reedacus25

T-Mobile could have done a lot more about the rural areas in 2012, before the LTE launch. That was my greater point.

From what I've come to believe, they could either start investing in rural and be behind the 8 ball on LTE deployment, or start the refarming/modernization process for future LTE deployment groundwork in the money making areas. Rural areas got screwed out of a [third] generational cycle due to the ATT fiasco, and the fact that UMTS deployment is much more intensive than EvDO.

So the rural was stepped over to get the urban core built, to then work it's way out. It sucks for the non-urbanites, but I think it is the right strategy, especially considering their MO.

 

Remember this? What was T-Mobile's excuse for that frailure?

That was prior to the AT&T attempted gobbling. All network upgrades and expansion were put on halt for what equated to almost a full calendar year.

Forced stagnation was that "frailure."

Hey Digiblur, 4x2 live in Nola, at least in some parts, if not all. Live from the Causeway to the Lakefront Airport, I'm sure CBD too but I very rarely venture that far down. Should hear back from someone in Elmwood/River Ridge to see if it's live there.

Next trip to Baton Rouge I'll see how Metaire and Kenner look.

Considering their 230M POP goal of 1H2014, I don't think it is completely inconceivable for them to make that goal. That covers their existing UMTS footprint.

As for reaching 250M by end of 2014, I have my reservations. Thats a ton of sites to get that extra 20M covered. I won't hold my breath, but I do think they will start drawing their way out of the "ink blots" and letting the pen bleed a bit. A fair amount of that old GSM only equipment isn't much longer for this world. It has a finite lifespan and its likely nudging its expiration date. I wouldn't be too surprised to see some of those sites make the jump first.

As for what they are upgrading to/from, a rural site is likely at most broadcasting 2 or 3 GSM channels with GPRS/EDGE services in those time slots. So thats at most 600 kHz FDD per site assuming a 3 sector rural site, which there are plenty of 2 sector sites out there on highways. It takes very little frequency reuse to keep GSM chugging along on those highways, realistically 2 MHz FDD or less should be plenty to cover a highway stretch with frequency reuse I would think.. I would expect a minimum of an AWS and/or PCS HSPA+ carrier and a 5+5 LTE carrier in AWS spectrum allowing. They have at least 10 MHz of AWS nationwide, so there will be some type of AWS service living there, and my bet is on LTE where they are constrained and both UMTS and LTE where possible. So at most you would have GSM1900, UMTS Band 2 and 4, and LTE Band 4 and 12. Doubt we will see rural Band 2 LTE except possibly on old MetroPCS markets where they didn't have AWS like Atlanta.

As a T-Mobile subscriber, I obviously have an optimistic slant, but I also view this realistically and with a grain of kosher salt. I want Sprint to succeed, I want T-Mobile to succeed. I think both of the 3 & 4 carriers doing well will shake up the duopoly a bit and help even the playing field a bit. I just don't want the anti Sprint label placed on me for being in the Magenta camp (I have a FreedomPop hotspot for EvDO on car rides if thats a sign of good faith).

Sounds like the same thing with me. Their coverage is a huge joke. I thought about getting a Tmobile SIM to play with but with them only having coverage in about 25% of the places in the city that I go to it wouldn't be worth it.

The few times I have been in downtown Baton Rouge, it was fine outdoors but the few buildings I went in near I110 the RF died. But down towards campus the only issues I've had were in the bars of Tigerland. Perkins, Highland, Nicholson, Burbank, Brightside/Lee/College, Bluebonnet, Siegen that area have all worked fine for me. Tiger Stadium had capacity issues, but thats because the site serving Tiger Stadium wasn't broadcasting PCS HSPA and AWS LTE by the A&M game for whatever reason....

Spent most of my time this summer on the Northshore in Covington and Mandeville and only had problems out on the outskirts of Folsom. Granted ATT was struggling as well. If they could get the stretch from Hammond to Slidell to HSPA/LTE like it is from Hammond to Baton Rouge, I would be very happy. Overall very happy with T-Mobile for the most part in the south Louisiana area. I55 north of Hammond needs a lot of work, but thats a very different story and I have my Freedompop Hotspot on EvDO for the Hammond to Brookhaven, MS stretch.

I can't speak for Sprint in the area since I haven't used their network aside from the Freedompop I grabbed this summer since Virgin Mobile in 2004, but I know plenty of CSpire customers who bemoan their roaming service in Baton Rouge. And of course they are roughly staying in the same college areas as I do in Baton Rouge. Not trying to have a T-Mobile bias, just giving my experience.

I think T-Mobile would have had more reason to densify its network if they had been able to run 2 HSPA carriers from the onset and been able to sell a really good service their. That single HSPA carrier really hurt them there.

I may be confused, but that looks like a 10MHz wide channel, judging by the >37Mbps download speed. Where has Sprint launched with 10 MHz wide channels?

When the house is empty and a bunch of people come over, no one might notice any crowding -- if you catch my drift.

 

Omaha has almost zero local T-Mobile users, but it has the largest single license protection network that I have ever seen from any operator. So, I would imagine that the T-Mobile network could most readily handle an influx of visitors because, well, nobody is home.

 

AJ

This is completely accurate. But I found it interesting none the less. AT&T had an LTE cow just beyond left field.

Sprint issues were exacerbated by the fact that there was no NV in the area, and all the CSpire roaming that week, it came to a screeching halt.

Ah, if that is accurate, I was not aware that T-Mobile had recently divested control of the Des Moines market to iWireless. Good to know. And it makes sense -- at least, far more so than the reverse.

 

As you seem to be aware, Iowa Wireless Services is quite the cooperative of local telcos. If you have never seen the FCC ULS entry for T-Mobile's PCS A block 30 MHz license in the Des Moines-Quad Cities MTA, it is probably the most heavily partitioned and disaggregated license in the entire FCC database. Take a look:

 

http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/licenseMarketSum.jsp?marketType=O&licKey=8940&archive=&x=7&y=11

 

Though Iowa Wireless Services manages the whole thing, each local telco technically is the license holder of its own little piece of spectrum. So, T-Mobile might have a dastardly trying to buy out Iowa Wireless Services interest in the rest of the MTA.

 

Back to the sell off of Des Moines, I hope that something similar may happen in Omaha. T-Mobile operates only a skeleton, license protection network in the market. No local stores, no local numbers. T-Mobile users do exist, but they are just passing through or have moved to Omaha and maintained their previous numbers homed to other market MSCs. Divest it to Viaero, which will then have coverage throughout almost the entire state of Nebraska. And that may insulate Viaero against an almost inevitable acquisition by AT&T.

 

AJ

I can confirm that T-Mobile treats iWireless roaming as native for voice and data. It is not deducted from roaming data allotment, it is not throttled, etc.

I also want to second this sentiment of Omaha and Lincoln divestiture to Viaero or iWireless. Where T-Mobile works in Omaha, it works pretty decently. Where it works is extremely limited however. West Omaha is barren and nothing but fringe coverage at best. Lincoln has two sites on either end of the city, one 3G, the other not. It's pitiful. Let iWireless or Viaero take it over, and treat it as native roaming. Acquire Viareo and let them carry on business as usual under the Viareo brand until they build out AWS services and then bring it under the T-Mobile brand.

For the record, T-Mobile worked the best of all national carriers at the College World Series. Sprint was under water the whole week and half and EvDO was failing often.

Yep. But 10+ Mbps of upload capacity on 5 MHz, which can scale linearly to 10MHz and 20MHz, is nearly double what you can get on H+. And 35-37 Mbps real-world capacity for small cell sizes is a big boost from 21 Mbps...which ends up being around 14-16 Mbps in real life...in the same spectrum allotment.

 

The difference between T-Mobile and any other large carrier in the US is that, to deploy LTE, they have to refarm existing, not-all-that-much-less-efficient, spectrum from the get-go. Sprint is starting on the (vacant) G block, Verizon on the (vacant) 700 band, followed by the (vacant for them) AWS band. AT&T? Same thing, but with a different 700 band. But for T-Mobile, adding 37 Mbps of LTE capacity means, in many cases, removing 21 Mbps of H+. And equipment on both sides of the link is less expensive on H+ than LTE, though now the gap has closed enough that TMo doesn't mind making the jump. Particularly if it means that their early adopter users, with an ARPU of $80+ including EIP, have a network to themselves that they can rant and rave about.

An unintentional compliment, but very true. T-Mobile is making the most of its spectrum constraint and I feel they will do very well despite it. Leaps spectrum would have helped, but that's another story. T-Mobile had a fast network already, but LTE is obviously faster for the spectrum.

The main issue is with keeping voice saturation at bay, and this is being combatted with PCS HSPA+ carriers (of which they could do Dual Carrier with if they chose and had the spectrum to do so).

The biggest "speed" factor that is improved with LTE over HSPA is the latency, which is improved over the already low latency over HSPA provided by the modern equipment. Sheer numbers are a useless metric for 98% of real world usage, but the latency is critical 99% of the time.

So until VoLTE matures. T-Mobile must make a difficult decision on how much spectrum to allocate for HSPA in the AWS band for voice+data, while maximizing usable spectrum for LTE.

I thought that HSPA+42 was DC than needing more spectrum?

 

Or does it need two cells and more spectrum?

When you see HSPA+42 it is technically DC-HSDPA. It is two HSPA carriers bonded together in the downlink. That's why the downlink data rate "doubles," but the uplink stays relatively low.

But, because it is 2 HSPA carriers, it actually has 2 voice carriers, increasing voice capacity as well as data capacity.

Yes they do. I am able to connect to the protection sites here in Arizona with my Freedompop account.

 

 

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Fantastic news!

Figured I might resurrect this thread instead of posting somewhere else erroniously.

Does anyone know if Freedompop customers have access to Clear protection sites? I am getting the Overdrive to have some cheap data in the car for my iPad on the EvDO side of Freedompop for $4.

Still would be nice to have access to WiMax at home, which is served by a protection site.