John Saw, chief technology officer of Sprint in a blog post said the SoftBank subsidiary has achieved several milestones that will assist in improving customer experience.
“The billions we’re investing in our network is about putting our spectrum advantage to work, building a superior 4G network and launching mobile 5G in the first half of next year,” John Saw, CTO of Sprint, said.
Main achievements
# Thousands of triband upgrades on-air
# Nearly 200,000 Sprint Magic Boxes distributed
# Thousands of strand mount small cells on-air in the past few months
# 36 percent increase in Sprint’s national average download speed, the largest increase of the four big carriers (Ookla data)
# Sprint has fastest download speed in 100 cities including Austin, Denver, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and Seattle as well as the market of Indianapolis (Ookla data)
Sprint started upgrading its macro sites to use all three spectrum bands — 800 MHz, 1.9 GHz and 2.5 GHz – to ensure that its wireless customers are getting the fastest service in the US. Sprint despite investing billions in wireless networks is still the fourth largest mobile operator behind Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile.
Sprint CTO said the addition of 2.5 GHz to more cell sites is key to giving mobile customers a superior data experience. Nearly every 2.5 GHz macro site uses either 40 MHz of spectrum with two-channel carrier aggregation, or 60 MHz of spectrum with three-channel carrier aggregation.
Sprint customers on 2.5 GHz service are getting the fastest average download speed in the country at 42 Mbps according to Ookla Speedtest Intelligence data.
Sprint’s average download speed rose 68 percent from 14.15 Mbps to 23.81 Mbps, and customers’ time on LTE runs above 94 percent.
“Our network build also includes densifying the network by adding large volumes of 2.5 GHz small cells in major markets. The Sprint Magic Box small cell boosts indoor data speeds,” Sprint CTO said.
Sprint has distributed nearly 200,000 Sprint Magic Boxes small cells to retail consumers and businesses in more than 200 cities. Sprint will be deploying 1 million Sprint Magic Boxes as part of the strategy to further densify the network.
In addition to Sprint Magic Box, Sprint is focusing on strand mount small cells to ensure that its customers are experiencing significantly faster data speeds. 2.5 GHz strand mount small cells delivered download speeds up to 16 times faster than relying on our macro sites. Time spent on 2.5 GHz while driving throughout the test areas increased up to 58 percent.
Sprint said its triband upgrades and new deployments have helped drive a 36 percent increase in Sprint’s national average download speed, the largest increase of the four big carriers.
Today Sprint is #1 for fastest average download speed in 100 cities according to Ookla Speedtest Intelligence data, including cities Austin, Denver, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and Seattle as well as the market of Indianapolis.
Sprint is also rolling out 256 QAM and 4X4 MIMO to improve the efficiency of spectrum and drive faster data speeds. These technologies, combined with three-channel carrier aggregation using 60 MHz of 2.5 GHz, will enable Sprint to provide customers with Gigabit Class LTE service in more than 100 of the largest markets.
Sprint, with more than 160 MHz of 2.5 GHz in the top 100 markets, is one of the operators in the world with enough capacity to operate LTE and 5G simultaneously using Massive MIMO and huge channels of 100-200 MHz of licensed spectrum on the same radios.
Baburajan K
