bigsnake49

So all they have to do according to you is just flick a switch. Should not take them more than a month to deploy LTE on their whole footprint .

So every one of their panels is AWS and PCS capable. There are RRU's mounted already on the rack. All of their basestations are LTE+HSPA+ capable. All of their switches are LTE capable. All of their network is LTE core capable.

I'm thinking that if anything is to happen it will happen towards the end of 2013, beginning of 2014. Merger to close towards the end of 2014, beginning of 2015. By that time, I'm thinking that VOLTE should be pretty mature.

Do you inside info on that or are you just speculating? There is nothing on the public record that they have anything ready to deploy yet. Yes Neville has promised a lot, but that's his job.

It would make sense except, they have absolutely no network right now.

By the time the merger is completed, VOLTE should be ready.

It keeps us entertained as well .

To whom, AT&T? Maybe, they can exchange some PCS for AWS.

It will increase their subscribers to 86M, at least in the neighborhood of the big 2. No it will not give them lower frequency spectrum, but it will give them plenty of AWS and PCS spectrum. I never liked the Sprint Nextel merger. I thought they should have merged with Alltel, USCC and some of the other regionals to give them great coverage, if only for bragging rights. I also wanted them to pick up some PCS spectrum from Nextwave and other PCS spectrum sales. I wanted them to participate in the 700Mhz auction. But it is what it is and I think that T-Mobile and Sprint should combine to compete with the big two.

Yeah, I forgot about the fact that you can combine the antennas into one panel. I still think that Sprint should just get back it's BRS spectrum and then sell the rest of Clearwire (leased spectrum+network) to Dish. Of course that should include debt. That may quell any cries that Sprint is a spectrum hog, plus it unloads leases to Dish. Of course Charlie Ergen is not stupid and may just elect to sell his spectrum instead.

Sprint Nextel Corp. Chief Executive Officer Dan Hesse said he’s on a hunt for wireless spectrum after watching Verizon Wireless and AT&T Inc. devour more and more of the mobile-phone industry’s most precious resource. Sprint, the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, needs to add capacity to keep its data service from buckling in the future as more users watch sports and music videos on phones and tablets. The company is looking for deals with other companies or through government sales, Hesse said in an interview. A cash infusion is helping Hesse get more aggressive. In the two months after Softbank Corp.’s October agreement to spend $20 billion to take over Sprint, Hesse’s company agreed to $2.6 billion in purchases, mostly in an attempt to seize control of Clearwire Corp. In the previous 12 months, Sprint had spent almost nothing, standing by as its two biggest competitors cobbled together more than $5 billion in purchases. “Clearwire would give us a strong spectrum position for a period of time,” Hesse said in an interview this month. “But we also have a very long-term view, and we would want to acquire more spectrum.” http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-02-20/sprint-ceo-hesse-seeking-more-deals-as-data-demand-surges-tech.html? Analysts speculated about acquisitions of the usual suspects, USCC and Leap. I still think that Sprint will go after T-Mobile.

Yes, but you have 800Mhz panels, 1900Mhz panels, 2500/2600MHz already, plus the RRU's for each. Yes S band and 2600MHz can share, but will be not be optimal for either.

In the GSM arena only two are active at most at the same time. Which is probably true for the CDMA/WiMax side as well. For future phones that don't have carrier aggregation and support VoLTE, you could have just one RF path being active.

Yeah, the intercell interference reduction techniques might actually enable LTE to have the same coverage radius that the CDMA standards enjoy now. Which will be a good thing.

Yes, I'm afraid that some of their sites might need to be braced further to accommodate additional panels. I think that having to accommodate 4 frequencies in the same handset might be more troublesome. I think that Sprint might want to reserve the fourth frequency for rural roaming.

Yeah, but carrier aggregation will be, because that's "teh new sexy", even though from an average user's perspective it matters very little and it might be detrimental to battery life because it requires two RF paths to be active at the same time.

Do you set them straight, AJ?

Boy Kevin Fitchard goes off on the wireless industry on coopting the LTE - Advanced moniker for marketing reasons when they actually are not adopting Release 10. http://gigaom.com/2013/02/17/lte-advanced-is-the-new-buzzword-hype/

Yeah, I have no idea why they went from 100MBps down to 60Mbps. It will all clear itself up eventually.

i don't remember which thread was discussing LTE results for Clearwire, but here is an excerpt from Dr Saw's interview abt their LTE tests: Clear Blog: Remind our readers, what are these technical trials all about? Saw: In Phoenix we are conducting 4G LTE technology trials to test multiple coexistence scenarios between LTE and WiMAX radio technologies. The goal is to basically see what we’re capable of and show wireless speeds that are unmatched in the U.S. Clear Blog: And how are the results looking? Saw: Fast. We’ve clocked download speeds of 50Mbps using 10MHz channels and 90Mbps using 20MHz channels. http://www.clear.com...g/size-matters/ There was a question whether they were using 10MHz or 20MHz channels and it seems to me that they were probably using 10MHz channels. On the other hand from the question and answer session on the 4thQ 2012 results Dr. Saw said they are using 20MHz channels.

They just have to space the spectrum allocations for TDLTE and Wimax far enough apart not to interfere with each other. With some decent frequency planning you can even reuse that spectrum.

The A320 is a nice plane, except for the need to reset the flight computers occasionally, sometimes at the most inopportune time.

I would like for JetBlue and Frontier to merge since they both use Airbus planes and their route tree does not have many overlaps.

I don't really know if Sprint sites can accommodate panels and RRU for 4 different frequencies. Plus Dish would probably want Sprint to utilize some of the capacity of the Dish Network which means that Sprint phones would have to have 4 RF paths which I'm sure that Sprint does not want.

I don't know if they are using the same panels or not. If the channels they use are separated by enough MHz, they could. They could also add another panel in each sector just as long as it is separated by enough distance from the other panel.