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Marcelo Claure, Town Hall Meetings, New Family Share Pack Plan, Unlimited Individual Plan, Discussion Thread


joshuam

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Listening to the Conference Call now.

They're talking about deploying several thousand small cells on the current Altice footprint, and as Altice's footprint grows, Sprint will deploy additional small cells on that infrastructure. This is not an exclusive agreement apparently. Sprint will pay Altice for the usage of its network and there are performance benchmarks for both sides. Sprint will not have to go through the traditional permitting process to build out infrastructure on this network. Also, according to Tarek, this deal would have occurred even if the T-Mobile merger would have been announced.

Also, we can expect to see various incarnations of "Magic Box" deployed as part of the arrangement with Altice.

The Lendlease Towers is also part of Sprint's expansion/densification plans: https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2017/10/softbank-joint-venture-acquire-8000-us-cell-towers

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3 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Great news!

AYEE!! thats a good amount to throw at the network. So We have more funds so now its all about execution and how fast things can get done. 

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8 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Great news!

Is this new network investment as in actual growth of the network, or just maintenance and upkeep spending, and things like Magic Box, etc.?

I know the Magic Box seems popular around here, and it does have its benefits. However, it isn't a replacement for macro site growth and the kind of network growth that was talked about in various announced projects some years ago when Dan Hesse was still with Sprint.

Softbank ought to be revealing those kind of network plans with massive national scope, not just an MVNO deal, which this really sounds to be not much more than that, except for a bit of a network boost in areas Altice serves. Not so good for the rest of the country without Altice.

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6 minutes ago, SprintNYC said:

This is the anti-Sprint Analyst now complaining on Twitter that the Sprint boys cued his questions on the conference call.

Yeah, I heard/read that too. Definitely an interesting "hot mic" moment.

Walter isn't so bad in my opinion. I think Craig Moffett is way worse in terms of being anti-Sprint.

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11 minutes ago, Johnner1999 said:

 


Damn I didn’t know TMO was burning that much per year on upgrades.

Sort of dwarfs this


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What are you saying? Sorry I'm not following.

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Sorry to break up the Altice talk,
But...
God damn this is ridiculously awesome!
My buddy in Greenwood Indiana...
 
DN4m7RcXUAAphMR.thumb.jpg.9a8394434b791c5bd60cd0df10be38fb.jpg
How was that speed possible?

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk

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2 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

Yeah but I have the same phone and never get that

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 

Backhaul has to be fully provisioned for all 3 carriers and config 2 and zero traffic (notice the times they were taken its AM) and LOS.

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8 minutes ago, Arysyn said:

Is this new network investment as in actual growth of the network, or just maintenance and upkeep spending, and things like Magic Box, etc.?

I know the Magic Box seems popular around here, and it does have its benefits. However, it isn't a replacement for macro site growth and the kind of network growth that was talked about in various announced projects some years ago when Dan Hesse was still with Sprint.

Softbank ought to be revealing those kind of network plans with massive national scope, not just an MVNO deal, which this really sounds to be not much more than that, except for a bit of a network boost in areas Altice serves. Not so good for the rest of the country without Altice.

This is both growth and densification. Sprint can grow and densify on the Altice footprint... which is pretty substantial. Altice currently has more than 4.9 Million customers in 21 states through brands including Optimum and Suddenlink. What this agreement means is that Sprint can readily deploy wireless equipment using Altice's backhaul and its existing right of ways, and Sprint's network can grow and densify as Altice's network grows. Also, because Sprint is paying Altice for usage on the network, Altice has every incentive to increase its footprint to cover more areas.

This isn't a replacement for Macro Site growth. As Tarek said on the call, this is in parallel. The Lendlease Towers deal that SoftBank is entering is part of this network growth strategy. It's another prong.

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8 minutes ago, Johnner1999 said:

 


Sorry...

In that linked tweet they show how much the others are spending for capex. And TMO is 10b. But maybe that was just due to 600mhz.


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You misread it. (T) is the NYSE ticker symbol for AT&T, not T-Mobile.

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25 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

This is both growth and densification. Sprint can grow and densify on the Altice footprint... which is pretty substantial. Altice currently has more than 4.9 Million customers in 21 states through brands including Optimum and Suddenlink. What this agreement means is that Sprint can readily deploy wireless equipment using Altice's backhaul and its existing right of ways, and Sprint's network can grow and densify as Altice's network grows. Also, because Sprint is paying Altice for usage on the network, Altice has every incentive to increase its footprint to cover more areas.

This isn't a replacement for Macro Site growth. As Tarek said on the call, this is in parallel. The Lendlease Towers deal that SoftBank is entering is part of this network growth strategy. It's another prong.

Well, we'll see how this gets developed and such.

I'm still not really supportive of cable company involvement at this point, though eventually it could be promising. Using wifi is something that could be of good use in situations further away from the macro site with cable wifi connections handing off as mobile moves around. Although I still don't want this to be the thing for any wireless carrier to say "Look, we don't need to densify with more macro sites since we have cable wifi to add coverage".

I see it just as I do with small cell development and wonder why all the fuss against wifi years ago when since then its been these cell companies suddenly welcoming wifi to save development money when back then they were worried about wifi costing them money. Overall, I'd much rather see fewer national cell companies sticking with macro cell development and leave small cell, along with high band spectrum to local companies that can focus on stuff like wisp services and allow communities to get into it, expanding partnerships locally.

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I wonder what the hold up was with Comcast and Charter about signing a comparable agreement. Strand and pole mounted small cells are a wonderful way to densify a network. I am thinking that the companies are looking to 3.5GHz carrier neutral small cells for the first layer of their wireless network with the Verizon MVNO network as a backstop too they can minimize their roaming costs. No reason why they can't accommodate both 2.5GHz and 3.5GHz. The only problem I see for the 3.5GHZ strategy is that once the incumbent and licensed users of the spectrum get their fair share of the spectrum there might not be a lot of spectrum left for the unlicensed users. Unless they decide to bid in the future 3.5GHz auction, I see the reliance on the unlicensed option to minimize the roaming cost on the Verizon network failing.

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I am confused by Son's latest comments. Now, after the failed merger, they say they'll invest serious money into Sprint network. Softbank has owned Sprint for 5 years. 

What happened last 5 years? Spending just enough to get by? Are they saying NOW they are serious about rebuilding Sprint?

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15 minutes ago, kamiller42 said:

I am confused by Son's latest comments. Now, after the failed merger, they say they'll invest serious money into Sprint network. Softbank has owned Sprint for 5 years. 

What happened last 5 years? Spending just enough to get by? Are they saying NOW they are serious about rebuilding Sprint?

Yeah, it's a confusing message.

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8 minutes ago, kamiller42 said:

I am confused by Son's latest comments. Now, after the failed merger, they say they'll invest serious money into Sprint network. Softbank has owned Sprint for 5 years. 

What happened last 5 years? Spending just enough to get by? Are they saying NOW they are serious about rebuilding Sprint?

This is what confuses me about Softbank and partly why I'm not impressed at all by the new Altice deal.

I like Sprint and would really like to see the company owned by a more competent group overseeing Sprint. Surely Softbank has done well in other situations, but not so much with Sprint.

However, if Altice and the other cable companies partner/merge, anything that can sell wireless service evenly across the country and they all have a part of Sprint, if this is something Masa knows about that isn't obviously being publicized, then I will call him a genius if he gets Sprint involved in this way while still keeping Softbank a part of it.

That is the only arrangement that would be a better deal for Sprint than joining with T-Mobile at this point. The move into cable though may not come soon enough, which perhaps will lead into another T-Mobile merger deal.

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I am confused by Son's latest comments. Now, after the failed merger, they say they'll invest serious money into Sprint network. Softbank has owned Sprint for 5 years. 
What happened last 5 years? Spending just enough to get by? Are they saying NOW they are serious about rebuilding Sprint?


Maybe now he’s serious because he thought that he would buy Sprint and merge it with another telecom company. Now after several failed merger attempts. It’s either seriously invest or just sell the company.
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22 minutes ago, tybo31316 said:

 


Maybe now he’s serious because he thought that he would buy Sprint and merge it with another telecom company. Now after several failed merger attempts. It’s either seriously invest or just sell the company.

 

Son tried that. No one was willing to buy at the price he was trying to sell. 

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I don't think this is confusing. He never really wanted to sell the company. He wanted to give Sprint scale. If you pay attention to many of the deals he has made, he uses any means necessary. I am thinking his goal was to gain control of the merged company after the merger by buying much of the open market stock. However, I am thinking that DT wanted to give him nonvoting stock. This would never give him the opportunity to control the combined company. I don't think it was ever his intention to give up control permanently. He was trying the backdoor.

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