ericdabbs

Sprint is before them.. They'll start preorders tomorrow for a June 21 delivery.

http://www.sprint.com/galaxysiii

Lets just hope that say by June 18th that the SGS3 phones doesn't get stopped by customs because they infringe on some bogus Apple patent and cause a delay like the Evo 4G LTE.

I love that Clearwire is joining the RCA. The RCA has gotten strong within the past year with Sprint, Tmobile, Leap, and Clearwire join the association to combat AT&T and Verizon. Lets just hope that Clearwire can benefit from the RCA membership in terms of expanding its coverage at some point in the future after it covers the huge metro markets.

Any update on the Photon 4G LTE phone? Any new phones hitting labs soon?

Sorry, the site still had qualcomm spectrum separated which voids the argument for echostar... I agree that they sliced it up wrong, but then I think that they screwed up on the PCS spectrum as well because it is broke into such tiny pieces that trying to make a continuous nationwide coverage is very difficult. And they are the ones that want the companies to offer rural broadband, lol.

Anyway I agree that the hosting deal with Dish will be nice, but I would like to see some more low spectrum because of the propagation characteristics, even if they just offer voice and EVDO on it, it will be nice to have some extra capacity at the low levels.

I agree that I would like to see Sprint acquire more lower spectrum in the future but the only lower spectrum that I would want Sprint to pursue if it ever became available is to obtain the 806-817 MHz spectrum that is currently held by public safety as well as others like SouthernLinc that uses iDEN still.

I think for now the amount of 800 MHz available to Sprint with 14 MHz for a 5x5 LTE carrier and a 1x carrier is going to help a lot especially since 1x Advanced can allow up to 4x the amount of users which is great for capacity.

I went to the site that you suggested, and I am surprised how few companies actually have continuous coverage in ANY spectrum band. And it was very hard to see exactly what the best fit would be for any M&A activity, but if anyone was smart, they would carve up the smaller carriers by spectrum type. I am sure that sprint would most probably not want to try and offer service in the AWS band since they do not currently have any spectrum in that band to match. (that and their tower set up is barely usable at 1900Mhz in the country where I live, so the 2100Mhz uplink band would suffer)

 

If sprint was able to purchase the smaller regional carriers, migrating customers to their network while they re-banded the PCS band to CDMA and LTE. They could then try to swap or sell the AWS spectrum to T-mobile.

Whichever the case, the idea would be to purchase the companies and gain a blanket nationwide coverage, and sell the other spectrum to another company that could do the same. Swaps might be the only way to get continuous coverage for launching LTE nationwide, and while there is still spectrum that is unused sitting in reserve, the companies should think of how to swap them before they get used for something else.

 

They could presumably also buy just the spectrum and then allow the regional carriers to run a virtual network, allowing sprint to gain native coverage and access to additional spectrum, and the regional carrier would gain additional coverage & national roaming. This would not be as good as just gaining the customers outright, but might be a cheaper option for sprint that will allow them to expand coverage area and quality of service.

 

The last thing I will say is that the best (and probably most expensive) option would be to buy the spectrum from both Echostar and Qualcomm for the 700Mhz spectrum, because qualcomm has a nationwide coverage from 716-722Mhz and the missing pieces from Echostar's 722-728Mhz nationwide coverage. Neither company can do much with the spectrum either of them has, they are just waiting for the right price and regulatory permission to sell it for a profit.

With both pieces sprint would get 12Mhz continuous spectrum in the premium spectrum band to offer another 5x5 LTE Advanced carrier and a CDMA 1x Advanced carrier. This, along with the upcoming SMR frequencies, would all but eliminate any coverage problems across the country. It would also give them the best LTE position once aggregation is introduced with LTE release 10.

 

I know that sprint is not in a position to even think of buying spectrum at this point as they are spending heavily on NV and everyone is waiting to see if they can really pull off a turn around. If they do pull off the turn around (and I think they will), we can re-visit these ideas (provided the big 2 don't just buy everything and hoard it) lol.

You do know that AT&T has already bought the Qualcomm spectrum. Also the Echostar spectrum is worthless. Its 6 MHz of unpaired spectrum and not worth Sprint's time to integrate antennas on it. To be honest, the FCC screwed up the entire 700 MHz spectrum band. I wouldn't want Sprint to acquire any of the 700 MHz spectrum because its so incompatible and diced up way too much. Sprint should only be focusing on Network Vision, acquiring the PCS H block spectrum when its up for auction and working on a network hosting deal with Dish Network.

If the regional carriers all merged together to make one large 5th National carrier, that would be sweet, but if that is not possible, I would rather Sprint and Tmobile buy up the rest of the regional carriers, so we have 4 Strong National Carriers.

 

I agree with Randall Stephenson, that we have too many players and we need some consolidation, but I do not agree that the consolidation needs to come from the national guys. The regional guys have so much spectrum being unused.

+1 on this. I would rather have Sprint and Tmobile buy up the rest of the regional carriers than to have a 5th national carrier. With 4G technology requiring larger chunks of spectrum, it doesn't seem as feasible to have super regional carriers with 20 MHz of spectrum nationwide to operate with. I would like to see Sprint acquire Clearwire and Clearwire and have Tmobile acquire MetroPCS. Don't know what to do with US cellular though.

Hearing some rumors that Cricket is short on cash and will not be able to make its roaming payment to Sprint. Is that an added impetus for Sprint to put them out of their misery?

where did you hear that from?

Does Sprint Direct Connect work over 1x yet or does it still work over 3G only? I think the adoption of Sprint Direct Connect would be much faster if it works over 1x.

I would hate to see Sprint lose a lot of Nextel customers especially if they are in areas where there is a weak 3G EVDO connections.

Do you think that with the next iPhone almost certainly having LTE we will see both bands for Sprint LTE ie: including 800 band. If not there will really be no point until iPhone 5s?

800 MHz LTE = Highly unlikely. Sprint begins 800 MHz LTE FIT testing in the Fall. Robert has mentioned that phones will begin to have 800 MHz LTE support starting Q2 2013 phones.

800 MHz CDMA = Highly likely since all LTE phones currently have support in this band

1900 MHz LTE = YES!!! Really a no brainer since iPhone 5 will have LTE and Sprint only has LTE in this band for now.

1900 MHz CDMA/EVDO = Definitely will have this one.

Do you have some pics of the LTE logo you are talking about?

It should be the icon on the middle of this page.

http://www.sprint.com/landings/lte/index.html?ECID=vanity:lte

The thing is, if you're not tech-savvy, why would you give a crap about what kind of 4G connection you have? Those folks would have to first have the desire to even learn the difference between 3G and 4G. Most probably wouldn't even know to go and turn an EVO 4G LTE to CDMA only until LTE's deployed - my wife sure wouldn't, lol. Once WIMax is dead, LTE will be it for 4G...albeit, there may be different revisions - but again, who will care?

 

Tech-savvy or not, are you going to sit there and stare at your beautiful 4G LTE icon in the taskbar or are you going to get crackin' and use the snot out of your unlimited data? Honestly, I'm cool with either one...

I don't get what you mean if you are not tech saavy why would you not care about what 4G connection you have. Lets not play dumb here, even the non-tech saavy folks knows what "LTE" and "4G" is due to the massive advertising from Verizon and AT&T. All the non-tech saavy folks don't know is the details on how it works but they do know that when they see the letters "LTE" = fast data speeds. Why do you think so many people left Sprint for Verizon and ATT because in their minds 4G Wimax = crap speeds and 4G LTE = very fast speeds. Therefore its important for Sprint to capitalize on this in their marketing plan that their phones highlight a "4GLTE" icon to let the non-tech saavy folks know that they are connecting over LTE technology which in their minds equates to fast data speeds. 4G Wimax has already given the Wimax community and Sprint customers a black eye so Sprint should try to correct that image by differentiating 4G Wimax from 4G LTE.

I really like the Sprint 4GLTE logo so I really hope Sprint uses the 4GLTE logo in the future phones. Its just that the wireless carriers have butchered the 4G term so it would be nice to let people that are not tech saavy know that the phone is connected via 4G LTE vs. 4G Wimax. I really like the Verizon 4G LTE logo and I don't think the Sprint 4G LTE logo would take up too much room on the top of the phone since the text doesn't have too big.

I'm hoping that they somehow or another convince the ILM customers in the 800SMR band to move to the 900 Band then move down into the 800MHz guard and expansion band and another 1MHz below that. That way they'll end up with 10+10Mhz in the 800MHz band.

Who are the ILM customers?

So with this article in mind... will Sprint plan on deploying 3G on the 800 SMR band as well, or just keep 1x-advanced and LTE?

 

Sent from my JB iPhone 4S using Forum Runner

Sprint does not have plans to deploy 3G on 800 MHz. For most of the country, Sprint has about 14 MHz of 800 MHz spectrum and 10 MHz which will be used to deploy a 5x5 LTE carrier and a single 1x Advanced CDMA carrier. In certain parts of the country, Sprint will only be able to deploy a single 1x Advanced CDMA carrier and a 1.4x1.4 MHz OR 3x3 MHz LTE carrier due to potential interference issues with Mexico and Canada iDEN networks. There simply isn't enough 800 MHz spectrum to deploy 1x Advanced, 3G, and LTE.

I was told that Clearwire is working on making its LTE backward compatible with WiMAX by doing a firmware update, so it can work simultaneously with each other.

Just curious if you have a buddy that works at Clearwire?

I nominate Phoenix to be the market to which the 800 LTE FIT's be deployed!

 

Edit: In all seriousness... this is Great news!

Nice try but Sprint doesn't care about Phoenix.. . . I hope Sprint can start doing 800 MHz LTE FIT testing somewhere soon. It will be nice to hear info on the improvements on coverage and building penetration between 800 MHz and 1900 MHz.

Sacramento hasn't been announced yet in the first and second rounds. The upper Central valley region is very important since it covers Sacramento, Stockton, Reno, etc. My guess is that it will be deployed in the third round which is sometime by mid to late 2013.

Hmm, wonder when the first LTE-SMR phones will arrive...

Definitely not until mid 2013. Its great that they got FCC approval to deploy LTE at 800 MHz because that was the main barrier that was out of Sprint's hands which they couldn't control. The problem right now is that Sprint is trying to decommission iDEN towers nationwide and actively trying to move iDEN customers to CDMA before they can even think about doing anything LTE related with 800 MHz.

I stand vindicated in the face of 4ringsnbr's overdone pessimism:

 

http://s4gru.com/ind...dpost__p__12127

 

AJ

4ringsnbr has moved on to Verizon and not looking back. Of course he is going to be pessimistic about Sprint doing anything right due to the way the current state of Sprint service in NO and BR are currently in. I am glad the FCC was able to recognize how important this spectrum band was to Sprint's future success and to the Network Vision project.

Yeah I am very happy that the FCC finally approved 800 MHz LTE on ESMR because Sprint really needed the extra 5x5 LTE carrier to bolster capacity as well as building penetration . To deny Sprint LTE permission at 800 MHz would have been devastating since they would leave 10 MHz of spectrum (in most parts of the country) unused which is not what the FCC wants. I know if Sprint were denied LTE at 800 MHz they could still use that 10 MHz that was set aside for LTE to bolster its CDMA/EVDO holdings but it doesn't help the wireless industry to move forward towards 4G. Im sure the FCC wants each carrier to maximize its current spectrum holdings before considering new spectrum auctions.

Which brings me back to my question: Why is Sprint not doing the same for 1900PCS? In 95% of the nation they are not using but maybe 5Mhz+5MHz of their spectrum. Are they waiting for carrier aggregation? They could still have two 1900Mhz channels even without carrier aggregation. Does carrier aggregation require new hardware?

First off how do you know 95% of the nation is only using 10 MHz of PCS spectrum? Also I am totally fine with Sprint starting off with just a 5x5 MHz carrier for LTE. I honestly don't think it will be a big deal if the speedtests are not like Verizon's where its like 30 Mbps. At the end of the day, its all about user experience and I think most of us are just concerned with whether we can stream Youtube HD or Netflix consistently without dropping connection like we do with Wimax at times. If Sprint LTE can provide that with just a 5x5 MHz carrier, then I think most people will be fine with it. Speedtests are only good if you are under a tower but that's about it.

For me, I like the fact that Sprint has some spare spectrum in its back pocket that they could deploy LTE at any time. They don't need to go guns blazing with two 5x5 MHz LTE carriers at launch even if it was available nationwide. Just start off with one 5x5 MHz LTE carrier at 1900 MHz and use the 800 MHz LTE carrier to supplement next year.

Which brings me back to my question: Why is Sprint not doing the same for 1900PCS? In 95% of the nation they are not using but maybe 5Mhz+5MHz of their spectrum. Are they waiting for carrier aggregation? They could still have two 1900Mhz channels even without carrier aggregation. Does carrier aggregation require new hardware?

I am confused by what you mean by 95% of the nation is using maybe 5 MHz x 5 MHz? Are you saying most Sprint towers are using only 10 MHz total for CDMA and EVDO?

Sprint owns 51% of Clearwire already. They have the majority vote. And it wouldn't be hard to buy out the remaining 49%. Just do an all stock transaction. It would be pretty easy. The only issue with that right now is the extra debt.

 

Sent from Joshs iPhone 3Gs using Forum Runner

I thought Sprint owns 54% of Clearwire but only has a 49.6% voting stake in Clearwire. I believe thats right but someone can correct me if I am wrong.

I agree that Clearwire should be bought out by Sprint eventually but not now. Sprint needs to remain focused on Network Vision. They have a very long way to go especially since they don't even have 1000 NV sites up yet. Even with an all stock transaction, its still not a good deal since Sprint's stock price is so depressed still. I would love Clearwire to keep focused on working on the TD-LTE standard and actually deploy LTE sites. I am very eager to see the performance of Wimax towers with LTE overlay with fat 20 MHz pipes.

Why would Tmobile protest against AT&T when it is Verizon that is trying to obtain the SpectrumCo AWS spectrum? I am sure Tmobile would have protested against the same cable company deal if it was with AT&T instead of Verizon. Now Tmobile wants Dish Network to sell half of its spectrum to the smaller carriers in case Verizon or AT&T swoops in and offers a very attractive price for the 2 GHz spectrum. It will be a real test to Dish Network if they were really serious about entering the LTE market or just trying to pump up the price of their spectrum to flip it for a nice profit.

Lets just hope that Google and Motorola can make a Nexus phone. I am tired of seeing Samsung always getting the rights of the Nexus phone. I know Google is trying something new this year where they are trying to contract out multiple Nexus phones to different manufacturers in order to speed up the adoption process of the latest Android software.