Sprint's top network executives laid out how the carrier is improving its 3G quality and bringing in LTE.

NEW ORLEANSSprint executives today laid out their plans for a better 3G network, wider push-to-talk capabilities, and a solid LTE 4G experience during a breakfast at the CTIA Wireless trade show.

We've already heard how Sprint is turning on six LTE cities in the middle of this year and committing to releasing 15 LTE devices. They've already announced four: the LG Viper, Samsung Galaxy Nexus, HTC EVO 4G LTE, and a Sierra Wireless hotspot.

Sprint's LTE and 3G Plans

Sprint has only announced six LTE cities so far, and the execs today didn't expand on that. Rather, they focused on how they're going to make the LTE experience consistent and solid.

Sprint's LTE rollout will initially be in 5-MHz channels, narrower than Verizon's 10-MHz channels. Peak speeds won't hit the levels we've seen on Verizon and AT&T of 30-40Mbps, said Sprint's network senior vice president, Bob Azzi. But the network will be more consistent and more convenient, with reliable average speeds and faster handoffs between 3G and 4G than Verizon is seeing.

"What we focus on is what the customers are really going to get in the network, and that's why we're really confident that this network will be really competitive," he said.

Sprint isn't ignoring its 3G network, which will still be its workhorse for the next few years. Its Network Vision plan dramatically improves 3G coverage in several different ways.

Shifting voice calls to the new 1x-Advanced technology lets Sprint carry more calls in less spectrum, opening up airwaves for more 3G data on devices like Apple's iPhone. Faster, Ethernet-based backhaul dramatically increases the number of megabits each cell site can carry.

Moving voice calls to abandoned Nextel 800-MHz spectrum opens up even more 1900-MHz data bandwidth for hungry iPhone users, without the iPhone having to include another radio band.

Sprint is also working on background apps that will automatically connect its phones to Wi-Fi networks, further improving the apparent data performance of 3G phones.

"It'll be a headless client that will prompt the customer with the ability to identify when there's a Wi-Fi network in the area, and permanently put that into the settings so that the next time you see that hotspot we'll connect to it," said Farid Adib, Sprint's device chief.

That client will also speed up transitions between 3G and WiMAX for existing WiMAX devices, he added.

A Focus on Voice Calling

That Nextel band has better range and building penetration than the 1900-MHz band, so Sprint users should see a dramatic improvement in voice coverage as it comes online.

"In about 80 percent of our markets, we'll initially deploy a single CDMA voice carrier on 800Mhz," he said.

For the old Nextel customers, Sprint's CDMA-based Direct Connect is working well and the company is moving customers off the old Nextel network, Azzi said. The next move will be to turn push-to-talk into a downloadable Android app that will work on a variety of phones, Adib said.

Sprint is already in the process of turning off 9,600 old Nextel cell sites and transitioning the coverage to its new Network Vision sites, Azzi said.

"The middle of the second half of next year is our target to have all the customers migrated and have the network turned down," he said.

Sprint will also activate HD Voice on its network, a higher-quality voice codec that's first coming on the HTC EVO 4G LTE.

"This will be the best vocoder in the industry for 2G," according to Sprint's vice president of network development, Iyad Tarazi.

For more from CTIA, check out the photoblog below.