lordsutch

Band 7 FDD is what's being deployed already in Europe and TD-LTE was relatively late in development; until China Mobile wanted it, I don't think anyone really planned to deploy TD-LTE, and even then it was a lagging technology. Canada committed to FDD before it was clear (no pun intended) that LTE was going to win out over WiMax in the U.S. on the 2600 MHz band, which is unpaired spectrum here (effectively forcing Clearwire to go with TD-LTE once WiMax proved to be a dead end). If they had it to do over again, maybe they'd go with band 41 TD instead, but it's too late now.

I think the big question going forward is whether or not CCA/RRPP roaming will count against the cap regardless of technology. Such an idea is not unprecedented in the industry, after all; in the olden days before their buyouts and buildouts, Verizon made a distinction between "extended network" (roaming but without a cap) and true roaming (maybe on some plans they still do). I could see the argument of "let's not give money away to ex-Alltel AT&T and Verizon"; the argument "let's try to make even more money off nTelos and C Spire customers' roaming than we already do by cutting Sprint roaming onto them" is rather less compelling to me, even if the dollar figures are the same, since $1 in forgone money from C Spire and $1 out to Verizon are both $1 of opportunity cost, after all. It's not a huge issue from where I sit, yet, but a lot of Sprint customers have essentially taken the idea that they don't have to be paranoid about roaming (just like unlimited data allows users not to be paranoid about doing an app update away from wifi) to be an advantage over the Other Guys. Maybe lower pricing will offset some of that but at least on planet my phone bill that lower pricing isn't there yet.* Particularly when Our Disruptive Friends are putting together plans that make people not have to worry (throttling rather than overages; international data roaming that will at least cover your basic needs) it's somewhat troubling Sprint seems to be moving in the direction of VZW-style nickel-and-diming without yet having a ubiquitous network that will allow people to tolerate that. * I could go with 2 lines of $60 unlimited and come out about $10 ahead of where I am now, but I'd be losing subsidized upgrades in the future along with 2/3 of my roaming data allowance; since I work 2-3 days a month in ex-Alltel and VZW land in an office with deeply flaky WiFi, even crappy 1X roaming data beats no data at all.

Seems like they're still using the Framily characters without using the Framily plan branding; they did that before with the HTC One Harmon/Kardon edition, for example.

AT&T is obliged to keep 1X and EVDO active through June 30, 2015. Whether that's the same day Alltel's roaming agreements with Sprint and others expire is anyone's guess, but I wouldn't expect AT&T to keep the sites live either way.

Right, I think IamMrFamous07 meant that those carriers were examples of Sprint affiliates/MVNOs/divisions that were the exceptions to the general rule of "port out and you can port back in as a new customer in a month."

Honestly I haven't seen substantially better propagation on T-Mobile LTE in band 4 and Sprint LTE in band 25 around these parts, CDMA power limits or no. Band 26 propagation around here is no better than band 25 (unlike in the Atlanta market, where I can tell a big improvement compared to band 25 only coverage in areas I mapped before), but I don't think Ericsson has calibrated around here yet since there are still numerous nearby 1900-only sites in the Georgia market to upgrade first.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_Positioning_System#Message_format L1 and L2 signal bit rate is 50 bits/sec, encoded with a CDMA chip rate of ~10.23 million chips/sec. The bandwidth is apparently about 30 MHz centered on the L1 center frequency of 1575.42 MHz, with most of the C/A code's energy at the center while the P (legacy military) code is more spread out.

Neither the Democrats nor the Republicans will nationalize the wireless infrastructure; the only times the feds have stepped in to nationalize an industry in American history was when the industry was failing and the industry's leaders were begging for a bailout (see Amtrak, which bailed out the railroads' money-losing passenger operations, or the GM and Chrysler bailout). Even if the market gets down to 3-4 national players and few others, nationalization just isn't going to happen. It hasn't even happened in Europe, where public and government support for owning infrastructure tends to be much higher. Instead, regulation by countries and the EU (along with more vigorous competition due to the lack of any meaningful GSM/CDMA split, and greater population density making limited rural coverage less of a handicap for new entrants) have forced carriers to implement more consumer-friendly policies like price caps on usage and roaming; that seems to be the more likely direction of the U.S. market with everyone effectively on LTE within the next 4-6 years.

I don't know if 800 LTE would improve things terribly (although in a lot of Georgia the GMOs don't even have any LTE active, probably due to backhaul), but 800 1X would at least get you basic fill-in service further into the rural areas along I-16 and I-75. To identify one local example, Cochran GA (pop around 5k, with around 3k college students) is at the verge of Sprint 1900 coverage due to GMOs on I-16 and in Hawkinsville, leading to signal bouncing between roaming on Alltel and Verizon and native within town, but would probably have solid outdoor 800 coverage even with the existing sites. Of course what Sprint really should do in Cochran is deploy NV on the ex-Nextel site on the bypass. I'm pretty sure the old Nextel equipment is still sitting up on that tower; I hope at least they switched off the power...