Fraydog

https://wireless2.fc...tInd=applAttach

Business is about to pick up in the USCC transaction.

http://www.stltoday....a630855c26.html

Unfortunately, it sounds as if May 17 is the last day of work for USCC retail employees. It is weird, though, seeing a bunch of USCC advertising during Cardinals games when it's going to be a stone cold lock USCC customers will need new devices on Sprint.

 

Then, other people would complain, "I can't believe that T-Mobile launched LTE in 'market X' before Sprint did! What a joke!" or "VZW has had LTE in 'market Y' for two years, and I'm still waiting on the WiMAX that Sprint 'promised' me three years ago. Sprint sux!"

 

Yes, folks, these kinds of exclamations are representative of an unfortunately significant segment of Sprint subs. Honestly, I do not know how these moronic people manage to navigate their daily lives.

 

AJ

I know, but I couldn't give a flying you know what about what those people think. Sprint PR does need to do a better job explaining to consumers the nature of the total network rebuild that Sprint is doing. I think most people would understand. The complainers? That's going to happen with everything. If you're Sprint management or PR, you just have to tell those people "thanks for the input", and then go on with doing the right thing in spite of their silly complaining.

 

 

Don't get me started. Stupid sprint marketing people officially launch the Boston market with about 15% of the actual sites upgraded. It drives me bonkers. Sprint needs to stop fake launching markets, just makes them look bad.

I'd rather just see Sprint officially announce markets when they're 100% complete.

If you merged Sprint and T-Mobile, the key question would be "how do you avoid the same blunders that besieged the Nextel transaction?"

Michael Fisher's review at Pocketnow also had the "print" instead of Sprint for the network name on his One review unit which was on Sprint. He also had issues keeping LTE indoors, which could be due to the 1900 PCS frequencies, the fact that only about half of Boston sites are done, or the OK but not great RF on the one.

I admit I did a double take when I saw the Flexi T-Mobile refarming/LTE setup in person for the first time. I thought they were RRU's, but was shocked to find out they were also the actual base station, sitting up at the top of the tower right behind the antennas more or less.

T-Mobile has been in that area for a while. Alarm bells should have been going off at DT HQ when ARPU started going into the toilet on their end. Perhaps it did and they thought that selling to AT&T would be the fix.

The Uncarrier branding is still postpaid. It's just not on contract per se. Now I would call the EIP a type of contract, and the credit requirements for that are, from my understanding, very tight. For a postpaid Uncarrier plan with no contract, not so much.

Have you ever listened to the Android Central podcast? Phil is probably the worst guy there for understanding the technology side of Android. If someone who is an iOS fan like me can understand the technical end of Android better than him, that's a problem. It's a shame because there are smart people over there, like Alex Dobie and Jerry Hildenbrand. Nickinson should be writing for iMore instead.

T-Mobile isn't a subprime network in the 225 million POP's they cover with HSPA+. It's just subprime in the areas they still only have GPRS and EDGE.

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Is there any effort to transfer QChat from working over CDMA standards to LTE ongoing?

Apple streams at a 256 Kbps. For overloaded EV-DO, I wouldn't recommend it.

Load the music you like on at home, and use that. Save the network load for others.

http://www.androidce...asual-review

From reading Mr. Nickinson's review, you can see how the lingering network issues still affect Sprint. How many people read a review like that and take him at face value, even though their network experience could be completely different where they live?

 

Definitely additional antenna panels that support AWS frequencies, carrier cards for PCS HSPA and AWS LTE/HSPA at the BTS, new RRUs that support HSPA and LTE on AWS and PCS. I am sure I am missing some other small details.

That was pretty close to what I thought.

That's another reason why I didn't want to say too much. I feel like I still have a lot to learn about the Network Vision itself.

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A lot. I wouldn't worry about it since it won't happen.

I'm speaking in terms of a merger or network sharing agreement with T-Mobile.

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What work would need to be done to get Network Vision towers to blast out PCS HSPA and AWS HSPA/LTE?

Yet another "ME TOO!!!" PR cry, promising bunch of nothing. After trying to steal T-Mobile's HD Voice thunder, they're doing exactly the same with Google...

 

Can you tell that I despise AT&T? lol

AT&T is the master of telecom vaporware. The sad part is that fiber wouldn't be that much of a deterrent to their short term profit. Over the long run, they'd put the hurt on the cable companies with a solid fiber to the home strategy.

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I'm trying to think along the lines of what SoftBank would do. They're definitely on the 3GPP train. I just don't think they care all that much about CDMA. Sure, they could support it for customers for a long time. I think that if they buy T-Mobile, it would be an opportunity on their end to switch technologies and more or less move off 3GPP2 altogether.

Now if they don't buy T-Mobile, it obviously makes sense to keep CDMA around.

Yet, I still don't have a conclusion. I may want to wait for the SoftBank/Sprint transaction to close, I want to see what they do for starters upon taking control of Sprint.

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AJ, I'm going through and doing the research on this throughly... but as far as the interim findings go, I'm very excited. It's still not a set standard and something we won't see until 2015... but we probably wouldn't see a merger close until then anyway.

Sprint is trying to save money on operating costs that have plagued them for years for running 2 different networks. In Sprint's opinion, many of the Nextel sites are redundant where Sprint sites provide overlapping coverage, so it makes sense to shut down Nextel sites that do the same thing. Now I agree that in certain areas in the US where Nextel sites cover areas where Sprint coverage does not, it should keep those Nextel sites and convert those to Sprint Network Vision towers. But I would say for the majority of the 30,000 Nextel sites, Sprint should decommission them and save money on operating costs. Sprint needs to cut down its 68,000 sites (Nextel and Sprint combined) to 38,000 sites (Sprint only) and improve its balance sheet.

 

The money saved from decommissioning about 30,000 sites would be much better used somewhere else like expanding the TD-LTE coverage beyond Clearwire's scope of its existing WiMAX footprint.

Only thing is, I'm not calling on the redundant sites to be kept. I'm calling on 1000 or so sites to be kept. With SoftBank in the picture, I don't see why you couldn't make the long term investment to keep the Sprint Nextel combined footprint at its current size over shrinking it further.

I'm hoping this gets reevaluated at the completion of the SoftBank buyout.

The Nextel aging GSM clone architecture is going away everywhere. So why not replace the rural sites with Network Vision?

I know 100 sites they were going to decommission they changed their minds on, so I don't rule anything out in the future.

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I think it's going to be a different ball game for Sprint with SoftBank ownership.

I'm hoping Carbondale work starts very soon and that LTE would be up and running for the SIU people by the beginning of fall term.

Anything with Martin and Union City in Tennessee?

Am I breaking the rules posting Photos and such here?

No. Carry on.

On a side note, I hope they do a Network Vision soon in the Metro East and south like in Waterloo and Red Bud, then go on and try further south... like my home town of Chester.

Data didn't even work half the time on Verizon in town. I want off in the worst way but I don't want to go to AT&T either.

...or go bowling.

 

 

AJ

Or the dark days where AMF owned Harley Davidson and almost ruined their brand. The AMF Harleys were such junk.

Damn near killed Evel Knevel.

bigsnake, I always thought the SMR block would be a stumbling block for a Sprint/T-Mobile merger, but now that Scalable UMTS has entered the building...

http://3g4g.blogspot.com/2013/02/scalable-umts-s-umts-to-accelerate-gsm.html?goback=%2Egde_1888232_member_214087984

I thoroughly believe that this could be a big aid to a combined Sprint/Softbank/T-Mobile.