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How relevant is et4g with sprints upcoming announcement

Seriously I kinda voiced this in another thread but I feel slighted. A lot of us just invested in a phone that wont be able to take advantage of sprints upcoming network enhancements. I was going to try to tolerate the sh!tty data because I was un der the assumption an upgrade would be coming but if they are abandoning wimax deployment and my new phone cant utilize their new tech I dont wanna be stuck with a shiny new brick. I think I may have to return it....thoughts
 
IMO, There will be an OTA update for any reception issues, although I'm not having any problems at all. As far as relevance, If you're in current and Solid 4G WiMax area, the phone is very relevant. I say this because 4G WiMax will still be "on" for quite some time. If you're not in a 4G area... well, that is still to be determined. That being said, I'm not in a 4G coverage area (Phoenix, AZ) and I still have no intent on returning my Epic Touch because it is simply an Awesome device. If it does not support LTE and/or Sprints Network Vision upgrade (although, in some way or another, we will all benefit from this upgrade regardless of phone)... I will sell it in Jan/Feb/March since I will still be able to get quite a bit of money for it and upgrade then. No regrets here.
 
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IMO, There will be an OTA update for any reception issues, although I'm not having any problems at all. As far as relevance, If you're in current and Solid 4G WiMax area, the phone is very relevant. I say this because 4G WiMax will still be "on" for quite some time. If you're not in a 4G area... well, that is still to be determined. That being said, I'm not in a 4G coverage area (Phoenix, AZ) and I still have no intent on returning my Epic Touch because it is simply an Awesome device. If it does not support LTE and/or Sprints Network Vision upgrade (although, in some way or another, we will all benefit from this upgrade regardless of phone)... I will sell it in Jan/Feb/March since I will still be able to get quite a bit of money for it and upgrade then. No regrets here.

Agreeing with this. It's a great phone, and I plan to enjoy it with or without 4G.
 
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Well Samsung will be partnered with Sprint for the network vision upgrade in my area (San Francisco) so I think it will be great to have the phone manufacturer helping with such a thing.

Sprint Selects Samsung as Infrastructure Supplier for Extensive Network Vision Program SAMSUNG

We won't really know how it affects our phone until the details are released in the announcement but we can't assume our phone won't be able to take advantage of any enhancements at this point. Rev B has already been confirmed as NOT being part of network vision
 
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they are not going to turn wimax off for years, they can't after releasing all these wimax phones. What they should do is use those towers that can handle multiple frequencies and set the current wimax bands to continue using wimax, and maybe later when lte is bigger, switch it over to lte, but that is in the future, way in the future.


in the mean time, I'll suffer with these horrible wimax speeds

sc20110929214421.png
 
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sprint will use both lte and wimax for its new system they are upgrading the iden nextel sites to a multi-mode system that does evdo wimax and lte so they can make the most of their network allocations voice will be on the 800mhz band and 4g lte will be on 700mhz wimax will stay on the 2.5 ghz band and they will market high speed data to replace home dsl service
 
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You want to the guinea pig for Sprint lte then be their guest. I am in a WiMAX area, granted it is usually spotty, but I can work with this til my next upgrade. I had the EVO 4G on release and for about 7 months I had no WiMAX around. So let them announce lte, we won't be seeing phones for a while still, and it will be a longer time before coverage spreads. I will settle with a new phone until my next upgrade is available a year or 2 from now, whatever phones are available then will utilize the new service much better.
 
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Here's the network vision primer video, this is what they will talk about tomorrow.

Sprint Community: Network and Coverage: What is Sprint Network Vision?

It gives the ability for new phones and future phones (which is anything newer than the Evo3D, which includes our Epic 4G Touches) the ability to take advantage of greater bandwidth for voice and data. All the details will be announced tomorrow about this. We should all see benefits from this system and it will be completely deployed by 2013....which I'm hoping our area gets it sooner than later, but not holding my breath as we don't even have 4G yet. I'm not too concerned about LTE switch. Any 4G destroys battery life. I'd rather see higher capacity 3G networks deployed with better coverage and building penetrance, which is what they are doing.
 
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The network vision changes announced to date give sprint the ability to handle more subscribers per cell tower and consolidate tower resources.

As subscribers, it doesn't give us much outside of possibly giving us SVDO (simultaneous voice and data). Sprint is not implementing EVDO rev B so it won't give us faster 3G speeds. It might give us better coverage depending on how effective they are with the tower work.

LTE is an important step and hopefully by this time next year it will be ready for prime time... the SMR frequency will be freed up from it's use by the iden network and redeployed for LTE (according to the rumors for the announcment on the 7th) and at the same time the next gen 4g radios for phones should be released that should be much more battery efficient then the current gen 4G radios.

I am curious what sprint will all be announcing on the 7th. I don't really care about 4G right now because I agree that in it's current form the coverage and battery life make it less then ideal. In addition even with a phone as fast as the Epic Touch browsing the web is still limited more so by the cpu speed then the 3G speed.
 
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Sprints press conference is going on...

-Transition of iDen PTT to CDMA completed by mid-2013
-CDMA voice (and I'd guess 3G) are moving from 1900 mhz to 800 mhz
-Wimax will stay on 2500mhz
-Will deploy LTE on the 1900 mhz spectrum currently used for CDMA... not sure how the lightsquared 1600mhz frequency comes into play.
-Mid next year they will start releasing 3G/LTE handsets.

That's a lot of changes... I can't wrap my head around how they are going to make all of these transitions.

Sounds like the Epic Touch supports the 800mhz CDMA radio along with the current 1900mhz CDMA radio. That's some good news. And they also mention 1x advanced... hopefully that includes SVDO but they did not specifically mention that.
 
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I really couldn't get a handle on when all of these transitions were going to happen. The only timeframes I caught from the info is that the iDen to to CDMA transition is starting now with a target completion of mid 2013. And that LTE rollout will start mid next year.

I didn't see any timeframes on the CDMA voice (and 3G if it's included) transition.

Yeah, I'm guessing wimax is basically entirely clearwire's baby now and I'm guessing they don't have the capital to continue the build out. It's too bad they didn't choose LTE from the start.
 
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I really couldn't get a handle on when all of these transitions were going to happen. The only timeframes I caught from the info is that the iDen to to CDMA transition is starting now with a target completion of mid 2013. And that LTE rollout will start mid next year.

I didn't see any timeframes on the CDMA voice (and 3G if it's included) transition.

Yeah, I'm guessing wimax is basically entirely clearwire's baby now and I'm guessing they don't have the capital to continue the build out. It's too bad they didn't choose LTE from the start.

Keep in mind, that it wasn't sprints decision alone. There was Intel and other major players and investors that took that gamble.

$10 Billion for LTE in the next 2 years. Heavy price tag!!!
 
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Yeah, I'm sure there were good reasons for sprint to make that decision at the time...

I don't know all the whys and what-fors that caused most other providers to pick LTE over wimax... it's just too bad that Sprint got caught holding the bag on a technology that everyone else bailed on. Especially since Sprint is more limited from a capital and spectrum standpoint than Verizon and AT&T.

I'm glad that they are going to try and compete with the big boys... they are taking a lot of risks with this and the iphone deployments. I hope it pays off, I've been with sprint a long time.
 
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The 800mhz CDMA rollout is apparently happening on a different block of 800mhz spectrum then the iDen network currently occupies. The epic touch supports the new 800mhz CDMA spectrum which should mean more consistent signal/coverage.

It sounds like the iDen frequencies will instead be used for LTE after the iDen transition completes in a couple years.

There's still a lot that's un-answered... you can monitor the following thread over on sprintusers if you want to monitor the discussion:
Sprint’s 4G Strategy Update Broadcasting Live on October 7th at 9:30AM Eastern - SprintUsers.com
 
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The 800mhz CDMA rollout is apparently happening on a different block of 800mhz spectrum then the iDen network currently occupies. The epic touch supports the new 800mhz CDMA spectrum which should mean more consistent signal/coverage.

It sounds like the iDen frequencies will instead be used for LTE after the iDen transition completes in a couple years.

There's still a lot that's un-answered... you can monitor the following thread over on sprintusers if you want to monitor the discussion:
Sprint
 
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I think it was around page 13... but to be honest I stopped reading the thread because it seemed to be devolving into speculation.

Basically sprint announced that LTE will happen starting mid next year in the 1900 mhz band, that's about all I took away from the presentation and can say with any degree of certainty.
 
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