utiz4321

It can't happen soon enough. Coverage in the heart of phoenix isn't that good either. I was surprised how badly lte coverage was in Phoenix itself when I spent some time down there last week. The whole Phoenix market needs 800 and to densify.

They also have a lot more towers. Last I looked they had 60,000 plus each. You don't have to have low band spectrum to build a great network you just needed greater cell site density and lower operating margins. A perfect example is phoenix, Att only has 1900 for voice and hspa+ and yet their network performs at the same level as VZW in reliablity according to root.

Yeah but they designed it that way (or at least past regulators). Japan's governentbis heavly involved in every major industry including wireless and is very anti consumer or at least has been.

Oligolpoly is an efficient outcome in any industry with return to scale and this is certainly true of wireless. The question is can government figure out the right number of players or is the market better able to do that? In Japan the government has the players it wants and I think that accounts for the large profits the players get.

I always like the old sprint logo.

Sprint has some of the highest costs per sub in the industry also. Look if you are not happy with sprint get some one you'll be more happy with. As far as two years going away being opinion you are right but it is an educated opinion based on working in the industry. You pay the phone subsidy back in any case I don't know why you are that concerned.

There are many solutions that for good rural coverage for a company that owns only high band spectrum. One is sprints rural alliance, but there are many other options.

Low band spectrum is not necessary to have a great network.

If you problem is sprint making you wait two years for your upgrade your statement doesn't make any sense. T-Mobile doesn't do contracts and is more expensive, VZW is more expensive and if you are on a contract you have to wait two years to upgrade... So get over it. Contracts are on there way out and can't come soon enough.

While a true statement it fails to take into account that sprint's network was designed for a 1900 evdo network in mind and was starved of capital for years while sprint pursued WiMAX. Given the propagation differences between 1900 and 2.5 lte with what the network was design for, the lack of investment for years in sprint's core cmda network and the limited 800 spectrum the non upgraded sites create large gaps in sprints lte coverage and overburnded 800 lte in many places.

Any one else super excited to hear that one of their focuses this year is to densify the network with small and macro cells? Because I think that was my favorite part of the call.

Phoenix is an AL market and they have been painfully slow and a handful of site have no upgrades at all and no sign they will be upgraded. That combined with the numerous 3G only sites and maricopa counties squatting on band 26 ( no AL fault to be fair) leaves large gaps in lte coverage. AL has been horrible here.

I wonder what would have caused them to leave it out.

Why are consumer willing to pay a premium that leads to the margins ATT and VZW have? After all they choose to. Because the value they derive from VZW and ATT is equal to or greater than the price they pay. Therefore, the premium both those companies are able to command are a reward from consumers. (Basic economics) I mean rents in the economic sense.

You misunderstand what higher margins mean. It is a reward by consumers for providing goods and services that are desired or a rent. But near as I can tell VZW and Att have the same rents as T-Mobile and Sprint. So this fact goes rather to my point. Also, I think both in terms of reputation and third party data they provide a better service on average ( individual experience varies to be sure).

Exactly. VZW and ATT have substantially higher prices than sprint and T-Mobile yet they own over 70 of the market. Consumer are saying they prefer higher prices with service in more places and greater reliability. An individual person might not prefer that trade off but it seem not enough to make the alternative model profitable.

They don't have enough 800 to have all there voice traffic run across it. Further that makes their voice coverage around what 1900 is and not even close to 800 1x

The problem is the cost of running such a network. Unless sprint picks up some 600 at the much delayed auction the cell site density required to match the reliability of their cmda 1900 network seems like it would make it prohibitively expensive.

So if sprint can't make cdma handoffs work I think they are going to lag on volte. Given their spectrum i would think they would need to densify their network dramatically.

Is there any way to hand off calls from lte to cdma?

Yeah, well the title says it all Sprint during CES. The op was making a claim about sprint service in that one location and time, nothing else.

do you know if these leases have any kind of clause giving sprint first crack at resigning? Also do we have any idea when the leases end?

Sure. And individual wireless experiance on a given network is highly subjective. But when can talk about an average experiance. Root metrics and other sources are not perfect but valuable resource to discribe such an experiance, especially when combined with a reasonable expectation of how a given band would work on a given cell site density it is easy to conclude that sprint either needs more cell sites, all three bands deployed or both to have a network that is competitive with their competitors. This is reflected in the root metric data. In areas where sprint is further along in the deployment of b26 and b41 their network performs more in-line with the competition.

It is easy. Look at rootmetric. you don't need first hand experience.

With the site spacing we have here absolutely true.