LTE in Las Vegas and LA

[Hurleygm]

I was at the Sprint store yesterday to get my wife an iPhone. Her decision, not mine!

I asked the rep when she thought LTE was coming to Las Vegas and she said it is difficult because a lot of people in the area, meaning the Southwest, are still using Direct Connect from Nextel to communicate with people in Mexico. She said the Direct Connect and LTE bandwidth are too spread out to be on the same tower. Therefore, Vegas would not get LTE until Q3 or Q4 of this year.

I am a novice when it comes to towers and bandwidth, so does this make sense? Has anyone heard anything related to this?

 

[themuffinman]

I was at the Sprint store yesterday to get my wife an iPhone. Her decision, not mine!

I asked the rep when she thought LTE was coming to Las Vegas and she said it is difficult because a lot of people in the area, meaning the Southwest, are still using Direct Connect from Nextel to communicate with people in Mexico. She said the Direct Connect and LTE bandwidth are too spread out to be on the same tower. Therefore, Vegas would not get LTE until Q3 or Q4 of this year.

I am a novice when it comes to towers and bandwidth, so does this make sense? Has anyone heard anything related to this?

Oh young padawan, you have much to learn. Rule #1,(Generally Speaking) never ever.......ever ever ever listen to a store level sprint rep when it comes to just about anything.

 

[Hurleygm]

Lol!

 

[dhoshman]

Not sure about Vegas but L. A. is already in the process of upgrading. Check out s4gru.com for more info.

 

[kingjames924]

The Sprint rep that you talked to is (oddly enough) half right

Theres 3 parts to Sprint's "Network Vision". Part one is decommissioning IDEN towers and actually reducing the amount of towers Sprint actually has. They currently have more towers than Verizon and AT&T. I know it sounds like farce but look at it like this. They maintain 3 completely different types of networks (CDMA, WI-MAX and IDEN) and not all of them are on the same tower. Decommisioning excess IDEN-only towers first gives them network space.

Part 2 is Re-Installing new tower setups that have CDMA, WIMAX, IDEN and LTE built in. These new setups take up about 60% less space, and are green friendly. The spaces that have only one or 2 types of network will be replaced by these new setups.

Part 3, which is my favorite part, is re-farming the IDEN network to use the lower band with LTE. The lower band means better in-building coverage. They just got FCC approval to do so.

Sprint knows it has to aggresively expand in order to compete with Verizon and AT&T. So Q3 or Q4 isnt that far off. Cricket Wireless is testing LTE here in Vegas to impressive results. I'm sure that Sprint will not be outdone by a regional prepaid carrier that borrows their network.