milan03

I think AJ would be the perfect person to answer that question. He knows top 100 PCS markets by heart

Can't believe that no one reported on this earlier, but according to William Hogg, Senior Vice President of Network Planning and Engineering, AT&T Services, Inc., AT&T is in the process of deploying PCS spectrum for LTE service, and will begin commercial LTE service in that band in the initial markets (e.g., Washington, D.C., Baltimore, Dallas, Philadelphia, New York City and San Francisco) by the end of this year. DECLARATION OF WILLIAM HOGG: https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsEntry/a...Ind=applAttach This is absolutely wonderful news, but it would also mean that they are shutting down some of their UMTS voice/data capacity in the PCS spectrum in some of these markets. I'm assuming 5Mhz FDD LTE in the PCS will be their initial push, which could be widened in the future to 10Mhz LTE, and used as component carrier in their future LTE-Advanced deployment. The real key here is to carefully avoid interruption or degradation in the essential services like voice.

You're welcome. Hope you do the same...

Has AT&T ever done something "better" than other US operators? Do they currently have a commercial LTE-A network? I thought so. Now spare us from your personal attacks. Moving on.. On a side note, Verizon actually started commercially broadcasting 20Mhz FDD LTE in NYC, and ironically I caught it earlier today during T-Mobile's UnCarrier 3.0 event in Bryant Park NYC. Just as we are talking about no need for Carrier Aggregation lol...

Exactly, WCS needs to be codified before they even think of deploying it, although I'm sure ALU and Ericsson are all ready for it. But in the near future (aka 2014) they could theoretically refarm PCS at the expense of HSPA, which imho wouldn't be the smoothest user experience, especially in many markets where they still struggle with dropped calls.

AT&T desperately needs LTE-A to stay competitive with the rest. They're mixing and matching 5Mhz/10Mhz in various markets as they have almost no contiguous clean spectrum swaths that are larger than 15Mhz FDD. Verizon doesn't need LTE-A in immediate future they have clean chunks for 20Mhz FDD LTE in many markets. That'll also help battery life on the terminal side, as the UE radio avoids two streams/twice the processing power drawn. T-Movile has quite a few markets with 2x20Mhz options planned out for 2014/15 time frame, and Sprint can just open its wings and fly on the insane amount of 2.6Ghz band from Clearwire.

VoLTE-compliant device launching this year doesn't mean they'll actually have commercial VoLTE service this year. They've carefully avoided talking about that part. #RememberLGRevolutionFrom2011?

In that case in NYC which is T-Mobile's Ericsson market they use NSN antenna as well? RRU is totally Ericsson RRU11.

The main issue here is the inconsistency on Sprint.com. If you don't see anything wrong by going to http://network.sprint.com and hitting "check markets across country" button on the right, then seeing 7 different "markets" within NYC metro alone, then I'm just gonna drop it right here. Then as someone pointed out newsroom article has completely different list. http://newsroom.sprint.com/news-releases/4glte-launchedmarkets.htm But ok I'll drop it, why don't we all agree that there is absolutely no issue here, and that this is perfectly fine.

This is confusing then. I pulled the screenshot out of the main page at http://network.sprint.com Why even bother titling it "Sprint 4G LTE launched Cities"? In my opinion, the newsroom article should've been consistent with all other showings of their coverage. To call Flushing, Queens a 4G LTE City is just wrong and it looks really bad.

Then what are they doing with their LTE coverage post? What's the purpose of all this nonsense? I'm completely speechless.

Just wanted to bring this inconsistency to your attention. Sprint's New York market launch involves some New York City boroughs, and as far as neighborhood or communities of Queens, extracted and individually wrapped up into completely independent markets!!! So according to Sprint, in the state of New York they have six independent LTE "markets" deployed out of one single New York City Metro market, for the sake of competition and increasing their market count.. Those six markets are 4 NYC boroughs of Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, and Staten Island. All counted as separate markets in Sprint's data base. But then, they really chose to "One Up" every other Tier 1 operator, and murder everyone by counting community of Jamaica, Queens, and neighborhood of Flushing, Queens as separate markets. To me as a New Yorker, this is beyond shameless. Other three Tier 1 operators count all of those NYC areas into a single New York City Market. Period. Sprint? Not so much. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, would love to hear your opinions.

It's actually 2x2 MIMO aggregating two 2x20Mhz FDD component carriers. One in Band 3 and other in Band 7. This will require Category 6 User Equipment which is due next year by the way of Qualcomm and Intel. Notice how all the baseband chipset vendors decided to skip Cat 5 which mandated 4x4 MIMO. From a business standpoint looks like that isn't happening simply because it's a bitch to cramp 4x4 into small form factor without some breakthrough interference coordination, which doesn't exist. Also, that'd absolutely eat batteries for breakfast. So they all are opting to go with "more aggregated spectrum" and 2x2 MIMO route for the time being.

I've heard about this, but I've never experienced it. Are we talking CSFB as well coming from HSPA+ to LTE? There is a 15.5Mbps annoying rate limit over HSPA+42 affecting some users, LTE not affected. There is a temporary bypass for that.

What worries me is that even iPhone 5 which is a unadulterated device and uses SIM for authentication, for some reason still needs MEID added to the account on Sprint. I truly hope this will go away with N5 so we can start to freely use multiple devices with one SIM card!

Here is another site with the mysterious panel (on the right) and what appears to be ClearWire's 2.6Ghz band antenna. I'm guessing WiMax?

"So, ignoring bands...which technology has the best building penetration?" I ignored bands by not listening to the music for a few days, and found that this technology by far has the best in building penetration: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ballistic_missile

Actually, here it is: http://micro.arocholl.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=118:adjusting-sweep-time&catid=42:faq&Itemid=69

Yeah you can adjust RBW from 2, 5, 10, 18, 48, 80kHz, etc... But sweep time not so much.

To wireless operators lower spectrum is much more important for overall coverage footprint than urban building propagation. Verizon launched 39 markets on day one back in 2010, and by 2012 they've covered ~90% of their 3G footprint. With 700Mhz spectrum they didn't have to deploy to every cell site in order to reach millions, so they've done it much quicker than T-Mo or Sprint, and they've ended up saving lots of time and money. They just love to cater their ad campaign towards highly populated areas, so they've isolated that one aspect that benefits urban users which is in building propagation. Truth to be told, I have absolutely no AT&T LTE coverage in my brick house in NYC, and I'm around -105dBm RSRP on my Verizon's device. On the other hand, T-Mobile's LTE is sitting at -80dBm which is in AWS.

You're absolutely right about their spectrum. Their UE requirements have changed to Band 2, 4, 5, 17 after they've divested large chunks of their AWS spectrum to T-Mobile. And since they don't really have nationwide lower 700Mhz paired spectrum either, they have to deploy LTE in other three bands. Perfect example is Bloomington, IL where they're introducing Band 5. As far as user experience, I don't think it should matter that much as long as your AT&T branded device supports all four LTE bands.

Why bringing it up? Because it makes more sense refarming mid band spectrum after you've already blanketed the entire nation with low band LTE, taking care of coverage. Common sense, no? So you're right, according to Verizon AWS is next, and PCS is to follow. Not CLR. Voice is mostly on 850Mhz which is another reason why it wouldn't make sense to start shutting that down too soon. Eventually they will use 850Mhz spectrum for LTE, but they're in a completely different position than AT&T and are definitely not in a hurry to refarm 850Mhz spectrum for LTE...

Seen FierceWireless article when it came out. That's not really the point... The point is that Verizon has low band 700c spectrum for coverage laid out already across the US. In places where they need capacity and don't have AWS holdings, it would make more sense to deploy mid band PCS which has similar propagation characteristics. Especially with the introduction of CA and small cells. Now as AJ just pointed out, there is another issue, and that is lack of significant PCS in many markets.

I'm pretty sure it would make more sense for Verizon to refarm their 1900Mhz spectrum since they have nationwide 700c almost fully deployed. After AWS i'm betting on PCS being refarmed.

Ah this sums it all up. Danke!