GigaOM » WiMAX

Why Sprint is pushing LTE for 100 cities in “coming months”

Kevin C. Tofel — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:16:13 +0000

Sprint is continuing its big network push for fast LTE service, announcing on Monday that 100 cities will receive LTE in the “coming months.” That’s not a very precise timetable, but what is definite is that Sprint is quickly trying to catch up to its U.S. rivals who already offer LTE. Sprint’s key differentiator is unlimited mobile broadband service, which can help it keep or attract customers, provided it gets the LTE network up and running sooner rather than later.

In the press announcement of its network plans, Sprint says the following major markets are part of the LTE expansion over the coming months: Boston; Charlotte, N.C.; Chicago; Indianapolis; Los Angeles; Memphis, Tenn.; Miami; Nashville, Tenn.; New Orleans; New York; Philadelphia; and Washington, D.C. A full list of the 100 cities where Sprint is deploying LTE during this phase can be found here. The carrier expects to complete its 4G LTE network build by the end of 2013, essentially covering its current 3G footprint of today with LTE.

What’s the rush? Sprint’s bet on WiMAX back in 2008 cost it both money and time as rivals chose LTE for its speed and GSM compatibility. As a result, Sprint has watched Verizon roll out 371 LTE market since 2010 while AT&T is at 60 and growing. Even T-Mobile is on the LTE bandwagon: It has a strategy to refarm spectrum and launch its own LTE 4G service. Add all this up and Sprint’s early mover advantage in U.S. 4G is long gone and so too might customers be who can’t wait for the carrier’s network upgrades.

On a related bet, Sprint decided to spend billions to bring Apple’s iPhone to its device portfolio in 2011. It will take several years to get that money back and even longer if Apple does add LTE support to its next iPhone as the Wall Street Journal reported last Friday. Sure, Sprint may offer unlimited data plans, but if a shiny new iPhone is stuck on an older 3G connection that’s up to 10 times slower than LTE, will consumers pick a Sprint iPhone or one from a Sprint rival?

History suggests faster speeds are trumping unlimited data; at least when it comes to the iPhone.

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iPod touch as a phone sounds great, unless you need 911

Kevin C. Tofel — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 15:28:37 +0000

Last month, FreedomPop began taking pre-orders for a $99 sleeve that turns an iPod touch into a voice-enabled 4G handset. The device uses Clearwire’s WiMAX 4G network for connectivity and is combined with a VoIP software client so that the iPod essentially becomes a modern day smartphone. That sounds great for those that don’t want a monthly smartphone bill — Freedom Pop gives you 500 MB a month for free — but what happens if you need to dial 911?

The answer to that is to be determined. Light Reading surfaced this issue last week, and was told by a Freedom Pop representative that the company “should have more insights by launch later this Summer.” This issue isn’t unique to Freedom Pop, though, as it applies to all voice over IP calls. However, many such services can leverage a phone’s GPS chip or fall back to a 2G or 3G cellular network to assist with location. The iPod touch has neither capability, leaving Freedom Pop without a simple solution.

In the coming years, we’ll be transitioning all of our mobile calls from traditional cellular voice to IP-based communications; voice will simply become another data type on mobile broadband. That’s no secret and is why, according to EETimes, North American network operators are looking to get E911 support on LTE by 2014. That timeline may not be aggressive enough in the rest of the world for emergency location services though: On Wednesday, SK Telecom is set to turn on Voice over LTE, for example.

This doesn’t mean the FreedomPop sleeve for iPod touch is a bad product; heck, it’s not even in customers’ hands yet, so I can’t speak to the performance. However, if you’re thinking of cutting expenses by dropping your standard smartphone bill and going with the Freedom Pop sleeve, realize that you may be giving up your ability to dial 911 to have help find you. Let’s see what the company figures out for launch.

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Clearwire starts shrinking as Sprint makes the leap to LTE

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 27 Jul 2012 16:26:53 +0000

It was bound to happen. As Clearwire’s biggest investor and customer Sprint moved its customers to LTE, Clearwire’s WiMAX subscriber growth would level off and eventually reverse course. Both happened in the second quarter.

After adding half a million new subscribers in the first quarter, Clearwire saw its customer totals dip by 42,000 in the second quarter. It’s not a huge loss, but at this stage of Clearwire’s development it’s one it can’t really afford. With only 11 million connections – the vast majority of them with Sprint – Clearwire needs to keep growing. It needs to demonstrate to its fleeing investors it has market-making potential, and it needs revenues not just for operations but to fund its future LTE network and long-delayed nationwide expansion.

Revenue-wise Clearwire is better off than the subscriber losses would imply. It renegotiated its wholesale contract with Sprint last year to guarantee a minimum of $1 billion in payments into 2013. So even as subscriber losses accelerate as more Sprint customers abandon WiMAX phones, Sprint will continue to pay the 4G carrier. Sprint has also begun selling WiMAX devices through its prepaid brands Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile, which will help offset those subscriber losses.

Clearwire has been trying to cut its dependence on Sprint by signing other wholesale deals, but for every step forward it seems to take a step back. Partners and investors Time Warner Cable and Comcast have abandoned their plans to resell WiMAX and have instead chosen to partner with Verizon. Clearwire landed mobile virtual network operator (MVNO) deals with Leap Wireless, NetZero, Tucows’ Ting and FreedomPop. But Ting and FreedomPop have both indicated that they plan to move over to Sprint’s LTE network when it’s available, so Clearwire only gains temporary relief.

Clearwire’s retail business isn’t faring much better. Of its 11 million total subscriptions, 1.3 million are retail customers, a number that’s held steady for the last several quarters. Clearwire will have to find growth from somewhere or its crisis of confidence will only worsen. Already Google and Intel have sold their Clearwire shares, and pretty much every one of Clearwire’s original champions, save Sprint, has cut their ties with the suffering operator.

Image courtesy of Shutterstock user Linda Bucklin

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On-Ramp aims to raise $30M for low-power wireless tech

Ucilia Wang — Fri, 22 Jun 2012 06:11:08 +0000

Finding a better, low-power way to send data over long distance is crucial for tracking energy use and monitoring the health of an electric grid. On-Ramp Wireless has been tackling this challenge and now aims to raise nearly $30 million to commercialize its technology, according to its regulatory filing on Thursday.

The San Diego startup has raised about $10 million of the $30 million round so far. It raised $11.5 million only a year ago. In March this year, the company told Xconomy that it had raised $37 million since its inception and was planning to start a new round.

On-Ramp says its radios can find and receive signals that are too weak for competing technologies to detect, and they are able to send those signals using less power. The heart of the technology is a set of algorithms that increases the sensitivity of the radios to capture the weak signals.

The startup, founded in 2008, told Technology Review last year that it only needed to use 35 access points to connect with smart meters and other network devices over a 4,000 square-mile area when a competing wireless technology would require over 1,000 access points.

On-Ramp is marketing its technology not only for smart meter rollouts but also for tracking the performances of a variety of industrial equipment over a large and sometimes remote region, from transmission networks to gas pipelines. The company says its wireless technology will work well to monitor power lines buried deep underground.

The company’s technology isn’t meant to send massive amount of data, and it’s engineered to connect devices that operate at less than 50 bits per second. But it could complement other wireless technologies such as WiFi, cellular or WiMAX or compete against them in a smart grid buildout, depending on how utilities design their networks. Other wireless technology developers competing for utilities’ attention include Silver Spring Networks, SmartSynch (now part of Itron), and Trilliant.

On-Ramp has been working on a trial in South Korea in a smart meter project with Fountain Springs and Korea Telecom. Last August, On-Ramp announced that it would sell its wireless equipment in North America and the United Kingdom through Science Application International Corp.

On-Ramp’s technology sounds solid, but whether it can price the tech competitively will be just as important for the company. As a startup, it also will have to show that it will be able to stick around to help its customers to deal with any repair and maintenance problems.

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Sprint packs WiMAX and LTE into latest hotspot

Kevin Fitchard — Wed, 09 May 2012 15:32:56 +0000

Sprint is cramming an awful lot of radios into its latest hotspot. On May 18, Sprint will begin selling the Sierra Wireless Tri-Fi hotspot, which customers can immediately connect to its 3G and WiMAX networks and eventually use Sprint’s new LTE network when it goes live this summer.

Sprint first unveiled the device at CES as part of its initial LTE portfolio, but the May launch shows it planning to follow the same seeding strategy it’s pursuing with its smartphones: By pre-selling LTE devices, its customers can take immediate advantage of the new 4G service when it launches.

Customers will have to put up with limited mobile broadband coverage initially – its Clearwire-run WiMAX network covers only 130 million people, while LTE will launch in 10 markets. But Sprint plans to ramp up quickly, building an LTE footprint covering 250 million people in 260 markets by the end of 2013. Once LTE is live, Tri-Fi customers will get to choose between two 4G options where they are available and fall back on Sprint’s CDMA EV-DO networks where they aren’t.

While Sprint’s smartphone data plans remain unlimited, its capped hotspot plans could definitely use some work. It doesn’t appear to changing its pricing policies for LTE, which could cause careless customers to run up enormous data bills. While Sprint’s plan of tier pricing undercuts most of its competitors, the carrier still engages in the medieval practice of charging punitive overage fees. If you exceed your data cap, charges of 5 cents per minute kick in, which works out to be $50 a gigabyte.

The plans for the device start at $34.99 for 3 GB a month, but it also offers several big bucket options: $49.99 for 6GB of combined 3G/4G data or $79.99 for 12GB of 3G/4G data. While at CTIA Wireless in New Orleans on Wednesday, Sprint announced that the new HTC EVO 4G LTE would be available on May 18 as well.

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As Sprint turns to LTE, WiMAX becomes its prepaid 4G network

Kevin Fitchard — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 15:24:08 +0000

Sprint doesn’t plan to dump WiMAX entirely after it takes its new LTE network live this summer. Instead, it plans to reposition the older 4G technology as the network for its prepaid customers. Sprint will begin selling WiMAX devices next quarter under the Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile brands, network operations president Steve Elfman said Wednesday on Sprint’s first quarter earnings call.

The strategy makes perfect sense for Sprint, which is trying to sort through a growing number of network technologies. WiMAX powers all of its 4G smartphones and modems today, but Sprint is already phasing out WiMAX devices and selling its first LTE smartphones in preparation for the new network’s launch this summer. While it will continue to support existing WiMAX smartphones and device customers, it won’t add many new ones – at least not under the Sprint banner.

Network partner Clearwire supplies Sprint’s WiMAX capacity but it only does so in a limited footprint, making it increasingly difficult for Sprint to pit its current 4G service against its competitors large and growing LTE and HSPA+ networks. Sprint, however, is Clearwire’s majority stakeholder and has committed to selling the wholesale mobile broadband carrier’s WiMAX and future LTE capacity for years to come. By shifting WiMAX over to Boost and Virgin, Sprint can deliver faster speeds to its growing prepaid base – it added 489,000 net prepaid subscribers in the first quarter – while keeping Clearwire afloat during its transition to LTE.

Moving prepaid data customers over to WiMAX also takes some of the burden off its 3G network in areas 4G is available. Sprint is beginning to load up its 3G network with iPhones, so it probably needs all the CDMA EV-DO capacity it can spare.

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Why you’ll likely see Sprint LTE phones sooner than later

Kevin C. Tofel — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:30:17 +0000

Any remaining Sprint customers holding out hope for new WiMAX smartphones can officially consider such hopes dashed. On Thursday, Fierce Wireless heard Sprint’s SVP of networks, Bob Azzi, confirm that no additional WiMAX phones will be launched. With Sprint’s move to LTE for mobile broadband, this may not surprise, but earlier in the year, the operator said it would offer new WiMAX devices throughout 2012.

This suggests that Sprint’s migration from WiMAX to LTE is quickly progressing. In order to make the transition, Sprint is first using 1900 MHz spectrum for LTE and later plans to repurpose the 800 MHz band currently used for iDEN. These types of moves typically don’t happen quickly because existing devices already use this spectrum.

Azzi noted the aggressive effort, saying that field integration testing was nearly completed and showing more benefits than expected. According to FW, Azzi said the overall network effort should yield a 50 percent savings in the costs to deliver a gigabyte of data or a minute of voice. Hopefully, such savings is passed along in the form of less expensive LTE plans.

This news may also lend credence to recent rumors that Sprint will launch the Samsung Galaxy Nexus LTE handset on April 15. Of course, any LTE phones will be limited to using Sprint’s 3G network until the carrier starts lighting up its LTE coverage areas, expected by mid-2012. That’s not a bad thing. Even without a network yet, buyers of LTE phones know their device will have a future. Sadly, I never felt that way about the WiMAX devices that used the 2.5 GHz band, even after attending Sprint’s WiMAX launch in 2008.

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Investors, customers take Clearwire on a roller-coaster ride

Kevin Fitchard — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 18:20:31 +0000

Clearwire has had a frustrating year so far. For every step it takes forward it seems to be forced a step a back, but CEO Erik Prusch said he is still plenty confident that Clearwire can overcome those setbacks to get its LTE network built and become the country’s only wholesale-focused mobile broadband provider.

At an interview at Mobile World Congress, Prusch said Clearwire had met all of its near-term goals: It had secured funding from Sprint and the banks to keep the company operating and start its $600-million rollout of its particular flavor of 4G, time-division LTE (TD-LTE), and it had even begun to build on its WiMAX business, signing up several new wholesale 4G customers, including Leap Wireless, NetZero and FreedomPop.

At MWC, Prusch was in a particularly good mood as the world’s largest operator China Mobile had just committed to deploying a huge TD-LTE network over similar frequency bands. That, along with similar TD-LTE commitments from India’s Bharti and Japan’s Softbank, will go a long way toward building the global TD-LTE ecosystem necessary to supply Clearwire with smartphones and devices. At the show, Qualcomm announced it would begin making dual-mode LTE chipsets supporting the frequency division (FD-LTE) networks used by AT&T, Verizon Wireless and most of the world’s operators on the same integrated silicon with TD-LTE. (For a wrap-up of MWC’s themes check out my GigaOM Pro analysis: How to Live in Connected World (subscription required).

“By 2014 we’ll have TD-LTE networks in a harmonized band covering 2 billion people around the world,” Prusch said. “We’re skating to where the puck’s going.”

That may be so, but Clearwire is getting banged up against the boards quite a bit while chasing that puck. While Clearwire has signed up innovative new carrier customers like FreedomPop, it has lost several of its original partners. Comcast and Time Warner, both key investors, have abandoned their plans to resell Clearwire’s 4G in order to dance with former arch-nemesis Verizon.

Clearwire’s other big investors are bailing as well. Google recently sold its $500 million investment, taking a $433.5 million bath. Intel also plans to sell a big chunk of its shares. While it’s unlikely that Google or Intel would have launched their own 4G services using Clearwire’s network, their loss of faith in the carrier doesn’t bode well. Majority investor Sprint is sticking by the company, but even Sprint is keeping it at arm’s length, constantly reminding anyone who will listen it has an LTE strategy independent of Clearwire.

To top it all off, the big new ecosystem Prusch has been touting may not be happening as soon as Clearwire would like. The Chinese government is making noises to the effect it won’t issue 4G licenses for another two to three years. That would be a big setback for China Mobile’s rollout of TD-LTE, and would force Clearwire to procure LTE devices without the help of its largest partner. The ecosystem certainly isn’t evaporating – Softbank and Bharti are big operators – but it has deflated a bit.

Roller coaster image courtesy of tonydude919.

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Key technologies for the smart city

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 06:55:30 +0000

As more and more people move to urban areas there is an escalating need for the smart city, where technology, sustainability, citizen well-being and economic development integrate. Currently five key technology sectors are enabling the smart city: smart grids, smart transport, smart water and waste management, smart building systems, and the enabling ICT platforms for the smart city. This report examines each and provides recommendations to those key players — IT companies, telcos, utilities and real estate developers — that wish to benefit and harness those technologies.

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The big theme of MWC: How to live in a connected world

Kevin Fitchard — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 16:55:38 +0000

It has been just over a week since the Fira de Barcelona gates closed on Mobile World Congress 2012, so now is a good time for a retrospective look at the event. The big thing at MWC wasn’t a phone or new network architecture but the much more subtle shift in focus on how we live in a hyperconnected world. This year the industry seemed to move beyond starry-eyed soothsaying about a world of 50 billion connected devices to start talking about how these mammoth networks of objects and appliances would actually work and how they would be managed.

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