mozamcrew

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Fist Fight

Green Bean

I realize this. I was figuring about 1/3 of the channels would be useable in a given market. That leaves roughly 12/13 OTA HD channels in a market. Plus most of them can do an additional sub channel or two within their spectrum. I think my perspective is also a product of geography. There is plenty of channel space in my neck of the woods!

I didn't realize newer TV licenses were being auctioned, I can't imagine they have much monitary value outside of spectrum constrained markets. My point is that if you are merely relocating their license, as opposed to simply just taking it, then they should be only be compensated for the cost of moving. AFAICT, outside of NYC and LA, moving to "only" 38 OTA TV channels shouldn't result in a loss of stations.

Mr. Mister

I'm fine with incentive auctions in theory. But the broadcasters were GIVEN the spectrum, they didn't buy it like a wireless carrier. Why should the broadcasters get any money from this deal, they never paid money for it in the first place. I wish they'd just vacate eveything above channel 38, pay the broadcasters relocation costs, and do the auction. It would avoid messy band and interferance issues. I'd also like to see them eventually rework the original 50Mhz of Cellular spectrum into 5 5x5Mhz licenses. The current owners of the A and B licenses would get 2 licenses each, with an ownership limit of 3 licenses per CMA. That would leave 1 (or 2) new license(s) that could be sold in each CMA.

Did USCC actually own those towers/poles? Most wireless providers try to sell them and lease them back from a company in the tower business.

I wouldn't say CDMA coverage is completely finished. As we have discussed in other locations on this forum, Sprint still has markets where it needs to build native coverage in order to protect its PCS G license (MT, ND, SD, NE, and WY); plus, Sprint will continue to add new coverage where towns have outgrown Sprint's coverage, or other areas where Sprint sees high roaming useage (particularly on VZW). But I take your point, almost all of Sprint's existing CDMA sites have been upgraded. Sprint does have LTE only sites (old Clearwire sites) and will continue to add them in metropolitan areas to improve data performance. But in areas where Sprint wants to build new coverage footprint, I don't see them building LTE only sites. They will get the NV1.0 equipment that does both CDMA and LTE.

It is widely known/assumed that Sprint gets significantly more favorable roaming rates from USCC and other smaller providers than it gets from Verizon. My point was that it may not have been economical to build out an area when it was covered by USCC, but once you have to pay Verizon's roaming rates, then the calculation may change.

It makes sense. At one time it was probably more economical to roam on USCC. Now that they are stuck with Verizon roaming, it probably makes more sense to build out. Also, now they can have USCC customers roaming on Sprint, which helps even out roaming revenue.

They just opened a new RS store in my town, and it does in fact have a selection of some of the more basic electronics stuff. They are still trying to sell cell phones too, but they have gone "back to basics" a little bit. I don't know how that is going to work out for them.

Sprint has said that they are in less of a hurry to roll out VoLTE than the other wireless providers, due to their investment in 1xA equipment as part of NV. They are going to take the time to do it right and make sure they don't have compatibility issues with other CCA/RRPP members. Basically, they elected to let the other wireless providers go first, and deal with most of the bugs and compatibility issues. And why shouldn't they? They have the newest and most efficient CDMA equipment, whereas Verizon is just going to let their old 3G network slowly rot away once they roll out VoLTE. Heck, they have already started to ignore all but the most serious problems with their 3G network.

I thought Qualcomm had basically stopped charging a premium for CDMA capability. Thought the Qualcomm pitch was now something like "you can buy from no-name semiconductor over there, or you can pay only a few pennies more and get a genuine Qualcomm chip, and as a bonus, it is also CDMA capable."

I said 3-4 years from when they roll out VoLTE, not 3-4 years from today, I agree they won't kill CDMA before VZ, that would be crazy given the investment they made in CDMA. I don't expect to see a Sprint VoLTE rollout until almost 2017, maybe mid-late 2016 at the earliest, given their statements on the matter. So basically I don't expect to see PCS CDMA completely eliminated until well into the 2020s. I think you might see Sprint squeeze their CDMA traffic into a single 5x5 PCS block of spectrum before then (a single 1xA carrier and 2 EVDO in PCS), but I don't seem them TOTALLY shutting it down until 80-90% of customers have VoLTE phones (and the remainder have BC10 capable phones or M2M modules).

I think we will get there eventually. Once Sprint starts moving to VoLTE, I imagine they will convert PCS entirely to LTE within 3-4 years. The only place I see them keeping CDMA in the next decade will be on that sliver of 1x800 that is too small for anything usefull except one (or two) 1xA carrier(s). Those 1xA carriers can provide a LOT of voice or M2M capacity.

I think there is still room for a local store to carry electronic stuff if you are in a big enough market. Sometimes your really want/need something right now.

USCC had its headquarters in Chicago, but Chicago was never really a big market for them. They didn't have a very good spectrum position there. They lacked a cellular spectrum license that they have in most markets. The spectrum they held there was PCS only and was acquired as part of a divestment and they didn't have enough spectrum there to launch a 4G network.

I hope they don't do carrier aggregation with band 26. They need to keep that free for people that don't have a band 25 or 41 signal. If they want to aggregate multiple 5x5 blocks within band 25 that would be great though.

American Cheese.

I don't think there is a "typical" number. It depends on the amount of traffic on a site. At the minimum on old sites you'd have a 1x carrier for voice and an EVDO carrier.

TD-LTE is but your handset may or may not support whatever band they are using for TD-LTE. TD-SCDMA is the wierd China only mobile standard that is being slowly abandoned for UMTS/WCDMA and LTE.

That assumes you have decent signal and are on a tower with enough backhaul. Many Clearwire sites don't have the proper backhaul to support those speeds yet.

I think you CAN pay off an easypay phone early ... so that might be a good workaround.

I noticed the same thing on here (Western Minnesota in the Dakotas market). It used to give the exact site location. I don't even see a standard distance for the offsets. This really annoys me.