hercules rockefeller

At this point the main benefit to 3xCA is so that Sprint can advertise insane peak download speeds and claim to be the fastest network in those areas where it's rolled out. In the future we'll actually need 3xCA to run whatever crazy applications we'll all have on our phones one day (assuming our mobile data usage continues to increase on the same pace it has been in the last 5-10 years from now). But for right now, it's really more of a marketing thing than anything else and explaining things in the simplest possible terms is clearly the right way to go (just look at how effective those Verizon commercials are).

If the Japanese version has the specs Sprint needs I don't think it will be a problem for Sprint to get HTC to make a version that works for them (possibly Japanese frequency support and american software, or some sort of blend like that). Between Brightstar and Softbank Sprint has the buying power and logistics to get that done. And they'll be able to distribute that to their CCA / RRRP partners as well.

Ever since 9/11 it's been really hard to get security clearance to work at an airport. My father in law retired from United after working there for 30 years and got a part time job for a hotel driving their hotel shuttle, pretty much because he speaks english and his security clearance hadn't expired yet (just for the record, he's also a pretty good guy and all that, but the security clearance is what got him the job). and that's just to drive a van onto airport property; there are higher security levels for other jobs. working on a construction project on the airport would surely require more oversight than that, for the employees involved and the materials they're bringing with them as well. And add to all of that the fact that an airport is a huge area full of large steel structures and a swamp of RF signals. the least important of which is whatever's coming out of a private corporation's cell site. Obviously we're talking about different frequencies and there are safeguards in place so it shouldn't be a problem. But there's more scrutiny put on interference issues at an airport than at other towers, combined with the areas that need to be covered and high usage demands the planning phase of the project is going to take longer than other towers.

The variance is interesting for standard deviation. But it should not affect the median or average. Run the same tests again next week, and I would expect notably similar results. AJ Variance matters when you're trying to apply the statistics to a real life decision; for example if you need consistent speeds more than fast peak speeds, that might be something to consider. But you've also got to consider the circumstances as well if you want to apply statistics to a real-world experience. With Sprint still finishing up its network vision upgrades I'd expect to see more variance in it's performance. If we were to run the same tests again next week I'd expect similar results; next month or next quarter Its I'd expect better overall results with less variance. That would be consistent with the trend of the results we've seen over the last year or so, and with the fact that we know that network improvements are ongoing.

I don't know why it won't support B5 right out of the box; I might even be wrong about that (hopefully I am). My understanding was that roaming on band 5 won't be supported initially for any phones, that it's not specific to the G Flex. So presumably there's some sort of compatibility issue that needs to be worked out between the various networks / phones and then it'll be enabled via a software update. Don't quote me though, that's just my speculation

You're right, it looks like it does. But it won't be able to roam on band 5 until later in the year.

My understanding was that devices supporting 2, 4, and 12 will be available first quarter and 5 will be later in the year.

Upgrades are definitely continuing. I would recommend calling Sprint tech support and letting them know the details of the problems you're having. There are a few things that could cause what you're describing, and they can either fix the problem or at least set the right expectations. It's possible that the nearest tower hasn't received any LTE upgrades, and the LTE from another tower is reaching you upstairs but not downstairs, or that you're in an area where you won't get B25 LTE downstairs, but B26 would reach you just fine. In those scenarios it just depends on when the relevant upgrade happens in your area. It's also possible that the equipment installed in your area is capable of getting to you downstairs, but the network needs to be tuned in order to do so. Any time you call tech support to report network problems it helps with the tuning process because the problem location is recorded in a system that's used to identity problem areas (that's regardless of whether or not a ticket is opened when you call).

I got some nice results over the weekend; I had LTE wherever I went (a mix of b25 and b26, my phone doesn't seem to like b41 but my wife's phone connects to b41 here and there. The speed tests below were at the parade of lights and the Broncos game, respectively. I think these speeds are pretty darn good given all the people around. Even the one slow result at the game yesterday was a huge improvement over the pre NV experience at Mile High. All I really want to do from the game is send text messages and get on Facebook without killing my battery and I had more than enough speed for that throughout the game.

I wholeheartedly agree with you here. the only comment I'd make is that the privilege granted in a spectrum license comes from the people, not the FCC. I realize that I'm getting on a soapbox here, but I feel it's important to emphasize that spectrum is a national resource just like our air, water, minerals, etc. We all own it, and we have every right to insist that it's used for our collective benefit first and foremost. I don't have any sympathy for a spectrum holder who's not using that spectrum in good faith.

In practical terms the difference is going to be even bigger in the long term, because each sector will be geographically smaller than PCS sectors and will therefore be less likely to ever need to serve that many users. I know that's exactly what greencat was asking, but I think it bears repeating that B41's biggest shortcoming (poor signal propagation compared to lower frequencies) will eventually become an advantage, once the network is built out to it's full density.

Marcelo talked about the shift in B41 priorities during the all-hands call a couple of weeks ago, and Sprint's definitely not backing off of the plan to roll out b41 across the entire network. It's just a change in priorities, or really a welcome change in mindset if you think about it. Taking care of the easier rural and urban sites first before tackling the more difficult urban areas was what made sense for Sprints needs whereas the new priority is more focused on what the customer needs. To be fair, there were good customer-focused reasons for working from the outside-in on network vision, as the whole point was to minimize customer impacts. But I do feel that focusing on the sites that need capacity the most whether it's easier for Sprint or not demonstrates a greater focus on the end user's needs. Ultimately in the long run being forced to build out a denser network that our competitors should leave Sprint in a more competitive position as we'll have more sectors in a given area along with greater spectrum.

I'd absolutely love to see coverage in western SD. My family takes a road trip to the black hills just about every summer, and 3g coverage would be really nice. I agree that the old Sprint wouldn't have been this aggressive, although I think it was eventually part of Hesse's plan to expand the footprint at some point down the road.

A temp site can also be used where the existing site can't be upgraded and Sprint has chosen to replace it with another nearby site. if the rest of the cluster is ready to go but the new site isn't up and running yet the temp site allows them to move forward with turning on the cluster.

Unfortunately, a lot of the legacy devices that aren't being upgraded are mobile broadband devices, not smartphones. That's just in my personal experience, but as an account manager for corporate and gov't accounts, I have a pretty good perspective on it. with Smartphones, you've got pressure from end users who want to have the latest and greatest device. But for a mobile broadband device if it's not broken and the end users have enough coverage / connection speeds to get their work done there's not a lot of incentive for the telecom manager to take on a big project and upgrade everyone. And then there's telemetry devices, which are mostly 1x (and will remain on 1x devices for quite some time), so they'll never quite hit 100%

we've seen a couple of clusters come online within the last few days, so I'd say that indicates that we've got plenty to look forward to in the near future. Assuming the outside-in pattern continues I wouldn't expect downtown to be upgraded in the immediate future, but we're still seeing progress, which has me feeling optimistic, personally.

No, Jonathan Smith isn't a retail store manager, he's quite a bit higher up than that. And he really does know his stuff. I think if he was being interviewed here, he'd have explained it just like Robert did a few posts back. I'm sure he was dumbing stuff down a little bit for the intended audience, and as someone else mentioned above, most of the misinformation in that article didn't come from Smith's quotes.

Unfortunately you'll probably know before I do... the only specific information I have is after the fact. I have general time frames before hand, and then once the tower is turned on it'll show a specifc date for each upgrade. We used to have expected dates, but in the wrong hands that information does more harm than good, becuase we'll end up setting unrealistic expectations with the customers. So unfortunately there's not that much info I can provide to the board in terms of predictions. But I'm happy to help clarify some of the information that care reps or retail sales reps may be providing.

You can IM me if you've got a question about those tickets. That's a bit limited, becuase I can't / won't provide information that's not public. But judging from some of the conversations with customer care that have been described in this thread, I'm sure I can clear some things up.

I took a look at a few of those 27 tickets and they were each for towers that have already been upgraded. They're opening a ticket for 30 days on every ticket that's upgraded, just to alert care that it's been recently upgraded These tickets aren't really trouble tickets, in the sense that they're being sent to the network technicians to fix a problem with the associated towere, they're more of an FYI only. That way if someone calls in after a cluster is turned on customer care can quickly identify the situation and let the customer know what to expect for the next few weeks. Like Dkoellerwx said, there's not a ticket opened for the installation of a new tower (at least not in our systems; I'm sure Samsung has some sort of ticketing system to keep track of their progress, but whatever they use, we don't see it). we get a general timeframe of when it's expected, but I don't put too much weight in those numbers. sometimes they're early and sometimes they're late.

I'm not sure where she's getting this information. The information I have (I'm assuming she's looking at the same thing I'm looking at, becuause it's the tool we should be referencing for the question you asked) doesn't provide specifc dates like that anymore. And generally not every tower will be upgraded at once. I suppose it's possible that one or more clusters would be scheduled to come up before April 1st, but there are generally a site here and there that can't be brough up with all of the others, so I would never tell someone that 100% of the towers in a generall area are going to be upgraded by a specific date. And that's for CDMA; as we've all read previously on this thread LTE follows when backhaul catches up to the towers. Hopefully that will speed up a bit now that the worst of winter is behind us. As for the 30 day thing, that's a standard timeframe that we're all being asked to quote once a cluster is powered on, but it doesn't refer to the timeframe in which LTE will be turned on, it refers to the rough time it takes to drive test the network and tweak all of the variables to optimize coverage. From what I've seen with my customers in other markets, the first couple weeks after a cluster(s) are turned on may be a bit rough but setting an expectation that coverage will improve dramatically within 30 days is accurate. After that timeframe (or even within a couple of weeks in some cases) my customers have been very happy with the new network. So 30 days may be a standard thing for care reps to say, but it's not just a canned answer, it's a pretty good rule of thumb IMO.

Nextel did this pretty sucessfully in the mid 2000's. They pretty much stopped building out the network footprint around 2001 or so, but that was back when Nextel was growing by leaps and bounds, so they quickly ran into capacity issues (for voice, not data). They eventually solved the capacity issues by adding towers to densely populated areas and re-tuning the ones they had as you describe above. Ironically they ended up having to take a bunch down towards the end of the iDEN network becuase they were so redundant once the iDEN subsciber base started leaving (in some spots there were just as many Nextel towers as there were Sprint towers). But the point is, if Nextel could do it with older technology, Sprint should be able to accomplish the same thing even more efficiently, given the more efficient network management tools available these days.

My guess is that things like carrier aggregation could potentially be used to sell different teirs of speed. Most people will never need speeds on the high end of what will be possible, but some people will be willing to pay a premium price for faster speeds. I don't think that's in any near-term plans, but Sprint has brought up that sort of possibility in the past. It would be a great way to leverage all this new technology to create a differentiated service and grow revenue.

Unless they have access to a tool with more detail that what I have (and I have access to all of the network tools that anyone in customer service would need), There's no way they'd have an ETA that shows a specific time like that. We used to have projected dates for various upgrades, but lately it doesn't even have that (most likely to prevent us from promising a specific date to the customer when the dates were always supposed to be a projection at best). The chat rep may have been looking at something else, like a trouble ticket on a specific tower. Those usually have an ETA with a time and date.