Verizon Takes on Sprint's 3G Network (And Wins)

[antilycus]

im confused. People still watch TV w/ the 4 minutes commercial breaks? I stopped watching TV that way a few years ago and think about how much time I've had extra since I've ditched commercials. 20 miuntes worth of commercials, per 1 hour show. I've watched at least 20 seasons of different shows, that with 14 episodes per season x 20 season = 1703 hours i've saved in my life. or 70 days of my life i've saved by not watching commercials.

 

[groveborn]

[citation][nom]montezuma[/nom]You mean that commercials actually provoke some people to make purchases? I, for one, have never been amazed enough by a commercial to buy anything.[/citation]
That's not true. You may not have noticed a passion rising in your bosom, but at some point you took some commercial's advice and purchased something advertised. How else will you have known about the existence of the product?

 

[matt2k]

to be honest, i like to think i'm not influenced by ads, but i probably am since they're everywhere, but i bought my blackberry simply because i went into an orange store and asked for a mobile that could deliver fast internet at my fingertips whenever i wanted it. (although i did end up getting a different carrier cos they had a better offer)

 

[Ford75chero]

IMO the battle on the superior carrier on the same network and technology is retarded and all advertising. As an employee of a cell carrier in the technical triage team I can tell you that both sprint and verizon are identical coverage using the same towers. Both parties have roaming agreements to use each others towers which is in the interest of expanding the network at a low cost. A comparison of GSM (global system for mobile communications) vs. CDMA (code division multiple access) would be a valid point. The only difference in coverage in the same network would be from signal strength qualities of the phone including prl updates and firmware updates, or if you are on a prepaid program which limits you to only towers the prepaid company owns and will not "roam" on other towers or use the benefits of roaming agreements hence the lower cost. Verizon Phones use Sprint towers as do Sprint phones use verizon towers. The only real difference between the two companies is one's android phones don't get blurry every 24.5days and the others do. LOL Either way verizon or sprint is way faster than At&t as long asyou dont talk and need data on your phone at the same time. My 2 cents

 

[Guest]

Yes but even though you have sprint service and can roam on a Verizon network Verizon will give their bandwidth to their paying customers. My friend had Sprint wireless internet on his laptop but it always connected to Verizon 1x network because he didn't get sprint service at his house. Needless to say his internet was slow on the Verizon network with a Sprint contract, But if I hooked up my data cable and dialed through my phone I had 3G network internet speeds on his laptop dialed through my phone. So yes Sprint can use verizons towers but they don't get priority to the bandwidth if verizon customers are using the tower.

 

[santeana]

Ever notice none of these carriers ever comes on and says "The most value for your dollar!" or "We never over charge" or anything like that? just a thought.

 

[Guest]

2 things..
First. A cell tower issue can, in fact, be a one time thing. Antenna's, RF lines, BTS's, Telco etc.. all components of a cell tower can go bad or suffer issues. If your car burns out a washer fluid pump does that mean your car is "bad" forever more? No.. It means you fix it. The same for a cell tower and all it's associated equipment.

Second. Sprint and Verizon don't use the same towers. This is oversimplification of a larger issue. Sprint's traffic will never run on a Verizon tower unless there isn't a Sprint tower in the area. And then ONLY if they have a roaming agreement in that area.
Carriers do frequently co-locate on the same towers. But everyone has their own equipment on that tower. Their own antennas, their own RF lines, their own BTS's. There are multiple factors that can influence carriers. So to say it's all CDMA and therefore the same is really an ignorant statement (ignorant in an uninformed way and not an insulting one). You can put 4 CDMA carriers on one tower and I can show you 4 different footprints, 4 different spectrum useages, 4 different tolerances for noise, 4 different capacity builds and 4 different ways to build a network. Even something as simple as antenna position on a tower will effect things. Cricket? Cricket operates so high in the CDMA spectrum that, at the same power output, they have almost 20% less coverage than another carrier lower in the spectrum range.

Advertising is snake oil and who can peddle words the best. National carriers will almost ALWAYS include the words "National" or "Nationwide" in their pitches. Why? Because they can't say they have the best network period as there are many rural and mom and pop carriers who can absolutely crush them in network quality.. in their areas. But they aren't nationwide.

5 years as a switch engineer and 10 as a Network Field Engineer for a Wireless carrier back me up on this.

 

[Ford75chero]

I do not argue your technical knowledge but I do ask you this. If all antennas are owned for the most part by the company using them, then why do all carriers have clauses in the contract in reguards to usage that states if more than X% is spent in roaming coverage for usage, then you are allowed out of your contract? Because the carriers charge each other for the usage of the tower on a quantity used basis. This means the more you use the tower the more costly it is for your carrier hence the contract clause. Is that using just the structure? I don't believe so.

 

[AtuBrian]

hmmm

 

[rockheim]

Not all carriers have such clauses. But many carriers do have terms in their contracts that state that you won't get charged or incur fees for roaming "in network".
Roaming agreements are not carte blanche contracts. Just because Verizon has a roaming agreement with Alltel doesn't mean that there are no fees associated with it. All roaming agreements are are negotiated fees for intercarrier roaming. Meaning Cricket may have to pay .20 a minute to Verizon for one of their customers hopping on to their tower but Alltel or US Cellular only pays .05 a minute.

Getting a phone in an area not served by a carrier or using your phone mostly in an area that is not covered and you can opt out of your contract because at some point and time you WILL begin to incur additional fees and the like. And most carriers will let you opt out.

You can also have your contract terminated for such behavior as well.

No carrier in their right mind, no amount of "savings" would lead them to tower/resource sharing as a matter of their network plan.

Look at AT&T right now. They've so oversold their data network that their customers are suffering and suffering large. Do you think that Verizon wants to take AT&Ts traffic for them? Why would Verizon want to compromise their network to save AT&T's bacon? Where's the financial incentive to do so? The flip side being what company in their right mind would want to subject their customers to another carriers network? You have no quality control, no way to guarantee the network or experience for that customer. Our sys performance engineers and RF guys would just as soon tear out their own eyeballs with McDonalds straws rather than let one of our customers onto someone elses network.

Also consider that since carriers subsidize the handset purchases of customers.. ie.. we sell that fancy new smartphone to you for $50 but we still had to pay the vendor $500 for it. So we need $450 out of your pocket to simply break even. So it would take far longer to break even if we were paying for your handset AND for you to roam on another network.

Now. There is an exception. Flyover/rural country. The 80 or so members of the Rural Cellular association have towers in places where AT&T, Verizon et al don't want or need coverage. They'll take the chance and the hit to simply eat the cost for the insignificant amount of customers who drive coast to coast or through rural America. US Cell made their fortunes that way. Raping the big carriers on roaming through their network and other smaller carriers and even ma and pa rural networks do the same.

In developed areas, big cities and even surrounding areas you'll never find a carrier that doesn't have it's own equipment in play. Beyond all the quality control issues and everything else who on Earth would you give another carrier even .01 a minute for your sub to roam on them when it only costs you .0001 a minute to carry those subs yourself? True, building a cell site is an expense.. But most sites pay for themselves within a year or 2. Get a big city site with 11 T1's going to it and that site just prints money.

Most people don't truly understand the true scope and scale of the issues. Not only as it pertains to the business model for carriers but even into the more tinfoil hat realms such as government eavesdropping. I can single out an average suburban/rural border site of mine.. Not quite farm.. not quite city.. a nice border site. Voice for a single day.. 3 sectors.. 44,000 minutes of traffic for the last 20 hours. About $2000 dollars a day if we were to roam those callers on someone else's network. For a site that is almost in the farm lands. One of my busier sites.. closer to the city.. true suburbs.. 145,000 minutes of traffic. Voice only.. Last 20 hours.. It's noon here so these figures include the overnight.
Think that a carrier is going to hand that traffic to someone else to handle at .05 a minute rather than handle it themselves for .0005 a minute? Multiply over the years.. lather, rinse, repeat.

Bottom line. No carrier actively "shares" their network with other carriers as a matter of course in order to save money.. Other than the aforementioned rural/flyover exceptions.

 

[Ford75chero]

In alot of the things you said I completely agree with you. I agree on the following points: 1. "Roaming agreements are not carte blanche contracts. Just because Verizon has a roaming agreement with Alltel doesn't mean that there are no fees associated with it. All roaming agreements are are negotiated fees for intercarrier roaming." Cost per use basis. We have established that.

2. "Do you think that Verizon wants to take AT&Ts traffic for them? Why would Verizon want to compromise their network to save AT&T's bacon? Where's the financial incentive to do so? The flip side being what company in their right mind would want to subject their customers to another carriers network? You have no quality control, no way to guarantee the network or experience for that customer: Financial incentive? the roaming charges are as good as the customers on verizon contracts. Money is green no matter whos hand it comes from. The towers that could be considered roaming coverage want to give quality as well being you are providing a service the customer is paying for. if the customer cant use thier phone thier they are less likely to use your services and therefore make money off roaming charges between carriers. Also note this might be an ie. story but att is gsm and verizon/sprint/local cell places in wa state are cdma. No sharing between networks of different techs.

where i respectfully disagree is:Bottom line. No carrier actively "shares" their network with other carriers as a matter of course in order to save money.. Other than the aforementioned rural/flyover exceptions. Many carriers especially local ones roam with the same cdma technology outside of thier area. Ever seen a prompt on your phone for data roaming? probably because they want to differentiate networks and because your using a foriegn tower. Also some cdma phones have a prl update function on them which is an update of tower definitions if you will. Preffered roaming list is the long name but it is a guide of what frequencies and thresholds to hold calls in when switching towers from home network to roaming coverage. 2 more pennies

 

[rockheim]

True but not for the reasons you think. Roaming lists are only for when your home network is unavailable.

If it were true that networks actively shared not towers but BTS (base stations) in order to save costs then the roaming clauses and right to terminate wouldn't be in the contracts. If Cricket didn't want to build towers in Chicago and instead figured they'd just enter into a roaming agreement with US Cell or Verizon then why have a clause to terminate the contract for excessive roaming? Why sell a service you plan on terminating? It's in your build plan to roam in this location.. Why set up a penalty to your subs for roaming then?

forgive the out of order responses here.. Going bottom to top..
Money is green. It also rules all in business. Yes. Verizon will take other traffic. They make more money on it. Only to a point. And the other carrier that is paying the roaming charges.. is losing money. A lot of it. They're essentially paying the other carrier to take their sub. And then there's the aforementioned quality control issue.
And yes. I understand the different technologies I'm merely throwing names out for the purposes of example and in no way mean it to be a specific or binding fact.

The point still remains. While you can roam and while there are roaming agreements between carriers a carrier will never make money roaming their subs onto a foreign network. Which is why there are termination clauses in the contracts. If it weren't true and say Verizon sold service in an area where they owned no towers and merely would use there roaming agreement with Alltel why would they have a termination clause at all? Why would they sell service to people where they would make almost no profit? Remember.. we have 2 year contracts in the industry because we understand that it will take at least one year to simply break even over the phone subsidy. And this is when your supporting a caller on your own network at fractions of a cent per minute. How long would you need a sub to stay active when you're paying another carrier several full cents per minute to carry your sub for you?

Roaming charges are expensive for a reason. Even intercarrier roaming charges. It takes network resources away from legitimate subs. It's a penalty meant to discourage use.