Conan Kudo

State Farm

I'm not sure if T-Mobile would be the perfect partner. Remember Sprint has build it's network with the option to host other companies on their backbone and it could be more difficult for T-mobile to do the same at this point in time

There's nothing in T-Mobile's network that would make it anymore difficult than it would be for Sprint. Nokia and Ericsson gear are designed for network sharing and hosting models, since they are common in Europe. All that is required is support for the frequencies in the RRH, which merely requires swapping out the RRHs for wider band ones that cover T-Mobile+DISH rather than just T-Mobile alone. MOCN also enables a multi-core network architecture to connect two independent core networks to a single radio network and use it as if it's two networks.

Sprint's network supports these techniques on the LTE side, of course. But T-Mobile's network is capable of it throughout all radio access interfaces, which would grant Dish support for existing and older handsets, as well.

You're probably right that it won't ever be a majority or the people or even a plurality of people. But I consider this to be more about the 80/20 rule initially. 80% of the capacity will be used by 20% of the people. And don't count out IoT stuff. That covers quite a large variety of applications, such as security cameras, car dash cameras, meter tracking, etc. Again, it's not just regular people, it's also corporate/business stuff, too.

Downlink data demand wasn't just regular people either. It was also driven by business needs and all kinds of other factors in play. IoT-style stuff will do to uplink what iPhone did for downlink.

I definitely agree with you on this. The biggest impairment to this is going to be data caps. But then again, this is also true for downlink usage growth, too.

Of course I understand that uplink is underutilized today, I just don't believe it'll remain that way for very long. If you believe it has to be in the next generation of wireless networks, then you're saying it'll happen at the end of the decade, which is only five years away.

I'm certainly looking forward to seeing improvements come my way... And of course, I'm always happy that there's more players sucking away at Verizon.

 

In a FDD scenario, downlink is way more heavily used than uplink. 

 

Neal thinks that the downlink heavy paradigm is going to shift.  He believes that the uplink will become just as utilized.  I presume that is through various sorts of self broadcasting -- probably typical Millennial "Look at me, everything I see and do is special" vanity bullshit.  That is not a reflection on Neal, but on Millennials in general. 

 

AJ

 

 

When you consider how wireless data is used, it's hard to imagine uplink and downlink ever getting parity in usage.  If anything the trend has gotten worse since demand of video streaming has gone up, tipping the scales even further.  Maybe one day, people will be streaming up as much as they stream down.  But that is not forseeable anytime soon.

 

And given this is how the wireless world is with greater downlink demand than uplink, things like TDD LTE and aggregating more LTE downlink to fewer uplink assignments will result in greater efficiency of spectrum.  And if one day the tables should turn and uplink starts to increase demand, well, we can address that.  And TDD-LTE can do that easily.

I still believe that equalization of upstream and downstream usage is coming very quickly, as UGC further democratizes through affordable mobile devices with better and better camera systems.

In fact, we're starting to see startups form to tackle how to make streaming video easier on mobile devices. For example, an app called Meerkat launched only a few weeks ago. Granted, it's only for iOS now, but I envision it coming to Android very soon. Other players in the live streaming market, such as TwitchTV, Livestream, UStreamTV, and (of course!) YouTube Live/Hangouts on Air will further improve and spread. "[V]anity bullshit" or not, it's foolish to ignore the data demand that can come from that.

Right now, it's relatively difficult and expensive to produce content in a mobile fashion. But it's very clear that it will change, and when it does, it'll be the second data explosion. No one expects the data explosion!

There's also other uplink-dominant applications, such as machine type communication (MTC), commonly known as the Internet of Things (which I still think is a stupid moniker). While these are low-bandwidth in many applications, several are high bandwidth and all require a high amount of uplink capacity. I say this as someone who has worked on such applications before and knows how fast that particular segment is growing.

While it is true that LTE TDD is certainly capable of uplink-dominated configurations, it remains to have deficiencies in parity configurations. That said, there are certainly ways to try to work around this problem (such as configuring a carrier in uplink dominant mode and another in downlink dominant, and switching carriers based on your usage model), but at the end of the day, either FDD or full duplex wireless will be needed to maximize efficiency.

Keep in mind that very few people expected the first data explosion that occurred in 2008 after the iPhone 3G launched. The signs were certainly there before that, but it was easy enough to ignore. This time around, I hope people don't miss the signs for when uplink becomes more important.

So, my last word on this is that you shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch. You might get an interesting surprise...

I didn't know that they could pick an area of a larger license, I thought it was as it was sold. This makes sense given their actual service area's, but does beg the question... who has the other parts of the licenses?  Do the spectrum holding companies that you have listed lease the license to other companies, or are they leasing it from someone else to provide service in the rural areas that other companies have under-served? 

 

And I am guessing that the same thing is happening with the AWS licenses that cover a huge percentage of the country on the map... they probably only own/use the spectrum in the Midwest where they have service.  This could make the spectrum gained from swapping much less valuable.  

 

Personally I know that there are spots where purchasing USCC would benefit me, and it would make sprint a DOMINANT force in the midwest... but I can see that it might not be financially better then an organic expansion in the areas sprint sees as growth opportunities. 

The licenses are fragmented. The FCC permits disaggregation and partitioning, which can be used to split it in the frequency domain, the geographical domain, or both. In this case, the splits occurred in both frequency and geographical space. You can see the other licenses in the MTA if you go to the "Define View" pull-down menu and select "Other Licenses in Market" and click "GO".

You have to go by call sign within an MTA. He needs to increase his granularity because of the severe disaggregation and fragmentation in the PCS band.

He's already doing that, to an extent. He can only present what the License View data gives him. And he has been attempting to use the ULS as the data source instead, but the awkward and inconsistent data format makes it very difficult, so he hasn't switched over.

Besides, it wasn't even hard to find the licenses. Clicking on an area, then clicking on the operator name, then clicking on "Market" in the ULS tab presents you with the information you seek.

Did no one notice the hyperlinked operator names and not click on them?

I like Kevin Fitchard, but gee, I wonder which is his primary wireless provider.

 

 

#TechPressBias

 

AJ

Considering three out of four national LTE networks (and many smaller networks) use AWS frequencies in a fairly significant manner for LTE, that really doesn't say much.

The site shows PCS A block. 

The FCC License View data does not provide geographic disaggregation data (the Spectrum Dashboard uses a different data source that is too infrequently updated to be useful), so you must access the ULS by clicking on the hyperlink to US Cellular's license. The ULS page will provide a tab showing what markets they have.

In the Pittsburgh MTA, this license indicates USCC (through Hardy Cellular Telephone) has only frequencies in West Virginian parts of the MTA.

In the Boston MTA, this license indicates USCC (through Maine RSA #1) has frequencies in the Portland, ME area. Also in the MTA, this license indicates USCC (through NH #1 Rural Cellular) has frequencies in the Lebanon, NH area.

In the Washington MTA, this license indicates USCC (through USCOC of Cumberland) has frequencies for the Cumberland, MD area.

We seem to rehash this revisionist history fantasy every few months.  Maybe we are just wireless industry masturbators.  Okay, well, lather up and go to town.

 

If given a choice, would Sprint have been better off now with Nextel and its nationwide portfolio of SMR 800 MHz spectrum plus substantial contributions of BRS/EBS 2600 MHz spectrum or with Alltel and its rural/select major market collection of Cellular 850 MHz spectrum?

 

And do not say both Nextel and Alltel -- because it probably could not have been done.  The choice is exclusive.

 

AJ

Eww on the imagery.

In any case... As they say: hindsight's a bitch.

Knowing what we know now, Alltel would have been a better choice for a couple of reasons: the acquisition of that network would have cut Verizon off at the knees, and given them the profits and power to keep buying smaller companies to put together a national 850MHz footprint, as Verizon has done. Of course, we'd be sitting here cheering for Verizon instead of Sprint now, because Sprint would have become the duopolist along with AT&T instead of Verizon.

While it's true Nextel provided a truly national ESMR footprint that extends all the way to the territories, and granted Sprint a similarly national PCS G block footprint, the ever-increasing costs and amount of time involved in realizing the full benefits of that transaction make me believe that it wasn't worth it.

That said, the choice was made and Sprint is finally starting to realize the benefits of the Nextel acquisition. The PCS G footprint was cleaned up and ready to go soon after issuance (some UPCS work to free up the uplink, and BAS relocation on the downlink). The ESMR footprint is finally being realized, many years after the original projected transition completion date. We're nearing that pot of gold for Sprint.

Who cares?  Sprint has BRS/EBS spectrum out the wazoo.  If Sprint wants to pursue this band 25 PCC + band 41 SCC carrier aggregation combo, it can leave the 3x band 41 carrier aggregation alone and dedicate a separate band 41 carrier to the process.

 

Or does that bother you, Neal?  Is that poor spectrum management?  Is that an unfair advantage for Sprint?

 

AJ

I care for a couple of reasons:

1. Sprint may not have 2.6GHz spectrum out of the wazoo forever. Sprint is considering the sale of some of its spectrum. While I personally do not believe anyone would be willing to buy Clearwire leases for a number of reasons and Sprint may wind up selling BRS licenses, it could wind up being a mix of both.
2. It bothers me on a technical level because carrier aggregation as it is done now doesn't really improve capacity. As users become impressed with Sprint's speeds due to CA, the pressure on the uplink spectrum available to support users will increase over time. It's not even just about throughput on uplink, but also the raw resources to support those connections. Ordinarily, this is rather poor spectrum management, but commercial demands and excessive supply of 2.6GHz means that this matters less than it normally would. Poor spectrum management could come to bite them later on, either politically or technically.

Sprint is free to use as much spectrum as the FCC allows them to have. I certainly want them to use what they have. Personally, I don't like that Sprint is effectively monopolizing 2.6GHz (just like I don't like the same situation with AT&T on 2.3GHz), but that's irrelevant in this case. At the end of the day, as long as Sprint manages to provide a decent experience across the board using its spectrum and has relatively pro-consumer policies, then the rest of it doesn't really matter, now does it?

And Sprint can do the same.

Right, but the cost is that the TDD carrier being aggregated can never be used to provide uplink, since the frames are blanked out on uplink time.

When an AT&T device uses B29 downlink, what does it use for uplink?

Either band 4 or band 2 uplink spectrum, depending on what AT&T has decided to set up for aggregation with B29. Band 29 is a very special case for carrier aggregation, as the spectrum resources don't get afflicted by a lock that renders them unusable for devices lacking in CA with B29.

But isn't this what AT&T is doing with Band 29?  And also, isn't AT&T Band 29 not paired exclusively with the uplink?

 

Also, Sprint says that they technology of what they are now planning is not supported by LTE releases now.  But would not be supported until future LTE releases after proof of concept, lab trials and perhaps even the FIT level are complete.  So you cannot hold future technology being worked on hard and fast to current LTE release limitations.

With the way current carrier aggregation works, the "lock" on spectrum is only on the downlink side. Band 29 lacks uplink spectrum of its own, so there's no "dangling spectrum" as a result of doing CA.

Are you saying that PCC/SCC assignment can be switched as seamlessly as a standard band-to-band handover? If so, would it be feasible to also implement the same sort of configuration where B25 downlink is paired with B26 uplink for the purpose of relieving the burden on the B26 downlink, of course done only when B25 signal is weak?

 

I'm curious how complicated such a setup might get in Samsung markets where the second PCS carrier is often noticeably stronger (~4-5 dB) than the original G block one. That may confuse whatever software is responsible for the PCC/SCC switch. Upgrading B25 to 4T4R may be the simpler and perhaps superior solution.

He's saying it, but unfortunately it does not work that way. I wish it did, because that would make CA so much more useful.

There are two annoying conditions about carrier aggregation:

• Downlink-only aggregation introduces exclusive locks on spectrum, eliminating use for devices lacking CA support by creating dangling spectrum
  • This can be somewhat alleviated if variable/flexible duplex becomes a thing, allowing usage of dangling uplink spectrum to be used with other downlink channels. You'd still be uplink-bound for capacity, since downlink CA is not designed to improve capacity (or spectral efficiency), just throughput for existing users. A two-for-one allocation means that you'd quickly run out of downlink channels to allocate for dangling uplink channels, too.
  • Alternatively, densification can help by having alternating sectors/cells configured without CA support to allow full carrier usage by non CA devices.
• When leaving aggregation areas, the device must reset the connection to reallocate resources properly.
  • To be fair, this usually happens so quickly that most don't notice it. It is a problem if you're streaming something, though.

Not a 100% correct characterization: it will aggregate b41 with b25 which effectively becomes b41-DL only when b41 uplink fails.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Also not true. In FDD+TDD aggregation, uplink time will be filled with blank frames on the TDD channel, ensuring that the uplink isn't used. There's also no real easy way to fix this and enable full FDD+TDD aggregation without introducing a lot of complexity.

Sprint quite possibly made this move to bring contract expiration, upgrade eligibility, and device unlocking policy all into sync.

It's a good jumping off point for transitioning customers away from the subsidy model if Sprint elects to do so, too.

Yet Sprint is exclusively using intra-band aggregation for band 41, so it's not outside the realm of possibility.

Intra-band is remarkably easy to do with TDD compared to inter-band, due to the additional complexity of potential temporal issues and differing propagation making it harder to do inter-band aggregation (which isn't really as much of an issue with FDD because it's a "dumber" airlink compared to TDD since it just pumps out all the time on dedicated frequencies for uplink and downlink).

At Deutsche Telekom's 2015 Capital Markets Day event, T-Mobile detailed the full scope of the coverage expansion that is expected to finish this year in the presentation PDF.

I have no idea what you consider reasonable. $42B is not reasonable and I don't care whether they are concentrated in the top 25 or not. Your favorite CEO called it a disaster for consumers. I wonder why? Mark my words, both T-Mobile and Sprint will bid heavily on the 600MHz auction. While both might have some low band spectrum, they want more.

First of all, if you exclude Dish from the equation, then it was about $30 billion. The majority of that was split between AT&T and Verizon. And here's the thing, most markets did not go for the prices of the top 25. For example, NYC went for about $5/MHz/person. Atlanta went for under $3/MHz/person. Then there were markets like Tupelo and Corpus Christi, which went for under $0.50/MHz/person.

At the end of the day, the valuation is based on the trade-off of using more spectrum vs the cost of cell splitting to support the same group of people. In already dense markets, naturally this is a higher cost because it's harder to split cells more. In markets where it's difficult to provision new cells, this is still true. That's reflected in the cost of spectrum.

The FCC has to realize that the huge amounts that were just spent on the AWS-3 auction are going to slow down investment in the industry. The amounts spent are ridiculous and have distorted the economics of spectrum. Even Verizon had to sell assets to be able to afford the spectrum they have just bought. Verizon of the 43% margin . The big monkey wrench is still Dish. Nobody wants to pay the insane prices they're going to want for their spectrum. I believe nobody want to host their spectrum because I believe that Dish is going to want to do it on the cheap. So their only two viable strategies is to spend around $10B to host their spectrum themselves or merge with T-Mobile. I don't think that Sprint wants to deal with Ergen and they definitely don't need his spectrum. 

 

Sprint & T-Mobile have to spend approximately $10B each to secure a 10x10 600MHz slice so where are they going to find the money to do that. Neither one is banking !

If you factor out Dish, then the amount of money spent in the auction is exactly what was predicted on the top end. Dish is the only reason it went up by $11-13 billion (depending on whether the FCC approves Dish's DE bidding credits).

I find it very shocking that people here keep saying that Sprint needs low-band spectrum to be able to roll out nationally. Sprint already has a national ESMR footprint. While it has taken a long time to get there, we have it now. For Sprint, 600MHz isn't really going to help very much, because we already know that low-band spectrum won't change Sprint's plans on deployment and expansion.

As for T-Mobile, I do not believe T-Mobile will bid for 600MHz in areas that they hold 700MHz unless it's cheap. If you take a look at T-Mobile's 700MHz footprint, there aren't a lot of major areas where T-Mobile lacks low-band spectrum. The areas where T-Mobile lacks it today are the same areas that don't get very much bidding, generally. So T-Mobile will not likely have a problem affording the spectrum.

You have to realize that outside of the top 25 markets, the pricing for spectrum was quite low, well within the range of reasonable purchase cost (though there are a few exceptions). For T-Mobile, that's perfect.

In T-Mobile's 10-K filing, the company stated it made $247 million in net profit for the full year, with $101 million of that in the fourth quarter. Excluding MetroPCS decommissioning costs ($299 million), it would have had $546 million in net profit. Also of note, churn for the full year is 1.58% for postpaid, and 4.76% for prepaid. Postpaid ABPU was $60.73. Prepaid ARPU was $37.10. It added 8.3 million subscribers across 2014, 2.1 million of which were in the fourth quarter.

MetroPCS networks in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento were fully decommissioned in the fourth quarter of 2014. So far in 2015, the MetroPCS networks have been fully decommissioned in Atlanta and Detroit metro area. The remainder of the markets (South California, Florida, New York, and the rest of Michigan) will be decommissioned in 2015.

As of the end of 2014, T-Mobile's LTE network covered 265 million POPs, according to the filing. It also released a revised coverage map showing the coverage as of December 31, 2014:

Shoe locker

Sounds like they just switched over the messaging system to Apple for iPhone unlocks to just push a full unlock instead of the janky partial ones.

Thanks for the explanation!

 

So, what about the iPhone 4S and 5S UICCs is different than the latter ones? I think I was getting to that question in a roundabout way. Did Sprint have Apple embed the CDMA auth just inside the phone (completely off of the UICC) or something? Is this why those are likely not unlockable? The Sprint Carrier bundle/firmware on a 4S/5 is looking for primary auth to come internally and the SIM only for international use?

Yes. CDMA authentication on all Sprint LTE phones utilize the E-UIM (embedded user identity module) that is mandated for the CDMA2000 system. To date, the only carrier in the United States that uses the CSIM instead of the E-UIM is Verizon Wireless, and that's only for 4G devices. Non-4G devices still use the E-UIM, as they aren't intended to be portable. However, like Sprint, Verizon's CSIM registration is tied to the IMEI+MEID whitelist, so it's functionally useless for portability.

Sprint UICCs (SIM cards) in iPhone 4S and up contain only a USIM program. The variant used in the iPhone 5 and up have the USIM program updated to connect to its LTE network.

Who knows.  Market forces from customers raising cane?  Apple pushing Sprint?  (Too many people complained to Apple?)

 

For those who are deep in the know about the differences between the old USIMs and the CSIMs - were the USIMs more of a hack to get CDMA working or something and they couldn't unlock them domestically because the Sprint USIM was the only way register properly on CDMA (and messed with domestic SIM usage)?  What makes USIM devices harder to unlock than CSIM ones?  As I recall, Sprint used a USIM in their iPhone 5, and VZW used a CSIM.  

 

At this point, only Sprint and Apple know, I guess.

USIM is required on UICCs for UMTS systems (WCDMA, TD-SCDMA, TD-WCDMA, and LTE). It also provides interfaces for authenticating GSM. CSIM is an optional program for UICCs that enables authentication on CDMA2000 systems.

A third one, ISIM, is required on UICCs for authentication with IMS subsystem on UMTS systems.

Sprint's UICCs lack the ISIM program today. Most of the UICCs also lack the CSIM program, too.