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Sprint had a bid for vendors back in 2011-2012 and vendors were selected based on equipment price, capability, and availability amongst other things.

 

From the very beginning Samsung equipment were the most advanced& capable and had a smaller footprint than the other 2 vendors (alcatel-lucent & ericsson) equipment. They also had an excellent logistical trail and were not faced with equipment shortages like Ericsson and Alcatel-Lucent who resorted to installing 4G only equipment due to a lack of 3G equipment. 

Samsung remote radio heads (PCS & SMR) were dual mode capable (CDMA + FDD-LTE) from the very get go whereas alcatel-lucent & ericsson were not (they've been FCC certified for dual mode capability now). Thus Samsung onlys needs 1 radio head for each frequency and that was it unless its a high capacity site where Samsung opts to add another PCS RRU and antenna. On the other hand, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson needed 1 radio head per technology which resulted in 3 and 4 RRU setups depending on capacity needs. This increases the weight on the tower racks which impacts lease and engineering costs. 

 

Furthermore, Samsung has, according to numerous contractors and Ericsson network management workers, the best and easiest to work with base stations (MMBS) which has an extremely small footprint compared to Ericsson / ALU. The size of a single ericsson RBS cabinet can fit both the Samsung MMBS cabinet & the BBS battery cabinet. Alcatel-Lucent is larger in both height and dimensions due to them retrofitting legacy Lucent mod 4 cabinets.

 

Sounds like Samsung was a good idea but why haven't the other carriers followed suit other than clear wire which I believe used samsung too. Also another question are there fewer Samsung towers than Ericsson towers? I've seen very few samsung towers.

Are there any benefits of using a Samsung setup vs Erricson or others? Or is it simply what was cheapest for each market? Also great info and great pics of the towers!

So I have been curious that with all the holdup on the LTE deployment apparently from what I've read on other forums it seems to be caused by either birds or permits on towers. Why would you need a permit to work on a tower? AT&T, Verizon, and T-mobile all got their towers upgraded quick without permit holdups, so what's the deal with Sprint?