irev210

Speaking to the general environment, here is another good recent article. Amazing that this could happen.

Seems like there is a chance that it will have 1.5GHz and 8MP camera. *shrug* we'll probably find out this month.

yup, that was already known. First round of phones will be non-LTE advanced. It should get more interesting when LTE-Advanced phones start shipping next year. Once that happens, you will see LTE-Advanced handsets on Sprint's 800MHz and Clearwire's 2.5GHz. That's a lot of antennas!

April seems to be the launch month based on this: https://fjallfoss.fcc.gov/oetcf/eas/reports/ViewExhibitReport.cfm?mode=Exhibits&RequestTimeout=500&calledFromFrame=N&application_id=824008&typ=8374&fcc_id=%27A3LSPHL700%27 Source: engadget

Yup, they are still WAY bigger vs. AT&T and Verizon... but not the global titan they used to be. Just look how they have changed since 2009: http://www.renesys.com/blog/2009/12/a-bakers-dozen-in-2009.shtml http://www.renesys.com/blog/2012/02/a-bakers-dozen-2011-edition.shtml Granted, they are still HUGE... but it's worth noting the decline. This is just not a focus of sprint anymore.

They do have a rather large "backbone" but they lack metro fiber. If you wanted to measure sprint in size, they are a VERY large part of the internet. It's all long-haul though, not metro fiber. It was actually good that they spun off their landline business. Frankly, Sprint doesn't have the size/scale to be competitive. It would have ended up being a cash drain.

http://www.qualcomm.com/media/press-kits/do-advanced

Seems like 800MHz and 2500MHz are going to be used in 2013 when LTE-Advanced goes live. I don't really see the point of doing it any other way.

Any chance you could add Boston to the list?

Will this work in Boston?

Still wondering Is it official that there are NV sites actually providing service to regular customers yet, or are they still testing?

I only posted the most recent article because it showed up in the paper today. What it DOES support, once again, is that the Chinese government has a long history of supporting/engaging in corporate espionage for the benefit of state-owned or state-supported enterprises in China. It just proves my point that the government in China actively engages in corporate espionage. As Huawei is a state-supported enterprise, I think it is perfectly valid to compare them. Here are some more direct examples: Cisco Systems filed an IP infringement claim in 2003 against Huawei Technologies (a powerful Chinese MNC that produces telecommunications and networking equipment) for copying patented Cisco technologies, user manuals, and the source code used for Huawei’s counterfeit routers. In a 2005 interview with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Warren Heit, a partner at White & Case, states that display cases at some of Huawei’s offices contained ‘perfect’ knock-offs of Cisco telecom and Polycom equipment. Huawei’s business model, for example, is partly based on selling counterfeit products in developing countries with poor IP protection. As Heit suggests: “Huawei is saying to itself… ‘I am going to knock (Cisco) products off and to the extent the IP law allows me to practice in these areas, I’m going to go there…Cisco, maybe you can have the U.S., but I’ll take you everywhere you haven’t gone.’” A Huawei employee illegally took photos of Fujitsu circuit boards at Supercomm in 2003; Business Week speculated that the employee may have also collected proprietary information from AT&T, Cisco, Lucent, Nortel, and Tellabs. http://www.hsaj.org/?fullarticle=5.1.7 On July 21, the general counsel of Fujitsu Network Communications sent a letter to Huawei CEO Ren Zhengfei, informing him that a Huawei employee had been caught allegedly trying to filch information on rivals' products at a recent trade show. On June 23, Yi Bin Zhu was discovered after hours at the SuperComm show in Fujitsu's booth removing the casing from a $1 million piece of networking gear and taking photos of the circuit boards inside. According to a July 21 letter sent by Melanie Scofield, the Fujitsu unit's chief counsel, a security guard was summoned and confiscated the photo card in Zhu's digital camera along with a notebook containing notes and diagrams of other suppliers' gear. On Saturday, The Australian newspaper reported that the country's national security ser-vice is investigating claims that the Australian branch of Chinese telecommunications giant Huawei employs technicians in Australia with direct links to the People's Liberation Army and the Chinese government. Their claims include that the Chinese government controls Huawei's operations and that the privately owned company is involved in cyber espionage against Australian interests, ac-cording to the paper. http://english.peopl...83/6751276.html But one telecom industry veteran said that around 2004, it was clear to many that Huawei was copying Nortel’s telecom hardware, and even its instruction manuals. http://m.theglobeand...?service=mobile As reported by The Wall Street Journal this month, hackers had free rein inside Nortel's network for more than a decade before the company went bankrupt in 2009. Still, neither the expert nor Mr. Shields was able to establish a direct link between the hackers and their mysterious benefactors. Mr. Shields' conviction that the Chinese government was involved on behalf of Huawei remains circumstantial at best: The Shenzhen based company had surpassed US$100-million in annual sales to international markets in 2000, the year many Nortel historians mark as the start of the former Canadian corporate champion's fall from grace. Huawei enjoyed rapid global growth from that point onward. Armed with nearly two decades doing security for the now-defunct Canadian company whose technology still powers telecommunications networks around the world, he had spent a day just before Christmas 2008 digging through the Web browsing history of then CEO Mike Zafirovski, known to colleagues as 'Mike Z'. Mr. Shields was convinced there were criminals working on behalf of China's Huawei Technologies Co. accessing the CEO's files, but his hunch hadn't been enough for his immediate bosses to grant him direct access to the top man's PC. http://www.canada.co...77-85427e0b97c2 Using seven passwords stolen from top Nortel executives, including the chief executive, the hackers—who appeared to be working in China—penetrated Nortel's computers at least as far back as 2000 and over the years downloaded technical papers, research-and-development reports, business plans, employee emails and other documents, according to Brian Shields, a former 19-year Nortel veteran who led an internal investigation. The hackers also hid spying software so deeply within some employees' computers that it took investigators years to realize the pervasiveness of the problem, according to Mr. Shields and Nortel documents reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. They "had access to everything," Mr. Shields said of the hackers. "They had plenty of time. All they had to do was figure out what they wanted." http://online.wsj.co...KEYWORDS=nortel I can go on and on... but I think this makes my point. While there is no "smoking gun" I think there is a long trial here. 1) Huawei copied Cisco and Nortel equipment 2) Chinese hackers had access to Cisco and Nortel computer systems 3) ZTE and Huawei are the two major state-sponsored telecoms in China that would benefit from hackers stealing IP from various telecoms across the world. 4) It is very well documented that no major (Verizon, AT&T, Sprint) telecom in the USA can use Huawei 5) There are multiple reports that confirm that while Huawei is "100% employee owned" in reality, it is a state-sponsored enterprise Smoking gun? Not exactly. Enough stuff out there to say that Huawei actively goes out and steals IP, yes. Do all companies do that? No. Do some? Yes. Are they told to by their respective governments? Typically no.

Sure, companies have. This is totally different. This is the Chinese government that is the driving force ehind this. Huawei is not innovating. They stole a crap-ton of IP and are now putting out a new product based off stolen IP. When you introduce a new product, it needs to be viable (at a price that makes sense for both the buyer and the seller). When development costs are not "real" you can essentially do things that other companies cant (you can't compete with a company that illegally steals billions in tech). Just because Huawei is releasing it, doesn't mean no other company didn't actually create it. Maybe they did and said "hey this would be too costly for anyone to buy". Huawei comes along and steals it and says "hey we can build this for a lot less because we have no development costs and people will buy it". Again, I am not one to argue about strange theories but there really is a pretty long list of lawsuits, news articles, etc that clearly define the Chinese Gov'ts roll of stealing IP from anyone and everyone. The fact that you say that's ok so they can "innovate" because "everyone else" does it is pretty sad. I am all for companies being competitive and what not... but not this.

Robert, In your most recent article it sounded like you were pretty confident that sprint would be rolling out 5x5 800MHz LTE in urban or capacity constrained areas + 1xAdvanced everywhere. You also mentioned that there will be a 20% improvement in coverage. Is that just a result of new equipment and RRUs @ 1900Mhz? Is that confirmed? Also, can you shed some more light on 1xAdvanced? With current 1x, data speeds are limited to about 144k/sec or so... what are the capabilities of 1xAdvanced from a coverage and data speed standpoint? I know that the qualcomm marketing material always says "4x the capacity or 4x the coverage" but what is sprint expected to do and how will that effect coverage? Glad you are getting in-depth on this stuff, it's super interesting. I (and I am sure many others) appreciate all the hard work and time you've put into this.

I agree with above. Sprint's goal with postpaid is to offer the best services with the best phones. Prepaid is great at offering the most value. At some point, I am sure that you will see Sprint offer a prepaid LTE plan but probably not for a while. They will want to take advantage of the increased efficency of LTE but will probably give well definied speed caps and data caps to keep Sprint postpaid a premium product.

Sadly, the Chinese gov't has a long history of telling state owned companies to steal US and other intellectual property. I'll dig up a few articles later... This one should get you started: http://www.bloomberg...-cyber-war.html “What has been happening over the course of the last five years is that China -- let’s call it for what it is -- has been hacking its way into every corporation it can find listed in Dun & Bradstreet,” said Richard Clarke, former special adviser on cybersecurity to U.S. President George W. Bush, at an October conference on network security. “Every corporation in the U.S., every corporation in Asia, every corporation in Germany. And using a vacuum cleaner to suck data out in terabytes and petabytes. I don’t think you can overstate the damage to this country that has already been done.” “We’re talking about stealing entire industries,” he said. “This may be the biggest transfer of wealth in a short period of time that the world has ever seen.” I am not one that is about crazy theories or grasping at straws... but there is a long list of articles that allow one to connect the dots. I will spend some time and draw up a long timeline of news articles. Did you read about the nortel theft? That's insane that Chinese hackers had full access to nortel networks for 10 years. If you feel like Huawei had nothing to do with that... I'll see if I can dig up some articles to convince you otherwise.

are you kidding Huawei pretty much stole everything from various telecoms across the globe. moto, nortel, who knows who else. why do you think sprint was not allowed to use huawei equipment for network vision?

They need somebody... not a huge list of people that they can hire. It would be amazing if Lightsquared was able to get the FCC to offer them a spectrum swap.

Looks awesome, maybe Sprint will deploy some of these

Same here. Other places have a few very "anti-sprint I hate sprint my data speed sucks but I am on AT&T now but I still like to complain about sprint" people that sort of kill any informative posts. S4GRU doesn't suffer from that.

Yeah, I would be curious to know what percentage of base stations are actually connected to the carrier's own fiber. Probably not that many (I am guessing). Verizon FIOS doesn't have the largest footprint... and don't forget that Verizon and Verizon Wireless are two different companies.

Yeah, I bet the capital costs of deploying microwave are very very low. But still, who wouldn't rather fiber, heh. I know it's not practical (or feasible) to have 100% fiber... but one can dream.

Microwave is better than a T-1, sure... but let's not get carried away here. There is nothing better than fiber to the tower. I am curious what percentage of Verizon 4G LTE base stations are fed via microwave... not many, I am guessing. Latency and reliability can't be beat with fiber I am guessing that Sprint defintiely learned a bit about microwave from Clearwire's recent deployment.

It's all about trying to get overages back on peoples bills. Carriers miss the days of going over minutes or texts... so now they are turning to data. They count on people being stupid opting for a cheaper upfront data package and then going over those limits. It's annoying.

This is the way I looked at it: Advantages: Sprint is actually really good running prepaid carriers (primarily boost and virgin). If I am not mistaken, all of Metro's customers can roam on sprint, so all of the handsets would merge wonderfully onto sprint. Adding ~10 million prepaid customers would be very easy and fit nicely into sprint's prepaid model. Sprint doesn't need Metro's spectrum and could profit handsomely off of selling the AWS and 700MHz spectrum to AT&T (or leap). With network vision and LTE going live, there will be extra capacity on CDMA voice/data channels - 10 million customers would help use that. Disadvantages: Sprint is finally gaining traction on actually fixing itself. They have a lot on their plate right now (network vision, iPhone, improving customer experience, etc). Price. I think when the board looked at the proposed value of 10 million prepaid subs vs. the value of Sprint, it was a hard pill to swallow. If Sprint's stock price was in a different position, I think this would have gone differently. I think that at the end of the day, the timing was just wrong.