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Comment by jasondclinton | Hacker News Reader

I think that the first-class Google Fi devices have shown a path where CDMA and UMTS networks like Sprint and T-Mobiles can coexist on the same phone. Basically, the phone uses geolocation and a database of signal strength to determine which network to prefer in a particular location. It hangs up the baseband on one network and switches to the other. (Disclaimer: work for Google but not on the Android or Fi teams. Know nothing that isn't public.)

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T-Mobile will be shutting down the Sprint CDMA, LTE, and 5G NR networks, and the T-Mobile UMTS network will probably also be shut down around the same time leaving just the T-Mobile LTE and 5G NR networks. While the Sprint network is still running existing Sprint customers will have access to both the Sprint network and (on a "roaming" basis) the T-Mobile network but T-Mobile customers will not have access to the Sprint network.

That's just business as usual for long-time Sprint customers. Many of them have dealt through several network shutdowns already :D

Sprint is the world champion of picking the wrong wireless technology.

Think I have still have some iDEN and WiMAX devices in a drawer somewhere.

WiMAX might not have been wrong if Sprint hasn’t flubbed the launch. Sprint had working WiMAX in many markets long before anyone had LTE, and there was a decent portfolio of laptops and such that had working client support. But Sprint never marketed it and wouldn’t sell it even if you knew about it unless you had a billing address in one of the few tiny markets that had official support. I would gladly have paid Sprint for their service if they would have been willing to sell it to me.

It’s hard to recover one’s investment if you refuse to sell the product you built.

I had Sprint WiMAX for my primary home internet connection for a while -- but I could literally see the tower out of my window. I loved it at the time.

But I was in the center of a pretty decent sized city. There wasn't even service in the burbs at that point, and by the time it got there, LTE was already a thing and Sprint was stuck with only a couple of odd-ball devices for their 4G network.

Momentum means a lot. It's hard to make money selling your service if the devices that people want don't support it.

It was like ~2010/2011 when WiMAX was a really hot tech. The iPhone 5 launched with LTE in 2012.

WiMAX was a sweet idea but worked liked shit in reality... I know, I worked for Clear at launch selling it. I couldn't even use it in my apartment 10 blocks away from a tower. We actually had to install a special tower, in our store, because it got no signal either...

It was so frustrating to sell something and have it returned because they didn't have service even though we said they did. Metal roof? That's no good. Metal building? That's worse. Concrete? Sorry. Wood? Maybe... if you're not blocked by a large metal or concrete building. Oh too many people joined and now you don't get a reliable signal?

They refused to sell it to you because it wouldn't have worked.

It also fucked with certain satellite radio frequencies and other weird shit you wouldn't expect.

WiMAX was a 10/10 idea, but a 0/10 everything else.

WiMAX also lacked backwards compatibility, which 4G had with 2/3G.

Canada's providers decided to shut down CDMA in favor of an all-LTE network, and I think they're better off for it.

I really hope that we could see that in the next five years for Sprint/T-mo: existing Sprint customers get upgraded to LTE and/or 5G devices, and then the CDMA network gets turned off in 2025 or 2030, and the bandwidth repurposed for 5G or 6G or whatever.

Too bad Canada's mobile prices are still crazy high.

Sounds like an application for Multipath TCP: http://www.multipath-tcp.org/

How much CDMA does Sprint have? Haven't they been on LTE for years already?

Sprint still requires CDMA for voice service in some areas. They've been by far the slowest to adopt VoLTE of the big 4 carriers in the US, the others all fully support VoLTE in all areas.

Sprint's towers were built for it's CDMA network running in the 1900 MHz spectrum. However, their LTE network primarily run at the 2.5GHz spectrum which has far less range/requires a different cell tower spacing. As a result, they have coverage gaps on the LTE network. If they moved to VoLTE, they'd drop a lot of calls due to the gaps, so they've primarily kept voice on the CDMA network.

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