lordsutch

If I was the FCC/DOJ, I would force AT&T to divest the landline division, I don't want them to be a choke point to the delivery of video over three different media: Satellite, broadband and wireless.

That might not be a bad condition on the merger, although it undermines a major justification for it from AT&T's perspective, which is adding subscribers to give it more leverage in carriage negotiations with cable and broadcast networks.

One alternative would be to apply common carrier rules to all of the landline division, including broadband, which would allow for more IPTV landline competition to U-verse.

Looks like the GSM/Global variant; there's no CDMA listed at all.

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This implies that 4.4.2 is polished. Many of my gripes are issues with the last update. How the heck is the delete button/backspace in the keyboard still there.

Keyboard is a separate app; if there's a bug in it (I haven't experienced this with my Nexus 5), it can be updated separately.

The counterargument to that, though, is Netflix is not just pushing traffic down, for example, Comcast's network.  Rather, Comcast's subscribers are using their broadband service and requesting those packets.  So, who is really to "blame"?  Netflix, Comcast, or Comcast's own subs?

Well, ultimately Comcast's subs are going to pay for it either way, and understandably both Comcast and Netflix want the other company to pay.

One thing lost in this debate is that the original peering arrangements that set up the Internet were based on the idea that traffic flows would be roughly symmetrical over the long term. Now that streaming audio and video services are a big part of the Internet, that's simply not the case; if my ISP peers with Netflix's ISP, the flows are going to be on the order of 1:99 (and a lot of that 1 is TCP/IP overhead like connection setup and ack packets).

The other point I'd make is that we're in a nasty regulatory hole between two extremes: ISPs aren't completely free of regulation, so their rents and other monopolistic behavior aren't high enough to attract competitors in the free market (except for companies like Google that have cash lying around and just want to spend it to make political points by depolying fiber in a few areas), but at the same time they aren't so highly regulated that they have to provide universal high-quality service either - for example, my mother lives in an urbanized area of a 1 million+ MSA, yet the ILEC doesn't even offer ADSL to her house. The FCC needs to find a regulatory policy that either incentivizes real competition by creating opportunities for profitable overbuilding (whether from profit-seeking companies, non-profit coops, public utilities, etc.) or needs to require universal broadband service from ILECs and cable franchise holders. The only winners from the current scheme are the ILECs and cablecos that make enough money from their position to be profitable but not enough to attract others to compete and grab a piece of the pie.

A switch to UMTS wouldn't be a disaster for Sprint or its subscribers. >60% of currently sold phones support UMTS on PCS, and the overwhelming majority of phones sold by Sprint are UMTS capable. This is not an issue for Sprint. In fact, the opposite. Most likely, there'd be a massive capacity gain.

My understanding is that while most recent Sprint smartphones can technically do GSM and UMTS on PCS bands, almost all (except the Nexus 5) have firmware or even hardware locks that don't allow UMTS/GSM access on US networks (e.g. any MCC starting with 31). Unless Sprint was forward-thinking enough to exclude 310-120 or another US MCC-MNC under their control like Nextel's (which would presumably mean that T-Mobile could broadcast the Sprint/Nextel MCC-MNC in addition to their own), there's no way to get those devices to authenticate on a US network. I suppose Sprint could go to the manufacturers and get them to update firmware to remove the lockouts, but we're talking about dozens of different devices, many of which are no longer supported by their manufacturers. You're also going to have to enable the WCDMA modes other than "Global," which are hidden from the menus on most Sprint devices, and talk customers through switching settings. And even after that you're probably looking at SIM swaps, with customers who have no clue what a SIM is, because it came preinstalled in the phone and they've never changed it.

And that doesn't account for the millions of dumb phones, m2m devices, mobile broadband devices, Phone Connects, and the like out there too, a lot of which don't even have any non-CDMA capabilities to speak of. And the older LTE devices that have embedded SIMs who won't be able to transition. Those people will churn - look at what happened with Nextel.

Indeed, and that's why it's important to keep realistic expectations for Sprint's TDD deployment in terms of coverage. 2.6GHz can be a great capacity layer, but as far as conventional macro deployment goes, it's extremely uneconomic considering propagation and reach. It's not an easy task to seamlessly blanket suburban/rural with 2.6GHz.

As has been discussed ad nauseum, 8T8R on the 2.4-2.5GHz band largely makes up for the loss of propagation characteristics compared to 1900 (which at the G block is closer to 2.0 GHz anyway); unless you're in a market with cellular site spacing - hello Baton Rouge! - the 2.4-2.5 band can relieve most of the close-in and outdoor usage (out to something on the order of 80%+ of the area), leaving 1900 and ESMR for adequate service indoors at midrange and outdoors at distance. No, you're not going to get streaming 1080p60 video 5+ miles from the tower, but that's not what mobile broadband is for. Unless you're measuring e-peen on SpeedTest.net, or trying to use your phone to drive the Jerrytron, you shouldn't know or care.

Of course, the challenge now is to get 1900 and ESMR finished so the 2.4-2.5 deployment can begin in earnest, along with stop-gap measures like shifting some of the A-F block EvDO carriers to LTE.

http://m.us.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702304655304579552301170337002?mg=reno64-wsj

 

Apparently Tmobile wants a break up fee of 1 billion plus

There's more to it than that; T-Mobile US wants to run the merged carrier and (surprisingly, to me at least) retain the T-Mobile brand even though Deutsche Telekom won't be part of the new company. I suspect that portends to trying to shift everyone over to UMTS/W-CDMA + LTE before VoLTE is fully baked, which would be a churn disaster.

http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=14052

I read these moves as a poison pill in the negotiations. I don't think Son wants to license the T-Mobile brand name (remember, he rebranded Vodafone Japan to stop paying licensing fees to Vodafone, and Sprint is planning to ditch the licensed Virgin brand too).

Frankly I think a network hosting or network sharing arrangement like EE or Telus/Bell on the companies' combined 600 winnings, along with (as I've said before) buying out the CCA carriers before the duopoly does, is a far better path forward for Softbank and leaves Legere and Telekom to deal with the consequences of their loss-leading customer acquisition strategy on Softbank's terms rather than the bailout coming out of Son's wallet and ultimately both companies' customers' wallets.

The only beef I have with Sprint's new policy is that it skips connection redistribution and goes straight to throttling. It may be necessary, I don't know, but I would have appreciated the company at least making the effort to try to rebalance the load before going the throttling route. Especially when something like statistical analysis is used to trigger it (which means there's no fixed throttle point).

It's entirely possible Sprint is doing connection redistribution behind the scenes, but not sending out press releases to that effect.

Honestly if the plan is to compete on a nationwide basis with AT&T and Verizon, T-Mobile doesn't get you there; there's so little non-overlap in footprint that SprinTMobile's not going to be a truly national carrier. If the concern is that AT&T and Verizon are going to buy out the CCA, then the smart play for Son is to buy those carriers out and build out the smaller urban/suburban centers and major highway corridors they don't cover.

The one thing T-Mobile has is a lot of customers... but they're customers that are likely to bolt the second Sprint tries to move them onto CDMA and/or AT&T and Verizon decide to get serious about price competitiveness. Plus the time to buy was before Legere's pump-and-dump strategy was underway; the "uncarrier" customers are easy pickings for AT&T in particular, who can put them onto nuCricket with nothing more than a SIM swap (with no need to pay ETFs).

Ocala Silver springs shores needs backhaul upgrade. NOW. Who is doing this upgrade when it happens. I just want to see if they are around. My job is centered around driving between lake weird HS and baseline. Get ok data around windixie. But up by Lockheed it Royaly SUCKS.

The ILEC is Embarq/CenturyLink, whose network in the Shores is garbage. Comcast isn't much better, but the more likely candidate, I think.

I noticed today no LTE, at all, on the ride to work, at work and at home. Should have been on the Carl Vinson tower, the Feagin Mill School tower and at least the Hwy 127 tower... on the ride home, I kept my LG G2 out and watched as I rode down Lake Joy Road. Even at Feagin Mill and Lake Joy, while I sat at the light, no LTE. Just 3G.

 

Has Sprint got trouble around Warner Robins, so they turned off 4G to get a handle on it?

I didn't notice anything today in the area (I was all over Warner Robins this afternoon) on my Nexus 5 except losing 4G indoors a few places. Maybe an eCSFB glitch? Might be worth a phone reboot.

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Happy belated birthday!

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^ So true. That ability to get updates faster was basically the only thing going for the Nexus line in my opinion.

Indeed, which is why it's only today the G2 is getting 4.4, as opposed to the Nexus 5 which had it out of the box...

The main difference I see between the CCA Roaming Hub and the past agreements like the Sprint Rural Alliance is that this is a long-term, mutual deal that ties everyone together, rather than the bilateral deals that Sprint had in the past. It'll be far harder for the duopoly to swoop in and poach out Sprint's native coverage than in the past.

One question going forward is whether this means Sprint finally cuts off Swiftel and nTelos as affiliates and makes them sink or swim as CCA partners.

link?

Press coverage: http://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/story/softbank-execs-check-out-qualcomms-nascar-small-cell-test/2014-03-05

PR from Qualcomm: http://www.qca.qualcomm.com/thewire/newspresslist/qualcomm-collaborates-sprint-nascar-conduct-live-trial-first-hyper-dense-small-cell-network-nascar-sprint-cup-series-phoenix/

Thread aquí: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/5584-qualcomm-sprint-accelerate-nascar-small-cell-experiment/

From FierceWireless' coverage, here's a photo of what looks like two Nexus 5's side by side, one on the public network and one on the picocell Band 41 network: http://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/files/wirelesstech/imagecache/slideshow_slide/slideshows/qualcomm_6a.jpg Picture's too small to pick out what the signal bar text is showing on the left N5.

It's known from Sprint PR that Nexus 5s were being used for Band 41 testing at a NASCAR event a few weeks ago, so the updated radio is surely ready to go unless they found new problems in the meantime.

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Personally, I have no issue with most of how the "duopoly" grew their networks to get nationwide coverage: buying out or merging with regional or local carriers (many of whom were incompetent and/or couldn't afford the capex to move beyond TDMA or even AMPS) that have and continue to have geographic buildout requirements on cellular. Having national cellular and PCS networks are good for consumers through "long tail" effects; while most customers are in core coverage most of the time, most customers occasionally need some remote coverage (and usually different remote coverage than others). The more carriers that can cater to more of the long tail, the better.

The two real problems I see:

• The cases where any carrier was allowed to obtain both Cellular A and Cellular B in a single market. In North America at least, the propagation characteristics of lower-band spectrum outweigh noninterference issues in making 850 valuable for ensuring basic coverage, including 911 access.
• The more recent mergers or attempted mergers that have been designed more to eliminate low-end competitors and increase incumbent market power (AT&T/Leap, T-Mobile/MetroPCS, AT&T/T-Mobile) than to broaden native footprints.

That said, forcing AT&T to properly invest in South Texas rather than just cherry-picking the border cities and Corpus is a positive benefit of this settlement, particularly since Cricket was not going to do it once it took over Pocket.

I still notice image compression on wifi... hmmm...

One possibility: If you've enabled data compression in Chrome, you'll see it on any network.

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FWIW this weekend in the Carolinas and Georgia I saw a lot of EDGE in places where Sprint has LTE or at least native EVDO, and very few places where there was even T-Mobile FauxG with weaker Sprint coverage (1x/EVDO/roaming) - really only around Florence SC where Sprint's buildout has been slow.

The good news for Magenta is that if Sprint can get backhaul to these sites, they should be able to do so too, but the bad news is that I can't imagine it'll be much faster for T-Mobile to roll out than it was for Sprint; they'll still be dealing with the likes of Windstream, CenturyTel, and mom-and-pop/coop telcos.

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Press Release issued:

 

http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/4glte-launchedmarkets.htm

This one has just the new markets: http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/sprint-continues-4g-lte-expansion-with-20-new-markets.htm

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Let's bear in mind that before the mid-90s, broadcast TV operated only under the must-carry rules and didn't receive anything in return for cable carriage. After all, from the broacasters' perspective, cable ensured that many people in their market area could get good to excellent reception who wouldn't have it otherwise due to signal propagation issues (lack of line-of-sight, transmission distance, cochannel or adjacent channel interference, etc.). Plus the broadcasters (particularly the O and Os in major markets) have used retransmission consent as leverage to ensure carriage of their affiliated cable networks, whether viewers want them or not. And they've used it to play off the cable and satellite providers against each other to increase fees well beyond inflation, largely to spend absurd sums for the rights to carry pro and collegiate sports leagues, and increasingly and most egregiously even to ensure that broadband providers are sending them cash on the odd chance you might want to watch their shows online.

Unless broadcasters are suggesting with a straight face that anyone who puts up an antenna to receive their broadcasts (which, after all, they are free to stop doing and go cable-only, and relinquish back their spectrum for use by others) should be sending them a monthly check, I find it very unpersuasive to argue that whether the antenna I use to receive their programming is on my property or my landlord's roof or in Aereo's server farm makes any difference as to whether or not I should have to pay them for their programming, directly or indirectly.

I am sure this has been discussed before but I can't find it right now.

 

I will be traveling out of the country next month and I plan on using a local SIM in my 32 GB Nexus 5 when I get there. If I do this is there anything special I need to do to get it back on sprint when I return to the US? Or is just swapping the SIM card and rebooting good enough?

You may need to change the network mode under carrier settings as well; it may not reset itself when you reboot.

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This caught my eye: " In addition, Nexus 5 handsets and one LG handset were also used during the tests..." Since the deployment was only on band 41, this must mean that they were using N5s with the Spark radio enabled. Hopefully that's a positive sign that the update is coming in the next few weeks.

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I have a couple of different capacities from NewTrent that I've been happy with (12000 mAh and a discontinued 5500-ish mAh unit).