supert0nes

These questions may have already been answered, but here it goes.  How do the OEMs (Ericsson, Lucent, Samsung) decide on which Sprint sites get 1x 800 which ones stay on PCS, am I asking this correctly?  Will every site be on 800 or have they already determined which sites need 800 (rural, etc) due to signal strength tests?   

They get 800 unless they are too dense to deploy on every site, in IBEZ, the site can't hold the extra weight of 800 panels, or some other extenuating circumstance.  Sprint wants 800 on as many sites as possible

Only rural sites will need to depend solely on the two 5x5 blocks.  Suburban areas around the country will get lot of benefit from BRS/EBS spectrum, even if it's just to take a couple subscribers from the other bands.

It's certainly not the first time LTE on surrounding sites has been temporarily disabled while testing a new site.  I'm not sure if they are adjusting down tilt with new sites as well.  The good news is we're coming up on the home stretch in Minneapolis.

Sprint owns the usable WCS in the south east. I think it is time for a wcs for PCS swap. Even if they don't get much PCS. AJ is right. In year old discussions he and others valued Sprints wcs holdings.

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

You are right to point out that tmobile will not have their WLTE across their entire lte foot print and the exstint of this roll out is important. But vzw will have a very extensive roll out of the AWS lte well before 2016. I doubt ATT is going to stand still either (although it is much harder to see where the come up with additional spectrum.). Here is why I think it is painfully slow, tmobile will be hammering the faster network and in carrier message for the next two years (providing they are not bought out which is what I think they are angling for) Verizon will continue with it message and likely see their reputation remained unchanged, ATT might be the only company that might have problems as it is hard to see where they go from here. What is sprint message for the next two years? There pricing plans are innovative and maybe that will be it. But they aren't really the cheapest (nor do They want to be known as that really). So what do they go to market place with as the reason people should choose sprint? Are network is the slowest (in terms of average speeds), our plans aren't the cheapest, every one is doing HD voice (except vzw), they will have the most advance network but the average end user won't see it that way, They'll see slower lte data, so what is the marketing message that they can deliver on. one of the appeals of NV was the speed of the original time line and had it been exicuted sprint would be at rough parody with all the other carriers today. But it wasn't and so they aren't in most areas. Maybe it can argued and maybe it is true that sprint band 41 rollout will keep them in line with their competition but that is not what sprint needs to be doing right now. They need to pull a head of the competition and really try to differinciate their network ( which is what they claim to be doing). For the reasons mentioned above I don't think their current time table will allow them to do this. But maybe this new pricing scheme will be the message.

First of all AT&T will be deploying WCS next and acquiring as much AWS as they feel they need.  If they want more spectrum, they'll just buy Dish.

The 2 year timeline you base your whole argument on is patently false.  It's almost like you completely ignored all the truth in Robert's post.

John Legere definitely thinks he would be the CEO of the combined company too.

Key quotes about Sprint so you don't have to pick them out.  I pulled them all from the cnet live blog.

When the Sprint guys get their 200M pops of low-speed LTE done, I'm going to throw them a party, he says.

"Someone ask Dan when Sprint will get 200 million pops and a full nationwide network, he says."

"Sprint is a sh!tstorm" As far as device compatability.

"Finding Sprint Spark is like a treasure hunt, he quips. It's also worse than our speed, he says."

"Sprint is deflecting criticism by focusing on a long-term lab project"

Is anyone else watching these live blogs of the CES Event?

 

http://live.cnet.com/Event/CES_2014_T-Mobile_press_conference_live_blog

 

I like how he didn't really diss Sprint. He says they have tons of capability and tons of spectrum. He tells everyone to go back once it gets better. He mocked the Framily name though. 

 

He said Verizon takes customers for granted and their family plans suck.

 

And he begins to tear AT&T apart!

You just commented too early.  Neville Ray is about to become enemy #1 in this thread.  I wonder if they can actually get away with painting such a skewed picture of Sprint?  Probably with the way the media hates them too.

So 15 minutes away...I know there's no chance, but how awesome would it be if instead of talking about buying out contracts from other carriers, T-Mobile committed to upgrading every single edge tower to LTE!

I find it unfortunate that Verizon was able to gain PCS spectrum from T-Mobile.

You are right, but I know AT&T will put any band their phones support to use.  I probably distracted the point by bringing up AT&T & Vertizon, they don't concern me. 

I really only care about Dish acquiring spectrum while they've shown no actionable plans on existing spectrum holdings.  The US government has a history of evaluating deployment plans before allocating resources (rural broadband), maybe something similar should be applied to any acquisitions for Dish in the future. 

Currently success or failure on an auction is determined by the bid price, but if the Government is concerned at all about the consumer, maybe these auctions should use more criteria.  The politics of spectrum sales probably make my opinions moot, and I'm probably just another commie.

I think they're buildout dates on AWS-4 are already on the clock and will expire in 2015, I think?

 

Also, while a minor point, Verizon, to my knowledge, does not own any WCS. They do own truckloads of AWS and will likely use all of it they get their hands on (assuming it's in the right areas). Considering AT&T has already started to use their PCS for LTE it's only a matter of time before WCS gets it's time. However, AT&T's AWS is a little more tricky. I believe that they are using AWS LTE in OKC or somewhere around there (AJ knows) and I suspect that they are using AWS LTE in my town of Lincoln, NE, but that is unconfirmed.

I should have thrown a respectively in there VZW on the aws ATT on the WCS.  Good clarification though, thanks.

I would like to get back to one obvious point.  What's the buildout countdown clock on each of their spectrum holdings?  The fact of the matter is that this is the largest abuse of hoarding spectrum and not using it so far.  If VZW and ATT put their AWS and WCS spectrum to use shortly, Dish will be the only spectrum hoarder in my eyes.

Sorry everyone.  Looks like I don't hang around here enough anymore.

https://plus.google.com/+JerryHildenbrand/posts/FVytdRTUZkB  caution NSFW language 

Will we need to pay a premium premium data charge?  Super duper premium charge?  Deluxe data charge?  for Spark?

Along these lines...Sprint is much better off if you are using LTE 2500 than any other band.  This is where they have the headroom to host many customers at once.

Ting will get the network improvements of course but the BYOD Triband phones will be delayed by a year unless I want to pay the $600+ for a new phone. I also don't use much in the way of bandwidth right now mostly because it is kind of enjoyable to pay so little for phone service. With the administrative fees etc that Sprint adds to it's bill it would be 3-4x more expensive than my current bill which is hard to justify. 

 

As I said, I feel that Sprint's service in it's current state isn't worth $160+ after taxes for 2 unlimited lines. 

 

Edit: To get there I would have to use over 1k mins/1k texts and over 6GB of data which I doubt I would be able to do if I tried on the towers around me. In 12 months that may be a different story but for now I will watch and wait for the network to be improved.

I agree.  I'm a Ting customer as well and am fine with limiting my bandwidth usage. 

Not saying this is what you should do, but if a Nexus 5 at $350 works on Ting on all 3 bands.  That's very tempting to me.

Almost cool enough to make me consider moving back to Sprint from Ting. Almost. 

 

 

I still feel that Sprint's pricing is too high for the service it CURRENTLY delivers.

Why wouldn't Ting get all of this?  Unless you are talking about the phone subsidy?

Does this mean that they have already upgraded to a newer release of LTE that is LTE-A capable?

I wish they wouldn't use inter-band carrier aggregation at all.  If people can use 2.5, there's no reason to let them use 1900 or 800.  If they can use 1900, I can't think of a good reason to let them use 800. 

Unless you care about speedtests.

Also, no triband for the g2 until 2014?!? Unfortunate.

What they will have is more focused assets for a potential buyer.

I would prefer they buy all 80 MHz and sell 2500/2600 after a 2 year period. With 1900 LTE propagation being so horrible, I would venture only only half of Sprints customers will actually benefit... My completed town only has about 2 percent covered with usable LTE... That means that 2500/2600 is a distraction for many and not a saving grace.

 

Sent from my SPH-L710 using Tapatalk

You've ignored a few roadblocks in acquiring and deploying spectrum.

I work on 96 and 35e in White Bear.  They were just installing on the water tower here a week ago.  White Bear has some of the better coverage in the twin cities.

I'm finally getting LTE inside my house in White Bear.  I've been getting LTE outside for many months, but the moment I step inside it would switch back to 3g.  Does this mean 800mhz has been engaged on my tower?  Is there a way I can check what frequency my phone is connected to?

Your phone doesn't support LTE on 800.

What's with the controversial headline

The answers to your questions can be better answered in your market thread or have been answered in one of the daily, "When will 800/2500 come online in my market?!?!" threads.