Conan Kudo

I think Sprint should decommission them and replace them with Network Vision sites. The whole point of Network Vision is the simplify Sprint's network architecture, and this would just complicate things. Not to mention, I believe that historically Clearwire hasn't done a great job placing WiMAX sites in appropriate locations, anyway.

From everything that I have seen, T-Mobile's "UNcarrier" strategy offers both postpaid and prepaid options on most/all plans.

 

AJ

There are still specific prepaid options, but the major "UNcarrier" stuff is the dramatic simplification of the postpaid plan system. For the bulk of the time that DT's mobile brand has been operating in the USA, it has had a dizzying array of options to choose from. The result was very confused customers who didn't know what to get. Examples include Even More and Even More Plus, the Classic/Value split, and so on.

The hope is that the simplification will reduce administrative costs and boost revenue. Early indicators seem to bear fruit, but we'll wait and see.

Can you point me to some of these PCS 1900 MHz licenses? I will check them out. However, unless they were newly awarded within the last five years, their five year benchmarks should already have been met, probably long ago. AJ

I think there are some of the north central US states that have active PCS licenses with nothing deployed on them.

Neal, there is absolutely nothing wrong with T-Mobile doing its public duty ahead of schedule. In fact, it would be admirable. But I do not completely buy what you say. AWS 2100+1700 MHz licenses issued prior to 2010 have a 15 year license term. Thus, the "substantial service" construction requirements do not come due for most/all T-Mobile AWS licenses until 2021. And even "substantial service" is rather vague terminology that T-Mobile has, arguably, already met with its current AWS deployment.

 

AJ

I forgot to mention that PCS licenses are also up for review. There are a lot of PCS licenses that are not actively being used by T-Mobile at the moment, and if they remain that way when the license review starts up in 2016, that could become a problem.

T-Mobile's Network Modernization effort really has two advantages:

1. T-Mobile already has advanced backhaul in place at many sites.
   
2. T-Mobile is upgrading fewer sites.
   

The second, though, is a double edged sword. T-Mobile has now and will still leave a lot of GSM 1900 only rural sites. If the entity that we know today as T-Mobile ever upgrades those sites, it will take years.

 

In the end, raising new panels and radios is no small task. Not having to wait on backhaul is definitely a luxury. But Network Modernization is no quick walk in the park for T-Mobile.

 

AJ

Considering the number of cell sites being upgraded in under a year, I'm fairly certain that once the metro markets are done (late fall 2013), T-Mobile will move on to upgrade the other areas very quickly. After all, T-Mobile's license review begins in 2016, and T-Mobile definitely wants to keep all of its AWS licenses throughout the country.

I know that 2014 will be the upgrade year for cell sites deployed prior to 2012, including many 2G only sites. 2G only zones are a high priority task, considering the equipment is no longer supported and absolutely needs to be replaced. And of course, MetroPCS CDMA1X/EvDO sites will be decommissioned throughout the year as CDMA usage drops. Roughly 1,500 to 2,500 CDMA/LTE sites will be retained and converted, while all DAS nodes will be converted.

So every one of their panels is AWS and PCS capable. There are RRU's mounted already on the rack. All of their basestations are LTE+HSPA+ capable. All of their switches are LTE capable. All of their network is LTE core capable.

Yep. T-Mobile's network also supports eSRVCC for handover among GSM, WCDMA, and LTE for VoLTE, but there are few phones that can use it.

Do you inside info on that or are you just speculating? There is nothing on the public record that they have anything ready to deploy yet. Yes Neville has promised a lot, but that's his job.

Well, if by inside info, you mean knowing exactly what equipment is installed in each one of those markets, then yes. Every single location you can get UMTS 1900 service is using radio systems that support AWS+PCS WCDMA+LTE. T-Mobile's equipment is configured for AWS+PCS WCDMA and AWS LTE, but the AWS LTE is only accessible to engineers and select testers at this time.

It would make sense except, they have absolutely no network right now.

Wrong. They do. In most markets where Leap operates, there's plenty of LTE tech ready for activation on T-Mobile cell sites. And T-Mobile is certainly working to get as many markets as possible. Neville Ray has already said that they will beat their publicly released numbers of markets (for mid-year and end-of-year 2013) with PCS WCDMA (with HSPA+) and AWS LTE by a large margin.

T-Mobile is a very attractive partner to roam with. I wouldn't be surprised if Leap makes a total switch because of the wider compatibility and the VoLTE support built into T-Mobile's network.

I doubt he took his spectrum analyzer to every site in the LA Metro area.

I dunno... He does seem to use it everywhere he goes!

AJ, how are you able to tell how much spectrum each site is currently using?

He has a spectrum analyzer, which is basically a device that can pull in radio signals and visually represent them in a way that conveys how the airwaves are being used.

Nice summarization of the BC's for some of the major continents. There was no mention of South American, African and Austrialian continents though. It just seems like a really tall order to ask for the entire world to agree upon certain BC's to globally roam on and deploy LTE in those BC's and finally to have devices to support all those globally BCs. You are right in that Clearwire uses BC41 while Asia uses BC40 so how would they be able to roam on each other.

 

Also your comment reminds me of the recent Verizon commercial where it shows a guy travelling all over the world using LTE roaming and back at his work office the manager and the secretary are wondering how he is getting his work done. Then Verizon shows in the commercial how their LTE supports LTE roaming in different countries. How is this possible if the current Verizon LTE phones cannot support the European LTE BC's?

Australia follows Asia (which is actually called the Asia-Pacific and Oceania region). The Middle East and Africa are using a mix of European and Asian frequencies, so it's a little more complicated. The Americas are using largely the same frequencies, so the US frequencies largely apply to Canada, Mexico, and nearly all of South America (except Brazil, which uses European frequencies too). The exception continent wide is with 700MHz. Just like Asia, most of the Americas will use a different band plan. From what I've heard, the Lower 700 band class 12 will be preserved, but the other bands won't be. I'm hoping that Asia will do something similar, but I'm not holding my breath for that.

Nearly all Verizon Wireless LTE handsets support global GSM/WCDMA roaming[1].

[1]: http://www.extremete...ility-with-them

Dish has said that they are going to build out an LTE network, but that seems like a ploy to just get the FCC to approve the S-Band for terrestrial use. If they did, I think it would be nice upside for sprint, since Sprint would be the best position to host Dish's network.

 

Not sure why AT&T wouldn't be allowed to buy S-Band? It's the perfect counter to Verizon's AWS play.

 

We will have LTE:

Verizon with nationwide upper 700MHz C block + AWS

AT&T with lower 700MHz B block + S-Band

Sprint with ESMR + PCS + ERS/BRS

 

The only national carrier that won't have LTE on sub-1000MHz is T-Mobile, which is sort of a bummer. I think to be competitive, you need sub-1000MHz spectrum for coverage + higher spectrum for capacity. It's the model everyone seems to be moving towards. For AT&T, the S-Band is the perfect fit.

 

I'm probably missing a few logistical reasons why AT&T wouldn't be interested in S-Band.

AT&T probably wouldn't be allowed because it has AWS and WCS along with PCS for usage with LTE. The other thing is that AT&T doesn't need to have a network that is too fragmented. Adding AWS-4 to AWS-1, PCS, and WCS would make AT&T devices very expensive compared to everyone else's devices.

The part I don't really get is - why does nobody poop on AT&T's spectrum plan? Outside of Dish's spectrum, AT&T has little options.

 

Can you think of any logistical reason of why AT&T wouldn't buy Dish's S-Band once it gets approved for terrestrial use?

AT&T is making it very hard to figure out what exactly its spectrum plan is. AT&T has done a lot of different confusing things in the last several months that make it rather difficult to figure out how AT&T plans it use its spectrum. Plus, with AT&T as the dominant GSM provider, analysts are never worried about it.

Also, AT&T will likely not be allowed to purchase S-band spectrum since WCS is now considered usable spectrum[1]. I expect carriers like T-Mobile, Sprint, and U.S. Cellular will aim to buy chunks, if not all, of the spectrum from Dish. As far as I'm aware, Dish is planning on doing the wholesale/direct to market hybrid business with terrestrial LTE.

I think Dish may be considering using LTE as a video delivery platform directly to consumers who can't use satellite, and offer broadband through wholesale, but that is speculation on my part.

[1]: http://www.extremete...llow-lte-on-wcs

Neal, from ExtremeTech wrote a pretty good follow up that I liked:

 

http://www.extremete...-it-really-isnt

Thanks!

It's not hard to do handover (I know it's called hand-off officially, but handover is more accurate) between FD and TD LTE. The way LTE handles handover is very efficient and designed to work well with mixed FD/TD environments.

As for the Qualcomm chip, there are a few issues. In the United States alone, the following frequencies are being used for LTE by various operators: BC25, BC4, BC26, BC12/BC17, BC13, BC14, and BC41.

Europe is using BC3, BC7, BC20, BC38, and BC42. Asia is using BC1, BC3, BC26, BC40, and a totally new band plan for 700MHz that isn't defined yet.

Since BC26 encompasses BC5 (UMTS band V) and BC6 (UMTS band VI), the US, South Korea, and Japan would be covered. Japan doesn't use ESMR, it uses a subset of BC5 that was standardized as BC6. BC26 covers all of these.

We're screwed on TDD, and we're semi-screwed on FDD.

The optimal FDD configuration for breadth of coverage on LTE would require a device supporting BC1, BC25, BC3, BC4, BC12, BC13, BC20, BC26, and BC40. This is not possible. That's four super-1GHz frequencies and four sub-1GHz frequencies. Only the one TD frequency is possible, and it's not even Clearwire's band. Clearwire is using BC41, not BC40 of Asia. BC40 is important because China and India use this frequency.

I'm glad you bought that up. I think the bigger issue is through mergers and aquisitions ATT(Cingular merger) and Verizon(MCI aquisition) became tier 1 internet providors. In the case of Verizon it has seemed that they have become more aggresive in their policies and positions since then.

Sprint still has the advantage of being a Tier 1 global internet access provider and third largest long distance provider in the country. The only national carrier that lacks the advantage of having direct access to the U.S. internet backbone is T-Mobile.

I'm not entirely sure of this, but Sprint may also still own about 18% of NII Holdings, which owns all Nextel networks in Latin America. Most of these are now HSPA, but some retain iDEN too. Nextel is still pretty popular in Latin America, and that does bring in some money. Of course, T-Mobile has the advantage of being owned by Deutsche Telekom, if that can be considered one right now (Deutsche Telekom isn't really doing much to help T-Mobile USA).

Thinking of that, I have no idea who provides my parent's landline phone now, Ameritech, SBC, or ATT. I was a youngster but I do remember getting long distance telephone service with Sprint meant you could hear a pin drop. The HD voice teasers had a pin on them and I got all excited and people looked at me like I was insane.

 

With all the big phones launching on all the big networks, poor T-mo, carrier loyalty is plummeting and people will switch. Too much restriction could be very costly in the long run.

I remember that my home where I grew up in Indiana was wired up by Ameritech, which became SBC when I was about to enter public elementary school. Finally, it became AT&T when I moved to Mississippi. Two years later, it bought BellSouth. Blech.

If your expectations of Sprint are rooted in how it performs on average in your home state of Mississippi, well, I can empathize with your opinions. I live in Hattiesburg and of the general opinion that Sprint has historically neglected everything but Jackson, Hattiesburg and the coast. I've always lived in good coverage and value the C-spire voice and 3G roaming we get down here, but I don't live rural. MS has historically been neglected by big telecom....its a terrible place to root your opinions. I tried Tmo here years ago and ATT in January. Too much "no service" with Tmo then and too many dropped calls/static in "excellent coverage" areas with ATT. You also have to remember C-spire eats a good deal of market share here and would naturally be a deterrent to expansion when considering potential customers. Even Verizon struggled here(didn't sell native coverage) as you probably remember, prior to acquiring Alltel.

 

A lot of people here become very defensive of Sprint because they are very informed about the details of Sprint's modernization plans and agree with the direction the company is headed. While it now seems we all agree the article is a misinformed error, it is an all too familiar stab in a chorus of negativity that tech sites have lobbed at Sprint over the last few years. Despite having the highest rated customer service scores, Sprint catches more negativity now online that I ever remember before. Entire forums have devolved into slam rants. If you're going to write negative leaning or critical pieces on Sprint, there are two types you should expect a response from: 1) Those who are informed and may defend Sprint if the data isn't accurate 2) Sprint haters who will agree and are excited by anything negative they read on the company "sprint sucks... bankruptcy is coming! Hesse is an idiot, they wronged me so bad bla bla bla".

 

Anyways, northern MS is considered part of the Memphis market and 'apparently' is slated to begin receiving NV treatment as a 2nd round/3rd round market. You will probably get network vision up there before any of us down here

I believe Starkville is still part of Central MS, which is why we don't have anything really good yet. I know Tupelo is considered part of Northern MS, and it has everything! Great Verizon LTE, good T-Mobile HSPA+, decent AT&T HSPA, decent Sprint 3G, and crappy Verizon CDMA. But that's almost 70 miles north of me. I don't particularly want to drive an hour and a half every time I want to have good cellular performance.

If Northern MS is slated for Network Vision upgrades as part of the Memphis market, then I guess I'll see it in Tupelo over the next year...

As for the critical writing of Sprint part, I think I now know what to expect. I wish people had noticed my Network Vision piece[1] like they did this. I put a hell lot more work into that one and it really wasn't noticed... The month of May was my Sprint spree. I wrote three articles about Sprint and all were hardly noticed...

[1]: http://www.extremetech.com/mobile/129198-network-vision-sprints-path-to-domination

Perhaps so, AJ.

But would people please stop calling me anti-Sprint? I'm fair to all carriers, domestic and international. I'm not stupid by any means. And that article was written with what I knew. Honestly, people! I can't write about what I don't know!

Most of my information comes from the few people I've been able to talk to about Sprint, and the research I managed to scrounge up for when I wrote my other Sprint articles. Yeah, I've written articles about Sprint before. And no, they weren't "anti-Sprint."

I get no credit at all for that, though. Then again, I'm not surprised. Hardly anyone noticed that I wrote those.

And insulting me by calling out the fact that I'm an undergraduate student! That was a low blow.

The only carriers I truly dislike on a philosophical basis are AT&T and Verizon Wireless. And much of it has nothing to do with mobile networks (business practices, really)! And AJ, I don't have a spectrum scanner like you do, so I have literally no idea how spectrum is actually utilized in the many markets I've visited. Never mind the fact that pretty much all carriers hate my markets and refuse to bring the latest upgrades.

Only when I visit other states do I get a chance to check out what these carriers are really bringing to the table. And you know what? It's pretty awesome!

I'm impressed with all four carriers. T-Mobile for pushing W-CDMA technology further than anyone else in the world, Sprint for designing a truly modern and advanced infrastructure architecture, AT&T for its broadly deployed Wi-Fi access points, and Verizon Wireless for being one of the first carriers to try to bridge CDMA2000 with LTE on a large scale and managing to largely succeed (brittleness excepted).

Do they have bad points? Sure. I'm seriously upset that Sprint is continuing the awful practice of embedding subscriber identity modules instead of making them removable like VZW did. T-Mobile isn't moving fast enough to upgrade its 2G footprint to 3G. AT&T is lying to the public too much about its 4G deployment and firmly backs killing net neutrality. Verizon Wireless' shared data plans are a bad value unless you max out the service options. And CDMA carriers (aside from VZW) need to move faster to deploy HSPA/LTE. VZW needs to get off its butt and finally deploy VoLTE instead of putting it off again.

Considering this is literally the first time I've had to deal with the S4GRU community (AJ excepted), I'm not very encouraged.

I would love to be wrong. I really would. But the information I have shows that Sprint isn't putting out enough to offer what others are or will offer.

I'll freely admit that I'm a huge T-Mobile advocate, but I regularly use all four carriers (as well as one regional carrier).

I'm still angry that T-Mobile doesn't have 3G deployed where I live, and AT&T data performance is mostly acceptable nowadays in Starkville. In my hometown of Clinton, it has issues though. Sprint performance stinks here. Verizon's performance on CDMA is equally bad, while its LTE performance is fantastic. In Jackson (the capital city, right next to my hometown), Sprint performance is pretty good, Verizon CDMA stinks, AT&T HSPA stinks, T-Mobile HSPA+ is excellent, and Verizon LTE is fantastic.

If there's information that S4GRU has that is better than what I've got, I would definitely like to know. Until then, I work with what I have.