iansltx

I have plugged in the Voyager via USB and didn't get any higher speeds than on WiFi. Then again, maybe the Mac drivers are poorer than the Windows one? Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Wow...never could pull that with my Voyager when I had it, even though I had perfect signal with low load. Maybe Clear has throttled such devices in the past and is now removing those caps? I had no problem getting 12-plus Mbps with the Clear Hub in the same location. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Okay. I heard something about the iPhone 5 needing different models because the Qualcomm chipset + radio paths can only support five LTE bands (CLR, PCS, AWS, 700-lower for A1428; 800-JP, PCS+G, 1800, 2100, 700-upper-C for A1429). But I think that this assertion was made by a journalist rather than an engineer, so it's probably incorrect.

Point of clarification: the A1429 iPhone (Sprint and VZW) can't do AWS LTE. Only the A1428 (AT&T) edition can do that. Hence my suggestion of refarming PCS for LTE rather than AWS. Dunno about CLR LTE support...I think that it's also another A1428-only band for LTE. The A1429 has support around that band, but the duplex gap is flipped to work with KDDI's network in Japan. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

To be fair, Verizon was the last to break 2.5 Mbps in the mobile context of any of the "big four", since Sprint had WiMAX and both AT&T and T-Mobile had 7.2 Mbps HSPA (5 Mbps usable), with T-Mobile launching 21 Mbps HSPA+ in some areas before Verizon started with LTE.In urban areas, Verizon had to do *something* to deal with capacity issues, and fast. Plus, only half of Verizon's customers are in the top 50 MSAs, so hitting larger areas with a single tower does those customers a lot of good. That said, in a mobile context, I'd hate to be the guy in the hot seat charged with building for capacity in a 700MHz network where you're limited to dropping the power output on existing sites and adding new ones to fill in the new gaps because you have to hold everything else constant (one 10x10 carrier, with zero ability to refarm 3G or add AWS because no one's devices, iPhone excluded, support it). Hmm...any bets on whether Verizon launches a 5x5 LTE carrier in PCS in areas where they're particularly congested AND have a lot of iPhone 5 users? AT&T will probably do this first, but for all the hand-waving that VZW has done about not touching their PCS spectrum for LTE until 2015, I don't believe them.

Weird. I've read official Comcast statements/install forum posts on DSLReports that say that the medium to the CPE is fiber (practically identical to a Metro Ethernet circuit that you'd see hooked up to a cell tower in fact), not coax. And it makes sense for Comcast to deploy at higher bandwidths this way, because there is a limited amount of usable spectrum on a run of coaxial plant (450-1000 MHz depending on the area, usually 860MHz), and it only makes sense to dedicate multiple channels to broadband usage if lots of people are using them (a few dozen or so is sufficient, but on the other hand the cable provider side of DOCSIS channels is expensive...it's not just a cable modem on the other end). When you're to the point that you need to keep eight DOCSIS cannels unused (or have twelve DOCSIS downstreams available at one-third utilization) just to serve one customer, it's cheaper to build out fiber to that one customer. Don't get me wrong. You can use coax for point to point communications; that's how you connect radios to antennas if they aren't antenna-integrated radios (RRUs have short coax pigtails). But that's not the kind of plant that you see out in the field for a cable company, and MetroE over fiber is. But hey, I'd be happy to be proven wrong by a photo of some sort of coax modem at the demarc to an NV site, converting RF to Ethernet.

The Running List will be updated soon...Merry Christmas by the way...and here are some highlights: Ericsson: Atlanta/Athens is now 49% NV complete. Georgia outside of the area is about one-eighth upgraded, albeit only with 3G. In Texas, Austin market, as a whole, is now 20% upgraded. DFW is 34% done, thanks to a big update this week. Houston is 42% done, while San Antonio is 45% complete. Miami/West Palm now has 8% of its sites LTE-enabled. Orlando got a few new sites as well, but nothing to write home about. Alcatel-Lucent: Baltimore is 57% NV complete. About 60% of those have 4G online. Boston is about 40% complete, with half of complete towers being accepted for LTE. LA is 27% complete; about two-thirds of LA sites are accepted for LTE. Orange County is now a little over 5% complete. Long Island is about 3% complete, albeit only on the 3G side. NYC on the other hand is around 19% complete, with a bit over one-third of sites 4G-enabled. Norfolk's NV deployment just started, but due to the smallish size of the market, it's already over 3% complete. Washington D.C. is now 32% NV complete, but only one-sixth of sites have LTE online. Samsung Fort Wayne/South Bend is about 16% NV complete, all with LTE turned on. Indianapolis is 23% complete. Sprint's Puerto Rico/Virgin Islands market is nearly three-quarters upgraded, though only a little over 40% have 4G turned on. The SF Bay market is 27% complete. Roughly three-quarters have LTE accepted. The South Bay market is about 13% complete, with nearly all sites sporting LTE. Want more information, including site locations and listings of sites that are in-progress but haven't been accepted by Sprint quite yet? Become a Sponsor and you'll get exactly that

Wait, there are AAVs that use coax for part of the infrastructure? I can believe Cat5e...but not coax. PM if you'd like to prove me wrong on this one...

Nope. While very high latency will impact data delivery speed, the latency of Clear WiMAX isn't in that league. We're definitely talking about transit/peering arrangements in this case; I've seen something similar even with a 50 Mbps Comcast cable connection that had good latency 98 percent of the time. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

TWC and Cablevision's fiber infrastructure is quite good. They would be delivering gigabit ports to as print towers at any rate, and really the only piece of their networks that is ever congested is the last, coaxial, mile. Which never gets touched in a back haul build. My bet is that they're a heck of a lot cheaper than Verizon anyway, for comparable performance. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Merry Christmas to everyone from sunny South Florida! Thanks to Robert and the various contributors/moderators/members who have made S4GRU what it is! Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Easy answer: no. Not at all. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I have seen 17 Mbps in Austin, via a home modem set up in a car on a tower that pretty much only served a section of 360. With perfect signal. Normal speeds are half to two-thirds of that, but it's fun seeing WiMAX go faster than CricKet LTE.

You're lucky. In my area with Comcast (CO) prices were double that. Then again, we had no competition to speak of; 12 Mbps was the fastest DSL money could buy. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

I'd take the deal. Flip the duplex gap and interference concerns with the H block go away. Sure, you lose range if you're planning on doing S-band only Tx/Rx, but realistically you won't ever be doing that, with a nationwide PCS G license, nationwide PCS A-F of some sort, and nationwide SMR of some sort. The disadvantage? It will be 2014 before you can get an S-band network overlay online, maybe longer if you switch the duplex gap and recertify the band. But if Sprint can survive with that, it ends up with a network that, from a coverage planning standpoint, looks a lot like T-Mobile's (~200MHz between bands, so not much coverage diference), but with the addition of SMR...and with more overall spectrum by a slight margin (they'd have 94MHz). That's a good place to be. EDIT: This would be much more likely in a vacuum, without SoftBank, than now SoftBank has a real hankerin' for pushing mobile usage of TD-LTE 2600 hard and fast. S-Band? Not so much.

You can just post this in Premier Sponsors, but what about Austin? I think it's probably AT&T, then Sprint, then TMobile, then Verizon, with TMobile pretty close to Sprint. But not completely sure. I know in Fredericksburg it's something like Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, West Central Wireless (local), CricKet, TMobile. Sprint was the first to get us EvDO, as well as the first to get us LTE. Verizon will almost undoubtedly be next, followed shortly by WCW. SMR 1x will be a pretty big deal here since it will allow Sprint to compete on coverage with VZW (a lot of their own towers in good locations) and AT&T (850 license...WCW owns the other one). WCW is great if you stay in the area most of the time, but you can't get 3G without a contract and data roaming is on the order of 50 cents per meg. Ouch. Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

Without starting a flame war here, I am very happy with the performance of my third-gen LTE iPad. However I have no desire to purchase another Apple product in the near future. My used top of the line last gen 27" iMac was enough Now if I'm wishing...a 35 cent increase in Sprint's stock price, an NV LTE site near where I'll be in FL over the holiday, or a Nexus 4 would all be cool Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

The Clear Spot Voyager does indeed use KHz as the frequency unit, as markjcc posted. As does the Clear Hub Express. Judging from his posts, "modem" = a Clear Hub Express or similar, sucking in WiMAX in BRS/EBS and spitting out WiFi in the 2400000 KHz band (yep, I'm being obnoxious)...or wired copper Ethernet, if that's your flavor. Spreaking of flavor, it's been awhile since I've had good Cajun food. I'd say I'd remedy that while en route to Florida Sunday, but Prejean's is way too expensive these days.

I'll give it half an hour before mods close this thread as it has been talk about before, but... Sprint's primary use for Clearwire's 2500/2600 spectrum is as an offload band in high-density environments. Where capacity is an issue, TD-LTE in 2600 is lit until capacity is no longer an issue. This is done on a site-by-site basis, though Softbank's ulterior motive for getting more TD-LTE 2600 out there (economies of scale back home in Japan) may bias things toward more LTE 2600 rather than less. That said, you won't see TD-LTE 2600 on every tower, unless something really crazy happens, for example someone (Sprint or some MVNO of theirs, maybe even Dish) wants to do fixed wireless using BRS/EBS spectrum, you won't see TD-LTE 2600 on every NV site. In the mobile environment, there just isn't the need for that much capacity over that small of an area (at 2500/2600 on a mobile device you're playing the odds if you try to get service more than a mile from the tower). Also, Sprint doesn't own 850 MHz spectrum at all. Just SMR (aka 800), PCS (usually 30MHz of A-F, plus 10MHz of G) and now BRS, plus some leases on EBS (2500/2600 MHz). With the proper network architecture, they've got a decent amount of air link capacity to do with what they wish, though PCS H or S band...or more PCS...wouldn't hurt in the long run.

The latest revision of the Running List will be out soon. In addition to Sprint's city launches (which are significantly more conservative than their market launches from months ago) here are a few interesting things coming down the pike, divided by NV vendor since there's a lot of news here: Samsung Chicago is even closer to 75% NV Complete than it was last week. Even when considering only sites that Sprint has accepted on the 4G side, you're looking at 45% completion. Also of note, roughly 26% of Chicago market sites have 1x in SMR live (using Network Vision equipment). This should provide a healthy boost to signal levels for anyone with a reasonably recent phone in that area. Sprint's PR/VI market is a hairbreadth away from 70% upgraded. Only a little over one-third of complete sites have gone live with 4G, but the number of 3G-only NV upgraded sites is decreasing even as the number of upgraded sites increases. Indianapolis coverage may start out a bit thin even though Sprint has now officially launched the city; the entire market is only 22% NV complete. That said, markets aren't just city-sized, so the number is actually better than it looks. The SF Bay market got a large update this week, pushing it over 25% complete, with most sites having 4G live. The South Bay market is now 12% complete, with practically every tower broadcasting LTE. Sites are live in Colorado (3G only for the moment) and Northern Wisconsin (one 4G site). Alcatel-Lucent Baltimore and Boston are, respectively, 54% and 39% NV complete, though there are still many 3G-only NV upgraded sites in both markets. Long Island got its first (3G only) site accepted this week. The NYC market showed some growth as well, with a double-handful of sites getting 4G turned on. Upstate NY got some NV upgrades as well, though no 4G sites have been accepted in that region quite yet. Myrtle Beach got its first two NV sites accepted this week (3G only). Northern CT got its first (3G) NV site. VT/NH/ME got a more sizable update, but doesn't have accepted LTE sites yet. Washington D.C. is now 31% NV complete. We're starting to see a significant number of LTE sites in that market, though most are still 3G-only. Ericsson Alabama got its first NV sites accepted this week, though there's no 4G in the market from Sprint quite yet. ATL/Athens is now 48% complete. The Georgia market (which does not include Atlanta and Athens) is 8% complete, but is mostly 3G-only. Kansas is now 42% NV complete. Like ATL, all but a few sites have LTE online. Nashville got a fair-sized NV update this week, though that only gets it to 2% NV complete. Other markets got more minor updates. Curious about more precise update counts, or where updated sites are? The Sponsors section has that information. Also, if you're about to whine about Sprint not getting LTE in your market quickly enough, don't. No new sites were updated in my market this week, but there's really nothing I can do but wait for more sites to go online...which will happen. Eventually one of the multiple hundreds of NV updates that Sprint accepts each week (and this week was a big one for updates) will be them adding LTE to the tower nearest me...and at some point your market will get a similar update. Just give it time