Conan Kudo

Outside of the US and Canada, the AWS band actually includes an extra block, which is 1755-1770 MHz UL / 2155-2170 MHz DL. The superset band class for it is band 10. It's used for both UMTS and LTE. Sprint may be interested in band 10 for its international compatibility and so that it would get into the AWS game as the other three have. Personally, I think it is a bit of a stretch. Ideally, I'd like to see the 25MHz FDD channel divided into one 10MHz FDD channel and three 5MHz FDD channels. I'd like to see T-Mobile pick up a 5MHz channel contiguous with the AWS F block, and Sprint picking up a 10MHz FDD block placed after that, with the remaining 5MHz FDD blocks being fought over by AT&T and Verizon.

Funnily enough, that's where Sprint's DSL business went. After all, SprintLink wasn't just a backbone network as it is today. It was also a DSL provider for many areas. Sprint spun it off as Embarq after acquiring Nextel, and Embarq was acquired by CenturyTel, who renamed itself to CenturyLink. CenturyLink then acquired Qwest, officially becoming a Baby Bell.

One of those numbers "that don't matter" (according to some people) is TeliaSonera's subscriber count: 160 million subscribers as of FY 2012. Definitively larger than Verizon Wireless, I would think. Here's a dirty little secret, if you don't already know this: Apple makes everyone do this (except T-Mobile, reportedly, but I'm a little disbelieving). TeliaSonera, Deutsche Telekom, Vodafone, SoftBank, C Spire, everyone signed agreements toward massive volume commitments. You can be damn sure all of those operators told Apple to support their LTE networks. But they got shortchanged.

So TeliaSonera, who has run LTE on Band 7 in some countries since 2009, and had national, well-performing coverage in most of them since 2011, isn't mature enough for Apple? And somehow Verizon, who launches its LTE network at the end of 2010, and doesn't get national coverage until now, is mature enough in early 2012? I call BS.

Apple supports carriers and have contracts with carriers that sell iphones, none of the carriers mentioned move more iphones than Sprint and softbank. Apple also supports the technologies of its carrier partners. Are you blind? Vodafone Europe (roughly half of that number) alone sells more iPhones. And Apple does not always support all the technologies of its carrier partners. Otherwise the iPhone 5 would have had Band 7 and Band 20 (Hint: it doesn't!). Nearly all of Apple's European partners had Band 7 and/or Band 20 LTE networks, but neither band is supported on the iPhone 5.

That is true, but we've already got antennas that'll work well enough in a mobile device for the 450-470 MHz band in FDD. That's why Brazil auctioned it as part of the 2.6GHz licenses and mandated broad coverage requirements with the band. They also did the legwork to get the band approved in the 3GPP as Band 31. Right now, the band is allocated in the US for walkie-talkies on an unlicensed basis, but perhaps they can be shifted into 600MHz relatively painlessly along with other unlicensed operations. 600MHz on an unlicensed basis for fixed wireless operations would make rural WiMAX much more palatable. I mention specifically WiMAX because it is designed to operate on unlicensed bands. Technically, you can do WiMAX on 900MHz ISM, 2.4GHz ISM, and 5.8GHz ISM bands, too. If 600MHz was allocated on an unlicensed basis, the IEEE would enable it for WiMAX in short order. WiMAX is also relatively cheap to design and build, because of the provisions that the IEEE requires for standardization (which the 3GPP does not require).

I'm actually not happy about the 600MHz efforts as well. I'd rather that the mobile operators be forced to rebalance sub-1GHz spectral allocations to get everyone on more even footing. And I'm rather horrified with how the current plans are structured for 600MHz. While I'm not a member of a WISP, I do consider them to offer significant value, and I think 600MHz should remain mostly as-is. However, if it were possible, I'd like to see 450MHz reallocated for mobile services. Or perhaps reconfigure the 700MHz band plan to be less screwed up (though I'm not sure if that's possible).

An even less popular suggestion would be that Sprint's subs would drain away, causing SoftBank to make a deal with Deutsche Telekom to do a spectrum sharing deal with T-Mobile and permitting Sprint to use the procurement JV that T-Mobile uses to buy equipment to expand and deploy faster and cheaper. Sprint would get immediate access to PCS WCDMA, AWS LTE, and it can have its spectrum used to fill in the gaps for PCS WCDMA service. With network sharing, T-Mobile's network and Sprint's 3GPP networks would be one and the same, while Sprint would maintain on ESMR its own CDMA1X network. The end result would be that Sprint would be effectively an MVNO, because a merger or business combination of any kind would probably not be permitted by the DoJ (and maybe still even the FCC). China doesn't matter because it refuses to play in the global space. It doesn't do much in the 3GPP, and most of its operators just quietly use bits of it without really contributing. The infrastructure vendors contribute some, but not nearly as much as others do. The Chinese government also makes the state-run telecom industry incredibly insular by forcing the use of Chinese infrastructure gear and Chinese handset vendors. This makes China's use of Band 40 and 41 effectively irrelevant, because the vendors and suppliers that Chinese operators use aren't often playing the global space. And strictly speaking, the iPhone is a luxury brand, which means that China is practically off limits for it. The iPhone doesn't sell well on China Unicom and China Telecom, because it costs too much. China Mobile won't ever sell it because of technology and because the customers won't buy it from the operator. And while there's diminishing returns on scale larger than 200M subscribers, suppliers will still give priority to larger customers. When you can deliver one handset that works for over 2 billion subscribers, you can make a serious amount of money on the operator orders for even a fraction of that 2 billion. Vendors know to make the assumption that around 25% to 40% of the subscriber base will adopt a new smartphone within 12 months (postpaid contract tenures mainly). This number is higher for cheaper handsets on prepaid, but lower for higher-end handsets on prepaid. This is where having a larger number of subscribers helps. The fewer the number of subscribers, the less likely the operator will order enough to break even. And strictly speaking, there is a bit of a balancing effect in the 3GPP. While some operators have more influence than others (VimpelCom, Deutsche Telekom, AT&T, etc.), they can't set policy because others smack them down (Vodafone, Telenor, Telefónica, etc.) and force a degree of reasonableness in global affairs. I wish they had with the US 700MHz affairs, but most didn't care since everyone knew that no one would be dumb enough to adopt the US band plan. Until some countries did... *sigh*

Well, it used to run CDMA-850 service until they refarmed it for LTE in 2011. The CDMA-1800 service is largely cell site protection at this point, since U+ has VoLTE deployed on LTE-850 and LTE-2100. The regulatory environment makes it difficult to convert a license for one technology to another, so it is cheaper to just let the network rot. Iusacell doesn't seem to sell any CDMA service in Mexico to subscribers anymore, so I didn't count it. You're right. I forgot about USCC. However, GCI and ACS are merging their spectral assets into a shared GSM/UMTS/LTE network (called Alaska Wireless Network, or AWN) to better compete against Verizon and AT&T. The FCC recently approved the network sharing and spectral transfer agreements. nTelos wants to be bought out, and their size makes them irrelevant. I did also forget about C Spire (shame on me, I live in Mississippi!), but at the same time, C Spire is piggybacking off of Sprint's ecosystem, so it isn't doing anything on its own. As for CDMA 850/1900 in other countries, the networks are gone. Telstra and Telecom New Zealand replaced their networks with UMTS. Vivo in Brazil returned its spectrum to the government years ago in exchange for some 900MHz spectrum and completed its CDMA shutdown earlier this year. America Movil has shut down CDMA across its Latin American properties except for Claro Puerto Rico, where the network has been downsized and merely exists for VZW roaming. There is Open Mobile in Puerto Rico (a divested movistar/BellSouth asset that went bankrupt and came back to life only to buy 700MHz Upper C block for PR+USVI and deploy LTE and VoLTE). I never said Qualcomm was jacking up its prices for CDMA2000 chips. But it is lowering the prices of chips that don't have CDMA2000 on them, effectively making the CDMA2000 chips more expensive.

At this point, the only operators that offer CDMA-850 or CDMA-1900 service globally are MTS India (850), Verizon Wireless (850/1900), and Sprint (1900). KDDI and China Telecom use CDMA-2100, and U+ uses CDMA-1800.

And my point is that from the suppliers' perspective, the R&D costs aren't made up from such a small base. It's not just parts. It's paying the people to figure out the proper optimizations and arrangements to make the hardware work with a suitably high level of performance. If this was a raw manufacturing game, he'd be right. But he's not because it isn't. It has never been that way. And besides, of that 50 million, only 25-28 million actually are served by the Sprint brand. And that makes it worse. And of those subscribers, roughly 30-40% actually upgrade to new handsets. That means that the reasonable target is much smaller.

Then Sprint would be left with ZTE, Huawei, and Kyocera. The rest would be told "go screw yourselves". None, but most operators in the US will only do interoperability as far as it benefits them to do so. Sprint should be using Band 27 instead of Band 26 for its ESMR LTE, but it won't. In fact, Sprint should have pushed for 26 and 27 to be combined into a single band, but it didn't, because it wanted to keep its competitors out of the space.

No parts were available for Band 26 from various suppliers until March 2013. Development started on power amplifiers and duplexers just after the Part 90 (SMR) rules were amended.

I did say that, but Sprint made those announcements prior to SoftBank acquiring them. I think SoftBank will leave ESMR CDMA alone (as it can service Assurance Wireless customers, M2M, and legacy customers). But it will aggressively work to get Sprint to switch PCS A-F to 3GPP from 3GPP2. G block is suspect because there are no other players. Canada has G block open and auctioned off, but the company Public Mobile went with CDMA2000 instead (and has to buy specialty devices for its audience). Sprint really hasn't tried to push the Band 25 ecosystem to those who use PCS LTE. It's been quite content being the only provider of Band 25 LTE services. C Spire is an unusual aberration that was caused by C Spire's need to get devices quickly, and no one could provide Band 2 PCS LTE or Band 12 700MHz LTE devices at the time C Spire wanted to launch. But C Spire has no G block spectrum, and it only uses Sprint devices rebranded. No unique devices at all. I doubt A.J. will particularly like my reasoning, but I've talked to enough people to confirm that the problem exists. But this is a game of economic and technological scale, and Sprint doesn't have it. Like it or not, these are real problems that Sprint has.

SoftBank and Sprint combined, which have a subscriber total of ~88M, are dwarfed by the combined strength of Vodafone (450M), Airtel (266M), SingTel (265M), América Móvil (252M), Telefónica (250M), Orange (230M), VimpelCom (215M), TeliaSonera (160M), Telenor (150M), and Deutsche Telekom (130M). All of those operators participate in the GSM/UMTS/LTE ecosystem, and all of them are doing GSM/LTE or GSM/UMTS/LTE with LTE FDD and LTE TDD with Bands 7+38 instead of Band 41 LTE TDD. That is an ecosystem of 2368 million (~2.4 billion) subscribers. Unfortunately enough, SoftBank can participate in this ecosystem and get good pricing on handsets with a swap to Band 41, but Sprint cannot. This is because SoftBank's handsets involve a simple filter swap on GSM/UMTS/LTE devices that support Band 38 to widen to Band 41 (and not include the Band 7 PA, which nearly all Band 38 devices currently do not have anyway). Also, since SoftBank uses bands for UMTS that are the same as the rest of Asia and Europe, there is a higher degree of reuse. This dramatically cuts the cost. Sprint has several counts against it in the ecosystem. While it uses PCS A-F spectrum (which is widely used for UMTS service), it provides CDMA2000 service on that band instead. It also provides CDMA service on ESMR, with plans to provide LTE service on the band soon, too. Additionally, its PCS G block has not yet been auctioned elsewhere because the viability of the ecosystem is considered suspect, so the PCS G LTE network is considered "unusual". While it is true that most power amplifier parts are multi-mode, the procurement of CDMA devices and infrastructure is much more expensive because of the vastly reduced market for it. It doesn't help that Verizon's planned exit of the user device procurement market for CDMA/LTE devices will cause an ecosystem crash (it cuts the size of the CDMA/LTE market by more than half). Sprint will have to spend substantially more per device, which means Sprint has less money to spend on infrastructure. 3GPP infrastructure will be much cheaper for Sprint to acquire now, since it can use the combined strength of Sprint and SoftBank, but 3GPP2+3GPP gear will continue to get more expensive. That is why SoftBank wants to convert Sprint to 3GPP-only by 2017. It doesn't want to fund what it considers to be a waste (which it does consider the 3GPP2 gear to be that).

Apple does not deal with China Mobile currently, and it's not likely it ever will, since Apple would have to incorporate GSM, WCDMA (with CA for HSPA+), TD-SCDMA, CDMA2000, LTE TDD (with MIMO and CA), and LTE FDD (with MIMO). That makes the iPhone impossibly expensive for China Mobile's audience. And unlike China Unicom and China Telecom (who both have customers that actually sign contracts and pay a lot of money), China Mobile's customers are almost entirely prepaid with demands for cheap devices.

Correct. SMR and ESMR are adjacent to Cellular band, and use the same duplex gap. Thusly, the Cellular band can be easily extended to cover the frequencies. That's how Band 26 exists. The problem isn't the baseband chipset. It's the RF frontend components. TDD components are vastly more expensive and require different techniques to properly implement than FDD. Also, smaller phones make it much more difficult to implement both modes. Effectively, a completely separate radio chain is required for TDD. That's also why SV-LTE goes away with Sprint LTE FDD+TDD phones.