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Shentel says they're going to deploy LTE too, roughly on the same timetable as Sprint NV; it's curious that Sprint isn't including it on their maps (although it could be something as simple as Sprint not knowing Shentel's tower locations - you'll note the LTE map matches up pretty precisely with the market maps here on S4GRU already).

In principle it's a great idea. In practice I have to wonder if anyone will build phones to take advantage of all these different frequency bands (700, 800 SMR, 1700/2100 AWS, 1900 PCS, 2500...); pentaband UMTS phones still aren't widespread (iPhone, for example, still doesn't do AWS 1700), and so far everyone's being provincial in their LTE phones - Sprint in PCS G only, AT&T and Verizon in 700 only, other countries' LTE phones running in AWS only - so even if you wanted to roam on LTE there's no way to do it. If everyone's serious about rolling out VoLTE that has to be fixed in the next phone upgrade cycle. Certainly I think the regionals, super-regionals (I'd put US Cellular and Cricket/Leap here), Sprint, and T-Mobile are going to have to work together to have any shot at having similar national LTE coverage to Verizon and AT&T and to ensure that the halo phones like the iPhone and Android flagships get built for their networks.

Hopefully this won't drag things too off-topic I've been with Sprint since mid-2002 or so, but I only moved to Blacksburg (which is Shentel territory) in August. Up till then I'd been in corporate markets for the most part, if not always (central MS may still have been an affiliate market when I lived in Jackson - I think the same clowns who ran Baton Rouge into the ground had the franchise there too). It's a bit different from Pioneer's deal was: basically everything customer-facing says Sprint, my bill comes from Sprint, the phone shows native coverage, etc. I honestly don't know how all the financials work exactly, although I think there's some sort of net payment to Shentel for corporate/other affiliate customers who roam here and Shentel pays for its customers who roam elsewhere. Presumably when I changed address to here I became a Shentel customer but there's nothing on my bill that indicates that. The only Shentel-y thing I've had to deal with is that my apartment really needs an Airave/Airvana (it is literally half-underground; 1900 MHz does not penetrate dirt at all), but Sprint won't give me one because I'm in Shentel-land and I have no clue how to get one from Shentel proper because they don't have anything customer-facing for wireless except the Sprint Store they run in Roanoke (1 hr away). Verizon's the ILEC here and probably has the biggest wireless following and best build-out; we also have AT&T, nTelos, US Cellular, and Shentel/Sprint (not a bad lineup actually for a rural area). As far as timing, I think they get new phones on more or less the same schedule as corporate. I expect I'll upgrade at Best Buy though since they ran that $50 gift card promo a while back, and I'll get RZ points. Anyway hope that clears things up. Basically I'm a Sprint customer except when I'm not.

It all sounds very plausible, but then again informed speculation gets you 90% of the way to those specs anyway; except the kickstand and SD card, it's all pretty predictable based on what we know already about the GSM One X variants. I'm still leaning toward the Galaxy Nexus just to have the pure Google experience and have my new phone 5 weeks sooner (and not to reward HTC again for my Evo's annoyances), but this phone definitely seems like a strong contender too, particularly if they can follow through with the accessories like the car dock (where Sammy hasn't in the US yet).

Given Hesse's comments about the data use of iPhone users, I don't think they're that worried about unlimited either. It's their big differentiator from the other majors, and iPhone apps are designed around low data usage (to keep AT&T and Verizon folks happy). Frankly I expect throttling above 5-10 GB/month to be their solution if they decide they need to crack down on data use to provide reliability of service; that would put the floor well above T-Mobile's and probably only really affect people that are stealth tethering.

The sports team naming, at least, is due to not wanting to take a side in the Minneapolis-St. Paul municipal rivalry; same reason why I-35 splits into "W" and "E" rather than one "side" getting I-35 and the other getting I-235 or something. A bit like the "Texas Rangers" being halfway between Dallas and Fort Worth.

(Pleasantly) surprised Memphis is getting in on the action so early, especially after getting passed by during the WiMAX rollout. SEC fans in particular should be very happy if they get Oxford and Starkville done before fall comes around.

SouthernLINC is probably so integrated with Southern Company's operations - essentially they're selling the public excess capacity on their own internal communications network that supports their various power company subsidiaries - that I can't see them selling the spectrum outright with nothing to replace it. On the other hand, I don't think SouthernLINC has the spectrum holdings to stage a transition to anything else (absent just shutting down the iDEN network and putting up something else overnight), and without Nextel they'll no longer be able to sell national roaming plans, so they may have to partner with someone to migrate to a more widely supported PTT system; Sprint would be the obvious choice given that they're the only carrier that would value ESMR 800 spectrum as part of a deal and has the spectrum holdings to overbuild the whole existing SouthernLINC network, and it would give them the full ESMR spectrum in the overlapping markets including Atlanta where they definitely will need it, but Sprint would be picking up a lot of rural territory that they seem to be content to leave to C Spire and VZW/former Alltel roaming now.