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If you’re a Sprint customer, you may have found yourself recently looking for new reasons to stick with the carrier after their “Season of Change” removed a lot of customer perks. As most of you have already heard, ‘Ol Yeller is getting their new LTE network set up for next year but what you may not have known is the carrier is also planning on rolling out an LTE-Advanced network for the first half of 2013, with voice over LTE (VoLTE) devices scheduled in the first quarter of that year. Sprint’s VP of network and development Iyad Tarazi spilled the beans while speaking during a breakfast meeting at the 4G World conference.
Mr. Tarazi also mentioned that 12 LTE devices are currently scheduled for 2012 with Sprint planning on covering between 250 – 277 million people with blazing fast LTE by the end of 2013. How’s that for sticking with #3?
If you’re curious about the fate of your currently equipped 4G WiMax devices, Sprint’s agreement with Clearwire means you will be covered for at least the next few years. That’s about 60 in smartphone years. With this new development are any Sprint customers going to wait it out? Or have you already been seduced by the blazing fast data of other carriers?
[Via FierceWireless]
im waiting it out… oh, and sprint, unlimited lte please :)
Not going to lie, I’m sick of my gf’s TBolt having blazing speeds compared to my EVO 3D. I just block her from the wireless network and make her think my speeds are superior.
Puts paper bag over head.
Good news. I just got my Epic 4G Touch which I’m happy enough with that I suspect I can hold out until I’m eligible for an upgrade again, which should actually be around the time these LTE-Advanced phones launch. So I’ll take that as a win.
Yeah, if sprint continues with unlimited data into lte as well? That would be sweet!
I’m gonna at least stick it out till the end of my OG Evo contract of course. If there are awful LTE options or the network has proved as slow (reliable, but slow) as it is now, I may reconsider. But Sprint has been fine for me so far.
I hope the Galaxy Nexus is the 1st of those 12 and releases by January! And it would be great to have unlimited LTE.
This is sink or swim time for Sprint. If they’re the first all unlimited all LTE network in the US, they will win all the marbles. If they don’t deliver, they will be in da poo poo.
wish they had just waited a little longer and gone with LTE right away…. and in the right spectrum too. what they really need to do is move their CDMA to the new ~800 MHz they just freed up and then move the LTE to the old CDMA frequency. after that they can worry about LTE-A.
i will be waiting until june 2012 and will again renew with sprint for another two years with the best phone they have at that time because they have always taken care of me and have great prices
That would not be a smart move, sprint is doing the right thing. If they put lte on the higher frequency then they would need to create more infrastructure since the signal would not go as far and the signal would not penetrate buildings as well, some of the main issues with wimax. And by being in the 800 range, they can potentially piggyback on Verizons existing network due to the fcc roaming rules just like they do now for their voice in places.
That’s just LTE-Advanced though. That also would be a required feature if they intend on using VoLTE. 800MHz spectrum for VoLTE is practically a must-have. Still, regular LTE will run on their 1900 spectrum which is better than their WiMAX (2500MHz) spectrum for building penetration and reception.
True, but I believe they will still be able to us Verizon’s network. I had heard somewhere that they were planning on rolling out VoLTE and advanced LTE on the same frequency ranges in 800 after they get everyone covered under regular LTE. Could have heard wrong though, but I would bet that LTE roaming will be possible.
That probably could happen. I just don’t know why Sprint would continue to do that. The main purpose of them creating their own LTE network was to eliminate roaming costs to increase profits.
I think that’s looking too far ahead. Currently Sprint has a lot to worry about because they are so busy trying to fix their Wimax mistake and throwing new phones out every time we blink they have forgotten about their current customers. They finally capped the Hotspot data so the next logical move is to do the same with our Smartphone data. They have to find ways to pay for LTE and I know the executives aren’t taking any pay cuts so the water runs downhill. There are a ton of customers complaining about their current phones and service and they don’t seem to be paying much attention. If they put a cap or start charging for our Smartphone data they are going to end up like Netflix who recently lost more than 800,000 customers because of their rate increase. I’m sure they didn’t count on all that revenue leaving and they have a lot of work cut out to make up for the loss.
I would go pre paid before paying higher prices with Verizon. Sprint keeps my family plan as long as they keep unlimited data.
Once again I hope they don’t get rid of the unlimited data especially when they roll out LTE. Hopefully the fact that they had to cap hotspots and mobile broadband was a way of shaving things off so they didn’t have to do the same for smartphones. They’re really winning customers due to the fact they are the only national carrier left with unlimited data. Many of my co-workers are switching to Sprint, especially since the 22% employee discount doesn’t hurt, either. I was once a customer of T-Mobile and I loved them, but left due to the merger, and plus I have better Sprint coverage where I live. If they go downhill, I wouldn’t mind going back to magenta (if the merger fails). At least they throttle and not cap and charge for overage.
Sprint needs to roll out a Galaxy Nexus Prime with LTE asap.
I think there might be a good possibility of this. It’s safe to assume that VZW may have a timed exclusivity deal w/ the device. By the time that ends, it should be well into 2012 and Sprint’s LTE should be going live by then.
I’m really excited for this! I have the evolution 3D so hopefully my contract is up when there is really good phones on the market.
heh sprint.. just like tfumble… IRRELEVANT
Sweet, i bought by Nexus in May of this year. In two years, hopefully their LTE-Advanced phones will have been announced, i would be able to upgrade to one of those.
Definitely going to wait it out, but really these 10 Mbs downloads I’m already getting on Sprints current 4G will definitely hold me over till the next iteration.
I dont get it,how many 4g networks sprint is working on?…here in puerto rico we dont even have yet 4g and they are having other services?…3g speeds here are a joke 18kb to 50kb tops in good reception areas!…the only thing that they have its the unlimited data,but at those speeds I rather have data caps,Im seriously thinking of droping my sero plan and unlock my photon 4g and go to other carrier…
Just give me the Galaxy nexus ASAP and I’ll worry about LTE when they turn it on in mid 2012.
It’s all based on how their LTE speeds end up, and if they keep unlimited.
Is 4G LTE speed that much faster than 4G or even that much faster than 3G?
http://4gltephones.blogspot.com/