irev210

Just a heads up - I am guessing that Boston server test is towerstream. It always has very high latency (not sure why, as the speedtests are always pretty good). The best speedtest server in the Boston area seems to be the New Hampshire "G4 Communications" server. Great to see NV coming along in Mass! It would be awesome if there was a month-by-month map for Boston like you did for PR/VI Thanks for the update! I bet we are going to start seeing a LOT more of these over the coming months. Only 2 more days until we start seeing 4G LTE speedtests popping up!!!

Cool, I didn't know you could bond unpaired spectrum to paired spectrum. Pretty neat they can do that. I am grasping at straws here - but could Sprint do that with Clearwire's ERS/BRS spectrum (e.g. 5MHz x 45MHz)?

Their Cellular spectrum is already paired - wouldn't really make sense to do that?

I just assumed that ment TD-LTE + FD-LTE via LTE-Advanced. From the sounds of it, they are doing the exact same thing Sprint is doing. The difference is, Sprint has clearwire with 150MHz+ of spectrum in the largest markets, AT&T has 6MHz nationwide and a handful of markets with 12MHz (D+E) to run TD-LTE. I dunno, maybe I don't know AT&T's plan... but not sure what else they could do besides TD-LTE with mediaflo spectrum.

Seems like AT&T is actually pretty screwed, at least compared to Verizon. AT&T's arrogance seemed to get the best of them when they thought they could acquire T-Mobile. If I had to guess, AT&T will buy Dish's 40MHz S-Band for gobs of money. That's probably their best bet. Personally, I think Sprint's spectrum position with Clearwire is probably the best in the industry, at least in the long-term. When Sprint can have Clearwire deploy all of their spectrum in small urban cells, I don't think AT&T or Verizon will be able to match that. Sprint finally can deploy their ESMR spectrum so people actually have good suburban/rural coverage, PCS spectrum will be the mix of capacity and coverage, and ERS/BRS will be the overflow in the very small percentage of square miles that has extremely dense populations (IE: major cities). Seems like high frequency spectrum that doesn't propagate well is almost a positive in an urban environment - more opportunity to recycle spectrum and deploy more small cells - and with LTE-Advanced it should be fairly invisible to the end user. And in Urban settings, when people are in office towers, ESMR and PCS should still provide great coverage.

Qualcomm's 700MHz "Mediaflo" spectrum is unpaired. Not sure I understand the part about Qualcomm 700MHz spectrum they can roll out 10x10 config? Fierewireless actually had a good special report on it about a year ago: http://www.fiercebroadbandwireless.com/special-reports/carrier-aggregation-how-att-will-use-qualcomms-mediaflo-spectrum-double-lte According to that, it is just being aggregated - and not to 700MHz B/C block due to interference issues.

I am pretty sure Apple is referencing the Cellular band that Verizon uses.

Yup, your iPhone is compatible with NV upgrades - you will appreciate the difference!

I wonder if Ericsson has the biggest advantage in the NV project since Ericsson manages Sprint's network. Alcatel Lucent and Ericsson both won hardware contracts with Verizon and AT&T so they already have a lot of hardware on the ground - it seems like Samsung would be the most disadvantaged. Apparently Samsung is a leader in Asia but I wonder how difficult it is for them to get going in a new market. I wonder how much competition there is between the three of them in terms of deployment schedule.

Too bad AJ couldn't get the grand tour like the other reporters.

Robert, there is not a post you've posted that I have not read! I know I've said this before but I appreciate all the hard work you put into this site and I always look forward to reading what's new. Drop more crumbs!

Thanks for making me a happy camper today! Good to see the progress they are making. Up from 20 sites on March 15th to 68 sites on April 16th!

Can you give an example of the Boston area, pretty please?

Yeah, bogus. This is the same guy that put out the fake 3G/4G videos earlier. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_W5kmsBXVso&list=UU7eE-qAZsj3dKqLX1SpNR7A&index=6&feature=plcp 17ms ping 7.5mbit 3G... I don't think so. People did a little snooping and found that this was totally fake. This guy is a nut job.

Sprint has a LOT less postpaid subscribers vs. AT&T and VZN. There are actually many places where AT&T can only deploy 5x5 at 700MHz - not all roses for them. 5x5 at 1900 is just to start. They will follow up with LTE-advanced and add another 5x5 at 800MHz. They will then add Clearwire's 2.5GHz spectrum in areas with lots of data usage. Spectrum is not something sprint needs to worry about for a few years.

I've just had such a bad experience using clearwire. Connection issues aside (I have a clearwire antenna right outside my window), speedtests are extremely variable, even in the dead of night when nobody is on the network. Even when the network was brand new, it was just SO variable. When I do trace routes, it looks like it takes an identical path to whatever server I am doing a tracert on, and since I have no networking expertise, I can't tell you why it is slower. For example, if I do a speedtest to using the G4 communications server in New Hampshire, I'll get under 1mbit on WiMAX. Using the same speedtest at the same time at night on 3G I get lower ping time and over 2mbit - even though it is the exact same traceroute. I am not a network expert but whatever clearwire does to connect to sprint's network doesn't work all that well. Maybe with their conversion to LTE-Advanced they will upgrade whatever network components that connect to Sprint's network. Maybe this is just an issue in the Boston market. It is interesting though and I wish I understood how Sprint<->clearwire works.

err, oops! Good point. I imagine that the amount of wires so high up means a good chance of higher maintenance costs, longer install times, etc. Imagine if you have a bad connection and you need to send someone up the tower to replace it instead of just to the base station. I wonder if Verizon decided that it just added too much time/cost for the benefit when they are using such good spectrum to start with.

It's amazing how many wires are running everywhere. I wonder if there are any reliability differences with the RRU's mounted on the tower. It seems like you could have multiple places were gaskets and such could wear out causing failure. The Ericsson solution that Duffman posted where the RRU was mounted inside the antenna housing was downright sexy - I wonder what the cost and reliability differences are between them. I wonder what the cost difference is for mounting the RRU up on the tower is vs. on the ground.

I think supporting LTE @ 800MHz would have caused their current crop of phones (GNex, Viper, EVO 4G LTE) and the unannounced LTE phones to slip in schedule. I also might guess that sprint might be waiting for LTE-Advanced capable handsets before supporting 800MHz (maybe Robert knows?) Sprint is already very behind Verizon and AT&T in terms of handsets - I doubt that they want to slip back even further. That's probably the biggest driver. For most people, it isn't going to matter anyway. Older LTE phones on 1900 will still benefit from newer phones on 800, as based on capacity, they should default to 800MHz leaving more room for legacy LTE on 1900MHz customers. Frankly, I am just glad they are getting LTE phones out the door now, not later. We need tools, not toys. lol.

Very exciting! I am really curious what the real-world data performance will be on 1x-advanced.

Same here. I really wish we had more info on what they were doing. I wonder if all that microwave and backhaul they setup will be robust enough to handle the new surge in data. Me thinks not.

I was wondering the same thing. I am curious how clearwire's LTE deployment will go and if it will be plagued with some of the same issues I see with their WiMAX network.

Well, I figured people would take what this out of context http://www.fiercebroadbandwireless.com/story/wi-fi-offloading-who-controls-your-handset/2012-04-11 Really poorly written article - she obviously has NO idea how the app works. Thankfully, because of Duffman, we do.

That makes a lot of sense - thank you for all the info! I wonder if the antenna situation is one of the reasons why there have been rumors that the new iPhone will sport a 4" display. If you had to predict how apple would configure the new iPhone - do you think it would follow in the footsteps of the new iPad?

I wonder how much carrier nit-picking is involved in all this. I would assume VZN would be upset if AT&T got AWS support but VZN got left out (granted AT&T absolutely needs AWS whereas VZN does not). I would also think that Sprint would be anxious to get the new iPhone onto 800 to improve voice coverage and dropped calls. I would assume sprint would really want to see that on the iPhone so they can keep PCS spectrum open for refarming. More iPhones on 1x @ 1900 means less space to refarm, right? I am just starting to think if Apple will bite the bullet and start engineering iPhones to have the same PCB but have a modular antenna system that they could just drop in during assembly.