Sprint confirmed its network upgrade plans, saying it will deploy thousands of new macro sites and tens of thousands of small cells. CTO John Saw said in a blog post that small cells will enable Sprint to “add capacity in targeted high-traffic areas, as well as extend better service in hard to reach locations and indoor sites.”
Saw said that Sprint engineers have been working very closely with counterparts at parent company, SoftBank, which has deployed a small cell network in Japan. Part of that network leverages the 2.5 GHz spectrum band, the same band that Sprint will use.
“Here in the U.S., Sprint controls approximately 120 megahertz of 2.5 GHz spectrum in 90 of the top 100 largest cities,” wrote Saw. “2.5 GHz spectrum is uniquely suited for delivering a lot of data at very high speeds, particularly in dense urban environments.”
Opportunities for vendors
Sprint has relied heavily on equipment vendors to execute its network builds in the past. The equipment vendors for Sprint’s recently completed Network Vision LTE rollout were Ericsson, Alcatel-Lucent and Samsung. For Sprint Spark, the vendors are Alcatel-Lucent, Samsung and Nokia Networks.
These vendors typically hire the contractors who perform the actual work on towers and construction sites. Sprint often names approved subcontractors for a given market, and then lets the vendors choose which subcontractors to hire.
Sprint may take a different approach for its small cell deployment. Mobilitie, a provider of neutral-host DAS and small cell networks, is widely expected to partner with Sprint and to potentially pay for part of the deployment. Mobilitie can monetize the small cell network by leasing space to other carriers in addition to Sprint. The company is expected to work with equipment makers Nokia and Airspan.
Strategic and surgical
“We’ll be extremely surgical and efficient, leveraging big data and network diagnostics to determine the optimal deployment of each small cell down to the street corner level,” said Saw in describing the upcoming small cell deployment. This approach is consistent with the recommendation of equipment vendor Ericsson, which has managed Sprint’s network builds in the past.
“The first thing you don’t do is just go in and start adding cells,” said Surya Bommakanti, head of Ericsson’s mobile broadband engagement practice. “You actually look at improvement in performance through software functionality and other elements. Then you actually make sure you’ve got the dense coverage that you need, and that densification can come from macro buildout, from leveraging your different spectrum bands appropriately, and finally adding cells, adding small cells. … The approach that operators need to take can be captured in three phases: Improve, densify and then add.” (Bommakanti spoke to RCR Wireless News as part of our recent Wireless Infrastructure Service Company Review.)
Analyst Jennifer Fritzsche of Wells Fargo also endorsed Sprint’s surgical approach, writing that she expects the carrier to “go narrow and very deep” in densely populated U.S. cities.
“We expect that with the combination of [Sprint’s] surgical network build of tri-band LTE (800 MHz/1.9 GHz/2.5 GHz), densifying with tens of thousands of small cells, and integrated with carrier aggregation and beamforming technology, [Sprint] has the potential to provide a differentiated customer experience and higher data throughput via its network,” said Fritzsche.
Fritzsche expects Sprint shares to outperform the overall stock market, a sentiment apparently shared by SoftBank. Within the last month the Japanese carrier has increased its initial $21.6 billion investment in Sprint by an additional $160 million.
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