Sprint's role as technology outlier may keep it on a road less traveled

Sprint will soon jump into LTE Advanced carrier aggregation as part of its Sprint Spark initiative, and the operator is also taking hard looks at numerous other cutting-edge technologies, such as SON and even Cloud RAN, for inclusion in its long-term roadmap, said a top executive.

"Historically we've looked to technologies a bit differently than everyone else. We're the only ones deploying TD-LTE. We're the only ones deploying 8T8R," observed Ron Marquardt, vice president of technology for Sprint technology innovation and architecture. That willingness to stand out from the crowd means technologies that other US operators may not consider could find a home at Sprint.

"We're evaluating everything from CoMP (coordinated multipoint) to even Cloud RAN on the more speculative end, just because of the backhaul requirements for that," said Marquardt.

Advanced self-organizing network (SON) technologies, enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (EICIC), high-order MIMO options and other advanced antenna systems "are all under consideration," Marquardt added. "We're actively investigating all sorts of SON options--architectures as well as specific implementations," he noted, though cautioning that "we're not even close to making any decisions, much less any announcements."