By some metrics, Sprint has the largest network in terms of airwave spectrum. But the company has not been able to translate that into the best overall network performance among the four major carriers, as the company routinely ranks third or fourth in performance tests.
Sprint plans to rely on a new industry standard—HPUE (High Performance User Equipment)—to improve the quality of its network performance (see earlier story). But this means getting equipment manufacturers on-board to adopt the standard.
Qualcomm, Mediatek, Samsung, as well as others have already announced they will support the standard in phones starting in 2017. But one major player is missing from the list—Apple, a company that accounts for nearly half of the smartphones in the U.S.
Despite Apple’s absence from this list, Sprint expects others to announce it will support the standard and sees the adoption of the standard as a way for it to improve its 2.5 GHz band signal. The carrier said it will help the signal travel up to 30 percent farther.
“HPUE will help us take our spectrum asset to an entirely new level,” said John Saw, Sprint’s chief technology officer, in a blog post announcing the plan to improve the company’s network. “With HPUE, our customers gain the best of both worlds, allowing our 2.5 GHz spectrum to maintain all of the speed and capacity advantages of high-band, while gaining the coverage advantages of mid-band spectrum on HPUE capable devices.”
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