by Robert Herron

Sprint 4G Rollout Updates

Wednesday, June 27, 2012 - 12:59 PM MDT

The next market in our Network Vision/LTE deployment schedule update series is...South West Florida. South West Florida has yet to be announced by Sprint, but is expected to be announced in the near future. Perhaps around the time of the first market launches.

The Sprint South West Florida market encompasses all of the Sprint native coverage in Manatee, Sarasota, Lee and Collier counties. Including the Sarasota/Bradenton area, Port Charlotte/Punta Gorda, Ft. Myers/Cape Coral, Bonita Springs and Naples. Sprint's Network Vision OEM Ericsson is scheduled to begin mobilizing with its subcontractors in early August. Completed Network Vision sites should start coming online before the end of September.

South West Florida Market Launch

It was Sprint's original plan to launch markets when they reached 50% of sites converted to Network Vision. However, it has now been determined that Sprint will move up launches sooner than 50% completion in several markets. This is likely to maintain a Mid 2012 launch in markets that have already been announced. However, in an unannounced market like South West Florida, we don't know if they will resume pushing back market launches to 50%, or if they will now settle on a 40% completion to be the new normal for market launches.

If Sprint waits for 50% completion to launch this market, it would make the launch approximately Mid December (should the OEM stay on schedule). If they plan on a 40% market completion for launch, that would be Mid November. You may think that 40% - 50% site completion is not enough to launch LTE service, but it would provide pretty good coverage. Even Verizon doesn't launch on all sites in a market initially. Usually less than 50%, then filling in with more and more sites every few months.

Anticipated Sites Complete at Market Launch. According to the Network Vision schedules that S4GRU

has reviewed, if Sprint launched the market in Mid November, these are the anticipated sites that would likely

have LTE complete at that time. This would provide fairly good LTE coverage over many parts of the market.

Schedule details and the bottom line

We currently do not have a date that Sprint will formally "launch" LTE service in South West Florida. It is difficult to try to pick a date now this far out, but we will take a stab at it. In looking at the schedule as of today, it would indicate a November or December market launch (going on a 40% - 50% completion for launch). But there is no way to know if Ericsson and their subcontractors will actually hit their schedule dates this early in the deployment for this market. We will be able to gauge better after a few months of production.

Ericsson will only need to hit a production rate of 30 sites per month to stay on schedule. This is a pretty low rate and should be able to be achieved. If properly prepared and equipped and if backhaul is ready timely, this market shouldn't have problems staying on time. But time makes fools of us all!

S4GRU has examined the schedule in great detail in this market and sees that most of the sites will be complete by March 2013. However, there may be a few sporadic sites that will linger past the completion.

Photo of Bonita Beach provided courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.