Conan Kudo

I suppose it depends on the quality of implementation. In my own opinion, I feel that IMS Voice provides a superior voice call experience to all other systems, but CDMA voice (WCDMA and CDMA2000 1X) offer a superior voice experience to GSM, D-AMPS, and iDEN.

If ALU is good enough for Verizon's small cells, it should be good enough for Sprint

 

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/verizon-taps-alcatel-lucent-ericsson-lte-small-cells/2013-05-21

What isn't mentioned is that Verizon's choice of vendors was pre-selected back when they began the LTE deployment three years ago. They were quietly talking about it at Mobile World Congress, as well. Last year was when Verizon became a loud proponent of small cells, and noted that it worked with Ericsson and ALU since mid-2011 on the HetNet stuff.

Wouldn't it be a good strategic move to give it some business to keep it alive and keep competition going?

 

And are you an engineer? How do you know that ALU equipment "isn't that great"?

Sure, it would be a good move to give it business, if it wasn't already so close to folding. It was in better shape when Sprint negotiated the agreement for Network Vision, but that is no longer the case. As for the feature set, Alcatel-Lucent DBSes lag behind Ericsson and Samsung in terms of 3GPP features supported in Release 9 (not even counting Release 10, since only one of the three vendors actually has a substantial amount of Release 10 features implemented).

What about Alcatel-Lucent?

No guarantee that Alcatel-Lucent would be around for too much longer (it's dangerously close to folding). Plus, ALU equipment isn't that great, either.

So Charlie Ergen is still wheeling and dealing for more spectrum.  

 

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-20/ergen-said-to-bid-2-billion-for-lightsquared-wireless-spectrum.html?cmpid=yhoo

 

 

Is this a plan B for when Sprint approves the SoftBank deal?

This is more like Plan C. Sprint acquisition is Plan B. Clearwire acquisition is Plan A.

"However, I think I would also have long term plans for the entire footprint and would be telling everyone about that."

That's another thing that worries me. TMUS isn't saying anything about LTE expansion AFTER 200 million. They keep crowing how they're investing $4bil but $3bil is coming from AT&T breakup fee

http://arstechnica.c...4g-lte-network/

and the "rest" is coming from selling their towers to Crown Castle

http://www.fiercewir...-24b/2012-09-28

 

AT&T to the rescue!

There was information distributed to investors at the Capital Markets Day for Deutsche Telekom in December.

Essentially, T-Mobile is steadily investing in network upgrades and expansions through 2015. However, these numbers are conservative, and likely have been raised already.

I know that inveterate handset switchers and cheapskates hate Sprint's insular device policy. But, honestly, with the number of largely proprietary bands/classes in which Sprint is operating, the restrictive policy makes sense.

 

If users could bring in outside W-CDMA 1900 handsets, they would lack CDMA1X 800. Or even if Sprint were running W-CDMA 800, outside devices would assuredly lack that band. So, BYOD users would get a lesser Sprint experience, and that would do nothing to improve the perception of Sprint's network.

 

AJ

Even Virgin and Boost phones? Are you telling me that Sprint couldn't allow those?

When you consider all the phones active on the Sprint network, the amount that could be used on a new Sprint WCDMA network is a very low percentage. And if they started producing them in the next 6 months to a year that way, then it's completely useless. Sprint will have nationwide LTE near the end of that time. Previous UMTS standards offer no benefit over LTE except voice. And Sprint will not abandon 1x for years.

 

A simple network architecture that has a simplified part list is less expensive and easier to manage. Kind of like how Southwest Airlines uses only 737's. Yes, if SWA purchased some smaller and larger jets, they would be a better fit for some routes and better for some customers. However, it would not be better for the airline. Especially if the planes being bought are the previous model. It just doesn't make sense.

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

That is currently true. However, a Sprint WCDMA network would have a number of current restrictions removed from it.

One major restriction is that Sprint-branded phones are the only phones allowed. No Virgin Mobile phones, no Boost Mobile phones, no non-Sprint (but compatible) CDMA phones, and no compatible CDMA/LTE phones. That goes away with Sprint PCS WCDMA.

The sheer size of the PCS WCDMA ecosystem is monumental. Because of early influence by deployments in the Americas, Europe and Asia are saturated with tri-band WCDMA phones that do WCDMA 900/1900/2100. There's also Latin America, who has largely converted PCS CDMA2000 to WCDMA, or at least done the overlay and stopped selling CDMA phones. Canada has done something similar, in order to get roaming revenue for the Olympics and simplify the LTE deployment architecture.

There's also inbound roaming. Right now, AT&T has a monopoly on PCS WCDMA roaming. And AT&T's rates are ridiculous. It was the same in Canada (with Rogers) until the Bell+Telus WCDMA network came online. Roaming rates have come down there.

Regarding this whole discussion about Sprint switching to UMTS, I do agree that this is a few years too late -- LTE *is* the evolution of UMTS, so putting the money into releasing UMTS, and swapping phones would be like blowing money...

It wouldn't actually require replacing large numbers of phones, since the only phone released in recent years that doesn't support UMTS and doesn't support ESMR CDMA is the iPhone 4. That phone will get phased out anyway, as they upgrade to newer models.

Rev B has been discussed over and over, it would require a ton of resources that are better spent on NV/LTE.

Not to mention, stringing three Ev-DO Rev B carriers together is less efficient than a single UMTS 1900 carrier that offers Category 14 (21.1Mbps) downlink and category 7 (11.1Mbps) uplink and one (short-term) Ev-DO Rev A carrier for backward compatibility.

This is a rather interesting read though, admittedly I cannot vouch for the veracity of it's contents:

 

http://denbeste.nu/c.../10/GSM3G.shtml

I actually agree with him, too. Back in the 90s, I was in the CDMA camp (which A.J. may not believe). The cdmaOne and CDMA2000 systems were by far technically superior to the GSM camp. No one likes Ericsson front-line people that much. They're like Cisco in that sense. However, I think that the 3GPP has caught up and surpassed them now.

And yes, I'm also aware of the dark dealings behind the cover that led to the GSM domination. And apparently, his vicious wishes have come true about the EU, too.

This is going way off topic, and we can move it to another thread if necessary.

 

As Twitter has long since grown beyond an SMS access and delivery system, is it time to increase the 140 character restriction and break some SMS compatibility? Or do emerging markets still rely on SMS for Twitter?

 

AJ

Quite a few do. Off the top of my head, I believe India, Afghanistan, Iraq, and most of Africa's mobile users post tweets through SMS. Interestingly enough, Twitter counts multi-byte characters as a single character, which can cause issues for CJK and Indic languages being written through SMS on Twitter (since SMS counts multi-byte characters as a set of multiple single-byte characters).

...all in 140 or fewer characters.

 

 

AJ

This is hard. I cringe every time I have to make a choice on how to butcher English to make it all fit...

There's no denying that swappable SIMs is nice. Nor is there denying that H+/DC-H+ are fast networks. But remember that T-Mobile had to obtain AWS spectrum before it could roll out WCDMA, because their PCS was full of GSM. In areas where Sprint only has 10MHz of PCS A-F, it would have been impossible to run WCDMA and CDMA side by side, necessitating purchases of new spectrum, band class changes, and the like. Not good.

Well, that's not really as much of an issue anymore. Sprint has all that ESMR for CDMA 1X-Advanced and LTE. ESMR, PCS A-F, PCS G, and soon PCS H will give Sprint plenty of room.

UPDATE: Actually reading a bit into Cingular/McCaw Wireless it seems that AT&T Wireless (and later AT&T Mobility under SBC) was a bit of a hodgepodge network). So I am assuming Verizon/Sprint's singular technology path and more organically grown networks rather than merger/acquisitions are why AT&T is much farther behind?

This is pretty much the case for everyone. T-Mobile, Sprint, and Verizon Wireless have largely had simpler M&A based expansions. AT&T's has been a mess over the years, with a multitude of acquisitions across a wide range of technologies and frequencies. AT&T's network is such a mess internally that its own engineers dislike dealing with some of the internal bridging done to make everything work. That's why its quality is lower than others, even other GSM/UMTS operators across the globe. AT&T is massively due for a network rebuild, but ironically it can't afford that. The CapEx for AT&T to rebuild its entire network would be ridiculous.

GSM became the standard in Europe because it was decided by the legislators over there. GSM was a Nokia technology, versus CDMA which was Qualcomm (American). That's why GSM took off.

GSM was also actually developed slightly before Qualcomm's cdmaOne was. The EU decided to unify on the GSM system for digital because of the massive mess of analog systems deployed throughout Europe. As for 3G onward, UMTS uses W-CDMA, which incorporates quite a bit of Qualcomm's IP. However, unlike the cdmaOne and CDMA2000 systems, Qualcomm was forced to sign FRAND agreements to have the technology incorporated. That's why the ecosystem is more "democratic" with more players and more interesting work going on.

So regarding why CDMA & W-CDMA got their respective market shares, is CDMA more expensive equipment wise? It seems if it gives better signal and range and requires a lot less spectrum wouldn't more countries want that? I mean had more gone that route Rev C would have made more sense so its not just a strait speed problem. What was the crippling blow to CDMA that it ended up being used less, I was reading about UMB and it seemed pretty cool. I wonder what a Sprint/Verizon network on that would have been like?

CDMA is more expensive because there are fewer players in the market for key inputs. For basebands, there is only Qualcomm and (ugh) VIA Telecom. For many years, only Alcatel-Lucent, ZTE, Huawei, and Nortel Networks offered infrastructure equipment. For the US and European markets, Alcatel-Lucent and Nortel flourished, while ZTE and Huawei mainly developed for Asian markets.

Since Europe and Asia used technology-specific licensing, most countries were barred from using CDMA systems on standard frequencies. Europe primarily uses CDMA on 450MHz for Wireless Local Loop or rural broadband services after NMT (Nordic Mobile Telephone, one of many analog cellular systems developed for Europe) systems were decommissioned. The equipment is not cheap because there are very few that make equipment on that band.

CDMA on 850MHz (3GPP2 BC0, to be clear) did spread quite a bit throughout the Americas, China, India, Japan and Korea (J-CDMA, later OMA CDMA), and Oceania. However, the economic scale of CDMA2000 was crushed over time as UMTS networks grew in number from 2004 to 2009. Latin America decided to migrate in full force a couple of years ago, and one of the last large networks was just shut off this year. Oceania did the same, and now the major CDMA networks actively sold and utilized are Europe 450MHz networks (which will upgrade to LTE in three years), and US networks.

Which data card? I have the Rocket 3 and have never seen more than 3.5 Mbps up.

It wasn't a T-Mobile branded data card. It was a white label data card (no branding on it, but curiously pentaband, nevertheless) that a friend of mine brought from Eastern Europe to try. I don't have it anymore because he went back for the month.

I thought WiMax in EBS/BRS was the fact that only WiMax supported the TD band pattern. LTE wasn't "approved" for TD usage, so Sprint/Clear HAD to go WiMax to meet the FCC build out requirements.

This. LTE TDD was simply not ready by the time that Sprint was required to have service up on BRS+EBS. WiMAX was a suitable TDD 3G system to brand as 4G for Sprint's purposes.

Fast forward to now. LTE has a theoretical capacity of around 37 Mbps per 5 MHz (I've seen 35 Mbps in real world environments) on the downlink and 14 Mbps per 5 Mhz (I've seen 13.5) on uploads. By contrast, HSPA+ has 21/5.76 Mbps of capacity in the same spectrum...and I've only ever seen about 14.4 Mbps on a single H+ carrier (28.8 Mbps on DC-H+). Granted, EvDO rA's theoretical capacity in the same 5 MHz is 12.4/7.2 (realistically you're getting 2.7 Mbps down, 1.2 Mbps up per channel, for 10.8 / 4.8). But at least there you don't have to wall off an entire 5x5 swath of spectrum for a single technology...a 5x5 that could be pushing a LOT more bits with LTE.

Technically, the T-Mobile HSPA+42 network is Category 24 DL and Category 7 UL. The HSPA+21 network is is Category 14 DL and Category 7 UL. The Category 7 UL means theoretical uplink data rates of 11Mbps. While most phones currently only support Category 6 UL, Category 7 UL is coming soon to most phones. I've used a data card that supported Cat 24 / Cat 7 on T-Mobile's network. The transfer rates are roughly equivalent of what I normally experience on LTE (I'm in 5MHz FDD LTE market) and the latencies are slightly better on average (excepting this last week where things have gone kind of weird).

Well, good, I thought that my joke had fallen flat. I was going to try this one next:

 

Miss Residency? Who the heck is that? The young, pretty MD at the hospital?

 

AJ

Ehh....

 

"Oh, there she is, Miss Residency..."

 

Wait a minute, I think she is drunk.

 

AJ

More like Crown Royal...

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

I'm sure you'd do very well..

I like maroon... just of a different variety. Saluki maroon.

Of course you do....

I've been called a maroon. Does that qualify me for Miss residency?

 

Robert via Nexus 7 with Tapatalk HD

Perhaps... It's pretty awesome here, anyway! Well... Except in July. The weather sucks in July.

I though Sprint excluded LINC's spectrum from there request to the 3GPP?

SouthernLINC operates roughly on the range 813.5 - 818.0 MHz/858.5 - 863 MHz. SouthernLINC can choose to use 3GPP band 26 or 3GPP band 27 for LTE equipment operating in its frequencies.

Wouldn't they have to get purpose-built devices to run the unique frequencies? Hell, they are holding onto iDen tightly because it works for their systems.

 

I do admit I know very little about them though.

SouthernLINC will be able to take advantage of the 3GPP approval of band 26, just like Sprint can. They'll be fine. SouthernLINC also works rather closely with NII Holdings (who does business as Nextel International). They'll work in lockstep toward LTE.

I think that's all they have to work with.

If they want to deploy LTE exclusively for a modern PTT system, then they can do it. But, I think SouthernLINC wants people to use iDEN less in some markets before they can begin testing it.

The problem is that T-Mobile does not have even remotely sufficient W-CDMA coverage in the Southeast to match SouthernLINC's iDEN footprint. Not to mention, SouthernLINC has scant spectrum to deploy LTE 800.

 

AJ

No one said that SouthernLINC has to convert the whole system at once. It's still doable, just tricky. Doesn't SouthernLINC have at least 1.4MHz FDD for iDEN across its footprint?

I'd prefer Sprint buying all of the SoLinc assets and moving the current customers to an implementation of PTToLTE.

Nah. That's probably not a good idea. Besides, I wouldn't be surprised if SouthernLINC is doing this as a transitionary measure. After all, SouthernLINC doesn't have another network to fall back to while shutting down iDEN. Now, SouthernLINC can move customers to PTT over UMTS and start working on an LTE-based PTT network.