Yea, at least in Seattle, they put special 1900 panels up and it will take a very long time to replace them with 800 panels, judging from how long the initial LTE rollout took. I'm not getting my hopes up for anything earlier than Q3 2016. Maybe Q2.
Sprint should just start building out its own network in Sioux Falls and turn it on as soon as the swifter contract is up - heck, include it in project cedar!
Apparently not. I know the MTA licenses have specific requirement based on spectrum depth (10mhz, 15mhz: 25% pops; 30mhz: 33% pops I think) but apparently these requirements are literally "substantial service". I don't know how they could have been more generic lol.
Also, AT&T falls back to HSPA+ to take calls and since I see DBMs like -125 on AT&T LTE a lot and calls go through just fine, their phones must be able talk to the network just fine. Maybe it's that lower frequencies like B17 (700mhz) work better at those DBMs?
Wait they aren't required to allow roaming with Sprint? I thought all CCA member were required to allow roaming on their network from all of the other members...
I honestly think that sprint will end up aggregating 20mhz TDD-LTE bands in 2600 and stay away from FDD-TDD aggregation. I can see them doing stuff with 800 and 1900 aggregation though...
I mean I've seen devices hold on as low as -140 LTE but the programming doesn't let them normally. I really wish the phone programming had it holding on until ~130 or so because LTE on B41 is still very usable at that signal. From my experience, 1900 is good until about -120 too.