Alltel commits to LTE, adds 1M customers in Q1
By Nilay Patel 
posted May 15th 2008 3:07PM
posted May 15th 2008 3:07PM
See, it's not all dour news in the wireless industry -- oft-overlooked carrier Alltel just announced that it added over 1M gross wireless customers in the first quarter, and that it's committed to LTE in the next three to five years. The LTE news isn't particularly surprising, since Alltel's got roaming agreements to maintain and both Verizon and AT&T are committed to LTE, but the company did specifically say that it was picking LTE over WiMAX. (Oh, and if you're keeping score, that pretty much puts the final, final nail in the coffin for Qualcomm's UMB -- good thing it's got those LTE-compatible chipsets in the works.) Alltel's actually growing pretty fast -- this is the second quarter in a row it's added over 1M gross customers, probably due to those sparkling call-quality survey results -- but we still have our doubts when the company claims it's "America's Largest Network." Should be interesting to see how this all shakes out as 4G gets built up, no?Read - Alltel Q1 results [Warning: PDF link]
Read - Alltel commits to LTE
Anyone thinking of signing up just remember that Alltel's internet packages use up your minutes. They say total internet for 19.99 but you have to add an additional feature called Axcess minutes (extra 9.99 per month ! ) for the usage to not eat up your minutes while surfing. Just a heads up on these scam artists.
And so Sprint stands alone, peddling it's WiMax wares while the rest of the industry goes LTE...wonder if Hesse is paying attention, or asleep at the wheel like every other Sprint CEO.
Hesse needs to start reading engadget articles and get in on what other companies are doing with their networks. Knowing what other companies do is your first defense on keeping your company profitable! Now all we need is for everyone to accept the same standards and have interoperability. This will never happen because companies who are trying to be profitable come up with crazy proprietary technologies that puts them behind. They invest too much in technologies that are going to go away in 3-5 years.
I'm still surprised people are actually expecting LTE to go anywhere. When DoCoMo can't get past the second phase of trials after almost two years of testing, I don't hold out much hope for it to go anywhere past press releases and lab tests.
For a standard that was essentially thought of as a hack to W-CDMA in order to remain on par with WiBro/WiMax, people are sure betting on an unratified and unproven set of currently incompatible standards that still require custom chipset designs and heaps of spectrum to operate, just like W-CDMA.
I also don't understand how AT&T can say "we will launch LTE in 2010" when there's no equipment manufacturers lined up, no municipal planning, and no contractors outside working on cellsites at the moment.
At least Alltel was smart enough to give a realistic timeframe for its deployment, even though it was obvious they would go LTE because of the roaming coverage afforded to them by Verizon and AT&T (if it ever does get off the ground).
Of course, if its anything like WiMax (which it is, just with a different name) expect LTE to have the same issues as any high-speed wireless network, namely the lack of reliable and plentiful backhaul in order to provide the speeds that are being promised.
This is why Sprint and Clearwire merged WiMax assets and got outside investment from cable companies, search engines, chipset manufacturers, and equipment manufacturers. I have yet to see that level of commitment from anyone in the LSTI working group.
I'd be shocked if AT&T manages to hit the 20Mbps downlink they're expecting to next year on the 3G end since they're known for being short on capacity for 3G access, especially in urban areas such as Dallas Fort Worth.
Actually they said their Total net adds were 385,000, I think 1 Million was for the year.
No, they're trumpeting adding 1 million gross subscribers, but when you subtract what they lost you get the net adds of under 400k.
Now that's nothing to write home about, but anything is better than the net losses Sprint keeps taking quarter after quarter.
Go Alltell it's the greatest. Great Signal strength over a wide area and that circle of 10 WOW my blackberry pearl just flys. :-)
haha, but once LTE rolls out in a few years, your pearl will be completely obsolete. NICE!