Conan Kudo

The Samsung Galaxy Light does not have 700MHz Band 12. It supports LTE bands 17 and 4. Most likely, the update erased the cache of local sites in your area, updated the cell selection algorithm, and coincided with a few newly upgraded sites that went live, resulting in better connection quality. The only Band 12 LTE devices T-Mobile sells today are: Samsung Galaxy Avant Samsung Galaxy Tab 4 8.0 It is expected that a variant of the Sony Xperia Z3 will have it, and perhaps the Samsung Galaxy Note 4. The jury is out on whether or not the next iPhone will have it, as the previous iPhone didn't have it even though US Cellular signed on with Apple at the beginning of that year.

Upgrades to coaxial or fiber-based connections are generally in progress from the moment a site is identified for upgrade. In the event that neither type is available, T-Mobile will construct a point-to-point microwave link to its closest coaxial/fiber node. That being said, there are circumstances where upgrading the backhaul takes a ridiculously long time. For example, in Dothan, AL, T-Mobile had DC-HSPA+ online with only 3xTDM/T1 for about two years while it waited for CenturyLink (the only fiber provider in the area) to actually pump up fiber capacity and distribution to reach T-Mobile's sites. Of course, it wasn't supposed to take two years, but this is CenturyLink, after all. This was finally resolved last year, and T-Mobile quickly switched on LTE afterward.

Generally, T-Mobile is very good about rolling out backhaul to sites. They won't turn on LTE unless backhaul is good enough (though they will turn on UMTS regardless, because of the technological benefits). It doesn't take too long for T-Mobile to get backhaul upgraded to sites that have been modernized.

It's very well known that T-Mobile is rolling out new 2G/3G/4G multimode systems that support GSM/GPRS/EDGE, UMTS/HSPA+, and LTE simultaneously.

Done. I may not like what Sprint has been doing, but I'm hopeful this new CEO can get things on the right track...

I'm glad you're not running T-Mobile. Selling to Dish would be stupid. First of all, 700MHz E block is pretty much useless, since it is unpaired. A block plus E block doesn't equal 24MHz, it equals 18MHz. Both 700MHz D and E blocks are unpaired, so at best, they could be used for SDL. However, SDL isn't very useful if your customer base is moving toward as much uploading as they are downloading (as Neville Ray has said a few times before). Dish's video business is slowly declining, but the declines have been accelerating every quarter. The costs of gaining access to content are huge, and they would impair the business significantly for years to come. You don't need to "own" media to make a media play. There are smarter ways to do it that don't impair the business. Partnerships, for example, are what permit T-Mobile TV to not drain the business dry of its money in content acquisition. It's someone else's problem.

Open plan

8T8R, however, is not a software upgrade. It requires replacing the entire radio head (including RRHs) to implement. Same goes for the weird 4T2R radios it is now installing to replace the previous 2T2R radios it had in place for FDD bands. Don't make the mistake that LTE-Advanced features are all accessible through software upgrades. Less than half are. The focus of Releases 10-13 are on features that require brand new hardware to function, because they modify critical behaviors or change the air interface in some critical manner. Most of the "software fixes" from Release 10 are focused on the core network (specifically IMS and IPX interfaces and functionality), so they won't affect the RAN much. That's the reason why T-Mobile received custom gear from Ericsson to be Release 10 compliant, and why NSN gear is Release 10 compliant as well. It's the same reason for AT&T and Verizon having to replace their gear again in order to move up from Release 8, and why Ericsson and ALU market upgrades to Release 10 will be far more painful than in Samsung markets. Release 9 was mostly software oriented fixes, so Sprint received Release 8 gear with patches to implement some relevant Release 9 improvements. Release 10 will require new hardware.

I specifically did not mention technologies. He asked about coverage, with no technological qualifiers. In terms of raw coverage, T-Mobile's native network is larger. There are some areas Sprint covers that T-Mobile does not, but T-Mobile has much more geography and population covered than Sprint, overall.

*sighs* Mou... As far as T-Mobile sites that improve Sprint coverage, there's a significant amount of them that would. The majority of Sprint sites are co-located with T-Mobile or too close to T-Mobile sites to be of any use, but there are a significant number of T-Mobile sites (~20K or so) that exist in areas that Sprint has much thinner to no coverage. These extra sites are the reason why T-Mobile's network is technically "bigger" than Sprint's, in terms of overall coverage (285-290 million people covered under T-Mobile's network vs 260 million people covered under Sprint's network).