GoWireless

My guess would be that by a year from now, most LTE capable phones sold in the US would include bands 4, 25, and 26. These fully cover Sprint and T-Mobile and partially cover VZW and AT&T. Devices sold by Verizon would add 13 and those by AT&T will add band 17. Basically, there would be two types of devices sold in the US: 4/25/26/13 and 4/25/26/17. These two combinations would pretty much support any conceivable reframing any of the big 4 might undertake in the next few years.

The range is between 5 blocks and 7 miles for -95dBM RSSI (-120dBm RSRP equivalence), outdoors...of course. The variability is because RF design and conditions are so variable from site to site. Some sites are designed to have very small cells to maximize capacity (usually in urban areas). Others are designed to be very large to maximize coverage (usually in rural areas).

 

There is no normal or average, as each site, and each sector within a site, is engineered specifically for that cell.

 

Robert via Moto Photon Q using Forum Runner

Robert, what's the expected maximum usable range/cell reach for LTE on 800Mhz?

Optimizing for a narrower frequency range is easier/cheaper than optimizing for a wider one.

Yeah, except that needing to add just 10Mhz to one side of the up and down links of the celluar band (to cover SMR) shouldn't make that much of a difference as far as antenna design is concerned, particularly since the band is under 1Ghz.

Maybe band 26 will be enabled via a firmware update.

One interesting thing to note is that assuming Verizon doens't disable CDMA band class 10, Verizon's iPhones would be able to roam on Sprint's lower frequency band. That would be an interesting change, especially in rural areas. It also means additional potential roaming revenue for Sprint.

Does Qualcomm's chipset 9615? support LTE band class 26?

As you can read from the two posts above you, there's no support for LTE band class 26. Assuming the pre-release info. is correct then yes, it should be using the 9615.

Folks, I have the FCC OET authorization docs for the iPhone 5. I am still going over them. But here are the early returns. It will support CDMA1X 800 (band class 10) but will not support LTE 800 (band 26).

 

More to come...

 

AJ

Thanks, AJ. So it looks like all the other phones Sprint has released recently - support for CDMA on the old iDEN/SMR band, but no support for LTE on the SMR band yet. Unfortunate, since LTE band 26 shouldn't be that hard to implement if the phone already supports LTE on the 850 band. Maybe it's coming in the iPhone 5S ...

It also looks like the "CDMA" phone will also support quadband GSM and UMTS. Hopefully Sprint has no notions of disabling that . They are usually pretty strict on on at least disabling GSM/UMTS850/1900 in the US and Canada.

A related question for you all is... if the iPhone 5 from Sprint does use a nano-SIM, will it store both the CDMA and LTE information, i.e., can we maybe expect Sprint to start releasing phones that have user-accessible SIM cards?

Strongly doubt it as well. Sprint has a deep hatred of SIM cards. In one of their latest phones that needs one, they opted for a soldered-on SIM card. Crazy. I wish all CDMA carriers in the 'states would use SIM cards like the carriers in Asia do - but that's not how Verizon and Sprint roll (Sprint even less than Verizon).

Unfortunately, Hampton Roads is the largest metropolitan area on the East Coast where Sprint/Clear did not deploy 4G WiMax (except for a small initial network whose footprint did not grow). This means that unlike most major metro areas on the East Coast, data traffic isn't being offloaded onto 4G and correspondingly the 3G network is clogged. As S4GRU indicated, Sprint is supposed to start deploying 4G LTE in HR soon. Let's hope that all goes according to plan!

The thing is that like I mentioned before, from a technical perspective, adding the 800Mhz band to a phone that already supports the 850Mhz band is a relatively simple undertaking. That's compared to say adding the AWS/1700Mhz band to a phone that support the 850/900/1900/2100 bands which would be a more technically challenging undertaking. That's why I'm thinking there's a reasonably good chance they'll add it.

And the iPad third generation supports AWS 2100+1700 MHz for LTE but locks out the same support for W-CDMA.

 

Apple does whatever Apple wants to do or whatever Apple's bosom buddies AT&T and VZW can convince Apple to do.

 

AJ

Well, in Apple's defense, when it comes to the iPhone 4S, Apple actually did a pretty admirable job of incorporating multiple radios and technologies onto one hardware platform that it distributes worldwide. Certainly more than what most other device makers have attempted to do with their devices.

When it comes to tablets, becuase most folks don't buy them cell-enabled anyway, Apple took a different tack but when it comes to the 4S they are actually pretty well ahead with respcet to having one device support many different networks. Of course as time goes by, SoC makers make it easier on phone manufacturers. I believe the MSM8960 S4 snapdragon in the Samsung GSIII and a few other devices for example can support seven different bands and four different air interfaces. Amazing what they can pack into one piece of silicon nowadays.

True. Yet the same presupposition also existed when the iPhone 4S came out.

 

Robert

Yeah, but that wasn't that much after the network vision announcement. Apple bagan designing and sourcing the iPhone 4S well before that so they have a reasonably good excuse I'd say. This time if they don't have it in the device that would be a different story.

...There is no guarantee even the next iPhone will support CDMA 800.

 

Robert via Kindle Fire using Forum Runner

I'd say there's a good chance the next iPhone would support CDMA 800. The SMR band butts right up against the regular 850Mhz wireless band (forming essentially one long single band composed of both bands) so I would think it wouldn't be to difficult, when designing a phone from scrach, to add CDMA850 support. Becuase of the relatively low frequency, the antenna spec. should be pretty simple to achieve too.