Conan Kudo

Have you ever seen a mass of zombies piling on and climbing a wall "World War Z" style?  That, sadly, is the way the hoi polloi basically "attack" wireless data networks.

 

In my dream scenario, the iPhone would have never existed, and the unwashed masses to this day still would have little interest in wireless data.  The iPhone is "patient zero."

 

AJ

It was going to happen regardless of iPhone. The iPhone merely sped things up by a few years. If the iPhone hadn't come around, some of the other touchscreen-based app-centric devices under development at the time would have led the charge.

There's no point in deploying wireless systems if people aren't using them. Yes, the architecture of current wireless systems is sub-optimal to be the primary Internet connection of many people, but the beauty of engineering is that it's all about solving a problem. There's always a way to make it work in a way that will either satisfy all parties, or satisfy nobody. And there are a lot of very talented folks working on designing wireless systems that can support people's daily needs as a primary Internet connection because that's all that would be available in many places here in the US and around the world.

We'll just have to wait and see, though.

Explain how the Nexus 6 is to receive VoLTE without carriers mucking about. I know there may be some customization per carrier, but it's clearly possible to have one phone with VoLTE support on all carriers.

Carriers are mucking about. Google and the carriers are preparing firmware update variants to load when the right SIM card is detected. That's the main reason for the carriers agreeing to sell the phone. There's also other behind-the-scenes stuff going on, too.

Ever since the Nexus 5, Ting has sold their own SIM cards rather than Sprint-branded ones, but I don't know if there's anything different about them other than the branding/packaging.

 

If it can't be done within a single card, then maybe someone will eventually bring a dual-SIM CDMA/GSM or VoLTE handset to the US.

There's nothing different about them except for packaging. I bought a Ting SIM for my Nexus 5, and it's just a plain Sprint SIM that just isn't registered to anything yet inside of a wrapper with Ting's name on it.

A dual-SIM handset with CDMA/GSM is unlikely here, unfortunately. VoLTE does not allow for portability across carriers, as it must be implemented using carrier customized firmware, so that makes multi-carrier VoLTE unlikely.

Now a real Ting coup would be to allow access to both the Sprint and T-Mobile networks on a single line without a SIM swap if you have a device that works on both (like Nexus 5/6 etc.). Technically devices without a firmware lockout of domestic competitor networks, like the Nexus 5 and 6 and the new devices coming in a few months, should be able to do it.

It's not possible because Sprint's infrastructure doesn't support custom SIM cards, principally because Sprint doesn't use SIM cards the way that 3GPP only operators do.

It's technically possible for someone to craft a custom SIM that authorizes AT&T and T-Mobile as if it was one network, or AT&T+T-Mobile GSM/WCDMA/LTE and Verizon LTE as one network because those networks follow the same standards and practices for network/subscriber authentication and management.

And here is the funny part to what you just posted. The 4G data is unlimited up to 10gb than they slam you down to 2G. That is going to bite them in the ads when the FTC sees that.

That's for the 4/$100 offer. That's not the same as the 2/$100 fully unlimited offer.

At this point Release 10 equipment isn't anything to brag about. It's a basic, minimum system requirement for operators that wish to activate LTE-Advanced features on their network.

Also, historically Verizon's never been the most "vocal" operator when it comes to their equipment infrastructure. Their PR loves to dumb it down as much as possible.

Getting details out of them is like pulling teeth sometimes...

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Dark times

interesting times

Shadow Game (闇のゲーム)

闇の扉が開かれた。

Call home

Shark soup

Let me clarify the above statement that I made earlier today.  It was neither "insulting" nor "racist."  Rather, it was a commentary on Neal's views on US band plans versus international band plans -- views of which many of you may not be aware.

 

Neal and I share like minded thoughts and have even worked together on possible reform of the Cellular 850 MHz band, but we diverge greatly in our perspectives on other band plans.  If honest, Neal would not disavow his advocacy for Sprint's band 41 TDD deployment to be rolled back to a clean slate -- in favor of a much smaller bandwidth band 38 TDD deployment to allow the BRS/EBS 2600 MHz band to be realigned for band 7 FDD employed in some other countries.  Furthermore, Lower 700 MHz and Upper 700 MHz would be scrapped and rejiggered to conform to the APT 700 MHz band plan.

 

Sure, different band plans elsewhere can have advantages.  But they may be years behind what is already in place here in the US.  And, in the end, why is it important to be in sync with other countries?  I cannot answer that, but as I stated, it is a "Eurasian centric" mindset.

 

Now, some of you can unbunch your panties...

 

AJ

Similarly, I do respect A.J.'s intelligence and his analytical ability. Our points of view differ due to how we examine the same type of business. I wouldn't necessarily classify it as "Eurasian-centric", but rather "global centric", but take it for what you wish.

For what it's worth, we have worked together (and continue to do so) on ideas and proposals regarding the future of spectrum in the United States. Despite our differences, we do get along well and manage to resolve them into something useful and interesting.

Now, onto the Band 41 comment of his...

Let me predicate this on the simple fact that I don't "hate"/"dislike"/etc. Band 41. It's a perfectly suitable band. However, I will acknowledge that Band 38 (the subset of it) has much larger scale, being used across Europe and the Middle East. Does that mean I necessarily prefer Band 38 over Band 41? No.

However, I would prefer that the U.S. band plan for 2.6GHz be reorganized to something that is more useful and usable for a wider number of parties. It goes without saying that the band plan for 2496-2690 MHz is incredibly screwed up. I would like to see it fixed up so that it would be more attractive to use by more companies, enabling more competition in the high-capacity wireless system market. I'd like to see a band plan that preserves Sprint's ability to launch up to three 20MHz TDD carriers with the remainder being auctioned for FDD and TDD operations by other parties. That would be a Band 7+41 band plan, with Sprint and others having some blocks that also fit in the Band 38 range so that they can take advantage of economic scale and inbound roaming opportunities there. Band 7 is used all over the world to offer high capacity FDD operations, and enabling other players in the market to be able to go after that opportunity would be good for competition.

And as for 700MHz, it is pretty screwed up in its own right. The 698-806 MHz band has had a long and storied history of being released piecemeal, which led to the convoluted and spectrally inefficient band plan we have today. It's very clear that no one really thought about the consequences of releasing frequencies the way it was done, which led to the issues we have today.

Because of this, the Asia-Pacific Telecommunity (APT, the frequency regulator for Asia and Oceania) worked very hard with CITEL (the frequency regulator for the Americas) and CEPT (the one for Europe and Africa) to design a better band plan to be used by countries all over the world. At the end of 2012, APT submitted the band plan to 3GPP to be designated as an official band for E-UTRA, and it received the designation as band 28. Shortly after that, the APT band plan was selected for 700MHz across Latin America, Africa, Asia, and Oceania. In fact, only the US and Canada have not chosen the APT plan. Sprint's parent, SoftBank Mobile, has a band 28 license and will be rolling out its 700MHz "platinum band" LTE network when the frequencies are released in January. While it is true that there are more devices for US 700MHz now, this will not remain true in the next two years.

With the APT band plan, the 700MHz band can support nine 5MHz FDD blocks. Depending on how the reconfiguration is structured, it could enable another auction of some 700MHz blocks on a national basis. And with the new band plan, all interoperability issues and DTV interference issues go away.

As for being in sync with other countries, it offers major economic advantages to consumers and to operators. Smaller scale businesses are more sustainable, because they can rely on the indirect scale available from the total market, rather than having to create its own scale by some other means. And with telecom being a business of scale, this is hugely beneficial.

Say A.J., Robert, and I wanted to build an operation together. If our frequencies conform to the design used by larger players all over the world, we can simply request those designs to use for our systems and take advantage of the design and cost advantages of buying something already available and well-scaled. For our customers, it would mean that our devices and systems would be cheaper, allowing our lower costs to enable savings to them. Perhaps what might cost us hundreds of millions of dollars for a unique system would only be tens of millions of dollars instead. Still big numbers, but substantially cheaper.

This is what makes GSM so successful. That global scale enables certain advantages to even new entrants, provided they are able to work within the framework that others have dug into. We see this in the U.S. on a smaller scale with operators like Bluegrass Cellular and Pioneer Cellular firmly sunk into the Verizon ecosystem as part of the LTE in Rural America program, or Piedmont Telephone Cellular and AT&T (prior to Piedmont selling its systems to AT&T and moving to be a "managing partner" like how King Street is to USCC).

As it gets more and more expensive to provide high-quality service, the "global scale" part of the equation matters more and more. Verizon's aggressive moves to kill its reliance on CDMA for its B2C and B2B operations are very much indicative of this.

Give me a break, Neal.  My assertion is not "dumb" at all.  I do not have time to address it at length now, but I will offer a short retort.

 

Other countries had to auction band 1 just to deploy W-CDMA.  The US did not do that, could not do that.  But, knowing you, you would probably fault the FCC for not doing so.

 

Basically, W-CDMA was built on the Eurasian expectation of "green field" spectrum.  That was not the case in the US, certainly not until AWS-1 became commercially usable, circa 2007-2008.  Meanwhile, AT&T had to devour egregious amounts of Cellular and PCS spectrum to deploy its W-CDMA network.  And T-Mobile was stuck in the GSM dark ages for lack of spectrum available to deploy W-CDMA.

 

If that is not "non American friendly," then I do not know what to tell your "Eurasian centric" self...

 

AJ

Actually, you're completely wrong on the premise that WCDMA was designed for greenfield deployment. The first deployment in the world was a refarm deployment on 850MHz in Japan. NTT DoCoMo designed the system to in that context, since Japan had not yet decided on whether it would follow the US band plan further or switch to the same band plan followed by mainland Asia for new bands, or that it would even release new frequencies at all (eventually, Japan moved toward the band plan followed by mainland Asia for new frequencies, as we know today).

And when WCDMA was initially standardized, Cellular 850/900, DCS, and PCS were supported. IMT (band 1) was added at the tail end for Europe, which auctioned DCS in tiny 2.5MHz FDD slivers originally. The United States' PCS band was fully capable of supporting WCDMA with wide 15MHz FDD channels on PCS A/B/C and 5MHz FDD channels on PCS D/E/F.

And why the world would I blame the FCC for not being able to auction IMT frequencies? PCS channels were wide enough anyway, and failing that, 850MHz was also wide enough to support WCDMA, too. The FCC was remarkably forward thinking when they released large blocks instead of tiny ones.

What makes you say T-Mobile gets 2x the performance on 5mhz over Sprint?

 

Sent from my LG-LS980

 

Sprint doesn't use EvDO Rev B with Phase II enhancements (EvDO RevB Phase II has never been deployed). Sprint only uses EvDO Rev A, so the numbers are worse. EvDO RevB Phase II supports up to 14Mbps with 4 contiguous EvDO Rev B carriers aggregated together. Average speeds of Phase II (at least from trial documents) were around 2Mbps. With Phase I, it's only at 9Mbps, with average speeds at 1Mbps. And EvDO Rev A doesn't support aggregating contiguous carriers. EvDO Rev A peaked at 3Mbps and averaged at 400Kbps.

Of course, to accomplish that, T-Mobile W-CDMA requires three to nine times the spectrum outlay of EV-DO.  Because T-Mobile went with a Eurasian centric, non American friendly 3GPP standard, it has had to agglomerate an undue amount of PCS and AWS spectrum -- especially for its smallish subscriber base.  And that inefficiency should not be celebrated.  AT&T has been criticized for its excessive spectrum accumulation -- so should T-Mobile.

 

AJ

The other way to look at it is that T-Mobile gets 2x the peak performance for 5MHz FDD and 10x the average performance of EvDO (with Rev B and Phase II enhancements) with HSPA+. EvDO Rev A is much worse than this (7x peak performance, 30x average performance).

Additionally, what gave you the dumb idea that 3GPP is "non-American friendly"? ATIS and CITEL have been strongly involved in the GSMA and 3GPP to represent the needs of operators across the Americas since the beginning of GSM rollouts in the Americas in 1993.

Heck, the FCC has never auctioned a block of spectrum for CMRS that is so small that you can't roll out WCDMA on it. Asian countries were more likely to offer small blocks than Americans. For example, India releases DCS spectrum in 250kHz FDD blocks! Some countries release in 4.4MHz FDD increments, too. So that reasoning is complete B.S. The smallest block the FCC has released is 5MHz FDD, and many blocks were larger.

And if you needed to roll it out on a smaller chunk of spectrum, you could compress a WCDMA carrier to as small as 3.8MHz FDD, which would offer a peak rate of 16Mbps (as opposed to 21Mbps) without WCDMA+ features. Even at that rate, EvDO is still less efficient than WCDMA. Throw in WCDMA+, and you get 21Mbps again, even at 3.8MHz FDD.

A decent argument can be made to say that CDMA2000 is more wasteful than WCDMA on a spectral efficiency basis, simply due to the technical advantages of the WCDMA platform. Not only that, CDMA2000 implementations are a strong enabler of "operator domination", which Americans don't like, since it involves restricting their freedom on how to use the service they pay for.

In my experience, TMO's HSPA+ is not as fast as it claims. The real speed is like EVDO's speed as if you are the only person parked at that tower.

That depends on where you are. Where I've been, T-Mobile's HSPA+ easily hits 10-15Mbps all the time, with sometimes peaking at 20Mbps. If T-Mobile has compressed its WCDMA carrier sizes, though, you will see some drops in performance.

However, in general, the experience is more of a backhaul thing than an airlink thing.

There are lots of smartphones that TMO selling right now are not LTE capable while most of Sprint smartphone are

The difference, of course, is that T-Mobile's non-LTE phones are capable of using T-Mobile's HSPA+ network, which offers a decent experience for people too. Sprint doesn't have that option, so it pushes harder to upsell to LTE devices.

Ok so with this whole whitelisting of the speed test app and they have to show customers what their actual speeds are. What does it mean for T-Mobile as far as their rep being the fastest? And what does this mean for the customers?

 

 

Sent from my iPhone 6+

Insofar as the reputation is concerned, it will always show what you can get as if you had unlimited full speed data. No more, no less. For customers, unless they use the upcoming speed test application being provided by T-Mobile for the purpose of evaluating throttled speed, they will see the true performance of the cell site(s) they are connected to.

Since T-Mobile now relies on this data to check network performance in real time, speed tests that show weak performance consistently will trigger action on T-Mobile's end. So, if something indicates that T-Mobile isn't the fastest (or fast at all) consistently, then T-Mobile will evaluate the location and work to improve the situation.

Rocks Cluster

Let's turn this discussion somewhat around. Let's say you're on a congested sector. Would you rather your speedtest show you what you could be getting if the sector was not congested or what you're actually getting? Since they have DPI they could momentarily elevate your priority to trump everybody else's so that your speed test results do not screw up T-Mobile's average. Would you be OK with that?

If the cell is congested, the speed test will reflect that. T-Mobile's treatment of speed tests was pretty much done at the request of its customers, in which they didn't want speed tests to count towards the data cap and they wanted to use speed tests to see what the network is capable of, barring the current status of their account, which is why I find it hilarious that people are complaining about it now...

The only condition in where speed test will not match what you experience is when you've used up your full speed data bucket. Every other condition will match (congestion, etc).

Contrary to popular belief, this is not really handled by DPI. T-Mobile isn't examining the data portion of packets to figure out whether it's a speed test packet or something else. The packet header (which is read for routing purposes) has information on the source and destinations. T-Mobile uses a whitelist of destinations that it acquired from companies that offer speed tests to exempt it. It's the same as how Music Freedom works.

DPI is computationally expensive (thus slow) and prone to errors (as not every speed test application tests it the same way). Destination whitelisting is computationally simple (thus very fast) and hard to screw up if you have the right lists. The lists may even be sourced by the companies T-Mobile is working with to whitelist in a dynamic form (such as a server list script that T-Mobile pings every 24 hours and dumps into its whitelist).

Mickey Mouse

Prodigal prodigy

One Time

This is for a person who wants a new phone but is not eligible for an early upgrade yet and is willing to purchase the phone outright and without extending their contract (say for example because they intend to sell their existing phone and use the cash towards another phone which they will buy at full cost). In the past Sprint has often been reluctant to even international unlock devices in this status. I remember reading posts from quite a few pissed off customers on xda about this inane policy ("but I bought it for full price and now these $@#&ers won't [int'l] unlock it!).

 

The CTIA's regulations don't really address this sort of situation.

 

 

 

No, the law you are talking about has to do with the legality of device unlocking by individuals owning those devices, not forcing carriers to unlock devices. The CTIA's unlocking policy which goes into full effect on Feb. 11 is an unrelated set of rules which ensures that carriers will unlock their customers' devices under certain circumstances.

 

With respect to Verizon, I don't think that they have a separate lock for LTE and for GSM/UMTS, and because all of their LTE devices are already sold unlocked this discussion is already moot for them - they are already unlocked anyway (at least as far as GSM/UMTS/LTE is concerned).

Hmm, I stand corrected on the law. However, I'm still concerned with Sprint's wording of its policy...

That said, you're correct about GSM/UMTS/LTE locks. The 3GPP part of the baseband for locking is generally an all-or-nothing scenario, and even if it wasn't, Verizon wouldn't be allowed to cripple the devices in such a manner because of the rules in the Upper 700MHz C block spectrum that prevent crippling. The problem is bringing GSM/UMTS/LTE devices that lack CDMA to Verizon. The only way to have voice, SMS, and MMS services without CDMA is VoLTE, and it's currently not designed to allow unbranded devices to automatically configure and support the service.

For example, Sony's unbranded Xperia Z2 supports GSM, UMTS, and LTE.  It supports all major bands for GSM, UMTS, and LTE except band 12. It even has band 13. However, when connected to the Verizon network, it cannot support voice and texting services because VoLTE cannot be fully configured from the ISIM application in the Verizon SIM card.

Has anyone tried to tell them that it may be impossible to activate T-Mobile Nexus 6s on other CDMA carriers? Or that the Sprint model has NO bloatware? (apparently the T-Mobile Nexus 6 has a "T-Mobile Zone" type app installed)

It does not. Exactly one application gets installed if you set up the Nexus 6 with a T-Mobile SIM in: My Account. The application is removable. Google insisted on it to show off how it can do carrier customizations on the fly for phones through Google Play Services.