Jul 31st 2013, 13:13, by Stephen Lawson, IDG News Service
Sprint says it will have live LTE sites using former Clearwire spectrum across the U.S. next year and expects all its new mobile devices in 2014 to be equipped for those frequencies—though not necessarily iPhones.
The company gave an update on progress in its Network Vision upgrade project during a conference call on Tuesday to discuss second-quarter financial results, according to a transcript provided by Seeking Alpha. Earlier this month, the fourth-largest U.S. mobile operator got a shot in the arm with its $21.6 billion acquisition by SoftBank and also bought out former partner Clearwire.
With the Clearwire acquisition, Sprint got access to an emerging Clearwire LTE network that it plans to use for extra mobile data capacity in densely populated areas. Though it uses a slightly different form of LTE than Sprint's and operates in a relatively short-range spectrum band, around 2.5GHz, the former Clearwire network could give the carrier a large amount of capacity to bolster services in cities.
The network had been intended for Sprint's use through the longstanding partnership between the two companies, but Sprint's takeover of Clearwire gave that plan a more solid foundation.
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