iansltx

Oh, I don't know, I was joking around because that author made it sound like the worst OEM skin ever imagined

 

Sent from my CM9 Toro using Forum Runner

Dude has obviously never used first- or second-gen MOTOHANGOVR...er...MOTOBLUR.

My fault...=( I was mistaking AT&T with Verizon. Verizon did say they plan to deploy LTE on its PCS spectrum some time in the future. I did however remember that AT&T was beginning to refarm its 2G spectrum in the PCS band in NYC to bolster their HSPA+ network.

 

http://www.fiercewir...mand/2012-06-07

Thanks for the link. It sounds like Verizon doesn't think it will have much LTE in PCS...almost undoubtedly less than Sprint...thanks to all those CDMA customers the company has. They also aren't in any sort of a hurry to deploy LTE there...2015 is 2.5 years form now! By that time, T-Mobile will probably have built its entire LTE network in AWS and refarmed HSPA+ to a PCS-heavy combo of AWS/PCS (where spectrum allows), and Sprint will have its entire network overlaid with LTE (in PCS and SMR). Heck, everyone will probably be using LTE-A, by then!

Of course, if VZW gets SpectrumCo goods, my bet is LTE on AWS will be up well before 2015. Cell spacing is close enough to PCS, and VZ can plop down a 10x10 carrier wherever it needs to that way, for 40MHz of LTE in areas that need it. That's a lot of capacity. Almost as much as Clearwire could provide in a hot zone...oh wait, Clear can do more

Cox does have their own fiber, and backbone to the ATL, but the same problem... fiber passing the sites.

Cox has talked before about how awesome cellular backhaul is for them revenue-wise. Just think...15x their average revenue per user for just one site, and they can sell that connection to two or three other carriers while they're at it.

Likely most sites have T1 via copper now... Microwave's been removed over the years from all the sites (all carriers) that I've seen in these parts.

MW might come back. New equipment has a lot more capacity than the old stuff, to the point that, if fiber can't be gotten at a reasonable pace/price, microwave can be implemented and no one will ever know the difference from a subscriber standpoint.

AT&T is one ILEC in the area, and they've also got fiber passing sites (sharing many of the sites with Sprint, Verizon, TMobile). Verizon LTE recently lit up around here, but the western part of the area's not served by AT&T, nor by Cox in the southern part. There, we have Windstream (formerly ALLTEL).

VZ LTE going live is a good sign. From what I understand, they want fiber to each site more badly than Sprint does, so if Verizon has LTE deployed to a cell site that Sprint also uses (I know that VZ owns its own towers in some places) Sprint could just use the same backhaul vendor and get a quick turn-up time, absent any shenanigans from Verizon (I've seen an AT&T backhaul RFQ that stated that, if a fiber buildout was done to a cell site in order to provide them backhaul, they were to be the only customer for that site!).

As for Windstream, they love cellular backhaul, for the same reasons that Cox does. As an added benefit, they probably have fiber to a number of towers already, since beyond 15 or so T1s the maintenance/crosstalk/etc. means it makes more sense to run everything over fiber on the long haul, then demux to copper or whatever at the site.

They'll have a heck of a time getting backhaul to most of their sites here - very little fiber (read: none passing most sites), and not a whole lot of copper available. I won't hold my breath on LTE, even if scheduled, until at least late 2013 (if then) unless I start seeing some fiber and/or copper going in toward some sites. One of the ILECs isn't real good about it (took over 6 months to get fiber into my data center).

Are there any cable providers in the area that have their own backbone (not just using the telephone company's)? They could definitely be used as AAVs for backhaul in NV. If they'll only deploy to cities, there's always the ability to serve other sites via microwave, though hopefully Ericsson uses gigabit symmetric radios (they do exist) rather than the ones (that do half that) from AlcaLu.

Well to be fair, I believe that AT&T still has a ton of spectrum to work with. You are ignoring the fact that they still have the 850 MHz cellular band of 25 MHz AND also have PCS spectrum which AT&T already says that they plan on deploying LTE in the future. I understand that GSM/HSPA+ is currently deployed in these bands but lets be honest at some point AT&T and the rest of the carriers will have to go all in on LTE once VoLTE becomes standard.

Where did AT&T say they were going to start using PCS to deploy LTE?

Also, AT&T will have to keep 10MHz or so of its spectrum reserved for GSM + HSPA for the foreseeable future, because they've still got a TON of GSM-only handsets out there, and even more non-LTE HSPA phones. This is the bare minimum: one HSPA channel with no guard bands (3.84 MHz x 2), plus five 200KHz-wide (on Tx/Rx) GSM channels, which would only support 80 simultaneous conversations per cell with no data and all using the crappy half-rate codec (I think AT&T uses that anyway, meh). In order to maintain service coverage, AT&T would probably want to keep both GSM and HSPA alive on both 850 and 1900 bands, particularly considering just how little bandwidth the GSM side would provide, so that's 20MHz of spectrum that they can't use.

Its not like AT&T needs to have 2-3 LTE carriers at this point to support the huge capacity when they are still trying to fill up one LTE carrier. Even Verizon which has had LTE deployed for about 1.5 years the 10x10 MHz LTE carrier is still not full. Not to mention that AT&T hasn't talked about using further techniques like wifi offloading, cell splitting, small cells (picocells and femtocells) to deal with extending capacity on a LTE carrier like all carriers should be thinking of doing. Sprint has made that known about deploying small cells and wifi offloading to deal with capacity.

AT&T will have to use 5x5 LTE in a lot of places, which means its channels will fill quickly. Verizon is already saying that they want/need more spectrum than the 10x10 system they have, and they need it next year in some markets. That's what happens when you get spectrum that propagates way out there...you either have to turn down transmit power to add more capacity, or get an interference prone mess (that's the plus of Sprint deploying its primary LTE on PCS).

Circling back, GSM carriers are at a bit of a disadvantage on the LTE spectrum front, because subscribers have the expectation that the GSM-only phone they bought three months ago will still work three years from now, even as AT&T tries to push GSM spectrum to HSPA or LTE. Decreasing available bandwidth for HSPA will be even harder, though there will be a bigger windfall for doing so, since each HSPA carrier is 5MHz wide. The issue there si that you need to get the majority of your subscriber base onto LTE before you can start refarming HSPA, and when your LTE phones are expensive that just isn't happening quickly.

The nice thing about CDMA is there's only one technology that you have to support, and its channels aren't terribly wide (1.25MHz in each direction...wider than 200KHz GSM but much narrower than WCDMA/HSPA). Any phone made in the past ten or so years can use this network, though newer phones (1xRTT, EvDO, 1xA) are more efficient at using the airwaves. All that said, CDMA carriers will need to keep two of these carriers alive (one for voice, one for EvDO data) for the foreseeable future, using up 5MHz of capacity per band they decide to keep alive (in Verizon's case they would want to keep CLR online in markets where they have it...everyone else can just stick with PCS). But hey, 5-10MHz is a heck of a lot better than 20MHz when it comes to "un-refarmable" spectrum.

I believe that in some cases they are. I know that Sprint was having problems getting additional T1's from some ILEC's...especially CenturyLink. I heard that in Central Illinois, they had some T1's get backordered over a year! So they were considering some AAV alternatives in these instances if they can get it out there fast enough.

 

I believe there is an issue with some vendor equipment routers and AAV though. Some legacy routers will not play with some types of AAV and they have to switch those out too. I think sometimes we get overly simplistic with our criticisms and solutions, and we really don't know all the complexities and the scale Sprint and Ericsson are going through to keep this old hodge podged network running.

 

Network Vision will give so much more monitoring and scalability for the future. It is going to be night and day.

 

Robert

Makes sense. All the network stuff that I've dealt with has been all-IP, so it's foreign to me that something wouldn't just be able to hook up via Ethernet and go. But the telco world is very different than that

As an aside for rural-area folks, the disadvantage to buying a phone now is unavailability of LTE-800, which probably won't be turned on anyway until a year-plus from now. You'll still get voice coverage at 800MHz if you buy a phone now. You just won't have superfast data speeds.

There's also the fact that, at worst, LTE coverage will be comparable to EvDO coverage you get now on Sprint. It's not like you'll lose high speed data coverage by getting a phone now, compared to what you already have (WiMAX excepted, if you get an LTE1900 phone). It's just that, after a year or so, there will be pockets of coverage (possibly indoors, where you can just use WiFi) where new phones will get data and you'll only get voice, where the new phones could just get voice-only before (but no high speed data).

Worst-case, Sprint finds that people are using a lot of voice on 800MHz 1xA and are complaining because their phones can't get data down there (though that's about what you get while roaming anyway). So they hand out a few Airaves to fill those holes with 1900MHz EvDO and go along their merry way.

As for how much spectrum Sprint actually has, there will be about 14MHz (enough for a 5x5 LTE carrier and a 1xA voice carrier, but probably no EvDO) in 800MHz, former Nextel iDEN spectrum. That's not a lot compared to the 25MHz or 50MHz of Cellular (850MHz) that AT&T and Verizon have in many areas (AT&T in some places has both CLR licenses!) but it's workable for augmenting coverage and not much else. AT&T and Verizon also have 700MHz spectrum, though both carriers will probably top out at using 20MHz of it (Verizon in the upper C block, AT&T elsewhere). Verizon will sell its non-upper-C spectrum because it's cheaper to just go with one band, particuarly when you have that band nationwide (like Sprint's PCS G block).

So yes, Sprint doesn't have a lot of low-band spectrum, but the way they've built their network they don't really need it (remember, they started with PCS, while Verizon and AT&T started with cellular).

As for higher-band spectrum, Sprint has a very reasonable amount of PCS when you include the G block (40MHz in many markets). In many cases, they have more spectrum here than anyone else. Plus, they have PCS nationwide, like Verizon has 700MHz. I'm 99% sure that AT&T doesn't have nationwide spectrum in any band other than PCS, and I'm 99% sure that Verizon only has its upper-C 700 license nationwide (they might have some PCS nationwide but some areas may be cellular-only).

Then there's 2500/2600. It doesn't carry very far, but it doesn't have to; that band is all about high capacity. Like, multiple 20MHz bonded TD-LTE channels capacity. When you have the ability to turn on tons of capacity in high-usage zones, you can leave 1900MHz for standard-use, everyday networking (remember, Sprint has 40MHz of capacity there on average...even if they keep 20MHz on CDMA they can match AT&T or Verizon's 700MHz capacity anywhere in their coverage area), and 800MHz for eking out that last bit of coverage, with still-respectable data speeds.

One last note: Sprint has less spectrum than Verizon and AT&T, but it also has (and will have, for the foreseeable future) less customers. This is probably not how Sprint would like things to be, but the upshot is that they can get away with less spectrum and still provide high-quality service to their customers.

I wonder whether any of these "band-aid" fixes involve switching from T1 to AAV backhaul. In markets where NV will be turned up soon, it might make sense to make the switch since legacy equipment can, though in many cases doesn't, handle AAV backhaul, and having the backhaul already on-site (even if it's only provisioned at 15 Mbps for the moment) could speed up NV go-live significantly.

From http://www.cnn.com/2....html?hpt=hp_c2:

 

The ability to create folders on the S III is also needlessly complicated. In Google's unaltered version of Android 4, a folder is created whenever two app icons are dragged on top of one another. On the S III, you have to hold your finger on the screen, tap "Add to Home screen" from a pop-up menu, select the "Folder" option, then drag your apps in.

 

 

Samsung has also needlessly altered Google's built-in Android features. Google has developed an Android-to-Android sharing system called

Android Beam

that allows two NFC-equipped Android phones to share files when the two devices are tapped together. The S III arrives with that feature intact, but Samsung also has added its own NFC sharing system called S Beam, which does the same thing, but only works with Galaxy S III phones.

 

 

The most I could get S Voice to do was say, "Hi, nice to meet you," when I said, "Hi, Galaxy," to either phone. If I said, "Hello, Galaxy," it would respond with, "I'm not sure what you mean by 'Hello Galaxy.'" Every other request or command I spoke to S Voice was met with, "Network error. Please try again," on both handsets, despite seeing full service bars and being connected to Wi-Fi.

 

 

The screen uses a

PenTile

subpixel arrangement that unfortunately results in discernible pixels and a jagged look that falls short of the screens found on the iPhone 4S and the One X.

 

If I recall correctly, S Beam has a superset of Android Beam's functinoality, and Android Beam is still included in the device, correct? Isn't Android Beam NFC-only (slow) but S Beam also uses WiFi Direct?

As for the folder-creation issue, Samsung obviously hasn't upgraded its TouchWiz UI to take advantage of ICS's features. THe solution: get a different launcher. Most of my time using my Epic 4G was spent using LauncherPro, which I like better than any other Android launcher I've seen so far. Gotta love Android customization opportunities.

As for PenTile "jaggies", we're talking about a phone with a larger display than either of the two phones the author mentioned, but wiith the same 720p resolution. It should come as no surprise that the pixels are bigger. As for PenTile itself, it's the price you pay for brighter colors and deeper blacks on most AMOLED phone displays (color reproduction on the One X still isn't as yummy as on an AMOLED handset, correct?).

Okay, maybe I'm coming down on the reviewer a bit too harshly. However calling colors "too saturated" seems odd...if you want lower saturation, you can grey things out a bit, but you can't ad saturation to a comparatively duller screen. On the body side, Samsung didn't feel like getting sued by Apple yet again for something that looks remotely like the iphone...one of the big tech outlets wrote an article on this. Funny how Wired didn't notice. I kind of wonder what they were looking for with "flagship styling" anyway...probably something that looked like an oversized iPhone? As for the nitpick about a dual-core CPU on the phone, I'd rather have a dual-core CPU and LTE than a quad-core and HSPA+...because with LTE I can use the phone on Sprint

Good to know. I wonder who would be willing to buy those AWS licenses, if AT&T decides not to deploy anything on them. We certainly don't need another SpectrumCo...

Which brings up another potential issue. If AT&T decides not to use AWS...ever...it has less spectrum to work with overall, so that it might be less amenable to a PCS-for-WCS swap than otherwise, even if the MHz-pop count is in their favor. Of course, that somewhat assumes that AT&T will want to drop LTE onto PCS now that AWS doesn't look so hot for them, but then they have issues if they decide not to ink a PCS LTE roaming agreement with Sprint, since both carriers would be deploying in PCS A-F. Not that that's stopped AT&T before (see the AT&T-championed lower-LTE-minus-band-A class versus the smaller-carrier-championed band class that includes lower-A), but PCS could be even more sketchy since the G band doesn't interfere with anything (other than AT&T's unwillingness to support a band that they won't be deploying anything on).

As a side note, deploying LTE in WCS could leave AT&T in a situation similar to SPrint regarding LTE, except with different bands.

AT&T

Low frequency - 700

Medium frequency - AWS 1700/2100

High frequency - WCS 2300

Sprint

Low frequency - SMR 800

Medium frequency - PCS 1900

High frequency - EBS/BRS 2500

I am aware that AT&T hasn't deployed LTE on AWS yet, and that a lot of their AWS holdings are going to T-Mobile as a result of the failed merger. However all AT&T LTE devices out now support LTE on AWS, so my bet is that AT&T does roll out LTE there, at least in some areas (are there any areas where AT&T is giving /all/ their AWS spectrum to T-Mobile, or are most areas still covered by 10MHz? Haven't checked that).

What makes the situation more entertaining is that, assuming WCS and AWS both go live, AT&T will be using five distinct bands on its own network: GSM/HSPA on CLR 850 and PCS 1900, LTE on 700, AWS and WCS. It makes Sprint's three bands (plus CDMA 850 for roaming), Verizon's eventual four bands (CDMA on 850/1900, LTE on 750/1700), and T-Mobile's two bnds (PCS for GSM and HSPA, AWS for HSPA and LTE, plus GSM/HSPA 850 roaming) seem quite efficient in comparison! And that's not even counting international bands for worldwide roaming (HSPA 2100/900 and GSM 900/1800 for now, at least LTE 1800 and 2600 later).

...and my phone's still backordered. Silly me, getting the higher-end version.

AT&T may not be willing to work wtih Sprint, but Dallas and Austin are big markets so they may be willing to deal anyway.

In return for the 20MHz on the Dallas MEA, Sprint could get 10MHz in Houston for starters, bringing their holdings outside the G Block up to 30 MHz (and AT&T's down to 30MHz...they have 20 + 10 + 10 there). AT&T sell off the license with 1890-1895 uplink freqs, which would abut Sprint's 1885-1890 license, giving Sprint the ability to do a 10x10 LTE channel on non-G-Band PCS in the future (I assume that, for compatibility reasons with 5x5-only LTE phones, that the G Block will stay as its own 5x5 carrier). A 10x10 carrier would have to be a ways down the raod, since that only leaves space for four 1x carriers, spread between voice and data, but it could happen eventually.

The second place where AT&T could trade Sprint PCS for WCS is Chicago. Sprint is limited to 20MHz there as well, and AT&T has 40MHz (30+10). AT&T is a bit more capacity-constrained there (10MHz AWS, 12+6 MHz 700) but assuming SpectrumCo/Verizon goes through AT&T will very likely get the lower B block from Verizon, giving the company enough bandwidth to do a full 10x10 LTE channel in 700. This leaves AT&T with enough spectrum that selling their 10MHz PCS license in Chicago (leaving them with 30MHz and Sprint with 30MHz) wouldn't be so bad.

According to my rough estimates (aka rounding to the nearest thousand, more or less, when adding FCC license data population numbers), Sprint's Dallas MTA holdings in the WCS spectrum cover a total of about 10 million people with 20 MHz of bandwidth. The 10MHz licenses from AT&T cover around 9.5 million (Chicago) and 6.3 million (Houston). If a swap of these two bands went thorugh, AT&T would be getting 200 million MHz-pops at 2.3 GHz, in return for parting with 132 million MHz-pops at 1.9 GHz.

It sounds like AT&T is getting a better deal than Sprint here, but it may take that skewed a pop-count to get the deal done. One plus on the Sprint side is that it has to do very, very little once NV is online to integrate additional PCS spectrum into its network, whereas WCS would require new handsets, base station equipment and even tower spacing for AT&T, to the point that the company might use the spectrum more as a "hot zone" solution (a la Clearwire) than as a full network overlay, as opposed to Sprint's use of new-found PCS spectrum in a full-overlay fashion.

That said, if the spectrum exchange seemed to be too much in AT&T's favor in terms of MHz-pops covered, they could throw in their 10MHz Austin-area PCS license (16 million MHz-pops, leaving them with 30MHz of PCS and Sprint with 40MHz). They could also throw in 20MHz in the Beaumont/Port Arthur area (around 9 million MHz-pops) since Sprint only has 15MHz of spectrum there right now in A-F PCS, and swapping out 20MHz of PCS would still leave AT&T with 35MHz. With those two additional swaps, Sprint would get 157 million MHz-pops of PCS in exchange for 200 million MHz-pops of WCS, which is reasonable since WCS is higher frequency than PCS.

So, how about it, AT&T?

As a side note, Sprint owns WCS in other areas than the DFW MEA. They have 20MHz in Charlotte-Greensboro-Raleigh (MEA007), Atlanta (008), Tampa/Orlando (010), Louisville-Lexington (023), Nashville (025) and New Orleans/Baton Rouge (027), and 10MHz in Birmingham (024), Memphis (026) and Jacksonville (009). If anyone is intensely curious about how many people those licenses cover, I could spend some more time running numbers, or you can go to the FCC website and do the addition yourself.

One thing's for certain though: Sprint's WCS licenses are more valuable to AT&T (who has 77 A-D WCS licenses, 56 of which are in the paired A and B bands), while I daresay that PCS spectrum in the markets I mentioned above is more valuable to Sprint than it is to AT&T. So, as much as I dislike how the 700MHz mobile broadband spectrum is divided into "the Verizon block" and "the everyone else block", making roaming on LTE more onerous, a swap like the one above would help everyone out (since I can't imagine that Sprint would ever use their WCS spectrum when it's only available in a fraction of its footprint and BRS spectrum is right nearby).

We should seriously break off the Apple topic and put it somewhere else. Mods?

Trying to keep the flame war contained here. As someone who lives in Colorado right now, I of all people should know what an important thing flame containment is (if you're wondering what I'm talking about, look up #HighParkFire on Twitter).

As an owner of various Apple products (2007 iMac, first-gen MacBook Air, early 2009 MacBook, first-gen iPhone, third-gen iPad) I feel I have room to talk here...from my iMac, running Windows 7 at the moment...

...Apple products aren't for everyone. The third-gen iPad was the best tablet on the market when I bought it...still is, I'm pretty sure. However prior to its release the Asus Transformer Prime was the best on the market. The iPhone 4S has really good performance etc., however the screen is a bit too small for my liking (ideally my device would be 4.2" 16x9 or thereabouts) and it doesn't have true 4G (14.4 HSPA isn't 4G). I would take a friend's HTC Rezound, which has a higher-pixel-density screen at a higher resolution and larger size than the iPhone, any day of the week over the iPhone 4S. The camera on the phone is quite good, and it's got 4G. If HTC copied the phone, but swapped in a new Snapdragon chip and swapped LTE 750 for LTE 1900, I'd sell the Samsung Galaxy SIII I'll be getting soon and buy the HTC.

By contrast, if the iPhone came out with an LTE version, I still wouldn't buy it. Too costly to replace, should something ever break, and stuff like Amazon Cloud Player comes first to Android.

Also, for the record, Apple's last OS upgrade made tothe iPhone 3G pretty much broke it. Imagine your phone working at a handful of frames per second...that's what the 3G ws like when Apple launched its latest OS (for that phone). That was quite the misstep IMO, even if it did net the company more phone sales from people trying to get decent performance out of their handset again.

As for the newly released MacBook Pro with its awesome screen and other top-shelf components, call me when I can get one for less than twice the price of a very capable, but not as flashy, SSD-powered rig from the likes of Vizio or Asus. Photoshop may run XX% faster on the MacBook Pro, but is the performance and size benefit worth the price, particularly when you figure in mini-DisplayPort-to-anything adapters? On the other end of the spectrum, the MacBook Air doesn't offer anything radically different from a garden-variety ultrabook 10-15% cheaper these days, aside from the operating system. This sort of thing is why the last Mac I bought was in mid-2009, and why the next one may not be until next year (whenever Ivy Bridge iMacs come out). It's why my family still uses PCs, with the exception of a Mac mini (the lowest-end Core 2 Duo model ever available) that's running Windows XP for my dad. Say what you will about OS X's revolutionary (note that I didn't say "new") features...there's a reason why not everyone has switched: competitors are actually quite good at their jobs.

KY, Louisville specifically, is UPS's hub. My guess is that Sprint will air-ship preordered phones, so if you're near a reasonably sized city you're likely to get the phone around the same time.

That, or they'll be ground-shipped, and proximity to UPS HQ should speed up the process a bit.

Ah, I do not think that is a solid generalization. AT&T's W-CDMA network gets quite a bit of criticism for being painfully slow in many markets. The difference is that HSPA has the potential for considerably higher peak speeds than does EV-DO. And people, reviewers included, go gaga over speeds that they never reasonably require.

 

AJ

For what it's worth, AT&T's network isn't even all that fast in many places. I speed-tested an uncle's iPhone 3GS an hour north of West Palm Beach, FL and got less than 2 Mbps. Granted, my Sprint phone wasn't any better, nor was my Verizon iPad (no LTE at that point, though the device caught a whiff of LTE a couple times, with drastically faster speeds). However to say that HSPA is always faster than EvDO is disproved by this little episode (though, with next-to-no signal inside said uncle's house, my T-Mobile HSPA+ aircard cranked out a solid 5 Mbps down and around 1 Mbps up).

If people are buying a device today based on actual service rather than promises thereof, Verizon (or in many big cities T-Mobile) is the obvious choice. If you're buying based on "the future" the choice shifts in favor of Sprint, since they're doing a full LTE overlay on PCS (AT&T might, or might not, eventually do this on a combination of 700MHz and AWS). AT&T is in an awkward in-between state; they aren't turning LTE markets up nearly as quickly as Verizon, to the point that Sprint could theoretically pass them on LTE pops covered in under a year, starting from zero. That's saying something.

...but VZW LTE is all over where I live and work and spend 90% of my time and damn it's fast (at least on my friend's iPad2).

iPad 2? The second-gen iPad only supports EvDO. The third-gen iPad does have LTE OTOH and, I gotta tell ya, LTE speeds on it are niiiiiice.

Good to know. I'm really intrigued by the $30 month unlimited prepaid plan they offer. 100 minutes would be plenty for me, and I can deal with the throttling after 5gb.

Just make sure to grab a phone with HSPA+ built in (T-Mobile's less expensive phones tend to only do 7.2 Mbps, out of which you'll see about 5 Mbps) if you have a need for speed. This means spending $250 on a phone, but look at all the money you'll be saving on your monthly bill!

Just make doubly sure that coverage is where you want it to be; T-mobile hasn't inked its roaming agreement with AT&T yet (a condition of the happily ailed merger).

marioc21, I haven't been in the Richmond area but in RDU with a T-Mobile aircard I was seeing 5-10 Mbps down and 2-3 Mbps up. 5Mbps only happened when I had low signal.

Definitely not a fanboy of T-Mobile's (their HSPA+ falls off to EDGE or even GPRS outside semi-major cities) but they do have a nice, speedy network where they've made upgrades.

Ya, sounds like you're definitely throttled. When Verizon is expecting users to just use a few GB per month and then one goes way, way beyond that (notice that they don't promise you un-limited speeds), they have to do damage control measures. Like throttling.

I'll probably use on the order of 5-10GB per month on my upcoming phone, untethered (tethering, if I did it, would be a tiny, tiny portion of that, maybe 500MB if not less, because I don't want to abuse the system). High-quality Pandora or Amazon CLoud Player while taking a longish run, or realtime photo uploads of some sort or other, would be easily doable via LTE, so I'd use up a fair amount of data with them. The GSIII does 1080p video; I'm not going to upload an hour-long clip over 4G, but if it's something short then sure, I would.

From the person who was responsible for STi Mobile's 12MB per week fair usage policy (I P2P'd over a 1x connection while my parents had dialup, racking up a whopping 1.2GB or so over the course of a few days...over 1xRTT!), I know that you can thrash a mobile broadband connection, and I know how. These days, I only thrash a connection if its gear connects a fixed point (via wireless or otherwise) to the Internet...I have no qualms about transferring hundreds of gigabytes over my cable connection, because the cable plant has around 40 Mbps of upload capacity (of which I can use 15) and 150 Mbps of download capacity (of which I can use 50). If I'm shuttling files around non-stop, it doesn't hurt other folks who also use the network.

Would I do that if I knew that I was sharing 5 MHz of spectrum in each direction with a hundred other subscribers on the same cell site? Nope. Not unless there were a heck of a lot of bits per Hertz there!

To clear the air a bit, Verizon advertises 5-12 Mbps down, 2-5 Mbps up, for their LTE network. Sprint advertises 6-8 Mbps down for LTE, 3-6 Mbps down for WiMAX. T-Mobile advertises around 10 Mbps down for HSPA+.

Of the four networks, T-Mobile's is by far the most loaded...any 3G-enabled T-Mobile phone uses their HSPA+ network in some form or fashion, and every single T-Mobile-branded smartphone uses 3G. Thus, it comes as no surprise that advertised and delivered speeds are comparable in many places on their network, though in others T-Mobile exceeds expectations by 50-100%. This is speaking from experience.

Next comes Sprint WiMAX. It's about as loaded as it's ever going to get; prepaid customers will continue to be added, but Sprint postpaid customers will end up on LTE in relatively short order. On the other hand, WiMAX service is poor in some areas where it's deployed. The upshot of all this is that, when you average the lousy speeds (in some areas) the the stellar speeds (in others, e.g. 12 Mbps down and 1.5 up), you get 3-6 Mbps.

Then comes Verizon LTE. The network doesn't have very many customers on it right now, since the only devices that use the network are ones that came out in the past year and a half, none of which can be had for free from VZW's website. The result: speeds on the network are well above advertised in many cases. I've seen 25 Mbps down, 10 Mbps up on my iPad. It's wonderful, but don't expect speeds to stay that way as Verizon loads more customers onto its network and doesn't add any more capacity beyond the 10x10 LTE Rel 8 carrier they have now. Remember that every single VZW LTE device on the market at this point can only use upper C block 700MHz for LTE, and while 700MHz is great for coverage, adding capacity to the network on such a low frequency will be a more delicate maneuver (surprise, surprise, Verizon wants more spectrum, at higher frequencies, to alleviate this issue).

Finally, you have Sprint LTE (does AT&T post expected speed numbers for its LTE network? If not, it's because 5x5 behaves very differently than 10x10). Sprint's smaller cells (due to higher frequencies) allow it to provide a more consistent experience on LTE than Verizon (6-8 Mbps vs. 5-12) because you're covering a smaller territory (less customers)...with less spectrum (a single 5x5 carrier now...more later). That said, Sprint's network will start off lightning-fast, since as of July they'll only have four high-end phone models (the lowest-end being the Viper) and a couple of mobile broadband devices riding on the network.

Eventually speeds will slow down to the 6-8 Mbps that Sprint is talking about, though my bet is it'll happen more slowly than with Verizon since Sprint will be making incremental upgrades to its network (refarming PCS A-F CDMA to LTE, adding LTE to SMR, upgrading to LTE-A) over the next 18-24 months.

All that said, if I can get a reliable 6-8 Mbps down and 2-3 Mbps up on my Sprint LTE phone from the time LTE launches until the time my contract is up, that's enough for me. If I ned to download something super-fast, I'll have a 30M down, 5M up cable connection at my apartment for that (or whatever TIme Warner Cable lets me get that has higher upload speeds).

One quick note re: phasing out WiMAX eventually in favor of TD-LTE hot zones: I'd think that Clear would want to maintain their old WiMAX footprint, even if they become more of a carrier's carrier than they are now. Particularly since they need to keep up some sort of presence where their WIMAX protection sites exist now.

Also, if Clear phased out WiMAX completely in favor of TD-LTE hot zones, they'd lose the ability to get MVNOs on board, which may or may not be necessary depending on how much money they are able to make off of "cellular offloading" from traditional cellular carriers.

My personal guess (and only that) is that Clear will add TD-LTE pretty much everywhere they have WiMAX now. Tower locations may change as they start collocating with Sprint, but coverage overall shouldn't get any worse. Additionally, they'll add sites where carriers tell them they are needed, so they'll end up covering a couple million more people than they do now.

I still think (though Clear will probably decide not to do this) that the company could set up its retail arm to serve up fixed wireless (with professional installs and high-gain antennas) for its TD-LTE network, competing with cable and DSL but not its wholesale customers (who all focus on smartphones and, to an extent, tablets and data cards, all in a mobility setting). Fixed wireless customers would tend to be well-behaved (i.e. not hovering on the fringe of serviceability and thus dragging down performance of the whole cell) and, if cell site downtilt isn't too aggressive, could be a few miles from the cell site and still have a good signal (try that with a WiMAX phone!). This use of a 4G network as a home broadband system has been done before (primarily by Verizon via HomeFusion) so, if Clear did it right, it would work. Heck, that's almost the same thing they did pre-WiMAX days, albeit with a self-installed (read: bad idea) modem instead of a professionally-installed, high-gain one.

Purple...magenta...