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Oh gosh, not this again. I am more against this than I was before. Tmo and Sprint are getting more competitive and gaining market share against the Duopoly. Verizon is on their feet, having to actually compete. The wireless market has never been better for the American consumer. I'm willing to sit back and see what comes of this, as twospirits recommends, but I think the status quo is right where we need to be nationally with wireless. The path forward looks good for Tmo and Sprint. Prices will go up if they are allowed to merge. They are trying to do it now. It is the 4th competitor, the odd duck out, that pressures the market. Three roughly equal sized competitors just won't pressure much. Mark my words!

I don't want this merger to happen, and I could care less about the Magenta fans saying that Tmobile is too good to merge with Sprint. The fact is Sprint is finally picking steam. They don't really need this merger especially with that massive amount of spectrum for 5G. Massa is wasting his time, the Germans and Legere won't want him to have a say in a combined company period. News like this distract the people that work in the field from executing the company's goals. A combined company will be saturated with debt and will slow the rollout of gigabit class LTE, and 5G. Maybe this is Verizon leaking false information since they are the ones that would benefit from this merger. They are eager to go back to raise fees and eliminate unlimited again.

The thought of a Sprint/Tmobile merger is enough to make me queezy.

Seems the majority of the members don't have a problem with the color scheme. The needs of the many, outweigh the needs of the few or the one. So for those that do have an issue (and are using Chrome browser) then just install the "Dark Mode" Chrome extension by Grephy. It makes the site (or any site) look like this... The cool thing about it is that its a toggle in the upper toolbar that one can go back to regular bright view or dark anytime you want. TS out

Round and round we go... https://www.cnbc.com/2017/09/19/t-mobile-and-sprint-are-in-active-talks-about-a-merger.html I can't imagine having Legere as CEO. It's painful to think about.

This isn't an issue of need. Sprint needs someone less now today than at any point in the past 5 years. And Tmo doesn't need anyone. It's a business decision. It's believed it is the best return for share holders, if they can agree on a deal. That is far different than need. But money does make the world go round.

An Interesting byproduct of this kind of news... I was on the cusp to move back to Sprint now since they are starting to deploy 800MHz in Washington State. But now I will just stay on Tmo and wait and see. Because if the merger does go through, I expect the network to go LTE Only or WCDMA/LTE. Sprint CDMA being phased out relatively quickly. No sense (and cents) in buying all new devices and jumping back to Sprint. I will just ride it out and stay on the VoLTE ecosystem that will likely be the survivor. I would like to see Sprint stay independent though. I just don't expect it to happen.

I don't think it matters to 99.9 percent of end users. I use a lot of data and it never impacts me in any meaningful way.

T-Mobile has increased its Deprioritization threshold from 32GB to 50GB: https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/unlimited-prioritzation-increase.htm Should Sprint respond by increasing its Deprioritization threshold up from 23GB?

Cool. Keep messing around with it and keep us posted.

was this on USCC? i did a few quick downloads again today while on USCC and i *think* it got added to my regular, non-roaming LTE totals for my usage. still need more data points though.

Fastest I've ever seen on a wireless carrier with my own experience.

Colors seem fine to me.

I'm glad things are really ramping up fast for Sprint. I think that both Sprint and T-Mobile can really stand on their own without a merger between the two. I would rather them not merge but we'll see what happens.

That is true however Sprint has a negative operating margin. Out of the 4 US providers, Sprint is the only one to keep having this financial issue. They have for quite sometime and financially while they are not under any threat to go bankrupt, at the same time they are behaving like a half dead zombie that isn't quite dead, but not fully alive to make heavy hitting upgrades to compete with AT&T and Verizon. So you are right it does come down to money which Sprint isn't swimming in. In fact, here in California I don't have access to Band 26 due to the issue with Mexico, so it's just 41 or 25 for me.

I meant everyones prices, not Sprint. Sprint's prices now are clearly unsustainable.

GSM is dead, Jim. Not everything T-Mobile is GSM. People need to drop that misconception years ago. AJ

Sprint has some of the best spectrum for dense areas with their huge amount of Sprint2500/2600mhz. T-Mobile has some of the best wide area rural coverage and in building spectrum with the combination of Tmobile600/Tmobile700/Sprint800mhz. The combination of the two companies plus some mid-band coverage should allow them to provide great coverage. Keep 1 CDMA voice carrier and 1 GSM voice carrier and re-farm everything else to voLTE. The network should be able to perform well for years.

Yeah I agree, it's mainly a marketing move focused on differentiating themselves from everyone else, since everyone sells unlimited data now. If anyone responds, it will probably evolve into a new form of tiered data plans - where all of them are unlimited and unthrottled but will have different de-pri thresholds. If anyone is to be credited for what may potentially happen here It would be Verizon who started it by offering an always-depri plan and one with a 22 gig threshold.

If Sprint and T-mobile do not merge, I hope that Sprint, once they are on their feet financially and have their network in order, enters into some kind of agreement with Dish with respect to some of their spectrum, namely their 600Mhz spectrum. It would not hurt if they sign an agreement for a discount on Dish's Sling service.

I think that Sprint's customers will be migrated to WCDMA and VOLTE. CDMA will go away pretty soon and WCDMA will follow in a bit.

I'd be surprised if they did. 7. Should be an absolute yes, but my guess is no. Which leads into 8. 8. It probably depends on the partner. If roaming is being charged on a per usage basis, pretty much the industry standard; then it depends on what Verizon is paying per MB to the partner, how much data a person is using, and what revenue the person is providing Verizon. I get the impression they're only really going after unprofitable accounts right now.

That actually would be kinda funny.

Lets not get ahead of ourselves, wait for the announcement and then hash it out.

Billy Beer

Dang AJ, the hits keep on coming.

= 1.75n² AJ

Not much on the spectrum side. For anything greater, users need to be supplying the backhaul, not relying on relay backhaul. AJ

I’ve had an Airave forever and I haven’t paid Sprint a cent for it...

I do not recall ever seeing Sprint count Airaves in new customer counts/new line additions. So I would not expect them to use Magic Boxes to 'pad numbers' either. They have counted new lines with free tablet giveaways, but they actually add a new line of service that is not free forever. Just for a promotional time. And this is something that all carriers do. Whether for free phones or free tablets that provide service. But I think we all see a distinctive difference between phones/tablets and Airaves/Magic Boxes, regardless if a phone number is assigned to the device.

The Gimp got gumped at the 1994 Academy Awards. AJ

It should be a top priority. Upload is very important as more and more people upload pictures, videos, and host live streams on social media. Those UL speeds reflect this. Too many people uploading junk to the internet. Personally, I don't get the need for people to have their lives displayed 24/7. But I'm sure I'm in the minority...now get off my lawn.

Letter a MT senator wrote to Verizon.. 2017-09-14 Tester Verizon Montana Contract Letter .pdf

No release date for the V30 yet? Seems to me LG is dropping the ball if they want this to be the iPhone 8/X and Note 8 alternative.

They may not count as a line but in the Sprint App there is a phone number associated with my Magic Box.

v30 has everything the Sprint network has deployed and more! For now, its the most technically advanced phone coming to the Sprint network.

I just updated my Tab E today to the newest build. It's been since late last year that it got an update, so at least they still are updating the security of it. Did you notice anything else different? It was over 300MB, so I would think that would include something other than security, but I haven't noticed anything else different.

MY DAD CAN KICK YOUR DAD'S ASS!

No, you are playing fast and loose (sidenote: Steve Dean, see the correct use of the word "loose") with the timeline. Sprint and 3GPP did not hatch HPUE out of thin air in December 2016. It was in the pipeline prior to then, a known commodity. Apple could have planned accordingly. LG and Samsung certainly did on handsets released months before the 2017 iPhone cohort. The most accurate thing you said is your final statement: "just Apple being Apple." The iPhone historically has been a generation behind in the latest RF technology. And until Apple settles its kerfuffle with Qualcomm or Intel gets its modem technology up to speed -- neither of which appears imminent -- iPhone will continue to be behind, even intentionally so. AJ

Just a note related to Hurricane Irma. T-Mobile has fared pretty well in my area. There was a brief interval of about 2-3 hours when the site battery back up failed but then it roared back up. The speeds have been excellent. Severely disappointed with AT&T which had a very bogged down network. I suspect that AT&T lost the site nearest to me during the storm although that site is both battery and generator protected. Both data and voice were iffy on AT&T. I have no idea how Sprint faired since I no longer have Project Fi.

I've made navigation and color toning changes to help readability and help you all get around the site. Web site and mobile site. With the changes, I'm starting to dig it. Especially the mobile site. I'm actually liking it much better than Tapatalk. IP Board responded to my support request and it made no difference when I re-installed Tapatalk. I don't know what further to do at this point on that front. But to wait for Tapatalk's next update for IP Board 4.2. Hope you are finding the site more usable now. More to do. Going to get more coffee. Robert

yep, BID 2690 we have logged/confirmed already. its the very last tower in iowa along I-35 before crossing into MO. looks like it would be roughly 50 miles away as the crow flies. not impossible to get a signal that far away, when 1x800 started coming online around here i picked up a tower 62 miles away in my house, it was a very weak unusable signal, but it was there.

SID 4190 is the St. Louis MTA, so that band class 1 signal is definitely coming from Missouri. AJ

Could be atmospherics playing with the signals. Look up "TV DXing" for an example of what happens in the UHF TV band during tropospheric ducting, and that band is right below the 700 MHz/800 MHz bands. I wouldn't be surprised, also, if that made the downlink path much stronger than the presumably much weaker uplink path, meaning that you would see a signal you can't actually use because you can see the tower but the tower can't see you. - Trip

Because as of right now it's still pretty high value with only one device that supports it and pretty much undeployed/unable to be deployed in many areas for another 2-3 years. I'm not suggesting that they should divest it, but it would likely be one of the first things on the chopping block.

Agree 1000% re prices going up. Odd thing is that Verizon and AT&T stock prices spiked up on this news. I'd bet $10 that the reason for this is that Wall Street also sees the end of, or at least a reduction in price competition if the merger is allowed.

Looks like it's going to be 3-months free initially per their press release. Macworld states: "Sprint's data plan for Apple Watch Series 3 costs $15 a month, but customers who sign up for auto-pay will get a $5 discount, bringing it down to the same $10 as the other three carriers. And Sprint is also offering a three-month free trial with no activation fee." Pretty crappy if you don't do AutoPay, so that's a must. Sprint intentionally pricing themselves higher than the competition seems like a bold move to me.