Sprint’s Vice President of Network Development and Engineering, Iyad Tarazi, told attendees at the 4G World conference that during the first half of 2013 they’re going to launch an LTE-Advanced network. Said network will be using the 800 MHz band—so it’ll penetrate through walls easier and also have a greater range using fewer towers—and 20 MHz worth of spectrum, basically a pair of 10 MHz channels. That sounds all well and good, but then Tarazi adds that the LTE-Advanced network will only be capable of doing 12 to 15 megabits per second down. This deeply saddens us since just 4 months ago Ericsson demoed a live LTE-Advanced network in Sweden and they managed to pull over 950 megabits per second. Now granted, they used 60 MHz worth of spectrum, but still, 20 MHz worth of spectrum using LTE-Advanced should be able to deliver at least 10x the type of speed that Sprint is promising.
Tarazi goes on to say that by the end of 2012 Sprint will be offering at least 12 devices that will connect to their as yet to launch LTE network. That network will be using the 1900 MHz band and the goal is that by the end of 2013 it’ll cover between 250 million and 270 million Americans. By that time Verizon’s LTE network will likely be complete, covering just about everyone in the 48 states thanks to the use of the even more attractive 700 MHz band.
Now what about Clearwire? They’re currently in need of about $1 billion to keep on running and migrate towards LTE, and since 20% of Sprint’s traffic uses Clearwire’s network, chances are that it will be Sprint coughing up the bill. It’s all one huge mess if you ask us, but it’ll eventually sort itself out with WiMAX users potentially getting screwed by the time their 2 year contract runs out. We can’t say we didn’t warn you!
[Additional reading at GigaOM]