ericdabbs

The Sprint coverage map has already been updated for the major markets of Los Angeles, Memphis and Charlotte. After looking and comparing the NV complete sites and the Sprint coverage map, I would say that the coverage presented in the Sprint coverage map is pretty accurate. This gives me good confidence that the info Robert gets every week is trustworthy.

I don't understand the fascination of a Sprint and Tmobile merger at this point when both companies are both caught up in their own transactions to bolster their network and trying to catch up to the big 2. I just don't see a Sprint and Tmobile merger occurring any time soon or if ever. Sprint attempted to buy Tmobile once several years ago before AT&T jumped with a better offer. I think the FCC is happy to have 4 major carriers in the US competing for market share. The problem the FCC has is that Verizon and AT&T control too much of the wireless industry and they need to find a way to help Sprint and Tmobile become a bigger threat to the big 2.

As much as I love Sprint, I am glad that there is still Tmobile out there as an alternative carrier that I can jump to that still has unlimited data. I wouldn't want to see Tmobile gobbled up by Sprint and reduce competition. I just think once Sprint and Tmobile catch up with their LTE footprint to be on par with Verizon and AT&T, current customers for Verizon and AT&T would be willing to give Sprint and Tmobile a chance once they see LTE in their town to see if they can save them any money and for the unlimited data. If you ask any current Verizon and AT&T customer why they wouldn't switch to Sprint and Tmobile and a lot will say its because they don't have LTE in their town even if it means they continue to pay higher prices.

I'm sure that Crest has been reinvigorated by the fact that MetroPCS' largest minority shareholder was able to get Deutsche Telekom to improve their merger terms.

 

Sent from my SPH-L900 using Tapatalk 2

It could be. The thing is even if Sprint were to improve their offer, at what price would it be satisfactory? Dish has stated an offer of about $3.30/share. Is Crest expecting at least $3.50/share? Hell I hope Clearwire investors are not expecting $8.00 for 49% of the company given the amount of debt they have and how much they rely on Sprint for survival.

Crest Financial waging proxy fight to block Sprint deal. Its getting "real" up in here for Crest Financial of their disdain of the Sprint deal and urging Clearwire shareholders to block the deal. I wonder how much effect this will have approving this deal going forward.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/clearwire-shareholder-crest-wages-proxy-fight-block-sprint-deal/2013-04-11

I'm speaking in terms of a merger or network sharing agreement with T-Mobile.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk 2

Definitely additional antenna panels that support AWS frequencies, carrier cards for PCS HSPA and AWS LTE/HSPA at the BTS, new RRUs that support HSPA and LTE on AWS and PCS. I am sure I am missing some other small details.

What work would need to be done to get Network Vision towers to blast out PCS HSPA and AWS HSPA/LTE?

A lot. I wouldn't worry about it since it won't happen.

4 per RRU according to the FCC docs. And of course they are mix and match. So in rural areas they can deploy 1 or 2 CDMA voice carriers, 1 EVDO and 1 LTE carrier.

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 5 using Tapatalk 2

Interesting information. I assume the antenna panel must be able to handle at least 8 CDMA/EVDO/LTE carriers since I believe each tower has 2 RRUs for each antenna panel.

I don't really agree with trying to create a fatter pipe from two different pieces of spectrum. If you are connected to SMR, it is because you don't have access to PCS (distance or obstruction). I'm not sure on LTE-A, but if sprint aggregated PCS and SMR, then you leave PCS coverage, can you use just the 5x5 SMR LTE on its own? Once again, it just seems like a "measuring contest" to get 10x10Mhz.

The point was that you could aggregate two 5x5 carriers to create a 10x10 carrier. Sure the 5x5 SMR LTE carrier should stay on its own to provide better indoor coverage and I would not aggregate with a PCS LTE carrier. Call it a bad example if you want. You pointed out saying that Sprint would never do 10x10 because in many places it didn't have a 10x10 of contiguous spectrum. What I am trying to say is that you don't need a 10x10 of contiguous spectrum to deploy a 10x10 LTE carrier in the future because LTE Advanced allows you to aggregate two 5x5 carriers in non-contiguous spectrum to create a 10x10 carrier.

I would make the argument that you can make a 10x10 LTE carrier from two 5x5 carriers in the PCS spectrum (one from PCS D and one from the PCS E block which are not contiguous). Again call it a "measuring contest" or what not but the point is that in anything that Sprint has planned for the future needs to have flexibility. What Sprint decides to end up doing, we don't know but to assume it will "never" happen is absurd. I wouldn't look at what Samsung did with its 5 MHz bandwidths as a measuring stick to what Sprint has planned for the future. Obviously the HTC, Motorola and LG phones were tested for 5 and 10 MHz bandwidths for a reason. If there were absolutely no plans for the future for 10 MHz bandwidths then it wouldn't have been tested in the first place.

How many CDMA/EVDO/LTE carriers can a RRU and the antenna panel handle at one time? Its certainly not an unlimited number of carriers.

A good chunk of the Sprint LTE devices are only certified for 5Mhz LTE Channels. 5x5 LTE is not going anywhere and will probably be the Sprint norm for SMR and PCS spectrum. My guess is that only larger channels will be in the BRS spectrum, but that is TD, not FD, so apples and oranges. Sprint can clean up 10Mhz of PCS A-F for an additional 5x5 PCS LTE carrier in many markets according to AJs data in other posts. However, I don't think Sprint has an available 20mhz contiguous PCS that is unused for 10x10 FD LTE.

 

Why are so many people on this forum hung up on 10x10 Mhz LTE? Two 5x5Mhz LTE carriers can support the same number of users, just a half the theoretical max bandwidth.

By good chunk of LTE devices you really just mean the Samsung devices only. The Motorola, HTC and LG devices have all supported 5 and 10 MHz LTE bandwidths. I understand for the time being that 5 MHz LTE bandwidths are what Sprint will be deploying for additional capacity. With LTE Advanced, you don't need to have a 10x10 of contiguous spectrum that you are argue is needed to create a 10x10 LTE carrier. The idea is that you can take two 5x5 LTE carriers from different spectrum (Ex: 800 and 1900 MHz)and aggregate them to create a fatter pipe. This to me is something that I can see as feasible for Sprint in the future if they so choose to. With RRUs only able to support 5 MHz bandwidths this is a limitation that does not allow for future growth. I can see not needed to test 15 and 20 MHz bandwidths but 10 MHz bandwidth is in no way out of the question.

Looks like Dish is stock piling 10 billion in cash to try to make some disruption in the wireless industry which involves either a Clearwire purchase offer OR maybe present a potential counteroffer for MetroPCS to disrupt the Tmobile/MetroPCS deal. Either way I hope in the end Dish gets neither of those deals and that way they can sit on their spectrum and pound sand. I would much rather have Tmobile have MetroPCS than Dish. I would love to see Ergen squirm if he can't land either one of those deals and he raised all that money for nothing.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/dish-amasses-10b-cash-pile-questions-swirl-over-its-plans/2013-04-10

Alcatel Lucent's is only capable of 5MHz LTE carriers at this point, and Samsung can do 5MHz & 10MHz on one after a Class 2 Permissive Change, and 5 & 10MHz on another from the original filing.

I am kinda shocked that Sprint didn't request that all the OEMs RRUs be tested for 5 and 10 MHz channel bandwidths. I can understand not needing to test 15 and 20 MHz channel bandwidths since that wouldn't occur until several years from now or if ever but I don't think that 10 MHz channel bandwidths would have been too far fetched for the near future. It seems like it wouldn't be too difficult for Alcatel Lucent to add 10 MHz channel bandwidth support with a Class 2 Permissive Change request on its RRU. With Alcatel Lucent covering some of the largest metro areas in the US, they will definitely need to be able to support 10 MHz channel bandwidths.

End of May can't come soon enough. If the FCC approves the Softbank/Sprint/Clearwire merger what happens next? I assume it still needs to get minority Clearwire shareholder approval and I would assume by then Clearwire has to make up their darn minds. This circus is getting ridiculous.

I'll play devil's advocate here.

 

So why can't Sprint just put up new Network Vision towers in those locations within the next 24 months, given the fact Sprint is not only retiring Nextel but also their legacy network? Wouldn't 800 CDMA/LTE give similar coverage to the old Nextel towers?

 

Isn't the move for the future to a much flatter network architecture anyway? If you could, in the future, deploy LTE only... wouldn't that be cheaper in the long run? I have a lot to study up on this, but the Single RAN idea is strong here.

 

 

Sprint is trying to save money on operating costs that have plagued them for years for running 2 different networks. In Sprint's opinion, many of the Nextel sites are redundant where Sprint sites provide overlapping coverage, so it makes sense to shut down Nextel sites that do the same thing. Now I agree that in certain areas in the US where Nextel sites cover areas where Sprint coverage does not, it should keep those Nextel sites and convert those to Sprint Network Vision towers. But I would say for the majority of the 30,000 Nextel sites, Sprint should decommission them and save money on operating costs. Sprint needs to cut down its 68,000 sites (Nextel and Sprint combined) to 38,000 sites (Sprint only) and improve its balance sheet.

The money saved from decommissioning about 30,000 sites would be much better used somewhere else like expanding the TD-LTE coverage beyond Clearwire's scope of its existing WiMAX footprint.

Here you go:

Original (RRUS 11 B25 was LTE only)

1st mod (Adds Dual LTE/CDMA use)

2nd mod (Adds 10Mhz & 15MHz channel bandwidth's to LTE use)

3rd mod (Adds 3MHz & 20MHz channel bandwidth's to LTE use)

Wow!!! I wonder if Samsung and Alcatel RRUs are able to support 10, 15 and 20 MHz channel bandwidths for LTE use. I am sure you can find this information.

Once again Josh you are DA MAN!!! Great finds for the Samsung and Alcatel Lucent RRUs. I live in a Alcatel Lucent market so I hope they start pumping out the firmware update to upgrade these Alcatel Lucent RRUs when they do new Network Vision installs so that it will be ready to begin deploying 800 MHz LTE later on this year.

Please have removable SIM in tri-band LTE phones this year.

If the Galaxy S4 has removable SIMs which would be the 2nd phone in 2013 to have removable SIM. I don't see a reason why Sprint would discontinue removable SIMs from this point forward regardless if it is single or tri band LTE phone.

I found RRUS 11 for CDMA800 re-certified for 800LTE/800CDMA mix-carrier use!

 

https://apps.fcc.gov...TA8AKRC161287-2

and

https://apps.fcc.gov...TA8AKRC161287-1

Good find. I wonder if Samsung and Alcatel Lucent RRUs are certified for 800 CDMA and LTE use.

I was under the impression that the Clearwire spectrum would eventually be deployed throughout every major metro area.

Where did you read that? I haven't heard of any Sprint official or unofficial comments on where they want to take Clearwire for TD-LTE deployment. The only thing I heard about TD-LTE deployment was from Clearwire which involves deploying hotzones in 31 markets.

My hope is that Sprint would take TD-LTE deployment nationwide to all major markets in the urban areas. Since Clearwire only has ~16 K towers nationwide, the only way I can see Sprint trying to achieve this is through deploying TD-LTE on its own Network Vision towers where it already has the tower leases and backhaul set up in markets where Wimax is not currently covered.

OK so how can I become this primer sponsor. I'm not trying to bash sprint. We pay the money went the service. They say "Truely Unlimited" Can't half use it. I thought living in Miami was a Big city like New York, California, Atlanta. Only way I can use my phone is to turn the 4g off and use the 3g CDMA. Don't ask it works.

 

How do I become Primer Sponsor.

Check this thread out. It has all the information you need.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/1195-information-about-s4gru-sponsorship-levels-and-how-to-become-a-sponsor/

Not worth it Here in Miami. Only able to get good 4g on the Major Highways. 1 area in my neighborhood gets 20+ MB so sad. As soon as sprint start to do a data cap like AT&T and Verizon We may start seeing faster speeds.

Miami only has 23% of its area covered with Network Vision and not all of it is LTE. Since you are not a sponsor here you can't see which towers have LTE which is why you observe LTE gaps. Miami still has a long way to go but you can see from the areas that have LTE that speeds are great.

When do you guys think this phone will be released on Sprint? Now that the HTC One is being released on April 19th, I think the S4 should be released in mid to late May.

Ehh I don't see how popular this facebook phone will be. I know its called the HTC First but it could also be called the HTC Last if it doesn't draw any market share.

Where do you see that? Not here, I guarantee because it is wrong.

 

AJ

I meant to say that it appears from the Engadget article in the link in my previous posts that the Sprint HTC One supports WCDMA at 700 and AWS bands. The table says which bands it supports and along with CDMA at 850/1900 and LTE at 1900 it says it supports WCDMA 700 and AWS bands.

Its probably a typo or the guy is clueless. Either way, I was kinda skeptical too so I was just wanted to throw that out to see if I was just seeing things.

I see that Sprint has WCDMA support for 700 and AWS bands. Which countries deploy WCDMA support in the 700 MHz band. Seems like a weird band to support WCDMA when it would have been better to include 1900 instead.