http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sprint_Corporation
When did I tell you that I purchased the phone in question. Early 2006. So according to you they went from 1% in December of 2005 to coverage for 190 million people in 2006. Swordmaker now it is your turn to think critically about something... does that seem realistic? And why do you keep referring to Verizon when I told you when the phone we are wasting our time discussing was on the Sprint network. They do have reciprocal roaming agreements, but the last time I checked they were still separate companies.
Yes, I am telling you that. At the beginning of 2005, EVDO was about 1% coverage in a few city centers and then exploded in the Verizon network. There were very few phones that could even connect with EVDO, and they were expensive. Sprint built where Verizon didn't. . . rural areas. Their mutual roaming pacts made their networks virtually indistinguishable. Between Sprint and Verizon, it was very easy to grow that fast.
It was a technology who's time had arrived.
A lot can happen with two years of concentrated effort and spending two-billion dollars. Sprint piggy-backs on Verizon's network and vice-verse . . . they lease bandwidth from Verizon. Verizon concentrated on urban populations with large concentrations and then built rapidly out from cores. Verizon was eating Cingular/AT&T's lunch. . . adding customers right and left at Cingular/AT&T's expense. Meanwhile Sprint was on Verizon's CDMA coattails.
That's why it was so easy for Steve Jobs to convince Cingular/AT&T to change their business model for the iPhone. . . they had to do something. Cingular/AT&T had the wrong idea that everything had to happen in any area at once. It slowed them down immensely because they would not activate anything in an area until everything was ready to switch over.