cdiao

Probably not. iPhones are second class citizens.

 

 

AJ

AJ, what will be required to support CDMA 1x 800? WHy would it be difficult since the radio and antenna that already serves 850mhz should be within range to access the 800mhz band? Wouldn't it be fairly trivial and depend whether the components are in broad supply? Given that HTC, Samsung, Motorola, LG, et. al. are already sourcing components that are SMR800mhz capable for CDMA, as well as the 850mhz band (since Sprint roams at that freq), why would Apple not want its purchasers of IPhone 5 to experience the improved coverage and in-building penetration offered by Sprint's new CDMA on 800mhz? I had assumed or taken this for granted but wish to get the opinion of folks here who actually know the technical constraints that will affect the next iPhone 5.

 

Similarly, besides CDMA 1x voice, if iPhone 5 will have radios and antennae that serve the 700 band 850band, 900band, 1800 band, and 1900 band (you seem to suggest no 1700/2100 AWS band at all), what is the constraint on provisioning LTE at 800 band? Is not the LTE comm processing capability separate from the RF definitions in the radio that defines which frequencies?

 

Just curious.

well i just replaced my Blackberry Bold for a Sammy Galaxy S3 in the hopes that NYC will be NV LTE live by October/November. Still have my old Epic to access WiMax until then (to be replaced by iPhone 5 presumably). Keep telling myself be patient, be patient. Hopefully all the initial "connection issues" will have been well resolved by the time NYC gets some LTE love from Sprint.

I'm positive it is VZW 850. The iPhone is not 800SMR capable.

 

From CM10 Toro on Forum Runner

 

i was wondering about this, now that 800Mhz SMR frequencies on CDMA is becoming a reality. Is there a running list of which Sprint smartphone handsets are SMR 800Mhz capable?

Yep, that's what I said. I seen it up to -83 even. 5.2 miles exact.

 

wow, is this the first sighting of 800MHz SMR on CDMA in the wild? that's like finding Big Foot!!!! Congratulations! :-)

 

So glad that 800Mhz CDMA finally becoming "real" for Sprint after 7 long years since the merger completed.

 

800mhz will dramatically improve coverage and in-building penetration for Sprint customers (those lucky enough to be on new handsets). makes me want to go out and get S3 for my back-up phone even before we get LTE.

Yeah, orders are not super easy to come by unless you know who to talk to. It kinda sucks that businesses have to ask for proof of something like that, but I can only imagine the amount of people claiming to be deploying when they just want to shut their phone off for a while. The nice thing for me, was that my upgrade eligibility months kept ticking off when I was overseas, so I came back and was upgrade eligible right off the bat. That alone is worth about $15 per month.

 

that i did not know. on seasonal suspend, I believe that the upgrade elligibility stops tolling. Since he was already upgrade elligible before he deployed. we had bought a stop-gap device on eBay while awaiting for Sprint to announce iPhone. It worked out well when he returned in january, it was perfect for belated XMas present.

 

Thank you for serving.

Do they not do the military suspend anymore? All I had to do was fax them my orders and they suspended it for free. After 12 months I lost my phone number though. Just as well though, it is good to lose the crazies every so often.

 

Sprint does still have "military suspend" but as you mentioned, I had to get copies of my son's orders, and he was a bit difficult to reach in Helmand Province, and frankly I wasn't exactly sure that he would have access to fax machine at camp, nor would they probably allow him to fax his orders due to operational security. So I paid the $9 bucks per month for "Seasonal suspend" instead. While it was good to know that Sprint did offer such programs for military families even though I couldn't avail myself, it wasn't lost on me that the monies that they collect from me in essence to reserve a DID number on Sprint's switch was a very high margin revenue stream for Sprint (for not using its network during that period). So I think Sprint probably owes me one. :-)

Seasonal Standby is $8.99/month. I have 1 line on it right now. Great solution when you are having problem with native service.

 

yeah i put my son's phone on seasonal standby when he got deployed to afghanistan (safely returned) but Sprint does limit the duration but I dont know how long. I also put another line on standby because I thought that I lost it but now that I found the phone, I'm just letting it roll until LTE is lit up in NYC so that I can justify buying a new handset. it's a decent policy for keeping your number "warm"

Nope. Baltimore was the only one specifically mentioned. Could be more minor ones like all those in Texas.

 

i just went through the various market deployment updates on this site -- seems like Boston, and DC are likely candidates, and LA is doubtful given how huge that market is (more likely October) and also linked with Orange County's deployment.

From earnings call: Sprint expects to launch 4 additional markets, including Baltimore by the end of august.

 

did they say which markets other than Baltimore?

 

 

Robert, besides Chicago and Austin, which are the most likely candidates for the "end of August" launch time-frame?

Interesting. Robert's hypothesis (explained here) is that the threshold settings on the handsets are affecting how they downshift from LTE as a function of signal strength, and not benignly. If that hypothesis is valid, then different OEMs' handsets may very well calculate the threshold and downshift differently.

 

This was what I was wondering about. Given the discriminatory results, there seems clearly to be more of a connectivity problem (LTE threshold settings perhaps) with HTC handsets. I was intrigued with the author's results for the S3 and Nexus and the seeming differences given that both are made by Samsung so that does seem strange but suggests there is something in the settings and or software that's affecting connectivity. I recall other postings from Nexus owners who say they were getting good results but yet EVO LTE owners complaining otherwise. S3 probably too new to have much of a user population. Can others confirm this?

Comparing it to iDEN and EVDO, Clearwire all-IP WiMAX network architecture makes it efficient at a lower cost from its compact design.

 

 

I believe that the footnotes are incorrectly notated and that they should be switched between footnote 2 and footnote 3. note that a major element of "efficiency" in this powerpoint is comparing capital with opex in that CLWR in this example is using digital microwave for backhaul (vs leasing fiber). Besides potential QoS issues related to DM such as weather or foliage, the comparison itself is self-serving because both carriers can elect to employ identical backhaul (it is not some inherent advantage of WiMax). The tower rent differential is somewhat specious because it is premised on CLWR negotiating better site rents than legacy cellular carriers. This isn't some great "efficiency" inherent in WiMax and at most reflects smaller footprints of later generation technology cell site equipment used by CLWR when compared with the legacy systems of cellular carriers (remember their equipment also support voice carriers), which the latest generation cell sites such as Sprint's NV would also have similar size and power attributes as CLWR's WiMax. This page is part of the "spin" that the company used to entice the investment community, who didn't know any better.

 

CLWR is building its LTE "overlay" on its existing footprint by cherry picking sites that are high volume network "hot spots" - that is why it chose not to piggy-back Sprint's NV build by co-locating on Sprint's cell sites (at least for the initial build) since CLWR enjoys operating "sunk costs" from its existing WiMax sites (tower rent, power, and backhaul). So until it turns its WiMax dark, perhaps in the 2015 time-frame, it is unlikely to reduce its ongoing operating cost to keep the network up and running, and even then only by the reduction in those WiMax only sites that it has chosen not to deploy LTE at (i.e. those sites that were originally built for "coverage" and otherwise not economically viable when viewed purely on a usage-demand basis). Hopefully CLWR can match the inevitable decline in WiMax revenues with some reduction in network opex by pruning the WiMax network, while simultaneously grow revenues from its TD-LTE hot spot capacity shaving business sufficiently to pay for the network opex that will remain. It's seems like a tricky path to navigate and not without some financial execution risk (it's not the technology but CLWR's ability to secure revenues from its commercial relationships). The bet is that the other carriers will be desperate for capacity off-load by then or otherwise will value CLWR's exceedingly fat pipe. I hope that's the case because I would love some of that 40Mhz TD-LTE wideband pipe.

True, I do understand that they are temporary. But temporary could mean another few weeks or a year, ya never know. I love the Sprint plans just not the service as of lately (last year or so).

 

just get a prepaid phone from Tracfone or StraightTalk (on Verizon) as "back up" to bridge the 3-4 months..

However, Im still curious if there will be an iPad that runs exclusively on Sprints network. There are rumors out there... such as photos of a Sprint new iPad in BestBuy's system.

 

it was "exclusively" because it would require it to use WiMax given the big feature of the New iPad was "4G" -- both parties figured out that didnt make sense. Besides, over 80% of iPad sales are WiFi only -- this may start to change as VZW and T introduce plans with shared bucket bundles to share among multiple devices.

 

Sprint really doesn't actively promote tablets (and they are very data consumptive so the "truly unlimited" plans are not applicable to tablets), but maybe that changes once its LTE network is up and running. Frankly it may be a better deal to enable the hot spot feature on your Sprint smartphone and then connect your tablet via WiFi tethering to your smartphone (which I did for awhile with my Epic using WiMax, but then I realized that I really did not use my tablet away from the home, or away from any other WiFi accessible area, to justify the additional $30 per month).

Ok if its not feasible, why is that spectrum so valuable to sprint? They had to move on that spectrum or lose it is what I read in another post in this thread. If this 2600MHz is going to have the same building penetration and need the same number of towers to run a full LTE deployment, is it really that important. I am guessing when clearwire deploys their 2600MHz LTE it will still be in a limited amount of markets. I think sprint should be trying to find some spectrum that would have better building penetration, and require less towers. Having LTE service in a spectrum I can't get most of the time indoors is not going to make me happier

It's valuable as a means to supplement an existing network by offloading capacity needs in high traffic areas, so-called "hot spots", but as a means to build a de novo network that requires ubiquitous coverage (both geographic breadth and depth in terms of in-building), 2.5ghz is a poor choice. In most recent FCC report on the AT&T -T-MUSA merger, FCC stated that it would take 7x the number of cell sites to provide comparable coverage using >2 ghz spectrum as it would take AT&T/VZW using their 700mhz/850mhz spectrum. The value for CLWR's BRS spectrum is in urban hot spots and high usage traffic corridors, and is now finally being deployed in a fashion that is suitable for its use -- unfortunately, that may not make it a viable independent company, as it needs to price its capacity as "first use" in order to efficiently off-load traffic, rather than "last-use" if it is usage-based pricing as how CLWR is trying to price its capacity for TD-LTE.

Because Sprint will have usage based pricing on CLWR LTE, Sprint will likely not default to CLWR LTE first, but rather last. LTE 1900 first, then shunt users off to LTE 800 when 1900 starts to hit the predetermined congestion point, prior to performance degradation. Then 800 LTE users get shunted off to 2500 (if available) when its lone LTE carrier crosses the performance threshold.

 

2500 first would make more sense, if it weren't for the usage based pricing from CLWR. However, if Sprint should buy them out as they start deploying LTE, that could make this scenario possible of defaulting to 2500 LTE first.

 

Robert

 

Because 2500 first makes a lot more sense, ultimately the placeholder usage-sensitive pricing deal that exists currently will need to change. As we've seen with propagating WiMax to Boost and Virgin, because Sprint now enjoys fixed-cost "owner's economics", CLWR benefits if Sprint actually wants to use the CLWR network (because it will end up creating a longer revenue tail for CLWR) rather than having Sprint view the CLWR network as the bandwidth of last resort.

NV sites are spaced apart based on 1900 propagation characteristics. Even if Clearwire was on every NV tower, their coverage would look like a bunch of islands covering a city. They would still need to come back in and infill between NV towers.

 

ClWR's frequencies not suitable for wide-area coverage. Only useful for hot spots to off-load capacity from G-block. Depending upon the commercial arrangement between Sprint and CLWR - let's asume it is a fixed price per site rather than usage-sensitive per GB pricing, then when multi-modality FD/TD-LTE devices are availalbe, they would search for the 2.5ghz freq first in order to off-load traffic from the 1.9ghz band, and if you are not covered by that "hot spot", then you ride the 1.9ghz band that's now presumably less congested based upon the off-load of heavy traffic to 2.5ghz. This architecture will not work if CLWR insists on usage-sensitive pricing because it turns the economics upside-down for Sprint, and it is exactly counter to the strategic capacity advantage that CLWR's "fat pipes" would offer, but CLWR has chosen to pursue dumb paths before, so who knows.