ericdabbs

Oh can,t forget about Philadelphia which is the 4 largest city in the USA Sprint should be taking of Philly also

I believe Houston is the 4th largest city and Philly is 5th but close enough.

Agreed. Just can't wait to hear Sprint officially announce hopefully the first 2 LTE markets before the end of June. It will just make me smile when Sprint starts announcing officially new LTE markets and they are in the same order as how Robert has posted in his NV running thread.

No. Articles are posting in launch order, not necessarily in Round Order. Because NYC is so large and SF Bay has had delays in its start, there will be some weaving of First and Second Round articles.Robert

Ah I see. I thought you were just posting update articles on how progress is doing for all the first round and second round markets. I didn't know that the articles were also being released based on anticipated order of launch date as well.

Are the first round markets articles going to be wrapped up first before the second round market articles begin?

Hmm I am a bit concerned that Sprint is not going to cover the Hacienda/Rowland Heights area by September which to be fair is near the edge of the LA Metro market. However there are so few towers in the area, I would have expected to see those markets covered by September and then work inwards towards the middle of the LA Metro market.

Samsung better be ahead of schedule in Chicago since this is their only Network Vision market so far. They gotta start deploying crews out at San Francisco and start that market.

Robert, just curious if you plan to do market updates for all the first round markets in the upcoming weeks? I would be curious about LA and SF Bay articles.

I am sure

So I'm seeing a pattern with all of these markets. Essentially Sprint initially planned on launching mid-2012 with 50% of the market completed. Instead, they're now going to end up launching short of that 50%, I assume this implies they're behind schedule?

Yeah it seems like Sprint is a bit behind schedule due to the learning curve needed for each of the crews and is also probably due to certain things like backhaul not being readily available at the time of NV tower completion, equipment etc. I am hoping that Sprint is able to catch up as more and more crews come up to speed and can deploy towers faster.

Great article again. Can't wait to hear about Houston and Dallas

If I was HTC, though, I'd be pissed that Sprint tied the LTE launch to the launch of the GS3. But, the sooner the better. :-)

Well if HTC believes they have a superior product in the Evo 4G LTE, they shouldn't have to fear the GS3. Just because there is a lot of hype on the GS3 doesn't mean it will be the superior product. For one thing the display on the GS3 is not super amoled plus so that is step backwards from GS2. The GS3 has got 2 GB RAM but who knows if you really need that much. I think the Evo 4G LTE can stand on its own against the GS3.

Looking forward to hear from those that receive the text message tomorrow in the 4 launch markets. I wouldn't be surprised if Sprint was targeting a June 21st and 22nd LTE launch date since that is when the GS3 comes out. Between now and then this would give Sprint another 2 weeks or so to launch as many NV LTE sites in the 4 launch markets.

Darn it when the heck is the Photon 4G LTE phone coming out?!?!??!?

It looks like the original June 10th release date is looking pretty good right now. Lets hope it doesn't take more than a week delay to resolve this stupid patent issue complained by crApple. Argh another reason to hate Apple.

This blows!!!!! Was looking forward to checking out the Evo 4g lte this weekend.

Wow so this means that folks who pre-ordered are actually getting it later than those who go in the store on May 18th? Wow this sucks.

I am very curious what the 5/7 device is that hit the labs today. I hope its either the GS3 or the Photon 4G LTE phones.

Sprint should wait until Apollo comes out to release a Windows Phone since it will have better specs. There is no point for Sprint to make windows phone devices currently which are so cookie cutter since the Mango software is so limited still. It doesn't support multicore processors, any other processors besides Snapdragon, no resolution other than 800x480, etc.

U guys are right. DOH!!!! For some reason I was thinking of something else. *runs in shame*

The EVO 4G LTE phone hasn't even hit the FCC yet so how can it be launched in May anyways. I trust Robert in his findings that we will see the EVO 4G LTE around June 10 or later.

Besides I think Sprint wants to give the Galaxy Nexus and LG Viper more time for sales.

Agreed. A short term of growing pains in handoff issues is much better than waiting until 2013 to receive NV upgrades. My only concern is whether the Sprint reps are explaining to the customers the reasons why calls are dropping. Last thing Sprint wants customers to think is that the network is getting unreliable for even voice calls. I am sure Sprint is already aware about its bad rep for the 3G data speeds.

I don't know what other OEM makes the legacy equipment but lets hope that the issues are only limited to just Samsung and Motorola.

I really don't understand why Sprint would do a half job on a site like this. How much more work is it really to enable LTE?

Agreed. If they installed all the radios, cabinets, antennas, etc for 3G, why not just complete the entire tower site with 4G as well.

Also there are places that Robert has mentioned that only 4G has been installed but not 3G. I don't get why it works vice versa as well. Just complete towers with both 3G and 4G like the Waco region.

I guess that's possible. However, that just seems crazy to me. But Sprint is really pushing this Eco thing. That could really backfire though. There are very few things less environmentally responsible than smartphones. So what if one has a slightly less carbon foot print?If you push it too hard to the evironmentalist set, they will push back and say it's the difference between a H1 Hummer and a H2 Hummer. And they would be right.Robert

Hahaha...I knew I would get some response flak for my theory. In all seriousness, I don't think the delay was focused on being eco-friendly but rather that Sprint just wanted to delay it as long as it could even for 1 more week so that it gives all 3 vendors 1 extra week to build out as many NV towers as it can. Right now as we know that the LTE build out is very very small and the hope is that by the time Sprint decides to launch some markets hopefully by end of June that there are at least a thousand or 2 NV sites.

They probably just pushed it back a week to screw with everyone who had pegged the correct launch date lol.

Call me lame but I think part of the reason Sprint pushed the launch of the GNex and Viper to 4/22 to coincide with Earth Day. It makes total sense that Sprint would be launching an eco-friendly phone in the Viper on Earth Day. But I also believe that production issues could have contributed to the 1 week launch delay for both the Viper and GNex.

So.. does it mean Sprint will upgrade their network to SVDO/SVLTE? I made this thread from http://s4gru.com/ind..._9675#entry9675 and I got different answers from them lol

SVDO and SVLTE is a device capability which is based on the SOC chip in the device which for the HTC EVO 4G LTE supports both in the MSM8960. It is not a network capability that is part of Network Vision.

So I always wondered this and i'm sure someone here can answer for me....after reading this article awhile ago I've always been wondering some things.http://www.engadget....le-4g-coverage/That states that VZ lit up its 200th market with LTE and that they also plan to double the # of markets with it by end of year...so 400 markets by years end...When I first read it I was shocked by the # stated as its grossly higher than Sprints markets being stated for LTE...So my initial thought was that big red was playing an excellent marketing game stating that each individual city is its own market unlike with Sprint where a market includes multiple cities/areas usually...I know VZ covers more area than Sprint in general but the # stated just seems grossly high and can't really see how Sprint would be not even 1/4th the markets VZ has....Edit:BUT after seeing VZ's actual list it seems they do combine some markets like Raleigh/Durham...http://news.verizonw...TE/Markets.htmlwhats the explanation for the vast different number of markets i guess is the ? here. Sprint really have less than 1/4 the markets VZ does in the US?

For example in Upper Central Valley in CA...sprint is calling Sacramento, Stockton, Reno, Modesto, Carson City as 1 market while Verizon would call that as 5 markets. Honestly I could care less what Verizon claims as a market but its just all about marketing and they are doing a good job of that since its gotten many people convinced that the LTE market gap is very large between them and the rest of the competition.

Hopefully you get more information soon. It would be awesome to see OKC, Tulsa and St. Louis added to the second round.