Conan Kudo

Nor do you. There's just too much that's unknown for you to be making declarative statements about what is or isn't going away soon.

 

 

Naturally. That's why I didn't understand the connection that you were trying to make to this recently announced roaming agreement.

 

And while the O₂ Ireland sale may have been consummated  in Q4 last year, the acquisition was announced back in the middle of 2013. I doubt that Hutchinson Whampoa would've appreciated Telefonica making a commitment for O₂ Ireland while they were in the middle of buying it. On the hand, the deal for O₂ UK was made in January of this year. Now as you've already opined in regards to the Sprint-Telefonica roaming agreement:

 

 

So it seems quite possible that they were already deep in negotiations well before the buyout for O₂ UK occurred. You're trying to pull from disparate scenarios to prove a point, but in actuality the stark differences in the timing of the O₂ Ireland & O₂ Slovakia+Czech Republic deals makes it difficult, if not impossible, to determine what will happen in this situation.

 

At the end of the day, Que Sera, Sera.

Perhaps you're right. I certainly want to see Sprint expand their international roaming offers. Who knows, perhaps this is the "in" to talk to Hutchinson Whampoa about setting up a more affordable roaming agreement with their footprint.

HWL has coverage in a number of countries:

• United Kingdom (Hutchison 3G UK t/a Three UK)
• Ireland (Hutchison 3G Ireland t/a Three Ireland)
• Austria (Hutchison Drei Austria t/a Drei Austria)
• Denmark (Hi3G Denmark t/a Tre Danmark)
• Sweden (Hi3G Access t/a Tre Sverige)
• Hong Kong (3 Hong Kong)
• Indonesia (Hutchinson 3 Indonesia t/a 3 Indonesia)
• Italy (H3G t/a 3 Italia)

It'd be awesome if Sprint was able to get access to that footprint.

I wonder how Sprint will implement this without making it extremely confusing for customers traveling to these countries?

 

 

For example, Movistar would obviously become the prefer roaming partner in Mexico, but what will happen when we leave Movistar coverage and stray into Telcel or Iusacell (now a subsidiary of Ma Bell) coverage? Will texts and data still be unlimited or will we fall back to the older pricing? Also, how will we, as customers, know which network we will be on? I know my phone is an LTE/CDMA/GSM phone, but when I currently roam, I don't know if I'm on Verizon or Cricket.

It should fall back to normal roaming rates in that scenario, if your phone allowed you to connect to it. I would hope that Sprint implemented it properly so that you wouldn't be provisioned to roam on that network, and you'd be kicked off, but someone would have to go there and test it...

Yet it's not as though Sprint had value roaming with O₂ Ireland or O₂ Slovakia+Czech Republic and then lost that agreement upon sale of those entities. Those entities were sold well before Sprint announced value roaming and possibly before negotiations for value roaming even began. So of course they never announced value roaming in those areas, but I don't really see how that validates your speculation. They did, however, announce value roaming in the UK and while it is certainly possible, it seems counterintuitive that they would announce their value roaming in an area knowing that it would be vanishing in the near future.

 

But you don't know when the agreement was actually made. Things like these are usually done several months before they are announced, as it takes a very long time to actually negotiate these agreements. The O₂ Ireland sale was approved and completed in November. That wasn't that long ago.

The other two O₂ units were most likely not included because they'd been sold over a year ago.

I'm not saying that you're wrong, but do you know that for a fact? Oftentimes in business a new purchaser inherits contracts that they have to honor even if they were made by prior owner.

In telecommunications, contracts like these are usually written to have stipulations to void upon a "change of control" situation, mainly because the agreements are usually group-to-group negotiations. That is, SoftBank+Sprint made the deal with Telefónica, not with O₂ UK. If Telefónica happens to not own O₂ UK anymore, then Sprint simply loses access to that area. That's why Sprint doesn't have "value roaming" with O₂ Ireland or O₂ Slovakia+Czech Republic, as those are no longer owned by Telefónica.

It's for this same reason that any buyout of T-Mobile US would result in a massive scale decrease for the company, as it would lose the procurement agreements negotiated through BUYIN and roaming agreements negotiated through Deutsche Telekom.

Actually, while it is a start, doesn't really compare to the 120 countries T-Mobile offers for free.  Europe for example is only UK, Spain, Germany.  No Italy 

The saddest part of this is that UK will go away soon, once Telefónica sells it to Hutchison 3G UK Limited (t/a 3 UK).

Is the International Roaming available to current customers for free too? I can't find any answers on that new Sprint website which is pretty bad.

You can call and add the feature for free to your plan.

Also, it works by using Telefónica Latin America (movistar and vivo), Telefónica España (movistar Spain), Telefónica Europe (O2 in Germany and UK), and SoftBank in Japan for roaming networks.

Time In!

Risky Investment

Yeah, I remember reading on CrackBerry a while ago that Samsung turned to BlackBerry for help with their enterprise KNOX program. Not sure what Apple is doing; I don't really follow them much.

 

 

Thanks for your input. I think that's what I'm going to do. Is there a forum comparable to S4GRU that any of you all are aware of?

 

I'm also curious to see what happens with this 600mhz auction. I'm hoping that the FCC lets Sprint and Tmo get a good piece of that spectrum.

Well, you're just in luck. T4GRU is now a thing. It's new, but it aims to be an environment for wireless enthusiasts interested in T-Mobile can come together.

What should I do? In your opinion, is there advantage to one carrier or the other?

While it is true (as A.J. pointed out earlier in the thread) that BlackBerry phones currently do not support band 26 or band 12, they will support band 12 eventually, because Rogers, Telus, and Bell all have spectrum in the Lower 700MHz A block (though they've just started deploying in the band). This is why the unlocked BlackBerry Passport has both bands 13 and 17, and why the Canadian Samsung Galaxy S6 has bands 12 and 13. Telus is also starting to use band 25 LTE in former Public Mobile CDMA areas (backed up with HSPA+ on 850MHz and PCS A-F), which is why the unlocked BlackBerry Classic has the band.

While the unlocked BlackBerry Leap doesn't have band 12, a future BlackBerry device will. And if T-Mobile gets a deal in place with BlackBerry again, we may see it even sooner.

And of course, all of these devices currently work fine on T-Mobile's PCS+AWS HSPA+/LTE network. So I'd go with T-Mobile because of the availability of compatible devices.

Software Engineer

Donald Duck

Varsity Grill

True, it looks like they've had some for about a year now. I missed that since I usually don't pay much attention to news about tablets. I believe all their hotspots still support CDMA for now though.

Verizon has one hotspot without CDMA. Future hotspot devices may lack it too. A version of the Spro 2 with Verizon's LTE bands did pass through the FCC, and it does lack CDMA.

It looks like it is HPSA+ 1900/2100 as well which is great I can use this with my unlimited 4G data plan on the T-Mobile network for only 79.99 monthly. 

 

It'll only support T-Mobile HSPA+ on PCS (1900). You'll see AWS referred to as either "AWS" or "1700" on most spec sheets. AT&T devices support LTE bands 2 and 4, so it'll support LTE fine on T-Mobile. According to the FCC authorization info, it lacks band 12 (which isn't very surprising).

Happy birthday, Robert!

I'm loving the redesign. It's more responsive and definitely easier to find things. I can't wait until it's filled out more and applied to the whole site.

And as a fair comparison, remember that the FCC awarded Nextel the set of PCS G block nationwide licenses as compensatory spectrum over a decade ago, but Sprint did not put that spectrum into commercial service until 2012.

That doesn't make it okay. And before you jump on me about it, yes I'm aware that T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon have done this too. Every single spectrum license holder does this, and I still don't believe it's a good thing to allow such wastefulness.

Funny thing is, 2.5 ghz is labeled TDD worldwide, so that is going to work.

Actually, 2.5GHz is generally allocated for FDD technologies, with the major exception of the China and Japan. Technically, the U.S. allows both, but the licensing configuration makes it tough to roll out FDD unless you want to mix BRS and EBS.

In most countries, they follow the preferred ITU Option (option 1), which is set up as follows:

• 2495-2500 MHz is a guard band for ISM, MSS, and BAS
• 2500-2570 / 2620-2690 MHz is paired for FDD operation (3GPP band 7)
• 2570-2620 MHz is allocated for TDD operation (3GPP band 38, but band 41 service can run here too)
• Internal guards at 2570-2575 MHz and 2615-2620 MHz are recommended to prevent interference

This configuration is known as the "IMT Extension" configuration, as it was originally designated for high capacity 3G networks (which is why you can deploy UMTS WCDMA on it). But it is now known as the "IMT Advanced" band, where high capacity 4G networks are to be deployed.

Most countries following Option 1 do not bother with allocating the TDD frequencies. In CEPT countries, TDD frequencies are allocated because CEPT recommends it. CITEL (for the Americas) and APT (for Asia and Oceania) do not make the same recommendation, though they do recommend Option 1 configuration.

The U.S., China, and Japan technically follow Option 3, which permits mixed FDD and TDD throughout the band, and only mandates a 1MHz guard between ISM/MSS/TLPS/BAS and the 2.6GHz band, so instead of starting at 2495MHz, it starts at 2496MHz (which is why there have been issues launching LTE service on the BRS 1 block). However, China and Japan have set up their allocations and regulatory environment so that significant Band 7 allocations are still possible (though they haven't been done yet). The U.S.' confusingly split regulatory environment makes it difficult (though not impossible) to launch FDD service there.

Now, that being said, while 2.6GHz is recommended worldwide under Option 1, 2.3GHz (2300-2400 MHz) is recommended as an all-TDD band. CITEL, CEPT, and APT all recommend 2.3GHz for TDD service, which is designated as Band 40 for LTE. This is live all over Asia and Africa. Latin America and Europe are starting Band 40 deployments now. The U.S. is the only country where it is FDD only, and only a small subset of the band has been allocated for mobile services. That mainly has to do with Sirius XM doing things it shouldn't be doing with its SDARS frequencies (which sit in part of that band) and being permitted to do so. Consequently, WCS is currently set up as an FDD band, but with some work, it could be converted into a TDD band.

Experienced any gmo lte 1900 sites?

Quite a few between Norwalk and Rochester. They had surprisingly decent range, but capacity was lower than full-build sites.

It's been interesting using T-Mo the last few days, seems like B4 is blanketed here, have yet to run across a dead zone.

Personally, I've had a similarly good experience in Norwalk, Stamford, and Rochester. Even traveling between Norwalk and Rochester was quite smooth, as I had native access throughout nearly all of my trip up to Rochester and back down to Norwalk last week.

T-Mobile's primary LTE band is B4 AWS, correct? And that's deployed in NYC in a 15x15 FDD configuration? 

Yes.

I would reckon reuse factor of 7, which leaves an extra channel for a random 4 sector site?

 

Would be my best guess.

3/4/6 sector sites are common in Latin America, Europe, and Asia, which is where the higher minimum carriers are needed. I believe here in the U.S., most are 3 sector only, so you'd just chop off one GSM carrier (21 instead of 22).

Not even one gsm carrier? Seems extreme

 

 

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You can use less, of course. However, that is unacceptable for dense markets like New York.

AFAIK, the SS model (FCCID: PY3AC779SS / AirCard 779S-100) is LTE-only in order to cut costs for regional operators and Sprint.

The S model (FCCID: PY3AC779S / AirCard 779S-200) is GSM+WCDMA+LTE for North America.

So in NYC, where they only have 10fdd pcs, TMO could still have Hspa 42 and 12 gsm carriers (200khz per carrier)

 

 

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Minimum accepted GSM allocation for reuse is 4.4MHz FDD (22 GSM carriers). On 10MHz FDD, even with 7.6MHz FDD for DC-HSPA+, you don't have enough for GSM.

What about lte 1700 or 1900 on any carrier?

And Hspa 1900, CDMA 19001x, evdo. Thanks

 

 

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Where I used to live, these were the ranges I saw:

• LTE 700 around 50 miles (AT&T)
• LTE 750 around 45 miles (Verizon)
• AWS LTE around 20 miles (Verizon)
• LTE 1900 around 12 miles (Sprint)
• WCDMA 850 around 50 miles (AT&T)
• AWS WCDMA around 18 miles (T-Mobile)
• WCDMA 1900 around 25 miles (T-Mobile)
• CDMA 1900 around 20 miles (Verizon)
• CDMA 850 around 50 miles (C Spire)