lordsutch

Will T-Mobile Take Over Sprint's Number 3 Position In 2015?

 

http://www.bidnessetc.com/31732-will-tmobile-takeover-sprint-corporation-number-3-position-in-2015/

Depends. If/when Sprint consummates the deal with nTelos and goes after USCC and/or C Spire, they may be able to hold T-Mobile off for a while.

I ended up backing out the map API change, so this release still uses Leaflet, but I did get the material design look implemented correctly. I also added the two columns of data that digiblur requested; hopefully I've gotten the band guessing logic right, but particularly for non-Sprint networks it could be wrong.

Linky to this release: https://www.dropbox.com/s/isejck79hskqqcl/SigDet2.apk?dl=0

Well, that was around the same time that Hesse was getting vetoed on acquiring USCC, if I recall correctly; presumably the board at the time wasn't interested in doing anything to improve Sprint's footprint.

The next step in shutting down former Alltel in Georgia is underway: http://www.phonescoop.com/articles/article.php?a=15007

Of note, AT&T's commitment to keep CDMA live in these markets expires June 15, 2015; I'd be surprised if they keep it on a day longer, which means a fallback to 1x on Verizon for Sprint customers roaming off the interstates and a few other corridors in south Georgia. The SouthernLINC RRPP buildout can't come soon enough...

The next front in the prepaid wars: Ting is adding support for GSM/WCDMA/3GPP devices (apparently as a MVNO of T-Mobile, directly or indirectly, if the coverage map is to be believed) and will allow you to have GSM and CDMA devices on the same account, apparently going a step further than the Straight Talk empire. LTE data is apparently included, but not depicted on the maps.

http://www.androidcentral.com/sprint-mvno-ting-support-gsm-starting-february-2015

Now a real Ting coup would be to allow access to both the Sprint and T-Mobile networks on a single line without a SIM swap if you have a device that works on both (like Nexus 5/6 etc.). Technically devices without a firmware lockout of domestic competitor networks, like the Nexus 5 and 6 and the new devices coming in a few months, should be able to do it.

nTelos is going to ditch its Tidewater markets in Virginia (divesting the spectrum to T-Mobile) and concentrate on its more profitable "Western Markets" where it also operates its Sprint wholesale network.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/ntelos-exit-markets-eastern-virginia-sell-pcs-spectrum-t-mobile/2014-12-02

Positioning for a buyout by Sprint or Shentel?

Anybody think its funny how sprint doesn't seem to advertise any nexus products on their main page?  It seems its always Samsung this and iPhone that.  I dont recall seeing them advertising the Nexus 5/6 releases.  I see the note edge is on there now.  Just thought id ask.

Sprint likely gets marketing money from Samsung and the other non-Apple companies to promote their products on the front page. They probably don't get money from Apple, but I suspect even today there are people who still think you need to get iPhones on AT&T.

And, for better or worse, the Nexus line are enthusiast phones and not really targeted at mainstream consumers like iPhones and Samsung's 17 different handsets.

Best Buy also has their "phone freedom" promotional gift card for upgrades, if you signed up early in the year for it.

I think the FCC will eventually require all carriers that are VOIP capable to interconnect VOIP (including VoLTE) calls directly over IP rather than bridging to and from circuit-switched technology. In the interim it's surely worthwhile for all of the "big boys" to interconnect over IP so they can move away from legacy equipment; there's no real competitive advantage for (say) AT&T to do VOIP interconnection with Verizon but refuse to do it with Sprint (the voice quality improvements from better codecs are secondary to the advantages of everything being run on a flat, all-IP network architecture).

As stated above, roaming is a completely separate issue... although, again, I seriously doubt the FCC will allow anyone with a LTE network to set commercially unreasonable rates for, or absolutely reject, LTE roaming agreements after CDMA or GSM or WCDMA is shut down by that carrier.

LTE is being really flaky today in Macon and Warner Robins; not really sure what's going on but my Nexus 5 isn't staying on LTE more than a minute or two at a time before getting kicked to 1x800 + eHRPD. I can't even wedge it into LTE-only mode.

And that is not going to happen for CDMA2000 from the so called GSM operators, who act as if they are god's gift to wireless consumers.  T-Mobile, for example, wants VZW and Sprint variant devices to support 3GPP standards and be domestically unlocked.  But by no means will T-Mobile turn around and ensure its variant devices support 3GPP2 standards.  In other words, device portability is a double standard for those holier than thou GSM operators.

Of course there's only like a half-dozen major carriers left in the world that are still actively using 3GPP2 for voice and legacy data, so we're getting to the point that supporting 3GPP2 is an additional cost that manufacturers are choosing not to incur.

Plus, even in the old days when 3GPP2 was a bigger share of the market, all the "big boys" locked out devices that weren't carrier approved. Even today both Verizon and Sprint only allow whitelisted devices on their networks, and there's no evidence Sprint plans to drop the whitelisting requirement when it starts offering all its devices unlocked next year.

The proliferation of boutique bands for 3GPP isn't going to help matters, particularly if 3GPP lets 600 MHz banding end up as absurd as 700, 800, and 1900 are now, but at least in a few years when VoLTE is widespread we can finally kiss the need for 3GPP2 support in handsets goodbye (whatever its technical merits, it's a dead-end technology path and everyone knows it).

Long time, no real progress to report. However, I am working on a new release, hopefully in the near future, with two big changes:

• Material design theme.
• Switching to the Mapbox SDK for the map instead of using Leaflet. This should be faster (since it's not running Javascript inside a Webview anymore), more power-efficient, and potentially less buggy.

However, there are two big issues standing in the way of the latter change: the Mapbox SDK doesn't currently support overlay tiles properly, and non-retina map tiles look horribly tiny. So I'm not sure if I'll back out the API change or find the time to fix the problems or what.

Obligatory screenshot link: https://www.dropbox.com/s/dqqunz51d91v6vv/2014-10-23%2022.10.23.png?dl=0

Assuming Google's pricing and Sprint's will be the same, I'd imagine the "buy from Play Store and then beg Sprint for a SIM" option won't be so popular this time around. (Hopefully Sprint will carry all the color/size combos.)

Plus my understanding is that the nano SIM isn't a simple trim; you have to shave down the height as well. This means a nano SIM is a bit better behaved when put in a tray adapter for the larger sizes, but that modifying by hand is hard.

The other big question is whether Sprint goes to SIM-based CDMA authentication for the Nexus 6.

No wonder they had to get capex under control. Yikes!

I could get behind Judy Greer as the next Sela Ward. And not even in a perverted way.

Apparently there are still some bugs to be worked out:

Shocker! Turn off the @CSpire #rebelwifi and my phone works. Turn it on, and it does nothing but drain my battery. #fail

https://twitter.com/olemissgal00/status/516044991748378624

SouthernLINC definitely plans to add towers to match its existing iDEN footprint; see e.g. http://www.radioresourcemag.com/onlyonline.cfm?OnlyOnlineID=448:

SouthernLINC leases most of its sites from a third party, and those leases need to be renegotiated to add LTE. Users should be able to have fixed data services during the buildout, with mobile capability following as more sites are added. More towers will need to be added to ensure the LTE network has the same coverage as the current 120,000-square-mile voice network, Johnson said.

 

“The whole tower wattage is much less in LTE,” he said. “To cover the same footprint in data speed and RF coverage requires more sites. There will be a larger number of sites.”

Also, I believe wideband operations have not been authorized below 817/862. And I just don't think the FCC would consider it. So currently that would limit uses in the SMR Expansion Band to narrowband. Additionally, the Guard Band is not traversable by any licensee. 815/860 is the demilitarized zone. So I don't believe SoLinc can cross that to try to link spectrum assets on both sides.

I'm not sure where SoLINC thinks they're going to run LTE if they can't put it below 817/862. They don't hold anything else in a standardized LTE band, and they say they're running LTE somewhere in 800. They may not have petitioned the FCC yet since they haven't started their rollout.

(Bear in mind this is the southeast, where the guard band is at 812/857, not 815/860.)

"Selects ericsson"... famous last words

Perhaps, but it should at least ensure interoperability with Sprint. I'm not sure how well the network would cope with a mix of Ericsson and Samsung or AlcaLu in the same area.

 Does SOLinc have enough spectrum below 814Mhz to put a CDMA carrier throughout their territory?

I may have misunderstood the rebanding. It's not clear who has/will have the licenses to the 812.5-813.5 and 857.5-858.5 area, which is referred to as the "expansion band" in the rebanding. As I understand it, non-public safety users in that band don't have to move, but they have a strong incentive to do so since they won't be protected from interference if they stay.

As far as I can understand things, when rebanding is done Sprint + SouthernLINC should hold everything between 813.5-824 MHz and 858.5-860 MHz in the southeast. That gives us 10.5x10.5 to play with, if nobody gets the expansion band. With carrier aggregation, probably the winning option would be three 3x3 LTE carriers and a 1xA carrier. With the expansion band, the plan above works.

The only other tricky thing I've noticed is that while officially BC10 does extend all the way to 806/851, the specs on Sprint's devices say "secondary 800" starts at 817/862 and may not actually be certified to operate on lower frequencies. If that's the case then the best that can be done is the "interim" arrangement of LTE 5x5 + LTE 3x3 + 1xA, at least until 1x is switched off, unless band 27 starts to find its way onto devices.

FWIW the 25%-off promo code disappears on the payment entry page when/if you check out with the router in your basket.

(Besides which, I am a T-Mobile customer too so I don't really feel guilty about buying one even though none of my Nexus devices support their WiFi calling implementation.)

For what it's worth, they're selling it to anyone outright for $99, at least on the website. So the question you have to ask yourself is whether saving $100+ on a top-end router is worth letting T-Mobile folk leach some of your bandwidth for voice calls on occasion.

I came across this article today on SouthernLINC's medium-term plans for LTE and iDEN (obviously this came out before announcing their tie-up with Sprint through the roaming hub): http://mccmag.com/onlyonline.cfm?OnlyOnlineID=448

Coupled with SouthernLINC joining up with RRPP, it looks like their roadmap is becoming clearer: the iDEN + GSM dual-SIM devices are an interim solution, with iDEN being migrated to the 1.5x1.5 outside of band 26 and/or into the 900 MHz range (Sprint may well have given SouthernLINC access to their dormant 900 spectrum to facilitate some of this).

This should free up a combined 10x10 between SouthernLINC and Sprint's holdings, which if current configuration holds up will probably be allocated as 3x3 LTE (SouthernLINC) - 1.4x1.4 1xA (Sprint) - 5x5 LTE (Sprint). Deploy Ericsson RRUS 11 B26 to match the existing iDEN footprint, with or without PCS 1x/band 25 and possibly band 41 as SouthernLINC sees fit. Once the majority of the new towers are live and existing sites retrofitted, SouthernLINC can start migrating customers to modern PTT-capable devices with VoLTE and CDMAone+WCDMA fallback.

The last trick up their sleeve: once iDEN is off completely, or at least all on 900, Sprint + SouthernLINC can reband their combined 800 ESMR as 1.4x1.4 1xA + 5x5 LTE + 5x5 LTE or 1.4x1.4 1xA + 10x10 LTE (my hunch is the former, since band 26 is the capacity band rather than the bandwidth band); band class 10 for CDMA starts at 806 MHz, so the CDMA carrier can go below band 26 leaving all 10x10 available for LTE in band 26.

Bottom line: both Sprint and SouthernLINC in this configuration should be very competitive with Verizon and AT&T in the SouthernLINC service area, and of course this buildout should also help additional RRPP partners CSpire and Public Service Wireless as well, although there will need to be some 700 and AWS sites constructed (likely on the same towers) for license preservation or organic buildout for them.

Yes, Yes.  Why invest in the cesspool called Mexico????   Who needs that?

Developing, non-mature market with millions of potential customers, plus opportunities for a US carrier to create some plans that could potentially attract millions of Mexican-American customers away from non-Sprint MVNOs with robust cross-border roaming and/or family plans at a better value proposition.

Carlos Slim made his billions off his dominant position in Mexican telecoms; a savvy businessman like Son could come in, make millions, and help out his US property at the same time. There's far more synergy for a Sprint hookup with América Móvil's divested assets than there is for Sprint-Softbank from a pure crossover market perspective (outside of the Japanese tourist market in Hawaii, there's just no mass market for crossover services, while millions of people cross the US-Mexican border weekly).

No such offer on my account (either on my two lines that are out of contract or my Phone Connect that is on-contract for another year).