Sprint made the announcement of LTE

[SmokeCrawler]

They signed a 15 year deal and are going to have 4G-LTE network to be completed more than one year ahead of the Federal Communications Commission mandate to cover 260 million Americans by 2015.

Sprint Newsroom | Sprint Nextel and LightSquared Announce Spectrum Hosting and Network Services Agreement

I'm still interested on how this is going to play out.

 

[Linkchomp]

If it means being in anyplace at anytime, including the mountains and being able to watch netflix in a sleeping bag, then The Miz approves of this.

 

[SmokeCrawler]

I would like that as well!

 

[NMherron]

If it means being in anyplace at anytime, including the mountains and being able to watch netflix in a sleeping bag, then The Miz approves of this.

This is the part that gets very little attention in the press...LS2's satellite component. By the rumors I've read, the satellite coverage will not be a part of the sharing deal. That's a bummer if that's true.

One thing I did read about though is that LS2 is working with a manufacturer on a portable discus receiver that will re-broadcast it's satellite signal into WiFi. It's magnetic and you can put on your car. Or put it on the roof of your house. It's highly portable.

It will receive the satellite signal and turn it into a Wi-Fi hotspot. You then could connect your device to that through Wi-Fi. Coast to coast, you would get a Wi-Fi signal. Could stream Pandora, or Netflix. It will also work with VoIP applications. This is genius!

So even if Sprint won't give us that feature included in our plans, we could get that ourselves. Perhaps Sprint could even sell the device in their stores, we just would have to pay for the service. And as long as it's a reasonable cost, I'm OK with that!!!

We would definitely have to find some carrier to run it on, because LS2 is wholesale only. Hopefully Sprint will support that device.

Another good thing to note is that LS2's satellite does not interfere with GPS. It's only their terrestrial stations. So no matter what, that satellite isn't going anywhere. LS2 can go out of business, and someone else will just buy that satellite for pennies on the dollar and offer the service. Sprint has a lot of fail-safe provisions in this deal with LS2 where Sprint takes ownership of some of LS2's assets if they go belly up (like their spectrum). Maybe it includes the satellite too?

Note though that in testing, the satellite isn't producing the speeds they originally hoped for. In the last thing I read, they were getting real world conditions of 500k-600kbps. Bursts of just under 1 MB. The reason for the reduction was they had to break up their signal into much smaller broadcast channels to accommodate loading and capacity.

However, this is still faster than Sprint 3G anymore in most places! And about 10 to 20 times faster than the past generation of satellite providers. And to get half a meg on a remote mountain in Wyoming just sends a thrill down my leg! (Chris Matthews jab)

BRING IT ON!!!!
I can take it!

 

[SmokeCrawler]

Using the satellite signal as a wifi hotspot would be awesome!

 

[NMherron]

HOLD THE PRESSES! HOLD THE PRESSES!!!

I just read a little line in the Boy Genius Report. Wait for it...

"Sprint will also get a total of $4.5 billion in credits toward LTE and satellite service."​

I missed that when I read the same story earlier today. WOOHOOO!!!!

I'm sure they will still charge us for it. But hey, this just made my day!!!

Source: BGR: Sprint announces deal to adopt 4G LTE

 

[digitalfan]

They signed a 15 year deal and are going to have 4G-LTE network to be completed more than one year ahead of the Federal Communications Commission mandate to cover 260 million Americans by 2015.

Sprint Newsroom | Sprint Nextel and LightSquared Announce Spectrum Hosting and Network Services Agreement

I'm still interested on how this is going to play out.

I want to know what this means fir WiMax and especially Clearwire. Are they going to make LTE tech? I don't see why they wouldn't since they all ready started testing LTE.

 

[NMherron]

I want to know what this means fir WiMax and especially Clearwire. Are they going to make LTE tech? I don't see why they wouldn't since they all ready started testing LTE.

This is the Million Dollar Question. Or should I say Multi-Billion Dollar Question?

Even in the worst case scenario, I think they keep supporting the existing WiMax network for years to come. Or at least until Clearwire goes bankrupt...

However, they have not told us what they are going to do with WiMax.

• Do they stop WiMax rollouts and start doing LTE only on new deployments?
• Do they continue a full WiMax rollout side by side with LTE?
• Do they just finish primary markets in WiMax? But all new deployments are in LTE beyond this?
• Do they do some sort of funky hybrid that makes absolutely no sense and cause complete confusion and anarchy?

I would guess the last one! HA!

Unless some info starts leaking out from Overland Park, I don't think we will know until after the October 7th Announcement. Will we even know then??? Will there be any Sprint cuistomers left to tell?

 

[Verdes8891]

Can't wait too see how this will turn out when it comes about.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G

 

[tybo31316]

I think that sprint is going to rollout lte on both ls2 and clear. On all available spectrum bands. When they are freed up.

 

[huix0018]

Boom! What happens to the current WiMax phones then? Can it feed off VZW LTE spectrums?

 

[NMherron]

I think that sprint is going to rollout lte on both ls2 and clear. On all available spectrum bands. When they are freed up.

I think you're right. But what about WiMax? What do you think they will do with that? My guess is they stop rolling out new markets. All new markets will be LTE. I think they just go back and complete WiMax coverage to 100% in the full service markets they are already in.

Then WiMax slowly fades away to nothing over the next 5 years or so.

The rumor now is that Sprint is also talking to Dish Network. Dish has a good swatch of 2000MHz spectrum (and a little 700MHz). The 2000MHz would perform very similar to the PCS bands Sprint uses for 1xRTT and EVDO. Significantly better than Clear's 2.5GHz EBS spectrum.

Also, Sprint is supposedly talking with Cox Wireless. Cox has some 700MHz spectrum. But only in 25 markets.

Can you imagine a world where Sprint has LTE deployed on...

700MHz (Dish/Cox), 800MHz (Nextel), 1500MHz (LS2), 1600MHz (LS2), 1900MHz (Sprint), 2GHz (Dish) and 2.5GHz (Clear).​

Wouldn't that be awesome? Now I'm just dreamin'!

 

[NMherron]

Boom! What happens to the current WiMax phones then? Can it feed off VZW LTE spectrums?

WiMax only phones will not run on LTE. You will be able to run on existing Sprint WiMax for years to come. But it's not likely there will be anymore significant WiMax deployment.

Sprint is coming out with dual WiMax/LTE devices next year. I'm waiting to upgrade until these come out.

 

[NOMster]

What I don't get is why? If u look at clears map with all those rural towers they've set up there are places where coverage looks like it would be easy to expand into a usable network. So many cities and towns have that protection tower set up that stringing them together seems like it would be easy.
Take Alabama for instance, damn near every little town in the state has a tower, and on the east end there are some with more. Why not push for more highway towers and make it usable? That's all they have for 3g there now anyway. Highway and major cities.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

 

[NMherron]

What I don't get is why? If u look at clears map with all those rural towers they've set up there are places where coverage looks like it would be easy to expand into a usable network. So many cities and towns have that protection tower set up that stringing them together seems like it would be easy.
Take Alabama for instance, damn near every little town in the state has a tower, and on the east end there are some with more. Why not push for more highway towers and make it usable? That's all they have for 3g there now anyway. Highway and major cities.

Sent from my Nexus S 4G using Tapatalk

Great point. I agree they should continue with a full WiMax deployment. But they will have to come back and do a lot of work at the protection sites. These were limited deployments.

Protection sites have less antennas than a full deployment. They also do not have antennas pointed toward the ground to help with building penetration. And lastly, they do not have their backhaul upgraded to handle true 4G speeds and capacity.

In some instances the tower they deployed a protection site already had fiber to it. Where that occurs, the backhaul is great. Here in Santa Fe, our protection site has fiber backhaul and the speed is 8 to 9 MB twenty-four hours a day.

So they will need to go back and do a lot of work on most of these protection sites.

But I agree with your logic. I will even add that they should deploy WiMax and LTE on every single tower in the U.S. when that tower is getting its Network Vision upgrade.

 

[volhater]

Ok so when is sprint going to start LTE deployment? They beeter starty now or in my opnion they wil not be arounf much longer.

 

[tybo31316]

Ok so when is sprint going to start LTE deployment? They beeter starty now or in my opnion they wil not be arounf much longer.

Sprint should have started network vision years ago and they wouldn't be in this position. Wimax is pretty much dead. The wimax/lte chips are basically to migrate people from wimax but at the same time have people use wimax in areas where sprint haven't deployed lte yet. I was reading an article on how countries in europe and asia did the same type of migration. I believe sprint is following their lead.

 

[intheb0x]

This is the Million Dollar Question. Or should I say Multi-Billion Dollar Question?

Even in the worst case scenario, I think they keep supporting the existing WiMax network for years to come. Or at least until Clearwire goes bankrupt...

However, they have not told us what they are going to do with WiMax.

• Do they stop WiMax rollouts and start doing LTE only on new deployments?
• Do they continue a full WiMax rollout side by side with LTE?
• Do they just finish primary markets in WiMax? But all new deployments are in LTE beyond this?
• Do they do some sort of funky hybrid that makes absolutely no sense and cause complete confusion and anarchy?

I would guess the last one! HA!

Unless some info starts leaking out from Overland Park, I don't think we will know until after the October 7th Announcement. Will we even know then??? Will there be any Sprint cuistomers left to tell?

its been said they will support Wimax AND LTE, including sprints killing off of nextel, they will then open up the public service 800mhz up for service to the public when the phones start coming out with that chipset (evo3d does), then sprint will have way better coverage, deep into buildings and other areas.

check out the 800mhz system.
sprint is really doing big things, the combining of 800mhz, new LTE and the wimax currently established, who can beat that.

 

[NMherron]

its been said they will support Wimax AND LTE, including sprints killing off of nextel, they will then open up the public service 800mhz up for service to the public when the phones start coming out with that chipset (evo3d does), then sprint will have way better coverage, deep into buildings and other areas.

check out the 800mhz system.
sprint is really doing big things, the combining of 800mhz, new LTE and the wimax currently established, who can beat that.

We know they will "support" WiMax. But the 1.7 million people who purchased WiMax only devices in the last quarter want more than just support. And this is the part Sprint is being particularly mum about.

Sprint has very little 800MHz spectrum from Nextel/iDEN. They are going to run CDMA voice on it for sure. If deployed right, they could have just enough spectrum for one or two small LTE TDD channels.

These could not be used for primary 4G services at all. They would get overwhelemed real fast. But they could be used in areas that already have other Sprint 4G service (like LTE or WiMax at 2.5GHz). That way when you go in a building or at edge of service where 2.5Ghz is poor, it could transfer to 800MHz and keep your data going.

As a back up, 800MHz could be very good for LTE and Sprint. But Sprint needs a lot more 800MHz spectrum to make a full LTE network out of it.

And it won't be as fast as Verizon either because Sprint will have to use smaller TDD channels. Because they just don't have the spectrum there for wider channels. But it should perform about the same speeds as Sprint currently gets out of its WiMax.

I agree that it appears Sprint is about to do big things. But Sprint is overly quiet about all these things. Other than Network Vision, they haven't told us much at all.

Sprint would be much better served keeping its customers in the loop. Even to a basic standard. They would be much more content and likely to stay if the felt a part of the vision in the long run.

 

[Kic360]

A lot of people are excited about Sprint's transition to LTE,but I don't know why. I like the idea of having lightsquare supply LTE,because it operates at a lower frequency and I believe they will give LTE a proper rollout( I'm looking at you clearwire). Lte is not necessarily a better technology and if clearwire would have rolled out their 4g service properly no one on Sprint would care about Verizon's Lte.

Sent from my EVO 4G using Tapatalk