Sprint plans to deploy Long Term Evolution-Advanced on its 800MHz spectrum during the first half of 2013, said an executive at the 4G World trade show today.
Iyad Tarazi, vice president of network development at Sprint, said that the company will deploy LTE-Advanced Release 10 in a 10×10 configuration. It believes it can achieve download speeds in the 12Mbps to 15Mbps range with that set-up. Sprint will begin deploying standard LTE on its 1900MHz spectrum by mid-2012.
It will offer data over LTE and voice over its CDMA network, though it will eventually transition to voice-over-LTE in 2013.
Tarazi also revealed that the company will end 2011 with about 20 percent of its traffic riding on Clearwire’s (NASDAQ:CLWR) 4G WiMAX network, which Tarazi said Sprint Nextel will continue to support for many years because of its agreement with the wholesale provider. Clearwire has said it needs to raise between $150 million and $300 million for the maintenance of its existing WiMAX network and $600 million to begin deploying LTE-Advanced network technology.
Sprint believes it can have between 250 million and 277 million POPs covered by its LTE network by the end of 2013. The company plans to launch 12 devices running LTE in 2012.
