Alltel now has a PCS License for Memphis, TN

It's only 10 MHz. They need a lot more than that to build out a city of that size.

 

How much would ALLTEL need if they did end up coming to Knoxville??
They'd probably cover the whole city its self, plus some of the surrounding towns (alcoa, maryville, oak ridge, clinton etc..).. how much spectrum would be needed for that kind of coverage?

 

Take into account that Memphis is well over double the size of Knoxville... 10mhz would work, but they wouldn't be able to support the kind of customer base that the have in their larger areas.

 

Oh, I know.. it was just a hypothetical question ...lol... it would be nice if alltel came to the area but I don't look for that to happen unless they get uscc/eloqui

 

lol yeah that is weird isn't it, tndan. I don't think that uscc would sell off to alltel but it'd be nice if Eloqui did, BUT.. eloqui wont if uscc wont, i think

 

Looking at the map of BTA290, I see connects Alltel's cellular-B coverage in Arkansas RSAs 4, 5, and 6 (gives them their last county in AR, Crittenden for statewide coverage) over to Alltel's cellular-A coverage in Mississippi RSA 2 (northeast counties with Tupelo, Corinth, Ashland and Fulton) and RSAs 6 (Winona, Kosciusko) and the rest of the central Mississippi Alltel coverage.

This is a good strategic purchase--Alltel will be able to reduce the roaming of its customers on Verizon (and Cellular South?). They'll be able to advertise to Memphians who spend much of their time in AR or MS.

I see this as the same as the recent turnup in Saint Louis by USCC. The PCS coverage links their rural cellular systems into one BIG coverage area.

COtech

 

Memphis is a very large city compared to Knoxville or Asheville.

It may hold them over for a while, but they are definitely going to need more spectrum to keep on going. Especially if they want to compete.

Keep in mind that Sprint now has whatever spectrum + Nextel spectrum.

 

Keep in mind that no current Sprint phone can use the Nextel spectrum even if they were to put CDMA on it. It's in the SMR band and none of Sprint's phones can even see it. Not to mention the "PCS" spectrum that Nextel was awarded is outside the range of the standard PCS spectrum that phones are able to access. So basically, the Nextel spectrum does them no good for the CDMA side of things. I do agree that Alltel can scrape by on 10Mhz of spectrum but it's not going to be enough for any large customer base. Perhaps its main purpose was to connect the aforementioned systems and serve to reduce roaming. They may not even push very hard for new subs in that market simply because of the limited spectrum.

 

Of this 10 MHz, how much is allocated for Data
and how much for Voice?

 

Probably because Knoxville is the only part of the state that matters during this time of year?

-SC (GO VOLS!)

 

Alltel buying Eloqui when Alltel has nothing in Knoxville doesn't make any sense. IMO, if Eloqui does anything at all, selling back out to USCC (either the independent companies that control Eloqui selling their shares of the TN-3 partnership to USCC to give them 100% control, or else giving USCC majority control of the TN-3 partnership again so that it would revert to a USCC market) is the most likely thing to happen.

-SC

 

Last time I was in Knoxville (back in May or so) SPCS was running two 1XRTT (voice/data) CDMA carriers...which is 5 MHz. I figure that they'll throw up a single EV-DO carrier whenever they launch EV-DO, which would result in their using 7.5 MHz of their 10 MHz.

Here in Atlanta, SPCS has 20 MHz of spectrum (their original 10 + 10 acquired from AT&T Wireless a couple of years ago) and VZW has 35 MHz (25 MHz 850 for AMPS and 1X + 10 MHz 1900 currently being used for EV-DO only), and each uses only 7.5 MHz for 1X voice/data service, except right around Hartsfield-Jackson airport where VZW uses more. VZW still has a huge amount of AMPS capacity in Atlanta, even in core urban areas...I'm at a complete loss as to why they have kept so much AMPS capacity up when they are having capacity issues on the CDMA side...

-SC

 

Thanks for that lookup, TNDan21. I will be watching for that CLLI now.

COtech@MMPHTNELDC0

 

How does one go about finding out how many carriers a given carrier is using in an area?

 

i don't think you can mix the spectrum for voice and data,
you have to allocate them.

 

uh, yeah.... that's what he was saying. Read it again, genius.

 

Haha...LMAO!!! :lmao:

 

I swear Jones's posts are so completely random and off-the-wall. Every once in awhile, he'll toss something out that's on-topic.

 

Or b/c the Knoxville area has better representation on the forums than the other cities with DarrylLee and cryogenic and TnDan not far away.

Meanwhile, I'm over in Nashvegas and COTech is in Memphis.

 

read what, genius?
You're the Genius you tell us.

 

Would they even have to have customers in that market? I mean, could they have the spectrum for their customers to use when they're in Memphis but that Alltel wouldn't market necessarily to customers in Memphis?

 

This is what I was thinking.

But they could get some customers in Memphis. It probably wouldn't be enough to justify more spectrum if they did.

 

So you think they would maybe have one sales office or maybe even just one or two dealers if they had any retail prescence at all in Memphis? I guess that customers from other areas wouldn't use all their spectrum there but adding customers in Memphis might lead to crowding and dropped calls, etc.

 

Will Alltel still get VZW roaming in the Memphis area, or will that end where there's overlap?