Sprint has accelerated its previously-announced timetable for adding new 4G cities in 2010, adding Los Angeles and Miami to the list of cities it will activate this year.
Newly announced markets that will see 4G in 2010 are Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and St. Louis.
Earlier this year Sprint announced that it planned to launch 4G in Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., in 2010.
Sprint argues that its 4G WiMAX network operates up to 10 times faster than a 3G network, based on typical download speeds of 600 kbps for a 3G network compared to a 4G network’s 6 Mbps download speed.
Recent studies suggest typical performance of a 3G network ranges from 600 kbps to 1.7 Mbps while 4G average speeds run between 3 Mbps and 6 Mbps.
Separately, Verizon Wireless has accelerated its own timetable for 4G deployment, aiming to activate its Long Term Evolution in at least 25 cities, potentially reaching 100 million people, by the end of 2010.
That would be a stunningly quick deployment of a new nework, given the fact that Sprint has been building out its 4G network for a couple of years.
AT&T plans to start activating its 4G network in 2012.
By some estimates, the number of U.S. mobile tower sites will grow from about 228,000 (2008 base) to as many as 300,000 as a result of all the activity.
In 2008 the U.S. had 228,000 cell sites feeding a backhaul network. These sites were each served by between 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps of backhaul capacity on average. This added up to mobile operators in the U.S. spending $6.2 billion on backhaul services. Globally, service providers spent more than $24 billion in 2008 on backhaul services.
In a case study Yankee Group conducted with one of the tier one mobile operators in 2009, more than 50 percent of data traffic was coming from desktop or laptop computers using aircards or dongles.
Approximately 24 percent was coming from screen phones and a little more than 20 percent was coming from smartphones (iPhones, BlackBerries). If the traffic trends continue, by 2012 more than 55 percent of the traffic will be coming from the smartphone “advanced OS” category, i.e., more than half of the mobile data traffic will be generated by truly mobile, instead of nomadic, users sending large amounts of data, voice or video traffic.
The backhaul implications are fairly simple, in terms of backhaul bandwidth requirements. A 2G voice network can get by with two T1 links. A 2.5 G EDGE network requires 4 T1s. A 3G HSPA network requires at least 10 T1s. Coming 4G networks might need as much as 10 times that much bandwidth.
By 2012 Yankee Group expects more than 300,000 cell sites in the United States, each supporting between 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps in backhaul capacity. In general, leasing a T1 costs about $300 per month, per mile. Seven T1s, adding up to a backhaul capacity of just more than 10 Mbps, will cost a U.S.-based provider about $2,100 per month per mile.
If we were to keep throwing T1s at the problem, this would result in a backhaul bill of $82 billion by 2012 and the monthly average cost per site would be about $23,000 compared to today’s average of $2,100 per mile. That’s not an option.
Performance requirements also are growing. Network architects as asking for one-way jitter of 1 to 3 milliseconds and one-way latency of 3 to 5 ms.
Sprint has accelerated its previously-announced timetable for adding new 4G cities in 2010, adding Los Angeles and Miami to the list of cities it will activate this year.
Newly announced markets that will see 4G in 2010 are Cincinnati, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Miami, Pittsburgh, Salt Lake City and St. Louis.
Earlier this year Sprint announced that it planned to launch 4G in Boston, Denver, Kansas City, Houston, Minneapolis, New York, San Francisco and Washington, D.C., in 2010.
Sprint argues that its 4G WiMAX network operates up to 10 times faster than a 3G network, based on typical download speeds of 600 kbps for a 3G network compared to a 4G network’s 6 Mbps download speed.
Recent studies suggest typical performance of a 3G network ranges from 600 kbps to 1.7 Mbps while 4G average speeds run between 3 Mbps and 6 Mbps.
Separately, Verizon Wireless has accelerated its own timetable for 4G deployment, aiming to activate its Long Term Evolution in at least 25 cities, potentially reaching 100 million people, by the end of 2010.
That would be a stunningly quick deployment of a new nework, given the fact that Sprint has been building out its 4G network for a couple of years.
AT&T plans to start activating its 4G network in 2012.
By some estimates, the number of U.S. mobile tower sites will grow from about 228,000 (2008 base) to as many as 300,000 as a result of all the activity.
In 2008 the U.S. had 228,000 cell sites feeding a backhaul network. These sites were each served by between 5 Mbps and 10 Mbps of backhaul capacity on average. This added up to mobile operators in the U.S. spending $6.2 billion on backhaul services. Globally, service providers spent more than $24 billion in 2008 on backhaul services.
In a case study Yankee Group conducted with one of the tier one mobile operators in 2009, more than 50 percent of data traffic was coming from desktop or laptop computers using aircards or dongles.
Approximately 24 percent was coming from screen phones and a little more than 20 percent was coming from smartphones (iPhones, BlackBerries). If the traffic trends continue, by 2012 more than 55 percent of the traffic will be coming from the smartphone “advanced OS” category, i.e., more than half of the mobile data traffic will be generated by truly mobile, instead of nomadic, users sending large amounts of data, voice or video traffic.
The backhaul implications are fairly simple, in terms of backhaul bandwidth requirements. A 2G voice network can get by with two T1 links. A 2.5 G EDGE network requires 4 T1s. A 3G HSPA network requires at least 10 T1s. Coming 4G networks might need as much as 10 times that much bandwidth.
By 2012 Yankee Group expects more than 300,000 cell sites in the United States, each supporting between 50 Mbps and 100 Mbps in backhaul capacity. In general, leasing a T1 costs about $300 per month, per mile. Seven T1s, adding up to a backhaul capacity of just more than 10 Mbps, will cost a U.S.-based provider about $2,100 per month per mile.
If we were to keep throwing T1s at the problem, this would result in a backhaul bill of $82 billion by 2012 and the monthly average cost per site would be about $23,000 compared to today’s average of $2,100 per mile. That’s not an option.
Performance requirements also are growing. Network architects as asking for one-way jitter of 1 to 3 milliseconds and one-way latency of 3 to 5 ms.
