Sprint begins Rev. A rollout

Sprint today commercially launched its first 3G network upgraded with EV-DO Revision A technology in San Diego, beginning a network-wide rollout that will target 20 more markets.

By the end of the year, Sprint plans to complete the network overhaul in Baltimore; Boston; Buffalo, N.Y.; Denver; Detroit; Hartford, Conn.; Kansas City; Las Vegas; Los Angeles; Milwaukee; New York City; Newark/Trenton, N.J.; Philadelphia; Pittsburgh; Providence, R.I.; Sacramento, Calif.; Salt Lake City; San Francisco; Seattle and Washington, D.C. Sprint plans to completely upgrade its EV-DO network nationwide by the third quarter.

The enhancement to its PowerVision broadband network will give Sprint a nominal 100 kb/s boost in downlink capacity, but EV-DO Rev. A main advantages come from its enhanced uplink data rates--quadrupling EV-DO’s upstream capacity to more than 300 kb/s--its lower latency and its built-in QoS. The EV-DO iteration is the first 3G technology that can fully support VoIP and other real-time applications.

Sprint’s plans for Rev. A are conservative for the time being. It will target the faster speeds at its business customers, offering Rev. A laptop cards that provide faster connectivity and support real-time business applications like video conferencing and heavy file transfers. But in 2008, Sprint plans to fully utilize the QoS and capacity capabilities of the new network, launching its push-to-talk services over end-to-end IP. Sprint announced last week it has selected Qualcomm’s QChat to power the next-generation solution, eschewing Motorola technologies that power both the current Nextel and Sprint PTT services.

In the interim, however, Sprint may launch other consumer services, but it has not made any firm commitments. So far the only devices available for Rev. A networks are laptop cards. Today Sprint unveiled a new Novatel Wireless card, the Ovation U720, that plugs directly into any USB port, potentially making Rev. A available to a much broader variety of devices. Sprint has been populating its 3G-subscriber base with other Rev. A cards for the last several months, anticipating the new rollout.