually let it go through. Maybe with Sprint having to divest the EBS spectrum.

 

Both T-Mobile and Sprint are deploying LTE. There's your convergence point. 

Well, technically Spring is leasing the EBS spectrum, it doesn't actually own it. It only owns the BRS spectrum which is about 55.5Mhz in size. And the FCC doesn't count the EBS against them in the spectrum screen either.

I'm actually fine with ATT buying up Leap, with 2 conditions

1. Divesting PCS spectrum in any market so that the combined company doesn't hold over 20 or 30Mhz of PCS in any area. (This should NOT be a problem given their enormous holdings in celluar, WCS (future), AWS (after getting some back through this merger) and 700 Mhz spectrum). They have lots of spectrum in a motley assortment of bands.

2. Divesting cellular spectrum in any market so that the combined company doesn't own more than half of the celluar (850mhz) spectrum. (This should be a condition of ANY merger involving VZ and ATT) I'd like to see it as standing FCC policy for approval of any wireless mergers. There is no reason for any carrier accumulate over half of the cell 850 spectrum in a market. I don't care if they decide to sell it, or swap  some PCS or AWS for it as compensation, but we shouldn't be letting any companies monopolize low frequency spectrum in a given market.

That's my issue. I don't NEED unlimited. Between the 4 lines I have, we rarely go over 4 gb if ever. I'd be hard pressed to go with Sprint over AT&T or VZ given such a small price disparity. I have to say I have no clue what is going on.

I'm curious, what arrangement of Smart and dumb phones do you have? 

From the looks of things, the single line plan is actually in improvement (or at least is no worse) than the old plans. Compared to the everything data 450, the new plan gives you for the same price the same unlimited data and messaging but with unlimited minutes, and you have a 1GB data option (instead of unlimited ) that makes it $10 cheeper for light data users. I haven't seen the promised 1GB hotspot option though, when I switched it only gave me the option to add a 2 or 6GB hotspot.   I only use hotspot on rare occasions, so having a cheeper hotspot option would be very useful.

I did a little comparison, and where they seem to be losing people is those with 3 or 4 lines, which is a lot of families. They would be more competitive if they simply made the 3rd line $20 instead of $30. It wouldn't completely destroy their new pricing scheme, but it would make plans with 3-4 lines more price competitive, which is the weak spot in their new rate plans in my opinion. 

I just have a single line, but I went ahead and made the jump from Everything Data 450 to the new Unlimited, My Way. It's not any worse than my old plan since it's the same price but with unlimited minutes (which I won't use I'm sure). But the new plans gave me the 1GB $20 data option  instead of unlimited (-$10) and a 5GB hotspot option (+$20 for my all in) that I didn't have before. The 2 and 6Gb hotspot options are $20 and $50 respectively and aren't changing.

I have an interesting factoid as a follow up...

 

When AT&T took over the divested Alltel (former WWC) properties, it started by overlaying W-CDMA 850.  So, big swaths of acquired coverage in the Rocky Mountains and the Dakotas were depicted with those diagonal blue lines, indicating "3G Handset Required."

 

But here is the cuckoo part.  Since then, AT&T has been going back and underlaying GSM 850.  I have watched the progress on AT&T's coverage viewer over the past year or two.  The Dakotas used to be W-CDMA only -- except for those old AT&TWS GSM 1900 protection sites we wrote about in my Bob Quinn rebuttal last year -- but are nearing completion of GSM underlay, while the Rocky Mountain states are still almost entirely W-CDMA only, just as you experienced in rural northwestern New Mexico.

 

Check out the AT&T coverage viewer.  AT&T itself may act like a tool, but its coverage viewer is a decent tool...

 

http://www.att.com/maps/wireless-coverage.html

 

AJ

So here's the question. Why not convert all of their voice traffic to W-CDMA and drop GSM? It would certainly free up more spectrum for LTE. It was my understanding that all the GSM carriers were moving to W-CDMA anyhow. Why would you go back and install GSM now on sites that already have W-CDMA coverage?

That's not even up for discussion: Sprint will deploy 2.5 GHz everywhere.

They have no other differentiator besides large allowance of data and they're not gonna have the spectrum to maintain the high data allowance without 2.5GHz.

 

When Son was interviewed after announcing first offer for Sprint, he was evasive about what exactly he was gonna do with Sprint. One can only assume that he's gonna use the 2.5GHz advantage to his fullest advantage.

 

That's his only card to play.

 

 

 

I don't think they will deploy 2.5Ghz everywhere, maybe 80% of sites by 2020. They won't bother deploying it on those rural/exburban sites where they aren't even using all of their alloted PCS spectrum. Why spend the money to add the 2.5 antenna and RRU if you if you could simply add capacity by adding another PCS LTE carrier first?

If I were rolling it out, I'd be installing it in cities where some of my cell sites are spectrum constrained (already using nearly all of their spectrum in some places), simply because it's a way to add capacity without adding additional cell sites.

Yes but the order for Canada is going to be pretty small. Unless they are going to replace part of their LTE network or use AWS as more than hotspot duty.

They are currently preparing for AWS LTE rollout in the US. I'm suggesting that they will be able to add additional equipment to that order to include their Canadian sites. Canada by itself isn't large, but lets say it adds 10-15% to their existing order. That may get them better pricing per unit on all the gear, not SO much for Verizon since their order is already large, but it will drive down the cost for Wind/VZW Canada.  Also, assuming they will have a shot at 700Mhz spectrum in Canada, maybe that means US Verizon customers will be able to roam in Canada on both AWS and 700Mhz since they will have LTE on similar frequencies???

That is a device/baseband decision not one by Sensorly.  Your phone controls all of that.  If your device is steadily using a 3G connection and drive into a 4G covered area it will not "step up" to the 4G as you have the radio busy transferring data instead of it being able to scan for LTE every once in a while.  Running Sensorly all the time can lessen your chance to catch a LTE signal since it is sending up the 3G points.  What I do to force my device to scan for LTE is run LTE Discovery in "Cycle while not connected to LTE" mode along with Sensorly running in Map Trip Started mode.  Then I pull up my LTE Engineering screen to look for new serving cells I haven't seen before.  All while mapping out in the background and catching the LTE that I might not have known about.

This is why I like to set Sensorly to only upload on Wifi, sometimes the upload activity will keep you 1x or EVDO even when  EVDO or 4G is available.

Now of course, does Candada follow the US 700MHz band plan? I hope not! That one so freaking messy.

Not necessarily, but they might be able to use the same antennas/equipment. Which means even more leverage when negotiating prices with vendors. The bigger your customer is, the more leverage they have on you.

Bingo!  You saved me a lengthy explanation.  Thanks, Rawvega.

 

To add to that, neither Bell nor Telus has deployed any GSM, only W-CDMA.

 

AJ

Yes, but if they're buying Wind, they're getting a pure WCDMA network that needs to be upgraded to LTE and will probably need 700Mhz in the upcoming auction to be competitive with the big three. 

The issue that I was responding to was not about Wind; it was about Bell and Telus.  Too many people think that Bell and Telus have switched to W-CDMA.  No, they rolled out some W-CDMA overlay for three reasons:

1. They had spectrum to burn.
2. They wanted the iPhone.
3. They wanted roaming revenue from the Vancouver Winter Olympics.

Other than excess spectrum, which is a constant "problem" for Bell, Telus, and Rogers, the other two reasons are now ancient history.  Furthermore, their CDMA2000 networks are still in place -- in fact, I roamed on Telus two months ago -- and they still offer greater coverage area than the W-CDMA overlays.

 

AJ

For some reason I had it in my head that they were replacing their CDMA networks with W-CDMA. Given that this isn't the case, at least in the near term, then it DOESN'T make sense for VZW to build/buy CDMA assets in Canada. In that case, the acquisition of Wind and their AWS spectrum (which VZW is starting to roll out LTE on in the US) and possibly bidding on 700Mhz in Canada, makes more sense. They will be moving to an all LTE network, and one using the same spectrum frequencies as their US LTE. Given the economies of scale, they probably see this as a good time to enter that market.

 

"What's in a name? that which we call a rose

By any other name would smell as sweet..."

 

These days, everything is AWS or WCS.  PCS is so 1990s now.  Plus, this block was labeled AWS-2 roughly a decade ago.  And the  just adopted service rules put it much more in line with other AWS bands than with PCS.

 

AJ

 

The real question is, if Sprint get this spectrum, will it be easy to adapt existing PCS A-G antennas and RRUs to use this spectrum, or will they have to go mount separate equipment on the rack just to use it? I don't suppose existing phones could be software updated to use it too?

Received a notification today from signal check that my phone connected to 1x 800. It was weird because I have full bars on 1xrtt and when it connected to 800 it went down to one bar. I am guessing they were testing it or something. I thought 800 was supposed to boost your signal not make it worse. I am in Vancouver Washington and I am in a 4g area.

The 800 signal might be coming from a more distant tower.

 But much to the chagrin of those of you who want to call this the "PCS" H block, it will probably be more appropriately classified the AWS-2 H block.

 

Why? Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the uplink is from 1910-1915, which is right in the middle of the rest of the PCS block. And the downlink of 1995-2000Mhz is bordered by the PCS G below it and Dish's spectrum (2000-2020 Mhz) above it? Why would we call it AWS instead of PCS?

Aren't the Canadian carriers that used to have CDMA networks (that were compatible with VZW and Sprint) all in the process of converting to using W-CDMA for voice? If that is true, I can understand why Verizon is interested in entering the Canadian market.

1. To perserve roaming for US CDMA customers in Canada (and most of them are currently Verizon's customers).

2. If all the Canadian carriers go to W-CDMA/GSM, then Verizon isn't going to be getting any roaming revenue from those customers anymore. 
3. They may be able to enter the market cheeply by buying up existing infrastructure from carriers that are/were using CDMA but are converting to W-CDMA/GSM.

 

They're removing most of them from its network: 68k towers to 39k towers. That's where much of the cost savings from NV is coming from: removing redundant towers. With Direct Connect on CDMA SMR 800 MHz, Sprint has no need for the Nextek towers. Also, Direct Connect will be available even while roaming on VZW albeit with possibly some additional latency in the call setup.

Also, you know they don't own any of those, right? They lease them.

I don't think Sprint outright owns any of its towers.

Someone else on forums said some of the Nextel lease agreements were really bad and that on many of the towers, Sprint was sole leasee. So, maybe once the site owner sees that they have an empty tower, they'll give Speint better lease rates and Sprint will come back to that tower.

I know most of the towers are leased as a rule, but I thought sprint still owned the old Qwest towers in Montana and the Dakotas, plus the odd ones here and there that they built themselves for some reason (maybe they there were no good options for leasing a tower in a particular area?). Did they sell those all off?

so that is all NV hardware and not legacy?  it def cannot be broadcasting yet, unless the backhaul isnt completed.  Is there anyway i can give someone here the address or ID of the tower to find out the NV status, just curious

I'd say the ones on the corners of the rack are the new NV gear, the square one in the middle is clearwire, and the two on either side of that are the preNV Sprint ones.  The racks below belong to other carriers. I'm guessing ATT and TMUS? I'm curious about the bottom rack. Is that old Nextel stuff, or possibly MPCS or VZ?

I swear, I'm not trying to make this thread more political, there is a point about wireless at the end of all this.

Government and markets are just different institutional tools suited for different jobs. Neither is a panacea, but that should come as no surprise, governments and markets are human institutions, and let's face it, we aren't exactly infallible. How would you like to live in a society where every establishement/individual had all their own laws and violence (or the threat of it) was the only means of solving disputes between different parties, or in a society were everyone eats the meal that a pluraity of people vote for?

Democratic governments work effectively when a decision has to be made collectively (for a given geographic area) and it simply isn't feasible for us to chose individually, due to the nature of the service or item being provided. They are the alternative to mass violence and 'rule by the few', but they do have a downside. When we vote instead of choosing individually, ALL of us get stuck with whatever MOST of us want. Sure, it's better than most of us getting stuck with what only some of us want, but wouldn't it be better if EACH group could get what they want? They call that a "win-win" in business school.  That's the advantage of using a market to provide something, as opposed to having us take a vote and be stuck with whatever a majority (or maybe just a pluraity) of us want. 

The more choices you have, the more likely you are to find an option that you like better, relative to the others. Markets don't provide unlimted choices of course, just more choices than if we take one big vote and are stuck with only one option. Different providers can cater to different interests and needs, as long as the group being catered to is big enough to make serving it (conceivably) profitable. 

In the case of cell phone service, you are limited by spectrum and the cost of building and operating a network. It's nice that different carriers can serve different niches/needs. And I, for one, am happy that we have at least some choice, instead of being stuck with Big Red or Ma Bell.

Please, we get just what we want/deserve every election, local, state, and federal. 

As they say in The Lone Ranger "What you mean 'We' Kiemosabe?"