Sprint over the past week has dropped some tidbits on when to expect their innovative Network Vision cell site technology to begin going online, and when to begin expecting LTE-enabled devices.

The embattled carrier created Network Vision as a way of mitigating the five current network platforms that it will power: iDEN, CDMA & EVDO, WiMAX, and LTE. All five have unique spectrum and tuning requirements that have stalled Sprint’s growth over the years. The difference between Sprint CDMA and Nextel iDEN alone cost Sprint millions of consumers, a fact Sprint has begrudgingly admitted, and attempted to correct with three iterations of Direct Connect (iDEN, QChat, and the current “remixed” QChat platform). Adding in Clearwire’s WiMAX, and Sprint’s eventual decision to go to LTE… and Sprint had to create its own solution to this spectrum problem.

Network Vision, as we have covered from the day it was announced, will allow Sprint to toggle resources and spectrum remotely, without accessing towers. This will allow Sprint to dynamically raise and lower spectrum for each of these platforms based on demand, ensuring that customers on legacy CDMA and WiMAX devices can keep using them, and that LTE will operate properly as iDEN is phased out.

The current roadmap that Sprint has announced calls for the deployment of WiMAX and CDMA as soon as possible, rollout has begun in many areas. One thing Sprint is keeping close to the vest however, is how much new WiMAX coverage will become available. It is not clear if WiMAX will immediately be turned on in areas where Sprint has not tapped into the backhaul of Clearwire’s network, or has sufficient resources. WiMAX simply may not be enabled network-wide ever. One thing Sprint is doing, is taking advantage of previously iDEN-only towers, and scrapping iDEN towers that will be redundant in this deployment.

The take-home message for CIOs all the way down to customer is; we’re suggesting you migrate away from that iDEN phone, be it on Boost or Sprint Nextel. iDEN customers clearly will have the most coverage impact that we have seen from source’s maps… and it isn’t a positive improvement at all.

CDMA will benefit, though the ESMR band previously used by iDEN will not be taken advantage of dramatically at first. Keep in mind, Nextel will need the ESMR frequency as long as it is active. For those with non-ESMR phones, and that’s most of you, that means you do not need to throw out your old device to get the best 3G coverage. An ESMR phone will only help in a few areas. Sprint will likely tap most of this bandwidth for LTE, so the primary benefit may lie in the long term; rural areas that see iDEN dismantled, but not WiMAX or LTE until fiber backhaul can arrive.

Sprint, this week, did drop the bombshell that LTE handsets will launch in the second half of 2012. However, this is mostly non-news that other drive-by colleagues in the mobile media simply didn’t realize was already known information. Sprint has said all along that LTE and Network Vision will be in consumers hands long before that date. It remains to be seen if Sprint will do an LTE mobile broadband trial in Q2, but this seems unlikely, as Sprint does not want to overcost hardware with tri-mode CDMA/WiMAX/LTE devices. This means that Sprint will wait until LTE coverage overlaps the vast majority of existing Sprint WiMAX coverage, and then launch CDMA/LTE mobile broadband devices.

In all, we chose to write this article based on information that actually is new, rather than regurgitate the “LTE is coming to Sprint in 2H2012″ that everyone else has reported. We wrote this instead as a primer on what you’ll expect from Sprint over the next year in terms of real-world experience.

The take-home from this is that for most users, the device you have right now will work better in the years to come, be it CDMA or WiMAX. If you buy a WiMAX phone today, you can rest assured it will work better throughout its 2-year contract timeline, and likely well beyond that too. If you have an iDEN device, we suggest getting rid of it… pronto. Sprint may not like that we’re saying that, but we see the coverage drops coming for iDEN. It’s not Sprint’s fault; AT&T did the same thing to their GSM network upon the desperate need to provide 3G/4G coverage to their customers.

I’ve posted a few brief comments on Steve’s passing on my personal blog…

It’s not 100% clear yet if all iPhone 4S variants will have CDMA hardware inside, but Apple has made one thing clear; if you purchase an iPhone 4S from AT&T, a GSM/UMTS carrier, or an unlocked version, you won’t be able to use it on CDMA carriers like Sprint and Verizon.

Many sites, including a few of our competitors, were unsure why Apple made this move. Thankfully, we have the answers.

Presuming all iPhone 4S variants have the necessary CDMA hardware, we explore the history, and answer why, you cannot activate that CDMA radio on a GSM carrier. And, we’ll also tackle the difficult questions for CDMA customers of roaming on GSM that iPhone 4S has raised.

And yes, there’s a history lesson involved.

First, a primer. CDMA is the abbreviation for Code Division Multiple Access, and its more modern version, CDMA2000, which is the network that Sprint, Verizon, MetroPCS, Leap/Cricket, and others use today as their primary network. GSM/UMTS are the (2G/3G, respectively) networks that T-Mobile and AT&T use.

GSM/UMTS is primarily used in Europe and much of Asia. CDMA is the predominant network in the Americas, and portions of Europe. While CDMA does not have a technical future, its diminishing cost has driven it to developing nations, while GSM/UMTS are migrating to the newer LTE technology. As such, Sprint and Verizon will also eventually be using LTE as their primary networks.

Up until now, there have been practically zero phones that operated on both CDMA, and GSM/UMTS, in the same country. There are a plethora of international devices however that operate on the frequencies used abroad, as well as networks locally. Even when devices supported both CDMA 3G and GSM 2G, they rarely have supported the U.S. GSM, UMTS, and CDMA frequencies at once.

Much of this has been at the behest of US carriers. Regulatory concerns crop up once CDMA and GSM carriers can interact with one-another. Specifically, each and every carrier fears that the FCC may begin to mandate that the carriers act homogeneously. If the carriers can claim technical barriers to that, then they can stave off FCC mandates regarding roaming, interoperability, unlocking of devices, stolen device databases, and… well, we’ll end the run-on sentence there.

This makes iPhone 4S a bit of a game changer. Technologically, there’s nothing stopping a Sprint or Verizon customer from accessing AT&T’s “4G” GSM/UMTS/HSPA+ network. They could also theoretically access T-Mobile’s 2G GSM network.

However, they can’t. The reason is aforementioned paragraph regarding why the carriers have not wanted this innovation; they don’t want all the carriers being interoperable, as it opens the door to regulation. As such, none of the roaming agreements are in-place to allow for Sprint and Verizon customers to fall back to GSM/UMTS/HSPA, nor is there a roaming agreement for AT&T or T-Mobile customers to hop on Sprint and Verizon.

Now we start to see how this situation came about. Of course, if your iPhone is locked to AT&T, activating on Sprint or Verizon is not going to happen, so Apple simply disabled CDMA at the firmware level.

GSM carriers have abhorred the more-robust CDMA2000, some in Europe even made it illegal to deploy such a network in many areas through regulation and “discretionary mandates”. As such, international roaming in places like Brazil, Mexico, and elsewhere, cannot happen on the GSM side of things.

Apple, out of care to the carriers that are their largest customers, simply is disabling the CDMA portion of the device when initially activated on a GSM/UMTS carrier. This prevents all of these questions, and calls for comprehensive roaming agreements to occur.

It also prevents people from scamming AT&T out of a $400 subsidy, and then running the device right over to MetroPCS or Cricket.

The next question that then comes to mind is why you cannot take a device from Sprint to Verizon, and vice-versa. CDMA, unlike GSM, does not have firm subsidy locks… instead using an antiquated Master Subsidy Lock code system. As such, the risk of people ripping off a carrier is high. Customers have already hijacked “frozen” Verizon iPhone 4 devices and activated them on MetroPCS and other regional carriers, in areas where the devices are compatible (part of MetroPCS’s coverage uses the 1700 MHz frequency, which iPhone does not support currently on CDMA bands).

As such, Apple is again helping the carriers. While Apple cannot (totally) stop jailbreaking, they can ensure that unlocked versions of iPhone 4S are limited to the carriers that have openly accepted unlocked devices with open arms (AT&T, T-Mobile, and the MVNOs that operate on those networks).

Sprint has agreed, years ago, in a settlement to unlock and accept unlocked devices, but the attorneys that took their multi-million dollar payoff have never forced Sprint to enforce the latter part of the settlement. No attorney to date has filed the simple action needed to enforce this settlement. Verizon claims to accept unlocked devices through a similar settlement, but only supports a list of antiquated devices that can be hacked with a common tool — and will not activate a Sprint iPhone 4S, even if the subsidy has been fully paid.

In sum, most of the rules of CDMA vs GSM that Apple has laid out are of their own making, designed to appease the carriers that flagship their devices. The rules are born out of a history of antiquated technological boundaries that are no longer valid. It will be left to consumers to demand that things change.

Walmart has an exclusive double-data offering on the Virgin Mobile MiFi. MiFi units sold from Walmart.com and Walmart retail stores have a different serial number range, which grants them 1 GB of data for $20/month, in addition to the $50/month unlimited plan. That’s double the data (500 MB) that Virgin Mobile offers on the standard plan.

OfficeMax this week is selling the Virgin Mobile MiFi for $99, down from the suggested retail of $129.

To get the best of both worlds, print out the product page from OfficeMax, and take it to Walmart. Price match down Walmart’s MiFi to $99. Finally, enjoy the 1 GB $20/month data, instead of only having 500 MB.

For more details about the current MiFi offering, and how Walmart fits into it, read more after the break.

The MiFi 2200 is Virgin Mobile’s first MiFi device. As a Wi-Fi hotspot, it supplies EV-DO Rev A. Virgin Mobile recently however began to throttle all mobile broadband plans on unlimited usage, to 2.5 GB per month of full 3G speeds. After that, speeds are throttled to 250kbps, which Virgin Mobile claims is still 3G speed. However, the throttled speed rivals EDGE, a network commonly considered to be sub-3G.

Hence, the 1 GB plan exclusive to Walmart may be the sweet spot. At $20, it’s less than half the unlimited plan, but completely unthrottled. At $40/month for two reloads, you get 2 GB of unthrottled data, which is where it starts to become economical to switch to the unlimited plan.

Virgin Mobile service can be cancelled at any time, but it is not clear how long the 1 GB Walmart plan will remain. The 1 GB plan pre-dates the 500 MB offering on the standard $20 tier, as such, you may want to hold onto the 1 GB plan and not either cancel or go to unlimited. It is quite possible that the 1 GB plan could disappear without notice.

Both Virgin Mobile and Boost Mobile have thus far grandfathered prepaid customers into their existing monthly plan tiers, for example, customers on the $25 Beyond Talk plan have not been forced to upgrade to the $35 tier, despite the $25 tier no longer being offered.

The 1 GB plan at Walmart remains an oddball, as Walmart has never touted the plan in any external marketing, and in many stores it’s not even clear that Walmart has an exclusive or enhanced MiFi offering. Virgin Mobile has not documented the plan anywhere online, except during signup, and in the My Account functions of customers who have selected the plan during activation.

The FCC has revealed the first information on the specifications of the HP Pre 3, slated for launch later this Summer. Of note is the quiet addition of global roaming capability, with support for quadband GSM and dual-band HSPA on the 900/2100 bands.

When the Palm Pre 3 was originally announced this year, no executive explicitly mentioned international roaming support for the CDMA version, nor was it listed in any of the preliminary specification literature. This suggests that the addition of global roaming on the CDMA version was a mid development cycle addition, possibly made to attract Verizon and Sprint into carrying the devices after the lukewarm sales reception of the first generation of devices led both carriers to conduct rounds of discounts and fire sales to encourage sales.

Sprint has announced April 17th as the retail launch date for the long-awaited Novatel MiFi 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot. Pricing for the updated MiFi is set at $79.99 after instant discount and 2 year agreement. The new Novatel MiFi 3G/4G Mobile Hotspot features the debut of the embedded MiFi OS for developers to deploy new applications specifically for use with the device, Wi-Fi N radio, GPS support, microSD expansion slot and dual-mode EVDO Rev. A/WiMax support. The device can be ordered now via Telesales/Direct Ship.

The FCC has revealed the first CDMA phone for Sprint that will operate on Nextel’s 800MHz SMR band in the Samsung SPH-M830 when the first phase of the Network Vision initiative begins later this year. The M830 also features Bluetooth, a touch screen with slide-out QWERTY keyboard, and support for microSD cards, suggesting that this will be the mid-range smartphone announced early last month as part of its Sprint Direct Connect announcement. Neither Sprint nor Samsung have announced the phone at this time.

With the FCC approval of the M830, this suggests that Sprint is ahead of schedule in the construction and deployment of its new multi-mode base station hardware first announced in December of last year. While the network and the new CDMA-based push to talk solution is not expected to debut until the end of this year, early approval of such devices means that full-scale network testing is close to being initiated along with hardware testing.

Network hardware manufacturer Ericsson has announced the completion of the first call using its new HD CDMA codec for voice calls over CDMA2000 networks. The call was completed utilizing hardware provided by Qualcomm in a lab setting and is claimed to reduce listening fatigue by encoding speech in the new Enhanced Variable Rate Codec Narrowband-Wideband codec otherwise known as EVRC-NW. The codec is claimed to reduce fatigue by increasing the dynamic range of the encoded speech within a wider frequency range, starting at 50Hz to 7000Hz. Neither Ericsson nor Qualcomm have confirmed when the new protocol would be commercially available in hardware.

Speaking during a roundtable at Mobile World Congress, Sprint executives have confirmed a few key moves for the carrier in the coming months.

First, it has decided to wait 4-6 months to make a final decision on its 4G strategy, which will be dependent on the rate of customers moving from EVDO to WiMax before deciding to stay with WiMax or deciding to roll out LTE. Related to the Network Vision initiative, the carrier has also confirmed the roll out of the CDMA 1xAdvanced as well as the replacement of its current T1-based backhaul solution for cellsites with a combination of microwave and fiber backhaul for greater capacity.

Finally, the confirmation of a new CDMA push to talk solution was elaborated on, with Bob Azzi stating that the new solution is an upgrade from the previous QChat solution and admitting that adoption of QChat was less than hoped for, with one of the main problems being in coverage differences. Sprint executives expect that the new solution will be an improvement over QChat with new features that they hope to draw customers, but did not specify which features would be included.

According to third-party online mobile phone retailer Wirefly, the recently confirmed Sony Ericsson Xperia Play Android gaming oriented smartphone will be launched on Verizon Wireless this year, after being confirmed for future sale by European carriers earlier this week.

What makes the confirmation stand out is that Sony Ericsson has not developed CDMA phones for sale in the US since the T608, released in 2003 in limited quantities on both Sprint and Verizon before Sony Ericsson ended all future US CDMA handset development after its release and gutted the US CDMA R&D team previously located at the venture’s former US base at Research Triangle Park in North Carolina.

With the Xperia Play being revealed for the first time in an official capacity this weekend at Mobile World Congress in Spain, the confirmation of a US version on Verizon Wireless would mark the first time since the saga of the T608 that Sony Ericsson has dedicated resources to developing a US CDMA version of a flagship handset. However, what is not known is whether the CDMA version was developed in Europe, the US or developed in Japan, as Sony Ericsson still maintains a CDMA R&D team for handset development with Japanese carrier KDDI, which also uses CDMA on a different frequency.

Cell phone radio manufacturer Option, best known for its UMTS modems has announced its newest multi-radio modules in the GTM601 and GTM609.

The GTM601 and GTM609 are being touted by the company as the smallest to support voice, GSM / HSPA, CDMA / EV-DO, GPS, and the new GLONASS navigation system.

The modules will also be compatible with Windows Phone 7, Android, MeeGo and Linux.