RedSpark

“The HP Spectre Folio running on our LTE Advanced network is a gigabit-class LTE device supporting MIMO, 256 QAM, and multiple channel carrier aggregation. In fact, this device supports five channel carrier aggregation (5CA), making it the first 5CA Band 41 Always Connected PC for our network.” That’s impressive.

The presentation was an admission of certain facts/truths that I was hoping wouldn’t be true. I was hoping Sprint’s “secret sauce” Mobilitie build would defy gravity and the naysayers... it didn’t unfortunately. (Page 3) I was hoping Sprint’s debt load wouldn’t be insurmountable, but it appears that the company is actually losing competitive scale as time passes (Page 10) and that its debt load (Page 15) will prevent Sprint from making enough capital investments to reverse that trend. (Page 12) I was hoping there would be more cost-cutting that could help turn things around, but we seem to be near the end of that now (Page 11). The most stunning admission however is about Sprint’s Postpaid Customer Survivability over 18 months (Page 7)... it’s redacted, but it’s prefaced by “only”... which sounds pretty bad. There’s not a sufficient scale of loyal customers. That’s a death spiral. As for investment/return... Masa never gave Sprint the necessary capital infusions for it to truly compete. That would have been the “investment/return.” If this merger fails to go through, Masa will be holding nearly the entire bag on this asset which he failed to adequately capitalize. At that point he’ll be relegated to getting a worse deal from another partner (given these disclosures) or be stuck with Sprint as a drag on his portfolio and reputation in its current state. At this point as a Sprint shareholder, I say he deserves either.

What Model Number of Magic Box do you have?

Why did Sprint choose to start with the S8/S8+ instead of the S9? Does Apple have any say in the timing of VoLTE being launched on its own devices? Perhaps Apple didn’t want to be the lead devices for VoLTE on Sprint?

I thought the WiFi was for backhaul. Am I mistaken on this?

Neat! Why would WiFi be currently disabled?

Good news for people passing through Austin’s Airport.

What changes do they enable?

To say “huge news” is an understatement. Check out the FCC news release that Marcelo links to in his Tweet: Link: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354283A1.pdf?linkId=57407697 There are two new shot clocks: • Establishes two new shot clocks for small wireless facilities (60 days for collocation on preexisting structures and 90 days for new builds); • Codifies the existing 90 and 150 day shot clocks for wireless facility deployments that do not qualify as small cells that were established in 2009; And there’s much more in that news release.... Municipalities won’t be able to delay deployments and gouge providers in the process.

Good addition for this area.

Calling Plus is set to be removed/shut down very soon. This Support Article was just updated: https://www.sprint.com/en/support/solutions/services/faqs-about-calling-plus.html Sounds like VoLTE is coming.

Very nice!

In keeping with past practice, Apple is being completely silent on this... until they finally release a statement that they’re aware of these reported issues and they’ll be addressed in a future software or carrier update. It’s hard for me to understand how Apple devices can have so many “out the door” issues for “basic stuff” like LTE and Wi-Fi Performance. This isn’t a special character combo which bricks the phone. This isn’t a bug in the “Find my Friends” App. This is something which goes to the essential function of the device. Doesn’t Apple “dog food” and actually use its own products?... or did they say “We know there’s an issue. Screw it, ship it. We’ll fix it on the backend.”

I’m about to upgrade four of our lines to iPhone XS in the next few days. The other 3 lines we have are on Android. I’ve always waited for the first batch to ship out in case there are any zero-day problems with the device, software, activation or accessories availability. This year it’s UPS delivery and activation issues. Hope everything settles down this week.

That’s a great potential explanation.

Are there criteria which determine whether UL B41 CA is active and that disable HPUE? Is this determined by the network or on the device itself? Or, will a device like the iPhone XS always have HPUE enabled, which disables UL B41 CA?

Wasn’t there an issue that you couldn’t have 2 UL CA if you had HPUE enabled or am I misunderstanding this?

Yeah, the specs for the Modem say it supports 2CA for the UL: https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/wireless-products/mobile-communications/xmm-7560-brief.html Curious what’s up here...

Sprint did pretty well on Average User Speeds according to this test report by P3: http://www.p3-group.com/en/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/P3-Report_US_Speed.pdf “Again, Verizon leads the benchmark with an average user speed of 5.3 Mbit/s. Sprint shows only slightly lower user speeds with an average of 5.2 Mbit/s. This is remarkable since Sprint’s Network Top Speed was only a little more than half of what the Verizon network showed. Obviously, consumers on Sprint face less limitations in their real life smartphone usage than users in the other networks. The average user speed with T-Mobile is 4.6 Mbit/s, while AT&T is slowest with still competitive 4.3 Mbit/s.” Background article: https://www.rcrwireless.com/20180911/test-and-measurement/verizon-tops-p3-network-speed-analysis-but-sprint-is-a-surprise-second

What’s different about these handsets to enable them to support CA for UL, while the iPhone XS doesn’t?

That’s definitely important!

Thanks! Will “current” HPUE devices be compatible with an updated FCC transmit power restriction or will this require a new handset?

Will this be addressed with new hardware and/or software?

Oh man... ? I guess something to look forward to for next year.

Is CA on the UL supported on the iPhone XS?