Fraydog

I was speaking of the GSM evolutionary path, not GPRS/EDGE, which I agree has outlived its useful life. As far as the rural carriers, I don't see a rush for backing off CDMA for voice. It's useful as a backup where VoLTE won't easily penetrate. I don't see that being many areas though. Also, there's no need for soft handover with the network infrastructure of LTE. Not that much of a loss by this point. http://parklands-wir...r-exist-in.html Now if you deploy like Sprint and have a RRU, I would think that coverage on VoLTE would equal CDMA 2000 on the same spectrum without a RRU.

Why not just have a three way merger, and commit to GSM/LTE as the long term winner in Sprint's technology path?

USCC and Smalltel (ATNI dba Alltel) would not hurt, especially considering that's area where Sprint isn't and nothing else than either Verizon or AT&T is at. In most USCC or Smalltel areas, one carrier is dominant the the other of the Big 2 neglects. Example. Southern Illinois, Verizon is king and Sprint is a brick along with AT&T, Smalltel can't compete because they don't have the money or power to take on Verizon 4G directly. Cross the river to Southeast Missouri where US Cellular is the main competitor to AT&T, and Verizon is absent altogether through large chunks of the region. As far as the west where AT&T and Verizon are the only carriers, once Network Vision is complete, I think there's opportunity for Sprint to build out on the Interstates. That's it.

As far as AWS... I think Verizon needs it more than AT&T does, but T-Mobile needs it the most. AT&T still has boat loads of PCS from the AT&T/Cingular merger. With their iPhone-centric smartphone base upgrading fast, they'll be able to start freeing PCS for LTE next year (probably in time for the 5S). VoLTE will come online at about the same time for them. Verizon isn't showing any signs of using their newly acquired SpectrumCo AWS until 2013 as well. Surprisingly the of the version iPhone 5 does not support AWS. T-Mobile is the only carrier using AWS now, barring a few spots where we can't confirm whether AT&T is using AWS or not.

http://www.fiercebro...-buy/2012-10-04 So Neville Ray, the CTO at T-Mobile USA, is elevated to rock star status now. He's done a great job on network modernization for TMo, no question. He has a pretty big challenge ahead of him, however. Also, as far as Alltel goes, there's still six markets out there owned by ATNI (including where I live). Would Sprint be interested in buying those? It's mainly CLR spectrum, but Sprint also owns lots of spectrum without much coverage in those areas. If they combined they could be a very powerful adversary to Verizon in this area.

Clearly, most don't care though. Generationally, people my age and younger don't even use the phone to talk much. HD Voice could change that, and I think my disappointment is in not having clear standards for the industry that help accelerate this process. The more I read about VoLTE, the more I realize it's a mess.

Could Apple add VoLTE support later on? It seems pretty clear the MDM9615 supports VoLTE and the baseband software by Apple does not. Could Apple add it to the baseband later on?

Since the iPhone will likely support VoLTE at some point, the real onus should be on carriers to accelerate to VoLTE. Most users I know on Sprint and Verizon don't really care, and even those who have LTE don't use SV-DO or SV-LTE. Again, a case of the tech geeks being disconnected from the rest of the planet. I suspect Apple wants the industry to move to VoLTE, as it is way more in line with what they want for the future.

I know all about his Oracle consulting ties, but look at the big picture. If this idiot judge banned the Nexus wouldn't you think Samsung would be in much bigger trouble with other products? Especially the ones that do look like they are somewhat ripping Apple off? Use a little common sense here.

Yeah Samsung does a lot to rip Apple. Thing is, this patent is nothing of the sort. This is just bad on a whole bunch of levels. Banning the Nexus because of voice search? So let me get this straight, Apple got the GNex banned over voice search? This patent is from 2004 and is so deliberately vague that it should never have been granted. Apple itself had to purchase Siri so they bought a technology that infringed the patent in question. Begs the question what did Apple say to get Siri to sell out to them. Android had voice search in their phones before the iPhone 4S was released. Yet, Koh rules in favor of Apple? The technical ignorance on her part is outstanding. I'm normally one to defend Apple on here, but this is absurd.

Nope, Lucy Koh, the clueless judge who made the Galaxy Nexus injunction, will probably rule on the GS3 as well. It's a shame you can't get Federal Judges expelled like Members of Congress or impeached like Presidents.

Pick up your GS3 while you still can, according to Florian Mueller, the GS3 is next in Koh's crosshairs. He said there's a good chance this could get an injunction. S Voice might be an even bigger infringer than Google's voice search was.

Cross-licensing. That's how things get handled in civility. Apple has decided to toss that out the window. Shameful.

I can't envision a scenario where purely profit shareholders are really happy with AT&T given the $4 billion loss on the failed T-Mobile merger. As far as network investment, AT&T is spending $21 billion this year and $95 billion the last five years on network upgrades, the problem is that they thought they could skate on investment after ATTWS/Cingular integration. AT&T had to spend way more due to the number of network integrations they have had. TDMA to GSM. Cingular/ATTWS merger. Jump from GSM to UMTS. Now from UMTS to LTE. Verizon and Sprint have both had an easier path with gentle upgrades on various revisions of the CDMA standard and now are in a better position to leap to LTE. So yeah, I could see this guy being on the hot seat.

AJ, the STL area is not part of the SpectrumCo deal. I'm pretty sure USCC holds AWS block B there. Other than that, nice breakdown.

Wait, I thought my avatar was changed?

I'd rather see AT&T fill in remaining EDGE with HSPA+, modernize the rest of their core, accelerate on LTE, and acquire enough spectrum to deploy LTE over their footprint by 2014, but what do I know?

Angry Birds makes my iPhone heat up. Maybe my iPhone gets...angry?

They (HTC and Sprint) better get a software update out quick. For one, it's been speculated on here that the EVO LTE is a big part of why Sprint is still blocking LTE sites. Also, the EVO is the flagship Sprint smartphone brand. The GS3 is a nice device, but like the iPhone, it's a device that is getting out on multiple carriers from Day 1.

That Alpena tower might get similar CDMA coverage to the existing iDEN tower, probably better given 800 CDMA flies further. Sprint is also using RRH's so that will also cause signal to fly further.

Those 28nm process chips are pretty much essential for me to consider buying an LTE device at this point. From the testing I've seen done on Anandtech, it's either those chips, or a big honker of a battery like in the RAZR MAXX, to achieve good battery life on LTE. The new iPad, like the MAXX, also went with a much larger battery to nullify the impact of the MDM9600 which uses the older and less efficient 45nm process. I don't know what nm process the Wrigley used but I presume it was a similar size to the first generation Qualcomm chipset.

Bainbridge is a perfect example of that. I would hope the few Nextel sites in that scenario would get NV before the 2013 cutoff. I'm going to make a guess it's probably between 50 and 100 sites in that need to be NV'ed for Sprint service to remain in this area.

All in all, I think manufacturers need to worry less about specs and more about a cohesive experience. They'd do better with root Android and common set of Android hardware. In other words, forget about the marketing hogwash of "differentiation". Make the product great and that will differentiate your product.

This is Sprint's market share for the top 40, courtesy of newyork4me on HoFo. It explains a LOT of the First and Second Round schedule.

Sprint should just flip the switch for the Viper and Nexus owners, and get the OTA fix finished. The AT&T One X had a similar issue, and AT&T issued a software update to fix it.