When will sprint update coverage maps...

Larry - Also, if you look at the Powersource, Sprint, and Nextel coverage maps at sprint.com, you can find areas (typically fairly rural or highway)where comparing the Nextel 800 mhz reach versus the Sprint 1900 mmhz reach can be easily seen. The "best" coverage areas are also typically much larger for Nextel, as would be expected. There are just many many cases where 800 mhz is what is needed to drastically improve range. I look forward to when Sprint finally gets a channel or two of 800 MHz CDMA deployed. I hope they do a good 800/1900 overlay system wherein the phones can switch between the bands, as has successfully been deployed by other carriers. I realize an overaly may not be called for in every area. Georgia, IMO, could defintely beneift from it. Use 1900 for strong signal close-in areas, and 800 for further reach. Hand-off between the two bands just as is done between different 1900 channels. Govern it as a function of the signal strength the tower is getting from the phone.

 

The general consensus of what I've been seeing around here and also on other forums is that nobody seems to believe (or care) that Sprint is making these massive improvements unless the towers that serve their particular neighborhood and areas of interest is inlcuded. And that's too be expected.

 

Well I hope you get what you wish for. But I'd be very surprised if that ever happened. At least in the next 3 or 4 years.

 

isnt the FCC doing another spectrum auction anytime soon?...............it would be nice if the could get some 800 CDMA licenses.............Sprint will eventually be dropping their Nextel licenses when they turn off the iDEN network..............maybe they could get some 800 CDMAs as a trade-in for the iDEN ones..........

now that i was thinking...........do you know what would be a good idea?

Sprint selling their Nextel sites to Southern LINC...........they could make good money off of that deal.............think the Cingular-T-Mobile Cali merger...........that.........but only on a much bigger level.............Southern LINC could go national and present itself as some competition............the FCC might like that

 

The whole 800 Mhz CDMA thing to me is so far off that it's not even worth talking about yet. The future is going to be adding 1900 Mhz CDMA to Nextel sites. It's where all of the budget money is going.

 

but like i was suggesting.........they could get a lot of money if they were to sell their iDEN network to Southern LINC...........like i said........it keeps the antitrust people happy.......Sprint gets more money for expansion........

 

No "cellular" frequencies are coming up for auction. There are auctions in the 700 MHz band (currently high UHF TV channels are there) There are only two cellular bands (A and B) and no incumbent would dare give them up. Once rebanding is complete next summer, Sprint will have a contiguous band of 14 Mhz in the 800 MHz range, but this is unique spectrum to only them.
http://www.800ta.org/_img/figures/img_channel_lrg.gif

Sprint is not going to give up this spectrum, nor are they required to. I do not know where people get this notion. It is not tied to the iDEN technology. Sprint has explicitly stated that they intend to deploy CDMA as soon as iDEN migration will allow the dediction of 800 MHz spectrum to CDMA.

 

so Sprint has 800 MhZ licenses and they can use them on their CDMA network?...........that would be nice

 

Don't get your hopes up. I doubt that it will happen soon enough to even be thinking about right now.

 

Well it looks like they are updating the maps again!

Now they show EV-DO Rev0 (orange) & RevA (red) and...

In addition to showing the towers built in the last 90 days, we can now see "Anticipated coverage in the next 120 days". This includes coverage, EV-DO Rev 0 & A, and future towers.

 

Wow I go away for a few hours and look what happens! They've entirely changed the coverage maps! This is so cool I think it deserves a new thread!

 

Ohhhh...fancy. Though it looks like this version needs some more work.

 

Yeah I think they still need to color code some of the green areas with dots. I don't see a legend for that but I think it means roaming areas with no signal strength data available.

 

this is really unprecedented........hehe........wow..........i'm sure some of the other companies are really jealous right now

 

Things are still in a transition state ans the rebnading goes on, so at this point it time whiel thigns are still interleaved they could not do it. Even after the tranistion is done in about 16 months, they would still have to unload the iDEN network to the porint they will have freed up enough bandwidth to dedicate some for CDMA. Even then, they will have to make the decision when/if to do it. I'm clinging to hope they will - I really think it would help Spritn's service repuation if they had the more robust 800 MHz band to carry a piece of the traffic. Time will tell if they decie to actually go this way. But iDEN will go away over time - what they do with the 800 MHZ if not CDMA remains to be seen.

 

By the time this 800 Mhz thing is figured out I think Sprint's 1900 Mhz network will be so much improved that we will no longer care that much about it and neither will Sprint. Here in So. Cal for example it's a non issue because 1900 Mhz coverage is already as good or better than anyone else's.

 

but if a company has licenses for a paricular band in an area they can use it on any technology they wish?

and if so it would be a good idea to put that up as CDMA because if the Nextel customers are coming over they are going to need some backhaul..........i know they will need it in my area............there are a lot of Nextel users and Sprint users..........when migration happens...........towers are gonna get more cramped and i still come across nights when i cant make outgoing calls because the tower is full

 

Is it my imagination or did they just change the color scheme of the maps? The shade of the light green areas looks different now. Wasn't it more of a yellow green before?

 

Yeah, I noticed the change yesterday. I thought I was crazy!

 

Yes, they changed it. Now it agrees with the colors in the legend, before (last week or two) it did not.

 

I think it looks better now. That old yellow green color looked lame. IMO