Sprint Says Network Vision Is Basically Done
Dec 3, 2014, 11:30 AM by Eric M. Zeman
Sprint recently indicated that its years-long Network Vision project is coming to a close. Sprint's 1900MHz LTE network covers 260 million POPs, according to Sprint CFO Joe Euteneuer, who made the comments at a Bank of America investor conference this week. Sprint's 2.5GHz LTE network covers 92 million POPs and its 800MHz LTE network will cover 100 million POPs by the end if the year. "I think from a network standpoint we have been waiting to get to this point of having a network that is substantially complete," said Euteneuer. Sprint said it will continue to add coverage in the 1900MHz band as its obtains more spectrum. All Sprint smartphones support tri-band LTE, which Sprint markets as Sprint Spark. Spark-compatible handsets are able to use whichever of the three spectrum bands (800MHz, 1900MHz, 2.5GHz) offers the strongest coverage in areas where all three bands are available. Sprint had previously said Sprint Spark would be available to 100 million people by the close of 2014, and it now appears that goal depends on deploying LTE to its 800MHz spectrum. All the major carriers are supplementing their LTE networks with additional capacity in other spectrum bands. For example, Verizon operates LTE in the 700MHz and AWS bands. AT&T and Verizon cover about 300 million POPs each with LTE. T-Mobile covers about 250 million. Sprint's Euteneuer also noted that Sprint will push an over-the-air update to the Apple iPhone 6 and 6 Plus in the next two to three months to enable Wi-Fi calling.
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Comments
Network Vision Network Flop
Looking at their Network Vision Maps when they proposed the idea, and promised capacity, coverage, and increase in call completion and data speeds, to now and the current maps - I see a huge lack of breadth of coverage, not to mention a very small LTE coverage area in the places they claimed they really were going to succeed. On top of all this, even in areas where they have deployed LTE, the signal levels are weak, and capacity low, culminating in a horrible user experience for its customers, often flipping back to 3G - which by the way has not seen increases in capacity or data speed with Network Vision, but in fact...
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Personally, I'd love to be able to use Verizon, but their service blows where I work and live.
Sprint has the MOST SPECTRUM and let us down
according to http://www.fiercewireless.com/special-reports /how-much-lte-spectrum-do-verizon-att-sprint- and-t-mobile-have-and-where
Sprint (NYSE: S) owns a vast amount of spectrum for LTE thanks to the 2.5 GHz spectrum holdings it acquired from Clearwire. Sprint controls around 120 MHz of 2.5 GHz spectrum in 90 percent of the top 100 U.S. markets, and plans to deploy two-carrier 2.5 GHz spectrum, or 40 MHz in the band, by year-end. However, the 2.5 GHz spectrum has weaker propagation characteristics than low-band spectrum, requiring more towers for Sprint to build it out. The spect...
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Much as I root for Sprint. . .
You've got AT&T and VZW with LTE networks at or above 300M PoPs and you've got Neville Ray talking about aggressively pushing T-Mo's network (whether that's all LTE or not remains to be seen) to 300M PoPs in 2015 and here comes Sprint's CFO with a comment that they are essentially done at 260M PoPs. Would anyone like to wager what the marketing messages of 2015 and 2016 are going to be?
I really wonder if Sprint gets it. There are 2 things that matter: customer service and coverage (feel free to argue speed and I'll counter that this is a function of coverage and that if I get over 3M down I'm ...
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