Sprint Project “Leapfrog”, New Devices, Playbook Release, iDen Phase Out Confirmed, More

We are lucky to have some very interesting and exciting information regarding what Sprint plans on doing over the next 3 to 4 years.  Lets get right into it.

[unordered_list style="green-dot"]

• Sprint plans on doing an entire network re-organization with the spectrum they currently own.  They expect the price to be upwards of $5 billion dollars.
• The project is currently being called “Leapfrog” as they plan to jump ahead of the competition with a complete change of how devices will work on the new network.
• Sprint currently has 800Mhz iDen, 1900Mhz CDMA, and 2500Mhz WiMax and they plan on combining all services on all forms of spectrum.  For example if in NY 800Mhz works best to complete a call or establish data then a device compatible with the new network would use 800Mhz.  If 1900Mhz is less crowded and works fine, it will use that, and so on.
• Three company’s have already won bids to help rebuild their entire network.
• If there are 3 sites within a general coverage area (iDen, CDMA, and WiMax) they will now be able to consolidate sites, at a cheaper cost with less power consumption.
• LTE is absolutely going into this plan and they will put LTE on their 800Mhz network when possible.
• iDen is absolutely confirmed to be getting the boot starting at the end of 2012/beginning of 2013.  They will be offering iDen handsets for a little while still, but dont expect major shipments.  QChat will be the way to go for PTT and it will run on the 1X advanced network.
• As far as new model phones we can confirm that both a Qwerty Bold with touchscreen and a full touchscreen (NOT the Storm) are headed to Sprint for THIS YEAR.
• Also there will be a Samsung 4G touch only Android device.
• The WiFi only Playbook is expected to ship between the end of March and middle of April with a 4G version due out 2nd/3rd quarter of this year.

[/unordered_list]

There you have it folks!  There is a lot to look forward to from Sprint in the coming years.