ericdabbs

2.9% according to this article http://www.zdnet.com...id-devices/7351 published today at that...

 

as far as ICS being "ready for an annual update, The SDK for Android 4.0.1 was publicly released on 19 October 2011 and the source code for Android 4.0 became available on 14 November 2011 according to Wikipedia. That is not even 6 months ago that the SDK was published. The first ICS phone came out on 17 November. Google would only infuriate the OEMs that have worked feverishly to push ICS out to their handsets if they released a new version of Android this soon.

Personally I think Google is not doing a good job in working with the manufacturers in providing the next version of Android sooner. I know manufacturers share the blame in this but I think Google deserves some blame as well. So far their Handset Alliance group that they announced last year at Google I/O has done nothing to provide speedier updates.

IMO, I think that Google should be providing the manufacturers a beta build 2-3 months before the official release of that Android version so that they can start developing driver, add their UI layer skins and the carriers can put their bloatware on top of it and start doing some preliminary testing. Then once the official Android version is out, the manufacturers would simply do a sync up of the latest Android baseline and do regression testing to see what broke and fix those items. If this were to happen, I could see manufacturers start providing the latest software updates for the phones within 3 months of the source code release.

The way I think of it is if custom rom groups like CyanogenMod can take the ICS source code and produce a pretty stable ICS rom in less than 3 months and this is without knowing the source code of the chipsets, think about how much faster the manufacturers could pump out ROMS with their expertise.

It will be a dud. *yawn*

 

Why offer a non LTE device at this time? Waste of money. They need to develop their WP flagship with MSM8960 and start getting people excited about it now. Like they did with the GNex. Dumb.

 

Robert via NOVO7PALADIN Tablet using Forum Runner

Agreed. I don't think that Sprint should be making 3G only devices anymore. Keep in mind though that this phone has been previously cleared through the FCC back in Oct 2011 when Windows Phone did NOT have LTE capability and is now going through reapproval from the FCC. Why they need to go through the FCC again I have no idea especially if the plan was not to add LTE in it. I believe the Nokia Lumia 900 which is coming out is the first Windows Phone to have LTE capability in it.

I am sure it will be marketed as a low end device just like the LG Viper but I am sure people will still buy it since it probably would be an upgrade over the Arrive.

Yeah, hopefully it will. I still can't believe that Jelly Bean is already coming out. ICS just launched last year.

Well when you mean coming out, I don't think its any time soon. I am thinking Jelly Bean won't come until Q4 2012 probably Oct or Nov. Reason being is that one of Jelly Bean's key features will be Android Assistant which will rival Siri which is coming out on Q4 2012. Plus we know that Google likes to take their sweet time on these things.

Meh....4.0" WVGA sceren and Gingerbread are so 2011....LOL

 

Not a bad entry level device though.

Yeah but I believe that the LG Viper will get the ICS update later on this year hopefully before Jelly Bean comes out.

It looks like we may have 2 Windows Phones coming out this year by Sprint. One of them has been confirmed by Robert and the team. This other one was yesterday's news but apparently it hit the FCC again yesterday. This phone the LG LS831 (not the official model name but its codename) apparently hit the FCC in Oct 2011 previously but now is being retested by the FCC for whatever reason. This phone doesn't appear to have LTE capability but it does have 800 MHz CDMA support.

What do you guys think? Are you guys excited to see Sprint bring more interest to Windows Phone and to attract those customers? I for one are happy about this for those Windows Phone fans and even though I don't own a Windows Phone, I am glad that they are trying to catch up to AT&T in providing more Windows Phone options besides just the HTC Arrive.

http://www.engadget..../#disqus_thread

If they created a Windows Phone subforum, would you guys be interested in it? Maybe turn the Nokia subforum into a Windows Phone subforum since Nokia only makes Windows Phones anyways.

Much has been written about Network Vision and its components. Multi Modal towers, 1x Advanced, DO Advanced, LTE etc. So Sprint isn't just rolling out LTE, in fact it has been stated that NV technology will make Sprint's network future proof. We know that Sprint will spend in excess of $7 billion on this massive project that will help maximize the efficient use of its spectrum holdings.

 

Verizon and ATT are currently building out their LTE networks and while doing so they are touching almost every one of their towers. Does anyone know if they are doing anything to help maximize their current spectrum holdings?

 

This question is a result of reading an article on Broadband Convergent. http://www.broadband...demand-capacity

 

Should a Wireless Network Operator show that the company is maximizing its efforts to use spectrum in a most efficient manner before being allowed to participate in future auctions?

 

Denny

When you are talking about "they" are you referring to Verizon and AT&T? Because if you are talking about Sprint then I would say ..Yes they are making efficient use of their limited spectrum that they have. Most people on this site know how Sprint is showing that they are making the most of its spectrum through the 800 Mhz refarming plan.

In terms of Verizon and AT&T, I would say "No" they are not making the most efficient use of the spectrum since that they haven't even tried such things as "Wifi offloading" on their network as well as deploying "small cells". Also Verizon is not looking to refarm any of its current 850 or 1900 Mhz spectrum first before resorting to buying more spectrum on the market. I would say the same for AT&T. They have a crap load of 850 Mhz and 1900 Mhz spectrum that could be refarmed before trying to starve the competition.

Tmobile is even doing a better job of making use of their spectrum by refarming HSPA+ to 1900 Mhz by kicking out 2G EDGE folks and of course repurposing the AWS spectrum for LTE.

Is it possible that Sprint will still release the GNex on the 15th, but it won't see authorized resellers until a week later? Sprint may want to drive sales at their corporate stores. This is a memo for Sams Club...

Hopefully that is true that it sticks with the 15th and that will definitely validate the nice info Robert has received.

According to TheVerge, it looks like there is a flyer that has the release dates for the LG Viper and the Galaxy Nexus. The LG Viper is still staying put for Apr 15 but now the Galaxy Nexus is pushed back one week to Apr 22. I guess maybe Sprint thought they wanted to give the LG Viper at least a week head start to gain some sales. I don't think its going to make much of a difference given the popularity of the Galaxy Nexus.

http://www.theverge.com/2012/4/1/2918755/sprint-galaxy-nexus-lte-release-date

Pretty interesting that Sprint seems to have given up on Oklahoma. They just ended their roaming agreement with Pioneer, basically cutting all their Rural OK coverage. The other carriers have included OKC as one of their first "4G" markets:

 

-Verizon launched 4G LTE in OKC as one of the very first markets launched in late 2010.

-T-Mobile launched "4G" HSPA+ 42mbps a few months after Verizon launched LTE

-AT&T launched LTE in OKC in the second wave of cities.

 

Sprint never had WiMax here, and doesn't appear to have plans to make OKC a priority on their NV LTE launch. Disappointing, but not surprising. Their 3G network here has deteriorated significantly over the last few years. I remember my Sanyo phone on Sprint with the polyphonic ringtones. Man, that phone was cutting edge! I hope to see Sprint turn things around here in OK, but it looks like they've striked this market from their "give a damn" list.

Keep in mind that it was Pioneer that decided to end the roaming agreements with Sprint and jump in bed with Verizon. I am positive it was not intentional. Lets face it, Verizon is more attractive to Pioneer especially if Verizon approached them with guaranteeing LTE through its Rural America Program. Unfortunately that area is covered by Pioneer so its not much Sprint can do other than to do roaming agreements in that area.

In terms of whether Sprint cares about OKC for NV, I feel that OKC/Tulsa will be a 3rd round market and not fall into the 4th round. Don't feel sad as some of the other bigger cities like Milwaukee, Las Vegas, Denver, Pittsburgh, etc will probably be in the 3rd round market as well.

I honestly think they were only lying a little bit. With regards to AT&T's current plans to deploy LTE ONLY in 700MHz and 1700Mhz AWS bands, they are in big trouble. EDIT: maybe not, their AWS is significant

 

The only national license they hold for either of those bands is 6 mhz in the D-Block (unpaired at that!).

 

Assuming that AT&T would bother deploying in these areas (TDD would be the only way) and LTE has a spectral efficiency of 2mbps/Hz, their LTE wouldn't perform differently from HSPA+ in these areas if they were to roll it out, which I seriously doubt they will. EDIT: maybe not, their AWS is significant

 

AT&T does have significant 700MHz spectrum licenses in urban areas, so these areas will get LTE, fast LTE at that. However, unless AT&T changes it's spectrum strategy (use other bands), rural areas will get left out in the cold just like always. EDIT: maybe not, their AWS is significant

 

I encourage you all to check out my source, it really illustrates who has what spectrum, where, and how much bandwidth of it they have,

 

Source for this info: http://specmap.sequence-omega.net/

Thanks for the link. I am really digging this site. Now the more I look at the website and where the AWS spectrum licenses lies for both Leap and MetroPCS, I am starting to change my mind and now realize why Sprint went after MetroPCS. Previously I thought that Sprint should go after Leap since I though they would have better spectrum assets due to just looking at AJ's chart comparing MetroPCS and Leap spectrum where it seemed as though Leap covered more markets. Now with the website, I realized that MetroPCS has more AWS spectrum than Leap (20 Mhz for MetroPCS vs. 10 Mhz for Leap) in many of the bigger cities.

What MetroPCS needs to do now is to obtain AWS spectrum for the central to east coast markets hopefully in a VZW AWS divestitures for the cable company deal or through bidding on SpectrumCo's AWS spectrum should the VZW cable company deal fall through to have nationwide AWS spectrum assets. This way MetroPCS can be a stronger player in the wireless market. Maybe at some point when Sprint's balance sheet is better that they could revisit a buyout of MetroPCS.

As long as a deal is fair for both Sprint and Dish I would be happy with it. Sprint needs money and if there is any way that can help offset costs from Network Vision. Also any spectrum that is not in the hands of Verizon and AT&T is a victory in itself.

I am sure AT&T has rubbed Ergen the wrong way already by crying to the FCC about the way they plan to deploy LTE. That is not to say that Ergen can't be bought though but I am sure it is not his first choice.

If Sprint and Dish Network were to partner up for network hosting it would be nice since the PCS band and the MSS bands are right next to each other.

If Sprint were to obtain the PCS "H" block nationwide and make a deal with Dish it would be good for both parties since Sprint needs the money and Dish needs a LTE network. It would be like one large contiguous piece of spectrum.

Agree completely. I was never insinuating they need to keep all the iDEN sites. That would make no sense. You live in Los Angeles where Sprint has lots and lots of CDMA sites and many of them were created from co-locations. Here in Louisiana and a lot of other areas, there are not enough sites. With all the money Sprint spent on the planning of NV, it would have made sense to use the best location possible, whether that is a CDMA site or an iDEN site. This would have been a great opportunity for Sprint to correct the mistakes Gulf Coast Wireless made in this area.

I wish I had a map to see where all the CDMA and iDEN towers are in Louisiana because I would like to see what you are talking about. It does suck that in Louisiana that the towers are not located in optimal locations. I am not sure if complaining to Sprint will do anything but I guess it doesn't hurt.

So the nextel merger was a huge financial drain to Sprint as we all know. So let's at least use the infrastructure that we overpaid for in the beginning to thicken coverage and provide a better service to our existing and potential future customers, right? No, we'll just shut it all down. Makes sense.

 

Sorry for the negative post, but this decision really does bother me, especially when I read that Mr. Hesse got a 31% pay increase.

 

Ok, back to being positive.

I agree with you in that Sprint should keep some iDEN sites that are located much better than CDMA sites to provide better coverage throughout the area and convert those to Network Vision. However I don't agree with keeping all 68,000 towers and converting those to Network Vision because there is too much redundancy and keeps the operating costs too high. Sprint needs to cut down dramatically on operating costs that are causing a huge cash drain. Most of the areas where there is a CDMA tower there is an iDEN tower nearby so there is no need for that and probably would cause too much interference. I wish Sprint would keep at least 40,000-42,000 towers instead of just a little over 38,000 towers.

Sounds like its an isolated incident. I am not surprised if folks that live in certain areas for Network Vision are experiencing some slight problems. I believe he was having problems with an airave version 1 and it was a known issue it has problems with the Photon. The airave version 2 seems to have fixed the problem. I wouldn't worry about too much. If there was a massive outage, I am sure it would have made the news.

2 days ago at the Barclays Capital conference, the CFO of Sprint discussed about the speculation of a Sprint and Dish network hosting agreement or possibly buying spectrum from Dish. Now this is not a new rumor since it has been speculated for some time now that Sprint could possibly look at Dish Network for a network hosting agreement should Lightsquared fail. Now that Sprint and Lightsquared have parted ways, I think now is the time to start thinking about a Sprint and Dish network hosting agreement.

The key thing from this article is that the Sprint CFO is publicly fueling the fire of this speculation to its investors. I think this is a good sign that the rumor has some legs in it. Who knows what preliminary discussions Sprint has had with Dish already but all signs point nothing but up. Sprint currently is not in a position to strike a network hosting deal in 2012 because the Network Vision architecture is not fully deployed yet as well as the S-band 2Ghz spectrum not fully approved yet by the FCC for LTE deployment. I can see a possible deal occurring sometime mid 2013 where at least half of Sprint's footprint is covered with Network Vision architecture.

What do you guys think?

http://www.fiercebro...aven/2012-03-28

I am so far behind!!! I need to delegate. However, I cannot give confidential source materials to even our writers. Must protect at all costs.

 

Robert

I am glad that there is still a ton of info to decipher through. At least it will keep The Wall fresh with new articles now that the announcements of the 2nd round are ending.

I am curious what Sprint will do with the PTT customers after CDMA is shut down. Even if they convert the Nextel customers using iDEN to Sprint Direct Connect using CDMA/EVDO and we are speculating that sometime in 2015/2016 is when CDMA will shut down, what will the folks that depend on the PTT feature use?

Will voLTE replace PTT and provide that instant connectivity that current Nextel and Sprint Direct Connect are used to? I am hoping that this is already discussed because 2015 doesn't seem too far away from now.

Sprint needs to rely on 1x Advanced for as long as it can for voice given its tight spectrum holdings since it is about 2x more efficient than voLTE.

Let's hope it is announced. I don't want to leave Sprint, but I don't want to buy an LTE phone and have to wait a year to be able to use it. I did that with the Evo and Wimax and I don't want to do it again. :\

Just curious...if Omaha were to be announced tonight, it would still be in the 2nd round which would put it around an early to mid 2013 time frame release date. Does that change your mind? To put it into perspective, you would still be waiting about a year for LTE service at the very earliest. Most of us are stuck in that boat of having to wait for Network Vision upgrades and LTE service. Even ATT's LTE isn't that widespread so Verizon would be the only alternative at this point. I know it sucks but I believe that Sprint is doing the right thing here in improving its tower infrastructure and deploying LTE to compete with the big 2. I have high hopes for Sprint.

Rest assure that Sprint will be upgrading all of its markets with Network Vision and LTE including Omaha. Sprint has a schedule of when to launch certain markets between now and mid 2014.

No. Albuquerque is dead last with 8 other "unnamed" markets.

 

Robert - Posted from my E4GT with ICS using Forum Runner

Are there a lot of round 4 markets or just a small amount...I guess in this instance 9 markets?

Not sure when Omaha will get LTE but it won't be in 2012. My guess is that they will be in the 3rd round so sometime mid to late 2013.

If NV is a success, I believe that Sprint may think about expanding into new markets that they hold unused spectrum in.

I would hope very much so that this would be the case. It would be nice to get a similar voice and data footprint like Verizon and AT&T.

OP let me put it to you this way....LTE at 2500 Mhz will reach farther than Wimax at 2500 Mhz alone. Wimax at 2500 Mhz has a threshold of around -85 dBm before it drops off hard while LTE at 2500 Mhz has a threshold of around -105 dBm which means LTE will have better in building penetration than Wimax. That alone tells you that LTE and Wimax at the same frequency is already better with LTE.

There is no doubt that even LTE at 1900 Mhz will have better in building penetration not only because it is lower frequency but Sprint is doing some little things such as putting the Radio Remote Units (RRUs) up high on the tower which will yield ~20% farther distance since you don't get the losses from the coax cables if the RRUs were set at the ground.

It is most likely that the first LTE phones will not have 800 Mhz LTE support since Sprint is still going through refarming of the 800 Mhz spectrum. If you wait until mid to late 2013 for phones, you might even get support for Clearwire's 2500 Mhz LTE bands. Luckily I can't upgrade until June 2013 which is just in time for the next phones which should support all 3 LTE bands at 800, 1900 and 2500 Mhz.

I think it is the "dakotas" market, twice...

Never too late to expand more native Sprint coverage .