maximus1987/lou99

In my opinion, the argument "the US government is just being protectionist" is really total BS. Exhibit A Samsung - South Korea Alcatel Lucent - France Ericsson - Sweden Nokia-Siemens - Finland+Germany I rest my case. Is there an American vendor left anymore? It's not about protectionism. The reason why China is a special case is because there is no rule of law and it is not a democracy. Oh, and if you Google "Chinese hackers", you'll find the other reason.

I say nay. In the same way that low-freq gave VZW and T advantages in coverage, 2.5GHz will give Sprint advantage in capacity which is the next challenge for carriers. Finally, Sprint will be able - though they may not choose to - to provide nationwide coverage with 800 SMR 1xA voice and LTE so it can choose to be at parity with T and VZW in terms of coverage. But with regards to capacity, Sprint will be king. Why should it give any 2.5GHz away? To qualify to bid for 600 MHz auction? Even if FCC requires this, which I highly doubt as DOJ is openly - by name - favoring TMUS and S, http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/att-accuses-doj-favoring-t-mobile-sprint-600-mhz-auction/2013-04-26 I predict Softbank will decline. Sprint doesn't need 600 MHz in the same way that T-Mobile needs 600MHz cause TMUS has no sub 1-GHz spectrum, only PCS and AWS. I think Sprint will bid for maximum 10 MHz (whether it's TDD or FDD 2x5) if the price is right. Sure, Sprint won't be able to deploy 2x5 LTE on SMR everywhere - cause it doesn't own all SMR - but if there's a town that's only covered by 2x3 MHz SMR LTE and it starts sucking up capacity, Sprint can add a cluster of PCS LTE towers and capacity problem solved.

"phase out edge" They said they are going to keep one GSM/EDGE carrier on for M2M and customers with 2G-only phones. http://www.fiercewireless.com/pages/slides-t-mobile-usa-and-metropcs-merge I wonder why they don't use that 2x5 block for LTE in Band 2 and woo Sprint iPhone customers with Band 25 iPhones cause Band 25 is a superset of Band 2. "slowly sell off their stake" The "lockup" clause: DT is barred from publicly selling shares for 18 months. http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-04-10/deutsche-telekom-sweetens-metropcs-terms-in-best-final-offer-.html This might have the effect that if TMUS starts to founder - cause they don't have low freq spectrum - then DT might make a capital injection to not see their 74% totally decimated in value.

Sprint is not gonna bid for it all even if it's all TDD. According to people more knowledgeable than I, the entire 600 MHz auction could raise $31 billion http://www.fiercewir...m-auction-guide I doubt Softbank would spend that much. They're probably more interested in buying 10 MHz in 600 MHz auction and then, as someone else said on this site, deploy 2.5 GHz toward ubiquitous coverage, not just "hotzones".

Why weren't the Sprint+Clearwire sites colocated in the first place?

Does anyone know why Sprint didn't pick Nokia Siemens?

Yes, I know that. I'm not complaining that Sprint couldn't use them, just asking out of intellectual curiosity. Trust me, whenever I read about a European country selecting Huawei, I feel like a double facepalm. http://captaincapitalism.blogspot.com/2012/04/why-young-boys-have-trouble-dating.html This is simply an intellectual question.

When Sprint was taking bids for Network Vision, they considered Huawei and ZTE but had to drop them for security concerns http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/report-sprint-excludes-huawei-zte-bids-network-project/2010-11-05 although they definitely wanted to use said companies because of cheaper equipment. My question: how many billions would they have saved if they could've used Huawei, ZTE?

A thread with useful infographics/maps like propagation models, market maps.

I wish they'd break it out by much is going to network expansion - more POPs - vs just network capacity investments or is the OPEX?

Could you make a pinned thread with all the informational infographics?

Care to guess which bandplan - TDD or FDD - the FCC will adopt?

I found the TMUS band plan proposal http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7022116151 And on page 7/17, TMUS included relative propagation distance as a function of frequency. I've actually been looking for something like this FOREVER! But, this is linear distance so if you want to know how much more area is covered, you square it. If you want to compare PCS vs VZW LTE, you divide both their values by PCS(value) and then you square the result. So, 1.3/1.3 = 1 (duh) and 3.5/1.3 = 2.69 Now, the meaning of this number is: if you have a signal on PCS and VZW transmitting from the same tower at same power level, then for a given signal threshold you set, the signal on VZW's spectrum will travel 2.69 x the distance it travels on PCS before degrading to that same threshold. So, for example, if the signal from PCS LTE dies after 5 miles, then the equivalent VZW LTE signal would die after 5x2.69 = 13 miles But, if we want to figure out how much more area - square miles - VZW spectrum covers as compared to PCS, then we take 2.69^2 = 7.24 This number means that for coverage, not capacity, PCS spectrum needs 7x as many towers compared to VZW's spectrum. I'm not sure if this is all correct so if it's not, someone let me know and I'll remove/modify things.

Isn't this public information? If I wanted to - I won't - couldn't I go to the FCC spectrum dashboard and piece together who owns what?

"T-Mobile probably is just banking on urban customers. Believing they can survive on that." I think the reason they've had that mindset - up until now - is because Deutsche Telekom thought their German/European strategy would work here but Europe is far more densely populated. " All those EDGE and GPRS sites that Tmo is spending so much money on providing T1's to. It will be cheaper in the long run to convert those to Ethernet backhaul and add high speed wireless service." If they simply do that, their 3G/LTE coverage increase, in land area, would be huge! Take a look at their native coverage (which is equivalent to their prepaid data coverage) http://prepaid-phone...repaid-coverage And zoom in until you get color gradients. I live in Detroit suburb but frequently go outside the green 3G/LTE areas. Like you said, if TMUS could change the yellow to green, that'd be huge. "However, I think I would also have long term plans for the entire footprint and would be telling everyone about that." That's another thing that worries me. TMUS isn't saying anything about LTE expansion AFTER 200 million. They keep crowing how they're investing $4bil but $3bil is coming from AT&T breakup fee http://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2012/02/t-mobile-takes-3-billion-att-breakup-fee-builds-4g-lte-network/ and the "rest" is coming from selling their towers to Crown Castle http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/t-mobile-sells-towers-crown-castle-24b/2012-09-28 AT&T to the rescue!

Is there a map of where Sprint doesn't have 14MHz nationwide?

Not sure I quite understand why the "overhead" is so unsustainable. If there are WiMax phones that are generating positive cashflow - revenue minus expenses > 0 - then what's the problem? Also, isn't WiMax tower spacing tighter than LTE 1900? So they can't simply move all WiMax equipment to nearest Sprint tower because then you won't have coverage.

I agree in the short term he won't; the quoted article states than only when Sprint LTE is bigger he'll MAYbe do it. If he can take advantage of the price points that ATT and V have conditioned the public to accept, of course he'll do it. I'm on V and gonna switch to TMUS or AIO wireless but I hope Sprint gets stronger to push prices lower like how TMUS forced ATT to launch AIO wireless.

If a CEO strongly implies that he MAY raise prices, you can be sure he will; only if its the converse could you accuse me of hearsay.

Sprint is going to raise prices. http://m.cnet.com/news/sprint-may-boost-plan-prices-when-lte-network-gets-stronger/57516148

Once LTE is rolled out on 1900, 800, and 2500 what is Sprint - assuming it owns Clearwire - going to do with WiMax towers/equipment? 1) Is it costing them much to simply "keep the lights on" for the declining number of WiMax people? 2) Is it "costing" them in terms of occupying spectrum that could be used for LTE? 3) At some number of users - 5 mil, 1mil, 100k, etc. - will Sprint decide it's cheaper to do a device exchange for LTE-equivalents instead of maintaining WiMax? 4) Once someone's contract is up, does Sprint have the legal right to simply stop WiMax service? Would they do something like that and risk customer backlash? Also, how would the answers to any of these question differ if Sprint does NOT own Clearwire outright but instead is left with a 65% stake? http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/softbank-ceo-sees-no-need-sprint-raise-clearwire-offer/2013-05-01

Besides not having the iPhone (until now), the other reason why T-Mobile was drowning: no low-frequency spectrum for coverage; it is the ONLY one of the Big 4 with none. In articles on Tmonews, there is a consistent theme in the comments regarding T-Mobile: their speeds are really fast but outside of suburban areas, you're left with EDGE or roaming. Sure they're upgrading to LTE but even there, they're going to cover 200 million . . . but their HSPA+ reaches 225 million http://newsroom.t-mo...news&id=1802242 So they're (probably) not even going to upgrade their entire network to LTE. Sure they might've had a chance with their new plans but then AT&T went and did this: http://www.fiercewir...rand/2013-05-09 unlimited talk, text HSPA+, throttled after limit reached: 2 GB = $55 7GB = $70 "But it doesn't include LTE!" So what? 4Mbps is fast enough for anything. Also, you'll get AT&T's HSPA+ coverage of 290million I'll take 290million + 4Mbps vs 225million and 25Mbps I really do want T-Mobile to succeed but is that possible? They're trying to be a national carrier without the solid coverage and they're trying to be a prepaid carrier without the MetroPCS low prices. They're like an oversized MetroPCS which is actually what their strategy may be. Listening to John Legere, having gobs of AWS spectrum in 90% of top 25 metro areas is going to save T-Mobile.

You don't have to. If you have decent credit, you can pay $100 + $20/month.

See my post and subsequent comments here: http://s4gru.com/ind...00-ev-do-rev-b/ Summary: Sprint wants to encourage people to get off EV-DO (for data), not prolong its life by introducing upgrades.

Do you think FCC/DOJ would allow Softbank to also buy TMUS? That'd be a kickass network. I can see them allowing it just out of spite! lol http://www.fiercebroadbandwireless.com/story/att-verizon-may-face-restrictions-600-mhz-auction/2013-04-14