standardmissile

I can confirm the California - Fallbrook tower is operational. No stats, but it is running as of March/April of 2013 Also there is a previously unknown tower in the northern section of Encinitas, CA in very close proximity to the intersection of El Camino Real, and Leucadia Blvd/Rancho Santa Fe Rd. It's service footprint is marked on the Clear coverage maps. No data, but it is operational with fairly decent coverage, given the 2.5GHz propagation patterns. Methinks it's sitting somewhere on the coastal bluffs on the western side of El Camino Real, but I didn't have the time to do any UHF-DF to pinpoint the tower last time I was down there.

Verizon has 1xRTT and EV-DO rolled out in the SD area. The call quality is pretty dang good, and I heard from a local tower guy whom I used to go drinking with after work, that Verizon is upgrading their CDMA network to try and keep up with Sprint's NV due to their 700 LTE band being overloaded. Also think of it, LTE is designed to operate in an urban developed area based on how the signal was designed to compensate for reflection on the signal path, and other urban specific RF problems. It would behoove them to not neglect their CDMA 850 band when it still carries buttloads of their business customers such as Public Utilities, large coprorations like Qualcomm sales execs, and even some public public/safety cellulars in light of Nextel's iDEN going dark. As well as the roaming agreements from Straight Talk, Net10, regionals, and some of Sprint's CDMA traffic. Those are cash cows! Low negotiated throughput, crappy latency, and roaming costs.

Chairfarce....

I was contracted to work at a company that used the Kyocera DuraPlus handsets back in 2012. We had so many issues with the PTT network, that we had to fall back to using radio protocols to confirm that transmissions were being received, NATO phonetics, confirming messages, standardized phrases, and training on how/when to key up. It felt like I was using an old Combat net from the early days of OIF/OEF, before Uncle Sam got our sh*t together and set up a decent trunking system. Can't tell you how much the employees wanted to go get some iDEN handsets to use instead of the POS that we had at the time. It only got marginally better with EVDO roaming, and limited 1xRTT support with the OTA firmware updates.

I agree with all of this, and would personally prefer to see as a part of NV 1.0 that every Nextel site that is not a duplicate converted to at least a CDMA EVDO Rev A/1X RTT Adv standard. I would have also really liked to see Nextel's iDEN network not waste the WiDEN hardware that they paid out the but for, and then shelved after installing/silently activating in most towers, due to the Sprint merger. That said, I am pretty certain that some of the sites in the middle of nowhere like the Dakotas, Nebraska, and Idaho are going to be neglected to a certain extent, due to their infrequent usage compared to areas like the LA Metro or Chicago. From a business sense the renovation would never pay off, and it would be cheaper to just establish a roaming agreement with Verizon or regional carrier for the few customers that would pass through. The customer in me does want NV even in the far reaches like that, simply because I like to go visit family and have my smartphone work like it does at home, but again it does not add up fiscally for their corporate goals.

Not entirely. iDEN towers operated different backhaul types and interfaces. While the frequencies might be very similar, the cost to convert every Nextel tower over to IS-95/IS-2000/TIA-856 compliant standards would be astronomical. Think of it this way, Nextel's towers used a backhaul that was very similar to a GSM circuit switched network, albeit with all Motorola equipment, and proprietary VSELP/iDEN protocols. To convert half those towers where it is not planned ATM to NV it would cost millions of dollars, and not pay off for the foreseeable future due to infrequent use (compared to downtown LA or NYC). It's just cheaper and much more economical to establish roaming agreements with other carriers, than to spend the dough on some podunk tower in the middle of nowhere, that few people will ever use. Also Nextel built their network out over years, not 6-12 months like Sprint is trying to do.

Sorry guys, didn't mean to come off too strongly. Just dealt with a few too many insensitive idiots and trolls in my day. That and the neighbor's chihuahua kept me up that night. Trust me, the Japanese are not perfect. Any society that allows you to be stuffed into train cars like sardines into a tin, needs to have their collective heads examined.

It's definitely a very interesting society, which us Americans could learn a thing or two from. I would also probably have to chalk some of that ideology up to how they pulled off the Japanese Miracle back in the 1950s-1980s. @WiWavelength That's not cool man, even if you're joking. Suicide rates skyrocketed there in the 90s, and got even worse after the 2008 economic collapse as well as the 2011 Fukishima Daichi incident. The Japanese have had our backs since the end of war two, and have been great allies economically, culturally, politically, and militarily.

Most Japanese companies attempt to reach a conglomerate status, and as such Softbank would be no different. Panasonic for example manufactures TVs, microwaves, fridges, ovens, telephones, some toilets, furniture, and bicycles, The Sony Group and Kawasaki Industries are the same way. Westerners mostly do not understand this kind of business strategy, but then again look at the Fukishima radiological disaster. There was no rioting or looting, like you would have seen here in the United States or other Westernized nations. The Japanese have a very unique way of life that is founded on the basis of "politeness." I cannot completely understand the perspective or worldview that influences/relates to this, but it does explain a heck of a lot about how their society runs.

To the best of my knowledge, most of those are "tweaks" to the underlying chipset on the USB dongles, or stand alone devices. Plus they are limited in the bandwidth that they can utilize. The devices I was making reference to were completely unchained from band limitations due to their designs, and are built from the ground up to for the purpose of being a dedicated SDR. The new JTRS are surprisingly shoddy though. The only ones said to have been able to operate reasonably are the Thales AN/PRC-148 v2, or the Harris AN/PRC-152 MBITR,.

I can tell you that hardware does exist that can do CDMA (CdmaOne, 1xRTT, EVDO, and SVDO) GSM, EDGE, GPRS, UTMS, iDEN, WiMax and LTE-A as well as non cellular protocols such as DMR, P25, or TETRA. Just don't ever expect to see it in your smartphone unless you're the head of the some shady agency, or the modern incarnate of Howard Hughes. The technology however is called Software Defined Radio or SDR, and uses a FPGA microprocessor to generate the waveform pattern of whatever signaling protocol(s) is installed via software, instead of the standardized hardware implementation we commonly use today. The only people making or using these things are defense contractors for JTRS and ETUS Laboratories for research/scientific applications. A watered down SDR from ETUS costs around $1500 USD and is limited to 300 milliwatts output. Even die hard Apple iNuts wouldn't pay that for an SDR iPhone, even if it had a GLADDOS style piece of Steeve Jobs soul in it.....

Whats most ironic is that 60 percent of the residents here are IT/science majors working for Software/tech companies nearby like Toshiba, Sony, Gateway, Hewlett Packard, and EA. They of all people should be the least NIMBY bastardesqe. Maybe its all the bleach blonde/hooker looking bimbos that I see strapped to them that are draining their rational thought process.

In a neighborhood where the average home still sits in the 500K range, and where people earn mid to high six figure incomes I was really surprised that it was well........ So poorly equipped to handle the population density and throughput. For lack of better wording. At least mounting of the 800 SMR 1xADV, 1900 PCS LTE/EVDO Rev A, and potentially 2600 band WiMax/anything will be a breeze on this tower........

To assist local residents spot Legacy Sprint towers, vs the new Network Vision upgraded ones I went to a nearby tower for some pics. This one is in a shopping center in Irvine at the intersection of Yale and Irvine Blvd. The shopping center is the one with Zion Market, Carls Jr, Del Taco, and US Bank. The tower sits on the Northwest side of the center behind the Zion market.

I work in SD county occasionally. There is a WiMax protection site in Encinitas ping avg 120ms, uplink approx 800 kilobit, downlink 1.5 megabit, Also another in the downtown San Diego area on what I believe is atop the old Hotel Del Coranado, ping avg 100, uplink 500 kilobit and downlink 600 kilobit. The UCSD tower is active and operates in the vacinity of the Salk Institute/Muir College along El Camino Real. Uplink/downlink varies widely due to the college kids, but avg is 500-800kbit/300-500kbit respectively. There is a tower in Escondido but I have yet to test its speed ranges. All of these tests are pre NV though and I can confirm that they utilize old leased T1 carrier lines.

Oh I play with some pretty fun toys for a living...... But having that 800 SMR sure would make calling/messaging my better half a hell of a lot easier and keep my ass outta the fryer a lot more often. Even if it is limited to a 1xRTT (IS-200) or hell even cdmaOne (IS-95)

I have noticed a large deployment of EVDO/1X RTT on the 800 SMR band in the Chicago IL area. Is there any news for anything like that in the Southwest, such as Southern California? I work in some pretty remote areas and have a CDMA tactical repeater attached to my vehicle for the 800 band and would love to be able to get signal out in Palms Springs, Victorville, and some of the more remote areas where I can only get a Verizon signal.