If you follow their ads, it seems that every cell phone carrier has the largest, fastest network in the country. Suffice to say, they’re pretty much all continuously upgrading their networks to accommodate more users and more devices demanding more bandwidth for not just voice, but data such as Web browsing, e-mail, texting, Tweeting and video streaming.
On Tuesday, I joined other reporters in getting a close-up look at one carrier’s network development when the people at Sprint invited us to see new equipment that the carrier installed on a rooftop in San Francisco.
The new equipment is being installed to beef up Sprint’s 4G LTE (for long-term evolution) network in the Bay Area to offload some of the traffic on Sprint’s 3G network, said Joe Meyer, vice president of network service management at Sprint.
San Francisco is one of 88 markets nationwide in which Sprint is expanding 4G coverage as part of a program the company calls “Network Vision.”
While every carrier boasts a robust network, Sprint’s differentiator from its competitors is that it offers an unlimited data plan, Meyer said. Of late, people are using their cell phones for more than just voice calls; they are using smartphones, tablets, laptops and other devices for moving data such as e-mails, videos, video-chatting, Web browsing and more. That being the case, network operators have to keep up with that data demand with faster networks, Meyer said.
“Data growth is what all of this is all about,” he said. “As people move to more high bandwidth intensive applications, video for example, it takes a lot more speed. Therefore, that’s where LTE comes into play.”
New 4G LTE equipment is needed in the Bay Area because its tech-savvy residents in San Francisco, San Jose, Oakland and Palo Alto use about 20 percent more data than the national average, Sprint stated. The carrier invested $137 million in 2012 in its Bay Area network, which is comprised of about 2,000 cell sites.
The new cell site we saw on the roof of the Medical Arts Building on Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco is one of 20 new sites Sprint will be adding in the city going forward to provide enough 4G capacity; because the city is so densely populated, the network has to be built to handle all those users, Meyer said.
I’ve written in the past about how carriers are building out their networks in the Bay Area to accommodate all the must-have gadgets we use here.
