iansltx

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).

MIMO and beamforming are two different techs, strictly speaking. Now base stations with 4x4 MIMO probably have beamforming built in, and beamforming does increase signal levels by multiple dB (translating directly into better LTE throughput), but it's not a direct side effect of just throwing more antennas/spatial streams at the problem.

A couple miles west of Fredericksburg, TX, tethering my GSIII via TrevEMod AndroidWiFiTether because Sprint's OLAM is being stupid...and it looks like speeds are higher this way... traceroute to s4gru.com (50.28.75.70), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 [AS28513] 192.168.2.254 (192.168.2.254) 4.167 ms 1.846 ms 2.129 ms 2 [AS65534] 10.156.76.109 (10.156.76.109) 50.875 ms 34.345 ms 46.806 ms 3 [AS65534] 10.156.77.77 (10.156.77.77) 43.913 ms [AS65534] 10.156.77.73 (10.156.77.73) 49.793 ms [AS65534] 10.156.77.77 (10.156.77.77) 52.192 ms 4 [AS65534] 10.32.144.10 (10.32.144.10) 42.398 ms [AS65534] 10.32.144.14 (10.32.144.14) 44.164 ms [AS65534] 10.32.144.10 (10.32.144.10) 39.241 ms 5 [AS65534] 10.156.76.198 (10.156.76.198) 39.823 ms 63.242 ms 52.672 ms 6 [AS65534] 10.156.76.193 (10.156.76.193) 35.919 ms 35.550 ms 39.924 ms 7 [AS0] 66.1.76.243 (66.1.76.243) 41.845 ms 42.870 ms [AS0] 66.1.76.242 (66.1.76.242) 50.677 ms 8 [AS0] sl-crs2-hou-.sprintlink.net (144.228.11.49) 42.346 ms [AS0] sl-crs1-hou-.sprintlink.net (144.228.11.45) 37.490 ms 48.543 ms 9 [AS0] 144.232.1.76 (144.232.1.76) 48.789 ms [AS0] sl-crs2-fw-0-2-0-2.sprintlink.net (144.232.19.86) 72.051 ms [AS0] sl-crs1-fw-0-1-5-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.18.249) 67.240 ms 10 [AS0] 144.232.1.163 (144.232.1.163) 67.710 ms [AS0] 144.232.1.161 (144.232.1.161) 51.135 ms 58.573 ms 11 [AS0] 144.232.25.188 (144.232.25.188) 60.801 ms [AS0] 144.232.11.178 (144.232.11.178) 54.022 ms [AS0] 144.232.11.210 (144.232.11.210) 53.121 ms 12 [AS0] 144.232.25.90 (144.232.25.90) 55.290 ms 68.947 ms 57.474 ms 13 [AS0] dpr1-ge-2-0-0.dallasequinix.savvis.net (204.70.204.146) 63.899 ms 61.480 ms 59.512 ms 14 [AS0] cr2-tengige0-7-5-0.dallas.savvis.net (204.70.196.29) 61.961 ms 46.656 ms 58.797 ms 15 [AS0] cr1-te-0-2-0-0.chd.savvis.net (204.70.194.73) 88.542 ms 91.825 ms 87.293 ms 16 [AS0] ber1-te-1-0-0.chicagoequinix.savvis.net (204.70.196.22) 80.591 ms 80.942 ms 93.828 ms 17 [AS0] 208.173.176.222 (208.173.176.222) 80.569 ms 83.858 ms 97.191 ms 18 [AS32244] lw-dc2-core4-te9-1.rtr.liquidweb.com (209.59.157.226) 89.894 ms 94.465 ms 97.009 ms 19 [AS32244] lw-dc3-dist14.rtr.liquidweb.com (69.167.128.79) 99.734 ms 97.869 ms 91.643 ms 20 [AS32244] 69.167.128.70 (69.167.128.70) 93.749 ms 91.852 ms 90.531 ms 21 * * * 22 * *^C traceroute to 4.2.2.4 (4.2.2.4), 64 hops max, 52 byte packets 1 [AS28513] 192.168.2.254 (192.168.2.254) 4.722 ms 3.972 ms 1.862 ms 2 [AS65534] 10.156.76.109 (10.156.76.109) 35.168 ms 38.359 ms 39.909 ms 3 [AS65534] 10.156.77.73 (10.156.77.73) 42.348 ms [AS65534] 10.156.77.77 (10.156.77.77) 46.816 ms [AS65534] 10.156.77.73 (10.156.77.73) 40.877 ms 4 [AS65534] 10.32.144.14 (10.32.144.14) 42.017 ms [AS65534] 10.32.144.10 (10.32.144.10) 40.798 ms [AS65534] 10.32.144.14 (10.32.144.14) 36.112 ms 5 [AS65534] 10.156.76.198 (10.156.76.198) 39.102 ms 41.974 ms 39.713 ms 6 [AS65534] 10.156.76.193 (10.156.76.193) 40.528 ms 41.669 ms 53.557 ms 7 [AS0] 66.1.76.242 (66.1.76.242) 47.445 ms 41.084 ms 53.205 ms 8 [AS0] sl-crs2-hou-.sprintlink.net (144.228.11.49) 39.006 ms [AS0] sl-crs1-hou-.sprintlink.net (144.228.11.45) 40.542 ms [AS0] sl-crs2-hou-.sprintlink.net (144.228.11.49) 42.086 ms 9 [AS0] sl-crs2-fw-0-1-5-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.18.251) 48.446 ms [AS0] sl-crs2-fw-0-2-0-2.sprintlink.net (144.232.19.86) 58.324 ms [AS0] sl-crs1-fw-0-1-5-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.18.249) 59.018 ms 10 [AS0] 144.232.1.163 (144.232.1.163) 60.653 ms 48.780 ms [AS0] 144.232.1.161 (144.232.1.161) 57.875 ms 11 [AS0] 144.232.25.188 (144.232.25.188) 53.208 ms [AS0] 144.232.11.178 (144.232.11.178) 58.633 ms 79.378 ms 12 [AS0] 144.232.24.18 (144.232.24.18) 73.200 ms 63.148 ms 52.022 ms 13 [AS3356] ae-1-60.edge3.dallas1.level3.net (4.69.145.8) 61.298 ms [AS3356] ae-2-70.edge3.dallas1.level3.net (4.69.145.72) 58.679 ms 53.319 ms 14 [AS3356] d.resolvers.level3.net (4.2.2.4) 54.696 ms 56.860 ms 45.587 ms 1 [AS28513] 192.168.2.254 (192.168.2.254) 4.305 ms 3.578 ms 1.820 ms 2 [AS65534] 10.156.76.109 (10.156.76.109) 33.945 ms 45.723 ms 42.071 ms 3 [AS65534] 10.156.77.73 (10.156.77.73) 41.034 ms [AS65534] 10.156.77.77 (10.156.77.77) 43.722 ms [AS65534] 10.156.77.73 (10.156.77.73) 38.017 ms 4 [AS65534] 10.32.144.14 (10.32.144.14) 37.707 ms [AS65534] 10.32.144.10 (10.32.144.10) 45.018 ms [AS65534] 10.32.144.14 (10.32.144.14) 37.840 ms 5 [AS65534] 10.156.76.198 (10.156.76.198) 36.075 ms 44.898 ms 39.840 ms 6 [AS65534] 10.156.76.193 (10.156.76.193) 39.559 ms 45.893 ms 40.377 ms 7 [AS0] 66.1.76.243 (66.1.76.243) 41.466 ms 37.829 ms [AS0] 66.1.76.242 (66.1.76.242) 54.308 ms 8 [AS0] sl-crs1-hou-.sprintlink.net (144.228.11.45) 45.677 ms [AS0] sl-crs2-hou-.sprintlink.net (144.228.11.49) 49.360 ms [AS0] sl-crs1-hou-.sprintlink.net (144.228.11.45) 37.678 ms 9 [AS0] sl-crs1-fw-0-1-5-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.18.249) 67.391 ms [AS0] 144.232.1.78 (144.232.1.78) 51.198 ms [AS0] sl-crs2-fw-0-14-0-0.sprintlink.net (144.232.6.116) 70.877 ms 10 [AS0] 144.232.1.161 (144.232.1.161) 52.153 ms [AS0] 144.232.1.163 (144.232.1.163) 45.431 ms [AS0] 144.232.1.161 (144.232.1.161) 46.746 ms 11 [AS0] 144.232.11.178 (144.232.11.178) 56.755 ms [AS0] 144.232.11.210 (144.232.11.210) 66.894 ms [AS0] 144.232.11.178 (144.232.11.178) 51.534 ms 12 [AS0] 144.232.24.18 (144.232.24.18) 59.556 ms [AS0] 144.232.24.30 (144.232.24.30) 46.053 ms [AS0] 144.232.24.18 (144.232.24.18) 64.612 ms 13 [AS3356] softlayer-t.edge2.dallas3.level3.net (4.59.36.94) 65.248 ms 57.269 ms 53.896 ms 14 [AS36351] ae5.dar02.sr01.dal05.networklayer.com (173.192.18.217) 52.430 ms 66.318 ms 70.729 ms 15 * * * 16 [AS36351] speedtest.dal05.softlayer.com (173.192.68.18) 168.132 ms 45.851 ms 57.905 ms I can't find a site that I can trace to in Houston that doesn't double back to Dallas first...guess Sprint doesn't have many corporate customers in HOU anymore. The connection looks quite jittery from the traceroutes, but it's incedibly usable, especially considering that it's over 10x faster on downloads than my parents' DSL connection (Verizon, 1.5M down, 384k up...it's all we can get this far out) and over 20x faster on uploads.