iansltx

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

Chips supporting LTE-TD in BRS/EBS are either nearly, or already, available. I expect that, at the latest, phones two generations later than the SIII and the Evo will have that band. Might even happen with the upcoming generation. EDIT: By "chips" I mean SoCs that have, among other bands (including FD in band 25), TD in BRS/EBS.

Looks like LTE-A uses 15 KHz OFDMA carriers though on the uplink, and I can't imagine LTE Rel 9 or earlier devices ever supporting that band. Though I would expect that, in the lower-link-budget portion of the band, the subcarriers will be sitting at lower modulations most of the time, if they're used at all, due to SNR issues. Who me, alphabet soup? Never!

Sounds like, even if Sprint won PCS H, they wouldn't use it to make a 10x10 with PCS G, due to very different footprints as a result of different Tx power requirements. Maybe they'll do some weird asymmetric channel width fandango on PCS H though, such that LTE-A devices will carrier-aggregate G+H downlinks (for 10 MHz of bandwidth) and use as many uplink subcarriers (15 KHz apiece, right?) as possible while still obeying power budgets (which might mean all of PCS G, plus 2 MHz of PCS H, farther from the tower). Going along with this idea, if Sprint had G+H in a given market, they could "stack" the subcarriers as tightly as possible (since a 5x5 channel is actually 4.5x4.5 with a 250KHz guard band on each side) such that a few more subcarriers would stay outside the very low uplink section of PCS H. Dunno if LTE Rel 10 supports that though, and I'm too lazy at the moment to look the spec up.

I'm surprised that the deal went through at that price, but I'm also pretty happy about that, since I didn't speculate on CLWR. With the money Sprint saved from buying at $2.97 (and convincing 2/3 of the float to sell at $2.97), they can deal with whatever lawsuits the vocal minority wants to throw at them. I guess the other investors had enough sense to realize that CLWR's value hinges on Sprint's ability to be their primary customer, and if things play out for too long, Sprint could lose interest, sending the stock out of the frying pan and into the fire. As for Ergen, now Sprint has a big bargaining chip with which they can tempt Dish to do a partnership. Sprint can add TD-LTE 2600 to any NV site relatively easily, and they can install S-Band antennas while they're at it. I'm sure Sprint wouldn't mind leasing capacity to Dish for use in a fixed product, as long as that capacity is on 2600, in return for Dish being cordial about PCS H and maybe even working on Sprint jointly to deploy in the S band, such that Sprint phones will end up having access to the S band in addition to PCS, BRS/EBS and SMR for LTE. One can hope...

I'm aware. You probably have caps above 25GB on your WISP, right?

Spectrum or no spectrum, Clearwire alone has a much shakier footing absent Sprint than investors seem t give them credit for. They're losing money hand over fist over pot over teakettle, their network is slower than T-Mobile's DC-HSPA network, let alone anyone's LTE (and this is in a desktop context; take speeds and halve them in the mobile context, a problem that no other carrier has because Clearwire is being cheap CPE gear), and they can't extract premium, or maybe even reasonable, wholesale rates because their network isn't built out like it should be. Don't get me wrong. If you're in an area served by Clearwire, $90 for a modem plus $10 per month for 10GB of data is a very decent deal. $90 for the modem plus $0 for 1GB of data is also decent. However if you're selling gigabytes so cheaply to FreedomPop that they can offer those rates and break even, are you even paying your own infrastructure costs, even mixing in Sprint's network lease payment? I mean, you do have a spotty, stagnant network footprint but geez... For investors thinking that Clearwire will be able to sell its spectrum for a pretty penny, look at the potential buyers. In order to get AT&T or Verizon interested, Sprint would have to drop its share of CLWR completely, which first off isn't happening and second off would tank the share price since there would be 100% increase in the number of shares in the open market...and the Sprint contract keeping some of the lights on would be gone. Dish or DirecTV? Sure, but they don't have anywhere near as deep pockets as AT&T/VZW, so you won't get nearly as many cents per MHz-pop, even though there's already a 3GPP certification for Clear's LTE band and hardware will be available for it years sooner than for WCS. Why won't you be able to get as many dollars per MHz-pop in a Dish situation? Well, you see, Dish isn't a mobile provider, and even if it became one they wouldn't be able to use Clearwire spectrum to do a traditional mobile network because cell sizes are too small. You have to do fixed wireless because Dish's customer base has a large rural proportion, and Dish's current customer base is what they'll leverage for a new wireless product. And what do you sell to rural customers seeking fixed wireless broadband? Well, something that gets billed by household rather than by person, something that has a lower cost per gigabyte than mobile, and something that will get discounted as part of a double/triple play. So look for an average revenue per household of $50 per month, rather than an average revenue per person of $70. You may not have to subsidize fancy phones, but you do have to pay for labor to install the user CPEs, and pay for the CPEs themselves...and do this while staying under the pricing of VZW HomeFusion, ViaSat exede and HughesNet. With all of those caveats, why do CLWR investors think that their company is hot stuff, again? To be fair, the investors in CLWR might be using AT&T phones and wouldn't ever have to live with HughesNet, ViaSat or some potential alternative. Or maybe they're shorting AT&T, hoping that that company will depress its stock price like Sprint has done by going after Clearwire. Who knows? Okay, I'm just being grumpy now. In the interest of full disclosure, I have immediate family that has a fair amount of Sprint stock. So I'm shaking my head at Sprint, muttering "too soon..."

...and now CLWR is trading well above Sprint's purchase price. Silly investors. It's not like AT&T or Verizon will swoop in to buy up Clearwire for a price above what Sprint is willing to pay. And Dish will likely stay away since now we're talking about a potentially overvalued company.

T-Mobile is going about it in a less upfront way vs. Telefonica/Vodafone. TF/VF didn't have payment plans for their handsets, and they may not have even lowered monthly pricing. T-Mobile OTOH has payment plans such that, if you want to pay for a handset in installments, you'll be saving a little money in the long run, but will otherwise be getting bills close to what you'd pay otherwise.

I think one big SPrint iPhone issue was that they were funneling all iPhone traffic through one gateway in their core network. That got fixed. As for WiFi calling, I don't expect that it will be available on the iPhone. Voice quality on T-Mobile is generally fine though, second only to Sprint from what I've seen.

There are a number of sites in TX slated for MW backhaul. We know that AlcaLu has a MW solution as well, and I suppose Samsung does too. So while fiber is the preferred backhaul method for sites (AAV primarily), MW is used as well.

The Sponsor-Only NV Sites Complete map has been updated, and the Running List will be soon. Here are a few highlights: NV equipment is on nearly three-quarters of Chicago's cell sites. Discounting 3G-only sites, the completed site count is still above 40%. 20% of Indianapolis's sites have 4G online. Nearly two-thirds of the PR/VI market has NV equipment online. One-quarter of complete sites have 4G accepted as well as 3G. The SF Bay market is now 22% complete. Over 70% of completed sites have 4G online. In Ericsson-land, 46% of Atlanta/Athens sites have 4G turned on. Percentages for Kansas, Houston, San Antonio and DFW are 41%, 40%, 39% and 30%, respectively. The Austin market is now 16% 4G-enabled. Baltimore and Boston are, respectively, 52% and 38% upgraded. Roughly half of NV complete towers are 4G enabled in these markets. The LA Metro market is a little over one-quarter NV complete, though a little over 40% of NV complete sites in the market are still 3G-only. Washington D.C. is 29% NV complete, though most sites only have 3G online. New York City is around one-sixth NV complete, though most of its NV sites are also 3G-only. Whew, that's a lot of information. There's more where that came from in if you're a Sponsor, though.

I want one, as long as it's unlocked and I can stick a SIM from *whoever* in it.

I know that my VZW LTE iPad does not transition seamlessly between CDMA and LTE; it will drop the CDMA connection for a couple seconds when it connects to LTE, generally speaking. My guess is that this happens despite the fact that VZW has eHRPD set up. I don't get this issue on my phone. Then again, the iPhone 5 can't be connected to two cellular networks simultaneously, per FCC submissions, while the SIII can.

T-Mobile has actually been doing this for awhile, with its Even More plans etc. The primary reason they're losing customers is the lack of an iPhone, like it or not; $XX up front plus $XX per month for a phone seems to work well enough for them.

The question is where you draw the line. In rural areas, do you run fiber to everyone's home? If not, you'll be using wireless. Who should run that wireless infrastructure? I'm sure many in this area would be fine with paying the local electric co-op $XX per month for fiber, plus another $XX for ISP and/or video service from either the co-op or someone else, but can that model work better than the shaky ground that has been UTOPIA for the last few years? Dunno.

One caveat to all this is that, if people have to pay for their devices up-front, or realize how much they're paying for their devices, they might start buying more Huawei and ZTE phones...and then potentially flooding tores with complaints about those phones' poor quality. Actually, Huawei and ZTE have gotten better over the past couple of years, but now you've got the new crop of Chinese phone manufacturers who will sell a low-end device on the cheap. So what carriers gain in reduced subsidies gets (partially) lost in support costs. Hence carriers' willingness to cough up a $400 subsidy for the iPhone. Me? I'll take the cheaper plan with the unsubsidized phone the next time it comes around, as long as I'm actually getting a decent deal/getting all the features the phone can utilize (e.g. LTE, ahem AT&T and Verizon MVNOs). Tracfone branch (and Sprint/VZW/AT&T/T-Mobile MVNO) Straight Talk has been doing exactly this: buy an unsubsidized phone (either from them or from elsewhere, plus a SIM from them) and pay $45 per month for unlimited (more or less for data, depending on the underlying carrier) everything. The rest of my family? Well, the last heavily subsidized phone anyone has gotten (Tracfone and Virgin Mobile both subsidize their phones to an extent...maybe by $40-$60) was a Nokia 5165 on Cellular One/Concho Wireless. Since then, my mom has been through four phones (Nokia 2126, Nokia 2126i, Optimus V, LG Marquee), my dad has been through four, more or less (Nokia 1221, Nokia 2126, Nokia 2126i, LG 440g), one brother has been through three (Motorola w376g, Optimus V, Marquee coming very soon) and the other has been through three (Samsung t10Xg, brother's w376g, LG Marquee). The amount each family member has spent monthly has been way less than what they would have spent on-contract, even though Tracfone minutes aren't particularly cheap (8¢ or so is the minimum) and Ting has very, very small device subsidies (the Marquees are cheap only because they're refurbs).