irev210

I don't disagree with your logic and conclusions. But when you consider that there is no capacity gain with carrier aggregation, there is only speed gain, why bother? This is just my opinion of course. Just one lone voice of many. But I don't have any interest in losing battery life for more speed that I don't need.

 

3-5Mbps meets my needs. 10-15Mbps is just gravy, to me. 30Mbps wireless speeds? It's hyperbole in my opinion. Why should carriers pay so much money for the extra speeds? Customers are not going to pay more for it. That's for darn sure.

 

Look at home ISP's. When there is a la carte pricing based on speed, the lion share of customers purchase speeds less than 10Mbps. If we did the same with mobile and institued speed based a la carte pricing, I bet consumers would not care one peep about 20, 30, 50Mbps mobile speeds. They would pick something that meets their needs. Like 5 to 10 Mbps.

 

If I owned a wireless company, I would go with 5x5 carriers and just keep adding for capacity. Market why it's better to have an unlimited 10Mbps network that meets your needs and avoid CA. All just my opinion.

 

Robert

That's a good point. I always just assumed that LTE advanced allowed for seamless hand-off. I don't want to go back to the days of getting stuck on 1x while streaming radio, heh.

So, without LTE-Advanced, would it be possible to do seamless hand-offs between different 5x5 carriers? It seems like there would be no point to LTE-Advanced if Sprint could manage traffic with seemless handoffs (IE I am streaming radio outside, walk inside, seamlessly hand-off to ESMR from PCS to have an uninterrupted listening experience).

LTE Carrier Aggregation is not the panacea its being heralded. It causes significant device battery drain and prevents the use of MIMO in smartphones.

 

I personally think deploying 5x5 LTE carriers is more than sufficient with Sprint spectrum. It performs more than acceptably and exceeds the needs of 95% of customers. Maybe even more. Sprint's 5MHz LTE is faster than most of their customers home ISP's! And it is way faster than smartphones can even appreciate and handle.

 

I think customers will really be more than happy with 10-15 Mbps LTE speeds. Any faster than that is just a pecker size contest. Sprint should reject carrier aggregation and just focus on more carriers (and spectrum) for capacity. Clearwire should also avoid CA and just deploy 20MHz TD-LTE carriers. They will exceed VZW speeds. That should be enough for bragging rights.

 

What would you rather have? A fast Sprint LTE device with a battery that lasts all day? Or a blazing fast Sprint LTE device with carrier aggregation that will last half a day?

 

For me the choice is easy. No carrier aggregation. I just think consumers are going to reject speeds beyond 10-15Mbps soon. It will just be bragging rights on paper only. It will have no real usable difference for smartphone users.

 

Robert via NOVO7PALADIN Tablet using Forum Runner

I also think that it's a bit early to completely write-off aggregation. When EVDO came out, people complained about battery life. When LTE came out, people complained about battery life.

As chipsets mature and manufacturing processes mature, we see substantial improvements in battery life (28nm qualcomm, for example).

I always thought of aggregation as the best tool to seamlessly load balance between different bands. Do I have that wrong?

Glad to hear other markets are better than Boston, New York City, Orange County (the three markets I frequent).

All three markets the service only worked outdoors and performance was highly variable.

I will be the first to admit it was NICE at airports though! 3G at airports is always way overloaded.

Wimax was going to be here for a while anyways. Sprint signed a wholesale deal with Clearwire to provide Wimax until 2015. Mind as well have prepaid customers on it so that it keeps a steady stream of revenue for Clearwire and helps Sprint offload 3G capacity from its network. This allows Sprint to make use of their Wimax wholesale agreement while they slowly shift postpaid customers to LTE. Hopefully Sprint gets the prepaid customers to cough up the $10 premium data to supplement the Wimax costs.

 

I assume by end of 2015, Sprint should have enough capacity to bring on the prepaid customers to LTE and Clearwire can shut down the Wimax network and refarm that spectrum for additional LTE carriers.

The prepaid market is pretty strange. Usually devices have long shelf lives. I would expect WiMAX to keep running well beyond 2015 if they are launching prepaid.

I am starting to think that Sprint/Clear plan to keep WiMAX to resell and offer as a prepaid 4G service. As Clearwire regains its financial footing and starts to expand into newer markets to supplement Sprint, I am wondering if they will expand WiMAX as well.

Hopefully we can get a Clearwire inside source that can provide more color on the Clearwire LTE rollout. I really like the list AJ.

Yes, I am really curious about the following

• How "new" of a network is this compared to WiMAX?
  
• What improvements to backhaul need to be made?
  
• Will Clear be retailing no-contract LTE devices like they did with WiMAX?
  
• How many 20MHz channels do they plan to aggregate?
  
• How much spectrum are they planning to deploy?
  
• Sounds like WiMAX will be around for the foreseeable future. Will clearwire continue to build-out new WiMAX markets if they are going in to deploy TD-LTE in a new location?
  

Many other questions... but those are the big ones. I hope new clearwire is nothing like old clearwire

I guess this means that WiMAX will be around for a long long time.

Interesting.

I'm not certain how the service is terminated for use at sites. However, when it comes to AAV Contracts, they are under master backhaul agreements. Sprint put out to bid their backhaul needs, and they included minimum throughput standards. So even AAV bidders still have to meet those standards, the same as microwave and fiber vendors have. AAV can be scalable by just adding another headend unit at the base station, should capacity issues arise or more carriers are added. However, in the instance of cable companies, the type of commercial grade backhaul they end up providing to Sprint is much better and faster than home service cable. Many cable companies are using fiber backbone now and can extend that fiber to the site in some instances. But this would still be considered AAV because how the service would be terminated at the site.

 

The great thing about AAV is it creates a competitive outlet for the whole process, lowering prices on all types of ethernet backhaul. And allows carriers to get less dependent on one type or only a few companies. In Network Vision, Sprint is using dozens of backhaul vendors. I may create a list. Thinking about it.

 

I don't have any more details about the CL DS3's now than I did then.

 

Robert via NOVO7PALADIN Tablet using Forum Runner

Very interesting! I know cable cos are a great source for backhaul since they have local fiber everywhere in the markets they serve. There have been some articles on how cable operators have really helped drive down backhaul pricing.

Are there any examples where sprint runs its own fiber to a tower? If so, it seems like it would only be a handful that they do that. There was a lightreading article last year that was saying "AT&T dropped their pants" on backhaul pricing to Sprint but that's been about it.

It would be great to read an article on backhaul - so if you want to write one up, I would be the first to read it

It can be cable, and often is. It's basically a catch all. AAV (Alternative Access Vendors) typically means all ethernet based backhaul solutions that are not microwave or direct fiber connection. However, even sometimes I have even seen fiber marked AAV when provided from a third party.

 

Robert via NOVO7PALADIN Tablet using Forum Runner

Stupid question-

How does AAV work? Depending on the site, does the vendor run fiber to a box (aka switch) that basically supplies any company that wants access to their hookup? So say, comcast runs fiber to the tower, they offer ethernet hookups to their fiber connection for $x a month and that would be called "ethernet based backahul"? Then, in the case of direct fiber connection does fiber run straight to a new sprint basestation?

What sort of backhaul is being piped into basestations? You mentioned that Chicago is getting DS3's via centurylink (single or multiple DS3's per basestation?). I guess I am wondering if Sprint is going to run into backhaul issues again in the future. It's hard to imagine going from bundled T1's to a DS3... but 45mbit may cut it for now but won't cut it once they add another 5x5 carrier.

I am headed to an important meeting, but I will add this point. The number of total sites being completed in 2012 is way down. They were initially aiming for 20,000 sites in 2012. NV is a total of 38,000 sites. This may not be a total schedule slip, as they may make it up in 2013. But it is a slip.

 

If I were Sprint, I'd consider changing strategies. Perhaps whole market conversions are not the way with the current schedule. Instead of having four/five crews in each of the markets now, maybe break it up and get two of those crews moving on to another market. Even though it will slow down one market, the other one will start getting deployment early. And more markets can have some sort of LTE coverage.

 

However, I wouldn't slow down Chicago, given their problems. If anything, I would speed that one up.

 

Robert via NOVO7PALADIN Tablet using Forum Runner

How many sites do you think they will complete by the end of the year? Steve Elfman is now saying 12,000 with 100-120 million pops covered.

Chicago sounds like a mess - you would think that given the situation it would make sense to make completing Chicago a #1 priority.

Sites upgraded may have to do with equipment as well, I recall a clearwire exec. saying that alot of there later basestations were software upgradable to handle LTE.

 

http://www.clearwire.../featured-story

 

 

"Its WiMAX antennas and radios could pull duty for the LTE network, and on the base station side, Clearwire could easily upgrade to WiMAX [LTE?] with software, adding more baseband processing line cards to support LTE’s new capacity"

 

http://www.lte-tdd.org/newsdetail/399

Yup, older Motorola sites do not have software radios. Newer Huawei sites do.

I tested the Galaxy Nexus vs. the Epic 4G Touch and only noticed that the upload speeds on the galaxy nexus are the highest I've ever hit on a 3G device.

Otherwise, download speeds are about the same (for me).

Stopped using screen protectors since I switched from old resistive touch windows mobile phones to modern capacitive phones with glass.

Overall, I've done well. Never been able to scratch gorilla glass.

I recently read an article saying Clearwire is starting a major move to LTE. With an expected reach of 5000 base stations in mid-2013 and another 3000 soon afterwards. My question is why. Why only deploy 8000 base stations. Lightsquared just failed in getting a new nationwide network built. This is Cleariwire's time to shine. Clearwire cloud easily sign all partners of Lightsquared to new deals. Then Clearwire can possibly make a network sharing deal with Sprint similar to the one made with Lightsquared. This would give Sprint more capacity which we know Sprint will need and offer a major threat to the big two, Verizon and AT&T. Why not Clearwire, why not?

It's about tonnage.

Sprint's network will only become loaded in certain areas. Does it really make sense for Clearwire to put a basestation in where there is no need (no demand)? Definitely not.

They've said a bunch of times they are working with Sprint to identify areas with the most traffic and deploy their gobs of spectrum there. They want to deploy as few basestations as possible while offloading the most traffic possible - that will make Clearwire the most money with the least investment.

Adding coverage to a small rural population that is serviced with Sprint's own spectrum would make Clearwire zero dollars. Over time as data usage grows, areas that will not be adequately served by Sprint, Clearwire can come in and start to offload data onto their network and profit.

A quick follow-up:

I went to three more network vision sites (this time south of Boston instead of north) - still no LTE.

I also want to add that speed at each tower is DRASTICALLY different. It was pretty shocking to see all of the sites have completely different levels of speed/performance.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but I read that Samsung was using an off-brand radio and and a good chunk of Verizon users were complaining about reception issues. There was some debate on other sites that Samsung would use a different radio to fix the issue. Perhaps that was lumped in with the other rumors about the Gnex getting an uprated processor and camera.

yeah, it uses a VIA CDMA chip and a Samsung LTE chip

Not sure why they have to put a qualcomm sticker on every phone...

irev210: Just to be Master of the Obvious, they did activate your Galaxy Nexus on the SERO-P + $10 plan, right?

yup, good to go on SERO-P+10

Any chance you were under the bubble of the antenna?

I don't think so. I did multiple tests driving, parked, across the street. I didn't have a ton of time but speeds were not like how they are in Boston.

Those are great shots! Looks like the 4G Live dates in our NV schedules are accurate. They said that 4G LTE wasn't live yet. I was hoping they actually went live when the 3G went on air.

 

Robert

The thing that blew my mind was the slow 3G speedtests.

These are the tests that I took in a parked car right in front of the antennas.

I know it is not the new galaxy nexus - in downtown boston at 6:15PM during primetime usage (big redsox day) I am getting absolutely blazing speeds (as usual).

Network vision speed test results:

Current speeds in downtown Boston:

So sorry for the bad news. I hit up two towers before traffic got really bad and had to call it quits.

Sadly, both did not have LTE. I did everything from toggling CDMA to CDMA/LTE, coming in and out of airplane mode, and rebooting the phone - still didn't grab LTE.

Here are shots from the two sites I visted:

Big thanks to Duffman. I am off to go hunting for LTE now.

I wonder if the Sprint version will have the qualcomm radio?

My phone does say "qualcomm 4G" on the bottom near the charging port. Is that on the Verizon version?

Yes, after a quick google search, qualcomm 4g sticker is on the verizon version as well.

Duffman: It doesn't mean they're gonna renew your contract, right? If I bought a nexus on a full price and activate it.

Yes, you buy the phone off contract and it doesn't change your contract renewal date.

I show SERO doc "PAST -SERO Plans" updated 04/13/2012 states "Subscribers who choose to upgrade to a Dual Mode 3G/4G WiMax or LTE smartphone..." so you should definitely be able to add it to SERO Premium plus $10.

 

I believe this is just an error with the billing system not set up properly to accept the phone for on SERO.

 

 

 

 

 

And the reason it required changing the plan to what appeared to be the same plan is because there can be several codes on the backend for the plan you see. The plan code determines some features such as Blackberry access if needed. So in this case I believe the specific plan was to include LTE.

Thanks for the clarification Duffman!

Can't wait to find some LTE!

On wifi for now...

My gut tells me that SERO plans will not work for LTE service. WIth the introduction of LTE, they have an opportunity to call all accounts "new" just like when WiMax started, everyone had to have the $10 fee. I think Sprint would love to get rid of SERO and SERO-P since they don't make money off those plans. I think they'd be stupid to do this-- most people I know who are still on Sprint are only because of SERO.

Not sure what is going on - activated a co-workers galaxy nexus who is on a standard 69.99+10 plan and it made him re-signup for a 69.99+10 plan.

Very strange. Normally when I do ESN swaps online it just swaps the phone over, doesn't make you sign up for a plan again.

No bueno! Why would it be different than WiMax devices and SERO? It shouldn't be!

 

Robert - Posted from my E4GT with ICS using Forum Runner

Dunno, it's not looking good. I've been on the phone with account services for over 20 minutes.