supert0nes

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.

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.

Not sure why I'm so negative on this. I think public opinion on Sprint has me down.

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.

Sprint will be happy when this market is finished. That includes the loop. It's going to be funny/sad frustrating when they "launch" LTE in Chicago and the closer you get to the city, the worse your 4g/3g will be.

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!

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

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!

You hit most of the major points on the capacity issue but it is very complicated even beyond that. Sprint should get help from clear wire, any device out now won't support lte 800 or clear wire freqs tho, so that matters in the short term. Same with vzw phones out now without 1700 support. One issue always fun to talk about is that H pcs spectrum auction. Plus many more opportunities and difficulties. Each one probably deserves and has its own thread here lol. I don't have any real point here other than to say it's awesomely complicated

I would think a lot higher percentage vzw users use lte than Sprint Wimax. The battery efficiency of Wimax chips is so terrible I would never leave it on where many Verizon users I know never turn their lte off. Lte chips get more battery efficient all the time. Mmm qualcomm. Whereas wimax is a bastard chip in any device

Why would you think November or December? Sprint has to finish Chicago as fast as they possibly can, with the issues between NV and legacy towers. I would think, in the next month or two Chicago will be completely lit up. There really is a lot of information on this site if you search, especially about markets currently in development.

Good point, but my cabin isn't that far north thank goodness.

Hopefully all rural areas! Looking for LTE 800 in northern MN for sure!