Sprint Pitches $2B Emergency Network to Obama

i think the re-regulating thing is a good idea becuase it would put the companies back on even footing.........help to keep costs even and possibly make unlimited plans cheaper like the boost one that is coming out on the 22nd.

out of curiosity......over the past year i thought sprint was supposed to be sort of revamping their whole backbone to all be on the same platform.......CDMA, iDEN, and WiMAX......so where does Sprint's use of special access lines come in....

from what i understand Verizon and AT&T each run their own personal backbones.....through a friend at Comcast i know Comcast used to use AT&Ts backbone but now they're building their own to support the fiber speeds of tomorrow..(or today some would say)

so where do "special access lines" come in......like are these separate from AT&Ts and Verizon's?

and where exactly does Sprint's activity of putting all the networks on the same platform" go?

just fill me in on everything

 

Quick answer:

Iden cannot be combined with CDMA as close as you will get is qchat
Somewhere down the line someone will release a CDMA/WiMax phone but the networks cant be combined.

Sprint owns tons of fiber all over the country and will have to work on how to use it as the backbone, as of now Sprint relies on mainly ATT for t-1 backhaul to all of the iDEN and CDMA cell sites.

 

As of now, on the backend of things many circuits have been aggregated together to lower overall transport costs. The special access lines that Sprint is paying for is basically the "last mile" connection. When building out all these sites it was impossible for Sprint (Or any of the other carriers for that matter) to reach each site with their own network. They had to rely on the local loop carrier, the same company you'd buy your landline phone from(ATT, Frontier, Qwest, Verizon, etc..), to provide the connection from the site back to the nearest central office. From there, the carrier would bundle the T1 into groups of 28 which forms a DS-3. The carrier will lease multiple DS3's or higher from central office to central office until it gets to a point where it can enter the carriers own private network. In many instances currently, the T1 will remain on the LEC from cell site to the switching facility but Sprint and the other carriers are working to bring all the traffic onto their own networks sooner as it will greatly reduce their transport costs.

Now, in terms of Sprint revamping it's platform to all be on the same network. There is two initiatives here, one of which is public and one is internally. The public one is Q-Chat, enabling a customer on the CDMA site to direct-connect to one on the iDEN one. The internal one is to bring both networks over to the same backhaul and limit the usage of other providers as much as possible. Being that everything is digital, just 1's and 0's the carriers have to pay for all that bandwidth to and from the cell sites. For the most part, all the carriers have the same costs to operate their backbone networks as the next carrier, but if they're gonna have someone else use it then they'll tack on the profit to make it worth their while, thus if the carrier can just handle it themselves, they'll reduce operating costs and make more money (Cause they certainly won't lower the price on the services afterwards!) In situations where Sprint has enough traffic going from central office to central office they're consolidating multiple DS3s for Sprint and multiple DS3 for Nextel into OC12's, OC48's and up depending on needs.

Basically, it all boils down to lowering the cost of doing business thus making investors happy which certainly won't hurt Sprint!

 

i never said combining the technologies. i'm talking about the background platform

 

instead of filling yourself up with a lot of angel hair pasta....you eat thick spaghetti instead.....gotcha.......now does the cost of leasing bandwidth on other carriers outweigh the cost of maintaining a more extensive backbone of your own?

 

Hopefully Obama will say no thanks. Once LTE gets here there will be a nationwide network, with hundreds of devices, maybe ATT and Verizon can agree on some protocol to allow priority access. Sprints ident network is too old to be considered relevant. Again sprint misses the mark...

 

yeah they will be falling short with SMR.......i think that WiMax and LTE can thrive together.....i'm an idealist....what can i say......LTE is gonna be another cellular network where phones and laptop cards all come together to get services but i fell like WiMax isn't so tied down........it's basically there for anyone who has a WiMax enabled device....it's not about the company anymore