SPCS Alaska coverage maps...

Despite any corporate indications to the contrary, there is -- and
actually has been for over two years -- native Sprint PCS footprint in
Alaska. See the TinyURL below for links to PDF maps demonstrating the
geographically concentrated SPCS coverage in Anchorage, Fairbanks, &
Juneau.

The five-year construction deadlines for SPCS' three PCS D 10 MHz BTA
licenses covering all of AK came due in April 2002. By that time,
legally SPCS must have launched systems covering at least 25% of the
POPs in each of the respective BTAs in order to satisfy that condition
of the licenses. Indeed, the Required Notification applications were
filed w/ the FCC in March 2002. As such, whether commercially
publicized or not, SPCS must have established a few active sites in
AK. As each of the three BTAs are very sparsely populated outside of
the titular cities, the 25% POPs coverage was probably achieved w/
only a handful of sites in Anchorage, perhaps only one or two each in
Fairbanks & Juneau.

The following is an extraction from my own SPCS spectrum database. As
the three licenses were issued in April 1997, adequate service must
have been launched no later than April 2002.

Alaska MTA049 (SID 4500)
CDMA channels: PCS 0375-i
BTA014 Anchorage, AK KNLH465 PCS D 1865-1870/1945-1950 MHz 10 MHz
BTA136 Fairbanks, AK KNLH518 PCS D 1865-1870/1945-1950 MHz 10 MHz
BTA221 Juneau-Ketchikan, AK KNLH545 PCS D 1865-1870/1945-1950 MHz 10
MHz

http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsS...p?licKey=10634
http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsS...p?licKey=10687
http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsS...p?licKey=10714

The following is a link to the Required Notification application
submitted to the FCC by SPCS in demonstration of satisfaction of its
five-year PCS construction requirement in the three AK BTAs. Included
are attached PDF buildout maps depicting the unspoken SPCS native
footprint in AK.

http://tinyurl.com/2hvjm

Andrew
--
Andrew Shepherd
[email protected]
[email protected]
http://www.wirelesswavelength.com/

---

› See More: SPCS Alaska coverage maps...

In article <[email protected]>,
[email protected] (Andrew Shepherd) wrote:

> The following is a link to the Required Notification application
> submitted to the FCC by SPCS in demonstration of satisfaction of its
> five-year PCS construction requirement in the three AK BTAs. Included
> are attached PDF buildout maps depicting the unspoken SPCS native
> footprint in AK.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2hvjm

"Unspoken"? In Texas thats called a LIE.

The below notwithstanding, we drove to Alaska and back in 2002 and could get
SPRINT NOWHERE. That included British Columbia, Yukon, Anchorage, Fairbanks
and all paved highways in Alaska. We did not try Juneau. The ironic quirk
was that Sprint advertised their availability on all Alaska TV stations that
we saw. From May through mid September we were ripped off because before we
went Sprint Customer Service said Sprint was in Alaska. They lied. We could
roam in Anchorage, Fairbanks and places on the Kenai peninsula.

Good luck!
John
"Andrew Shepherd" <[email protected]> wrote in message
news:[email protected]...
> Despite any corporate indications to the contrary, there is -- and
> actually has been for over two years -- native Sprint PCS footprint in
> Alaska. See the TinyURL below for links to PDF maps demonstrating the
> geographically concentrated SPCS coverage in Anchorage, Fairbanks, &
> Juneau.
>
> The five-year construction deadlines for SPCS' three PCS D 10 MHz BTA
> licenses covering all of AK came due in April 2002. By that time,
> legally SPCS must have launched systems covering at least 25% of the
> POPs in each of the respective BTAs in order to satisfy that condition
> of the licenses. Indeed, the Required Notification applications were
> filed w/ the FCC in March 2002. As such, whether commercially
> publicized or not, SPCS must have established a few active sites in
> AK. As each of the three BTAs are very sparsely populated outside of
> the titular cities, the 25% POPs coverage was probably achieved w/
> only a handful of sites in Anchorage, perhaps only one or two each in
> Fairbanks & Juneau.
>
> The following is an extraction from my own SPCS spectrum database. As
> the three licenses were issued in April 1997, adequate service must
> have been launched no later than April 2002.
>
> Alaska MTA049 (SID 4500)
> CDMA channels: PCS 0375-i
> BTA014 Anchorage, AK KNLH465 PCS D 1865-1870/1945-1950 MHz 10 MHz
> BTA136 Fairbanks, AK KNLH518 PCS D 1865-1870/1945-1950 MHz 10 MHz
> BTA221 Juneau-Ketchikan, AK KNLH545 PCS D 1865-1870/1945-1950 MHz 10
> MHz
>
> http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsS...p?licKey=10634
> http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsS...p?licKey=10687
> http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsS...p?licKey=10714
>
> The following is a link to the Required Notification application
> submitted to the FCC by SPCS in demonstration of satisfaction of its
> five-year PCS construction requirement in the three AK BTAs. Included
> are attached PDF buildout maps depicting the unspoken SPCS native
> footprint in AK.
>
> http://tinyurl.com/2hvjm
>
> Andrew
> --
> Andrew Shepherd
> [email protected]
> [email protected]
> http://www.wirelesswavelength.com/

In order to acquire Sprint in Alaska back in 2002 I believe you had to have an updated PRL. That could be why you couldn't get a signal even though Sprint was advertising it as being available.

Originally posted by Andrew Shepherd
Despite any corporate indications to the contrary, there is -- and
actually has been for over two years -- native Sprint PCS footprint in
Alaska. See the TinyURL below for links to PDF maps demonstrating the
geographically concentrated SPCS coverage in Anchorage, Fairbanks, &
Juneau.

Andrew,

I heard recently that Sprint was providing service in Alaska using an affiliate (maybe Alaska DigiTel??). Is that true? I also heard that no Vision data services are available there.

larry <[email protected]> wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
>
> Andrew,
>
> I heard recently that Sprint was providing service in Alaska using an
> affiliate (maybe Alaska DigiTel??). Is that true? I also heard that no
> Vision data services are available there.

Alaska DigiTel controls the PCS A license for the entire Alaska MTA.
Actually, to be more precise, Alaska DigiTel controls the PCS A1 15
MHz license. The PCS A2 upper 15 MHz was disaggregated to Denali PCS.

http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsS...sp?licKey=8974
http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsS...licKey=2448776

Sprint PCS won at auction the PCS D 10 MHz license for each of the
three BTAs in Alaska. Those three BTAs -- Anchorage, Fairbanks, &
Juneau-Ketchikan -- comprise the Alaska MTA. Thus, SPCS effectively
controls a consistent 10 MHz throughout all of Alaska. Reference my
previous post w/in the thread for links likewise to the three SPCS
licenses.

In short, Alaska DigiTel has its own PCS spectrum -- 15 MHz to SPCS'
10 MHz. And to my knowledge -- admittedly limited in this instance --
there is no network partner affiliate relationship between them.
Alaska DigiTel is simply a CDMA 1900 roaming partner.

To explain further, a coverage report privately e-mailed to me by an
SPCS user who recently visited Juneau is the proverbial smoking gun
that prompted the investigation into the Alaskan licenses in the first
place. The user reported -- for my ongoing deployed CDMA carrier
channels documentation in my SPCS spectrum database -- that he
received a native SPCS signal in downtown Juneau (SID 4500) (channel
PCS 0325). The PCS D license includes three standard CDMA channel
assignments: PCS 0325, 0350, 0375. As such, the coverage detected in
Juneau was most certainly utilizing SPCS' PCS D license.

I had blindly accepted the party line that SPCS yet had no native
footprint in Alaska. When the user reported otherwise, I resolved the
contradiction when it finally occurred to me that SPCS must have
deployed at least a bare minimum of adequate service, otherwise the
licenses would have automatically cancelled at the construction
requirement deadline over two years ago.

The SPCS user report also corroborated the assertion that Vision is
not currently available in the tacit coverage in Alaska. I do
suspect, however, that the Alaska SPCS infrastructure is truly
cdma2000 1xRTT. It is unlikely that SPCS would have deployed more
IS-95A as late as 2002. Lack of PCS Vision does not definitively
indicate lack of CDMA1x, just as there is no such thing as only a "3G
voice" handset. CDMA1x airlink enhancements -- QPSK, reverse-link
pilot, fast forward-link power control, et al. -- demonstrate 1xRTT
capability. But those enhancements do not have to provision
supplemental channels for 153.6/230.4/307.2 Kbps packet data. Rather,
the protocol revision of the SPCS sites is probably set artificially
low so as not to allow PSD -- perhaps because the current backhaul
capacity to the sites is not sufficent for anything but a few RS1 (9.6
Kbps) or RS2 (14.4 Kbps) voice or CSD connections. Remember, after
all, these few sites are merely placeholders to satisfy the FCC
construction requirement until SPCS definitively decides upon a course
of action -- to further buildout & launch commercial service in Alaska
or to divest/relinquish the licenses as the cost-benefit analysis does
not favorably compute.

Andrew
--
Andrew Shepherd
[email protected]
[email protected]
http://www.wirelesswavelength.com/