Fraydog

I'm doing a Sprint/T-Mobile spectrum spreadsheet right now... I'm not done with the top 25 markets, but I'll share this.

Merging the two wouldn't be as difficult as thought. The key is you'd have to sell BRS to Charlie and keep EBS, because EBS does not count against the spectrum cap.

As far as the two networks merging together... That would be easier than thought. I wouldn't want to merge completely until VoLTE was ready to go as a replacement for both UMTS and CDMA.

The cell density of the two networks would be incredible. More than good enough to make it a superior experience to both AT&T and Verizon. Get a nationwide block of 10x10 in the 600 auction and a combined Sprint/T-Mobile would have enough spectrum to be a viable competitor for 10 years.

If SoftBank were to buy both Sprint and T-Mobile, you can kiss CDMA2000 on smartphones goodbye. Sure the new combined Sprint could run CDMA into perpetuity, but if they get 600 MHz spectrum, there's no need to even mandate CDMA 1X on high end smartphones. Sure you could continue to support CDMA voice for flip phone customers, but over time, that network could be thinned. I would have dual mode network phones initially that support UMTS and CDMA 1X on SMR as a fallback and CDMA roaming as an option to keep the great rural roaming options Sprint has. I wouldn't force that on customers, however.

 

That's what I get for jumping in the middle of a conversation I know nothing about.

 

I just saw a twitter complaint and thought it must have been just some local celeb shooting his mouth off.

 

Sorry about that.

 

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No problem.

 

Who is Brian Klug and why should we care?

 

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I'm asking Tuscon people if it's really that bad. Brian Klug is a writer for Anandtech. He does some of the best write-ups in the industry on mobile devices. So I don't get the hate...

Corrosive conformity

I'm going to guess that some sites are going to be affected. As far as each site? That has to be verified with Sprint.

At least Nextel Mexico is transitioning to WCDMA which will make this less of an issue over time. The people in Canadian areas... I feel for because Canada still uses SMR for public safety and Telus has no need nor no desire to shut down Mike, their IDEN service.

I'm guessing Tuscon is part of the IBEZ.

That's a pretty big mess... unless something can get resolved. Knowing how slow governments move, who knows what will happen.

There's also the 800 border issues. It should be far enough away for Tucson to not be affected by that, however. Don't hold me to that.

More from Mr. Klug. Is it really that bad? Or is he just spoiled by the duopoly?

Letters are going out for US Cellular customers... They include this FAQ...

http://www.uscellula...nt-Websites.pdf

There's also this story on the TeamUSCellular blog:

http://teamuscellula...ted-422-110-pm/

It is going to be interesting to see if Sprint's footprint post-Network Vision in St. Louis will equal USCC's.

Letters are going out for US Cellular customers... They include this FAQ...

http://www.uscellula...nt-Websites.pdf

There's also this story on the TeamUSCellular blog:

http://teamuscellular.com/Forum/blog/2/entry-388-sprint-takeover-letters-trouble-updated-422-110-pm/

Forum discussion is here:

http://teamuscellular.com/Forum/topic/4226-chicago-users-where-are-you-going-next/

http://youtu.be/pjgpYDCYBi0

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DEDt1u_M6Qw

not true! Dan Hesse came to my office and personally thanked me for my patience. Then he handed me a 4G tower and pressed the 'on' button.

 

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Well, for the record my HTC ONE picks up both AT&T and T-Mobile in Boston, as expected.

 

I am hoping that the simlock can eventually be removed (legally). Additional functionality is never a bad thing.

 

I compared the 1x signal to my old EVO 4G LTE and it was about 1dB difference in favor of the new One. I would say that the EVO 4G LTE seemed to jump around a bit more while the One held a lot more consistent.

 

Overall, the One holds onto LTE forever; I am not sure how practical that is at -127dB but no complaints. Seems promising, so far so good.

What frequency bands is the One picking up? Just LTE, or is it picking up UMTS as well?

Yep, West Coast, Upper and Lower CA Central Valley, easily over 1000 sites here alone

The whole Chicago debacle put them in a bad place compared to Alcatel and Ericsson. Still, it is nice for the people in Chicago to be the first network done more or less.

What I don't get is how is Sprint and Softbank going to convince these minority shareholders like the Omega Advisor Group and John Paulson to vote for the Sprint/Softbank/Clearwire merger when they seem to be infatuated with the Sprint/Dish deal now?

Paulson can get his way though. Just look at how he got DT to compromise on the debt load for T-Mobile and MetroPCS. What I don't get is why he would not have similar or even bigger concerns with Sprint and Dish.

I question any source that has half his teeth. No offense to the people on here who like NASCAR. I just have this quaint idea that motorsports reporters should stick to their subject matter.

Or, he could have been planted this information by someone close to Dish in order to try to sway the NASCAR crowd to support the Dish bid.

If Google leaves Sprint out in the dust on the X phone i'm going to be pissed.

Google is permanently out of the business of making 3GPP2 Nexus phones. Now if that extends to the X Phone, we will have to see. However the intellectual property complaints from somewhere on the 3GPP2 side that caused the CDMA Nexii to not be in the AOSP database for a long time really burned Google bad. I don't know who submitted the complaints that caused the CDMA devices to be removed from AOSP, but I suspect it was Qualcomm.

1X can be run in the background for a long time. Since Sprint is deploying software defined radios, they can keep a minimum of the CDMA core in place for M2M even as they transition the voice traffic on the network to VoLTE.

For the most part, it does help Sprint out further to reduce the size of the CDMA core, so much money can be saved in the long run by doing that.

US Cellular customers in STL are getting letters this week.

I kind of wish they would have to wait until NV is done to be integrated, but it doesn't look like that's the case.

More supply issues forthcoming?

http://uk.reuters.com/article/2013/04/22/us-nokia-htc-injunction-idUKBRE93L0Z420130422

The differences between the AT&T landline and wireless sides are blurry, especially in situations such as these. I frankly wish the government would compel AT&T to break into three:

1. Cingular Wireless

2. AT&T long line networks

3. SBC local landline

Repeat for Verizon. It will never happen, because too many people would scream "socialism!!!" senselessly without thinking over the dynamics of what is actually happening, which is to break up an anti-competitive duopoly to ensure a free and competitive market.

Oh I'm clearly expecting Ericsson and Alu to have their own TDD-LTE setups as well just like how Samsung has their own TDD-LTE setup but as I said... another topic ...

 

Back to the scheduled NYC NV discussion xD

This is like sitting in on a 300 level RF engineering course on here.

The cost of each rural area is different. Then again, I can make a compelling case I'm not that rural. It's just that we only had one working provider in Chester in the past, now we have zero because VZW borked the LTE upgrades here bad to the point where they had LTE running and had to take it down. This was my fear of having a town my size (5,500 not counting the prison population) serviced by a single provider more or less.

I think you misunderstood what I'm trying to say. What I'm saying is that it's far more prudent to just stick with the equipment that's currently deployed as each vendor already has a standardized setup and most likely have replacement items and other misc. equipment stocked up in the case that something breaks. Adding another new panel just because it's a slight improvement in some aspect is just complicating things and needlessly expand how much more additional parts they must acquire in case the newer and different panels breaks. Much better to stick through with the current setups and not have a hodgepodge of different models strewn about.

 

On the part about the TDD-LTE, I too would love to see an expansion of that service and filling in of the coverage holes but that's a whole other topic.

I agree, but I'm not certain that the old Ericsson RRU's will be able to work with TD-LTE. If they are able to get a Permissive Change for that, then I'd lean toward sticking toward the old. If not, then I'd look toward the AIR's. I'm not wanting Ericsson panels stuck in Samsung areas. That would be dumb.

AlcatelLucent is a big provider of TD-LTE for China Mobile, so I'm sure they have some sort of RRU improvement or replacement that can be done.