supert0nes

My dream announcement - "From here on out we will be putting LTE 800 and 2600 in every phone we make, especially those 5 Nexus phones you keep hearing about for the fall. Apple, however, will not be supporting LTE 800 until the Iphone 6".

I think the fiber back haul is generally pretty awesome in MN as well. Great speeds up in Maple Grove consistently. My only problems are the holes in coverage.

I really like T-Mobile's spectrum position, especially compared to last week! And AJ beat me to it on their spectrum shuffle. It's not only about the Iphone, but should also make many more gsm world phones compatible and cheaper for T-Mobile to get.

Supertones wasn't trying to be sarcastic. He was giving an honest answer. I don't understand why you took offense to what he said. Basically what he said was accurate in that at launch about 40% of the towers in that market will be upgraded to LTE but after launch Sprint will continue to add towers every week until the entire market is done. Please read the market update article for Houston to find out more details. Please keep in mind that the goal of Network Vision is not to only upgrade to 4G LTE but to also improve 3G speeds through its new tower infrastructure and backhaul.

 

Just by your post count I can tell that you are new to this site so you haven't been able to read all the progress that Sprint has been making. Just watch come July 15th, you'll be amazed when tech blogs start doing speedtests for both 3G and LTE and it will be much faster.

You handled that response a lot better than me! Thanks. Typing from my phone didn't help.

The article explained it very clearly. Sprint will be 40 percent complete for lte at launch in Houston. Every week they will complete more towers after the initial launch. Lte will eventually cover the entire 3g network with better signal. 3g will also speed up with nv Sprint will be 100 percent in this cityearly 2013 but coverage should be fantastic before that unless you are in a really unlucky location.

If att works for you go to them. We are not Sprint reps

Forgot to mention, but as stated in other places. AT&T is probably pushing a little bit to find new spectrum more than anyone else right now.

I would say that this increases T-Mobile's position a ton and Verizon's already strong position. Sprint, as we've been discussing all over the site is sitting pretty well for their current customer demand and not really demanding spectrum from the same bands as these other companies. They share PCS with a lot of other companies, but their position is strong and if they can gain more, then great!

I look for Sprint to hold steady with their spectrum + Clearwire for the foreseeable future, unless someone like Dish makes them an offer they can't refuse. I think it's a pretty huge investment in infrastructure and compatibility to add a new spectrum band, and Sprint already has to add 800 and 2600(Clearwire) as quickly as they can. For more Sprint spectrum discussion look over at at the discussion in the Network Vision forum as their position hasn't changed much by this.

Thanks! This all pretty much agrees with what I was thinking. Looks like it's really hard (impossible) to move into new markets for a regional company like USCC.

Verizon phones will be as complicated as Sprint phones soon.

700, 850, 1700, 1900 am I missing anything?

Thanks WiWavelength and congrats!

I have more than a few thoughts on this.

Holy crap, those companies, especially VZW are sitting quite pretty now. Could it be that spectrum is finally going to be efficiently aligned among the carriers?!? On a side note, I really hope that USCellular picks up the 700MHz A Block, and moves into Minnesota (selfish).

I'm also interested to see how the Wisconsin market is affected as T-Mobile has such a small presence here and I saw it mentioned in the press release.

Does VZW have any phones with AWS LTE radios currently?

Now I truly believe that H spectrum should be handed to Sprint at a cheap cost

They have to do some sort of modernization to take advantage of all this new AWS Spectrum and they have to do some sort of hardware upgrade to go from LTE Release 8 to LTE greater than or equal to Release 10 for LTE-A. Knowing these two things, I think they'll start a tower retrofit program, ver similar to Sprint's relatively shortly.

This could help lessen interest from both Verizon and T-Mobile in the PCS H spectrum auction

Isn't T-Mobile deploying LTE to every last bit of spectrum they have?

T-Mobile might get more consideration from me now. Not really, but it's good to have a backup. They just keep adding in Minneapolis and it looks like they are gaining in Southern Wisconsin too. They needed the spectrum in Milwaukee very much. This is great news for competition around here.

I hope to see how this changes their spectrum position soon. First I gotta dig up those articles by AJ.

http://mobilesociety.typepad.com/mobile_life/2012/06/spring-lte-1900.html - Sprint, Spectrum Holdings, PCS 1900 MHz, LTE and Network Sharing

Nothing really new here, but I like reading his blog articles and analysis about the wireless industy worldwide. Pretty cool to see your articles getting more coverage. More proof S4GRU is the premier source for Sprint news and analysis.

Some towers in urban areas wont get an 800 radio, but this is by design as Sprint towers are densely packed and Sprint doesn't want to overlap signals too much in those areas.

The tower should have the ability once it gets Network Vision, however they will wait to turn on LTE on 800 until after all the Nextel Towers are removed. Sprint has put the official EOL for the Nextel Network at June 30 of next year. I'm sure it wont take them long to flip the switch after that.

CDMA 1X on 800 will be rolling out starting this fall, because they already have enough free spectrum on 800 to do that. So voice coverage should start improving on every tower with Network Vision upgrades then and after.

Hmm, I probably took it the wrong way. I was hoping that some of the points we made about the different spectrum were read and taken into consideration before reposting the story again. I didn't mean argue, as much as I meant our arguments or statements

Ya I'll definitely concede that their current network is junk in plenty of areas, most even. Also, I agree that overselling a network is something no internet provider should do, yet they all do to an extent and blame their most active users.

I will refine my opinions above to Network Vision. It's almost like a new leadership came in and righted the ship as it was about to sink. Too late? Maybe, but I think every decision is the right one and I believe they are rolling trucks to the locations around America at an awesome pace.

Do you really care about our points or did you just want to post your story about knowing a guy that works for Network Vision? You posted the story twice and the second time addressed none of our arguments. Also as Robert pointed out, this issue is discussed constantly on this site.

Just remember also that the big two have twice as many customers as Sprint, so they're probably in the same boat as far as total spectrum is concerned. Now, I do believe that Sprint should find at least another 10 Mhz of lower frequency somewhere. Would that be in the 900Mhz band where they own close to 3+3Mhz already or in the 600Mhz band to be freed through voluntary auctions? I don't have all the answers. If it was me, I would try to buy out the rest of the license holders in the 900Mhz band.

Each of those is another antenna and continues the issue Sprint currently has, where they have yet to release or announce a phone with 800 or 2600 support. Most around here believe they wont release one with support for those bands until next year! It's definitely an important point to consider when purchasing your next phone, especially if you live in a rural area.

Low end spectrum is great to have, but Verizon is showing that tons of it isn't their highest priority. Ideally you would have the low spectrum to cover areas that the higher spectrum can't cover (in buildings, and long distances). It should be your fallback spectrum. Then you want a lot of spectrum in that 1700 or 1900 type frequency for your major bandwidth every day users. We can't disregard the Clearwire spectrum because sprint has access to it and one day it could be Sprint spectrum. This high spectrum(2.6ghz) holds a lot of bandwidth and clearwire has tons of it, so it can be used to deliver fastest speeds and large amounts of bandwidth to the people in dense population areas.

The key is not to have tons of low spectrum, but to have large amounts of diverse spectrum, and to try to get it in a few well supported bands. Sprint is doing a very good job of that with 800, 1900, and clearwire 2600. They should be in pretty good shape spectrum/bandwidth wise, and their network coverage will be awesome once they enable 800 spectrum. They have never been able to cover those distances from the tower with 1900, and, because of this they have deployed their towers very densely around the country.

That is so true and my decision has nothing to do with Sprint CS, as many complain about. I have had good experiences w/Sprint CS, my disgust is with management/CEO. Oh well, maybe there is some new marketing technique that says to provide quality service to a few and let others pay for it.

I do not agree with this quote. I realize you are still mad about the Clearwire Wimax rollout, but Sprint is rebuilding their entire network, including your town to have the latest LTE and widest coverage with LTE/CDMA 800, not to mention all the backhaul enhancements, which is definitely the largest part of Network Vision. I think their decision to build out their largest markets first makes sense and I will patiently wait for my flyover land towns to get the LTE hookup. I personally find their pace and strategy remarkable.

I do think they have major issues with perception, post Iphone and I know that the faster they can get Network Vision rolled out to everyone, the sooner they can start changing that perception!

The 4G is actively being deployed, they are just not handed over to Sprint, yet. We only post sites that have been handed over to Sprint. There are many reports of people getting 4G signals in the Chicago area. Especially in the Hammond/Merrilville area. And at this point, while Sprint continues to block LTE connections, it doesn't much matter.

 

Robert

So if the 4g signal is active, they have backhaul? Or do i remember that incorrectly?

Does that mean the WiMax protection sites will become LTE protection sites?

The "protection" part of that is just to protect the spectrum. Seems rather expensive to deploy lte where you already have Wimax protecting the spectrum.

Too bad they aren't in better shape financially. Spectrum seems like one of those things you only get one shot at. And this spectrum fits so well!