WiWavelength

The Aints can be swept away in a hurricane or move to San Antonio for all I care. I would like to put a bounty on the Aints head for costing me at least $150 in the last regular season week of my pool. AJ

Become a Premier Sponsor, and you can check the status yourself. Now, if this is a question about Sprint LTE at your home, why should it matter? You should be offloading to your broadband connection at home. Both simple as that... AJ

Kudos to you. I like your realistic, positive attitude about Sprint's network development. It will take time, and you will need to upgrade your device to follow. Plenty of others here at S4GRU could take a lesson from you. They are perpetually "not impressed"... AJ

I imagine that Sprint would have preferred that its iPhone offerings not have a removable SIM yet. But Apple is such an egregious dictator and the iPhone such a cultish device that Sprint had little choice. AJ

Following the Sprint-USCC spectrum transaction in Chicago, Houston is one of two remaining top 10 markets in which Sprint holds only 20 MHz of PCS A-F block spectrum. So, no, do not expect another 5 MHz FDD LTE 1900 carrier in Houston anytime soon. Sorry. AJ

I will offer a counter opinion. Keep Gogo a little bit "pricey." That is just good resource management. I have used Gogo only once but probably will use it again anytime that I have the option. I have and will continue to use it for in flight productivity, not in flight entertainment. So, price it high enough that the "Joe Blow" iOS device crowd decides to stick with locally stored content and does not suck up my bandwidth with needless entertainment activity. AJ

I am not an RF engineer (though I play one at S4GRU). But if I were an RF engineer, I would do anything that I could to downplay Self Organizing Networks because they have the potential to put me out of a job. It is not far fetched to imagine base stations that could dynamically allocate carriers/subcarriers and coordinate power levels with no human intervention, just a little bit of assistance from GPS and "the cloud." Contractors could install a base station, plug it in, and after the base station self gathered some info about other base stations nearby, it would be ready to roll. Effectively, this is what the Airave/Airvana already do. RF engineering would not be rendered obsolete. There still would be some RF planning and drive testing to do. But SON would reduce the need for RF engineering, could make cellular network construction far more "plug and play." AJ

As Robert likes to say, das ist gut. AJ

Gogo's spectrum is adjacent to Cellular 850 MHz, so free space path loss is very similar between the two. The difference is that ground to air service operates very nearly in free space. http://wireless2.fcc...?licKey=2855806 AJ

Yeah, RRUs up top do complicate overall nomenclature. That is why I have long endorsed the generic term "cell site" to encompass all installed infrastructure. (In contrast, I hate the so often used term "tower" because it is so wrong in so many ways.) Regardless, RRUs up top are the radios, which require GPS timing. The equipment below is largely relegated to IP routing and power management. AJ

VZW's policy may be more liberal, reportedly so. But Sprint's policy, right or wrong, is very simple. If Sprint (or an authorized retailer) did not sell it as a Sprint device, then Sprint will not activate it, bar none. AJ

If a site uses RRUs, the BTS is effectively on the rack. So, the GPS antenna needs to be up top, too. AJ

Those black domes are the antennas that broadcast Randall Stephenson's and the ghost of Steve Jobs' mind control to all AT&T subs. AJ

The Gogo EV-DO Rev A/B ground to air sites are few and far between. https://twitter.com/WiWavelength/status/248116607019266048/photo/1 AJ

Some have expressed interest in how digiblur captured the above super telephoto image. Good news, I just so happen to have a documentary photo of him in that process. AJ

I just tweeted out a link to digiblur's super telephoto pic above because it shows that AT&T LTE panels' low and high frequency ports cover Lower 700 MHz, Cellular 850 MHz, PCS 1900 MHz, and AWS 2100+1700 MHz. Thus, AT&T needs only additional RRUs to support fully four bands of LTE. We already have a number of guests viewing this thread. Make them feel welcome. AJ

I will guess "BFFS4GRU." Or, on the flip side, could it be "STFUS4GRU"? AJ

Enough! April, you have already been warned once. Continue, and you will find yourself on an unpaid vacation away from S4GRU. You chose to be an early adopter of a service that has not yet launched. No one forced you. In doing so, you do not give up your "right" to complain, but your complaints should fall on deaf ears since you chose this situation for yourself. Regardless, S4GRU is NOT a complaint board. Further complaints will be deleted, and you will be subject to disciplinary action. Got it? AJ

That is like receiving socks and underwear for Christmas. Yeah, you need them, but you were already going to get them sooner or later. AJ

Oh, you know, I got a voicemail message for this thread... El Paso called. It thinks that this thread should be titled "El Paso market (including Albuquerque, Las Cruces, Santa Fe, Los Alamos, Roswell). AJ

It could be that Sprint just hates you. It could be that AT&T and VZW have lower frequency spectrum. It could be that you are mistaken about the site co-location. It could be that your interpretation of signal bars has no bearing on actual signal usability. So, where are you located? When you ask questions like you do above but do not provide any location info, you are essentially asking for little more than a shot in the dark. AJ

If nothing else, this SON...er, I mean Son...is big into LTE... AJ

...or, as I like to think of it, AAV is (in my best Transylvanian accent) "Almost Anybody Vut" the Baby Bells. AJ

Oh, man, you outed him. Yep, Robert's main source is the old Sprint PCS "trench coat guy." AJ

I am not sure what makes you think that there is no timeline. See Title 47 Parts 27.13 and 27.14. http://www.ecfr.gov/....0.1.1.5.2.49.4 The timeline is long for AWS 2100+1700 MHz licenses because the spectrum is not ideal. Government incumbents have to be relocated from the 1700 MHz uplink. No AWS licensee has hit its first buildout deadline yet, so no AWS spectrum should be revoked yet. And lest you think that I am soft on the duopoly, I suggest that you read almost anything that I have written here at S4GRU. Try a search on "anti competitive asshats." That should bring up some of my scathing criticisms of both VZW and AT&T. Moreover, if you want my perspective on carriers using protection sites to retain licenses, read the very first piece that I wrote for S4GRU. http://s4gru.com/ind...t-of-hypocrisy/ For basically a decade, I have hammered away at the use of protection sites. But there is a big difference between fat and happy AT&T sitting on prime PCS 1900 MHz spectrum in smaller markets and cash strapped Clearwire grinding to a halt with marginal BRS/EBS 2600 MHz spectrum in several already well served major markets. Regardless, your protests, Richard, strike me less as concerned altruism about use of public spectrum, more as sour grapes over the dearth of WiMAX in San Diego County. AJ