Telecom service provider Sprint on Wednesday said it will deploy Sprint Spark — high speed mobile broadband — in about 100 largest cities during the next three years. Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Solutions and Networks (NSN) and Samsung are its vendors.
The company launched Sprint Spark, which demonstrates 50-60 Mbps speed, in five markets — New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Tampa and Miami — today.
Sprint expects 100 million Americans will have Sprint Spark or 2.5GHz coverage by the end of 2014.
The company’s 4G LTE service will be available to approximately 250 million Americans by mid-2014, Sprint said.
Sprint will launch Sprint Spark compatible smartphones in early November.
How Sprint Spark works
Sprint Spark combines 4G FDD1-LTE at 800 Megahertz (MHz) and 1.9 Gigahertz (GHz) and TDD1-LTE at 2.5GHz spectrum, TDD-LTE technology (2.5GHz), and carrier aggregation in the 2.5GHz band. Tri-band devices will support active hand-off mode between 800MHz, 1.9GHz and 2.5GHz, providing data session continuity as the device moves between spectrum bands.
Sprint is building the Sprint Spark capability using a combination of spectrum capacity and network technologies. Sprint has approximately 55,000 macro cell sites. The company also anticipates using small cells to augment capacity, coverage and speed. Small cell deployment is expected to begin in 2014, continuing into 2015 and beyond.
Alcatel-Lucent, Nokia Solutions and Networks and Samsung will provide 2.5GHz radio heads to enable Sprint Spark. Each company will service approximately one-third of Sprint’s deployment markets.
These 2.5GHz radios are expected to have capabilities for 8 Transmitters 8 Receivers (8T8R), which will be a first deployment of its kind in North America. These radios will be capable of improved coverage, capacity and speeds when compared to the more traditional 2T2R or 4T4R radios used by our competitors.
