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There are positives to be had if there is a merger, for sure. I don't believe a merger is bad in every way. And if it happens, there will be things that I will like. I just believe, at this time, all things considered, I'd prefer they'd be separate. Just my opinion, and I respect the opinions of others points as well. Because I considered them, and they are marked in the 'pro' column for me. I like where Sprint is going now more than ever in its past. And Sprint's road to "5G" is less capital intensive than the others because of spectrum and equipment deployed.

This merger would stagnate the wireless market it would stink almost immediately. You are pro-merger but already wondering if they would have capital to build and expand the network. Sprint now has positive revenue to increase CAPEX for additional B41, MIMO, and 5G why hault the improvements that Sprint has been making? You guys screaming pro merger really need to sit back and really think, are you willing to see less competition and increasing wireless bills? Not to mention that unlimited will be a thing of the past, after all it was Sprint and T-Mobile that made the big two offer unlimited. If this merger goes through I don't want to hear complaining I am taking names...

SignalCheck Pro update is finally out! Should be available on Google Play within the hour. I believe most of the changes should be self-explanatory. 0E8 appears to be for Airave 3's, not Magic Boxes. The biggest difference is Airave 3 or S1000 B41 connections will now show as "Airave/S1000" because I have not identified a way to differentiate between the two yet. Added additional indicators for Sprint LTE band 41 Airave/S1000 cells. Added additional indicators for Sprint LTE band 41 Magic Box cells. Added indicators for T-Mobile LTE band 4 Cellspot and In-Store Pico cells. Added support for LTE band 71. Improved identification of mobile network type on IWLAN connections. Resolved issue with invalid GSM neighbor cell PLMN/CID/LAC information displayed. Resolved issue with IWLAN signal strength missing from notification icon. (Pro) Updated provider database. Thanks for everyone's support! Holler with questions anytime.. -Mike

CONTEST CLOSED!!! LIMITED TIME PROMOTION!!! YOU COULD POSSIBLY WIN A NEW iPHONE 8 IF YOU DONATE TO SUPPORT S4GRU **OR COMPARABLY PRICED ANDROID DEVICE!** The Goal The goal is to have some fun and raise some money to support S4GRU. If we can raise enough money to cover the device by 8 PM Pacific Time on Friday, October 27th, then we will schedule the raffle. The contest winner can select the color from what's available. The winner can also select the carrier (not limited to Sprint). The Plan If we are able to raise at least as much as the device costs us plus incidental charges like taxes and shipping, we will add any additional proceeds to the S4GRU general fund. If we can't raise enough, we will provide opportunity to refund. And which model it ends up being depends on how much money we can raise. If we raise just $750, it will be the iPhone 8 64GB ($699 value). For each additional $500 we collect beyond $750, we will give another $100 in toward upgrading to the iPhone 8+, iPhone X or memory/apple care upgrades. The winner can select any variant or upgrades, but they will need to pay any cost difference, from the prize value. Increases in prize vales will be announced in this thread. THE WINNER CAN SELECT AN ANDROID DEVICE IN LIEU OF AN iPHONE, IF THEY CHOOSE. Like a NOTE 8, Pixel 2, LG V30, Essential Phone, etc. Equal or lesser value to the winning iPhone prize. The Raffle Each donation to the iPHONE 8 PROMO will receive a range of numbers, equating to one number for every dollar you donate. The minimum donation to the cause is $10. If you donate $10, you get a range of 10 numbers. If you donate $100, you get a range of 100 numbers. The more you donate, the greater your chances of winning. There is no limit to the amount you can donate...in amount or frequency. But it needs to be at least $10 per donation to the iPHONE 8 PROMO. You will receive a Private Message (or email if you are not a S4GRU member) from S4GRU giving you your numbers after your donation. Most likely within 8-12 hours, but could take a day or two. We will stop accepting donations at 8PM Pacific on Friday, October 27th. Any donations received after that time will not be counted toward this promotion. Date and time of the drawing will be announced after the close of donations acceptance. We will select a number at random using my random number generator app in my Pixel XL. You do not need to be present in the live chat to win. All money donated to the raffle will be credited to your S4GRU accumulation total and will count toward future upgrades. If you are not currently a S4GRU Sponsor, you will be given Sponsor status for six months with the minimum $10 raffle donation. To Enter Go to the S4GRU PayPal Donation section by clicking on this hyperlink or by by clicking the donate button in the upper right hand corner of most S4GRU pages. Enter an amount you want to donate for this promotion, minimum $10. In the notes section, tell us your screen name and type iPHONE 8 PROMO. If you forget to do that in the PayPal donation, then send me a Message. You will get a message response giving you your raffle numbers by 11 PM Pacific on 10/27/2017. If you don't get them, message me. Rules S4GRU Membership is not required to enter. S4GRU Staff Members and their families are ineligible to win. Dollars spent on the promotion will count toward future member upgrades. There is no cash value of the prize. S4GRU will pay the shipping costs to send the prize to the winner. The winner will be offered options as to network selections, device options and colors based on availability within the winning prize amount. S4GRU cannot guarantee availability of any products, types, varieties or colors. Although many devices can be used on several networks, S4GRU cannot guarantee operability on any network. A SIM card purchase for the winner's preferred network may be required and is not paid by S4GRU. This contest is void where prohibited. Pre-scheduled automatic recurring payments to S4GRU during the contest period will not be eligible for entry in the contest. Should the winner desire a phone other than the iPhone product offered at contest conclusion, they can request an Android device of equal or lesser value. If a device more expensive than the iPhone offered is desired, the winner will need to pay the difference before the product will be ordered. If winner selects a less expensive phone than the prize offered, S4GRU will retain those funds as a donation. The contest may be subject to amendment, extension or cancellation as necessary. S4GRU reserves the right to provide a gift card or PayPal payment of the value of the prize for convenience or difficulty in sourcing the prize occurs. Photo Courtesy of Phone Arena

I don't think a merger will help consumers much. TMobile capex is $5b. Sprint might spend $5b. A merged company still could have $10b, but it will take years and a LOT of money to consolidate assets. There is going to be a lot of work, and a lot of money that will not go into making the network better, but making 2 networks 1. If you want to see a combined company make ProjectFi your carrier. Just look at some recent mergers. Charter is doing horrible. AT&T and DirecTV brought no value but just increased TV bills. Large acquisitions tend not to benefit the customers but more so investors and those on the board who get millions for making a deal happen. As an investor I can see the excitement, but not so much a customer.

How is Canada's three wireless companies working out...

You would think this would be a easy merger for Charter to absorb TWC beings that they served different areas. But just Google it. Charter is raising prices in their own markets. Upgrades that TWC was conducting have been stopped. Charter is pulling back higher speeds / lower prices that TWC was offering in favor of their own slower more expensive offerings. Service quality is going down. Charter isn't meeting buildout obligations in the state of NY so are willing to take a penalty fee. They city of Lexington, KY is pressing Charter very hard right now due to poor service and high/increased prices. In this news report there is some revenue per customers here. https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/08/charter-has-moved-millions-of-customers-to-new-and-often-higher-pricing/ You'd think more volume/customers = lower prices. But they are trying to increase revenue per customer. These mergers want you to think that more customers will lower prices, but when you are this big it is all about the money. They do the same thing for TV. "Oh, if we merge with another cable operator we have greater bargaining power to reduce the cost of channels" yet the first thing they do is up TV prices *looking at you AT&T/DirecTV! Sprint+TMobile will not lower prices at all. It will take a lot of time for the networks to fully merge together and redundant systems/towers removed, which will eat away at CAPEX. It will slow down all existing projects or completely stop them. And why even be concerned with buildout, being on par with VZW/ATT coverage? From TMobile's own reports/projections they should be on par with VZW coverage very shortly WITHOUT Sprint! And even with a spectrum disadvantage, they are practically #1 in terms of data speeds. There is a lot of spectrum out there to still be had for increased capacities if it was a real concern.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/20/technology/google-htc-smartphones.html?mcubz=3

Chicken Cow

I snagged an Airave 3 this week thanks to a timely heads up by a friendly S4GRUer! Sounds like inventory is still sparse, but I got lucky. Had to set up an RMA for the broken 2.5 before they would finish processing the new order. Arrived a few days later via UPS Ground and working ok so far. Biggest difference to me so far: the aesthetics. It is much larger than I expected; I knew it was bigger, but it still surprised me. All of the wires connect on the bottom. The data LEDs are on one side of the housing, while the voice LEDs are on the other. None of this is really a problem, just unusual. -Mike

I don't want to see a merger for three reasons: 1. I don't want them having any association with TMO because that has the potential to drag TMO down with them if TMO doesn't handle the merger super carefully. 2. I don't want my prices going up any higher than they already are (which are already asinine compared to many other countries) 3. I want to see Sprint put into motion those densification plans that got out recently and see them succeed on their own.

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!

While as a greedy consumer you may want to keep them at 4 with a weak Sprint competing strictly on price because they cannot afford to expand their network, as an objective observer you have to admit that this is a highly capital incentive industry and the more customers you can spread capex over the better. I do believe that a third strong competitor will be better for consumers than two large ones and two weaker ones. A combined t-mobile/Sprint can compete on network quality and not just price

How do you know 4 in 2025 isnt going to be the same as 7 in 2017? These companies are looking at this everyday and the market, which is alot smarter than both of us, has been trying to get the national carriers down to three for a while now. The fact is for The two years after this one sprint is likily to cut capex drastically. It is hard to see how they compete going forward. Would it be better to take a 3 player market because of a merger or risk a 3 player market do to a bankruptcy?

I am 100% against this merger. Sprint and Tmobile should remain separate to keep the competition at 4 players. If currently there were 7 semi major players in the wireless industry, I would agree with you that consolidation of a few more players would be beneficial for the industry due to LTE and 5G going forward requiring high amounts of spectrum bandwidths. However we are now down to 4 players which to me is already a good number to maintain nationally. Comparing how it looked in 2003 doesn't matter back then because we didn't have LTE that required at least 5x5 , 10x10, 20x20 MHz bandwidth. It would have sucked if we still have 7 major players in the 600 MHz auction with only 70 MHz available for purchase and each buying a nationwide 5x5 block of spectrum instead of fewer players buy a bigger chunk of spectrum to deploy larger bandwidths. Sprint needs to be worrying about getting itself into gear and try to deploy its B41 LTE in small cells and densify its network instead of looking for a bailout in Tmobile to save them.

You literally said #2 carrier ahead of AT&T. They're #2 not because of network metrics but because of the amount of subscribers they have. Nationally, T-Mobile is still ranked last in terms of overall network performance because despite their square milage, they still lack in call and text reliability. There is zero doubt that they have one of, if not the fastest network in the country but that is far from the only metric to measure a network, even if it's the most important to you. All you have to do is look at the recent reddit thread that suggested T-Mobile might stop their program that gives people those Cellspots to see that a lot of people were ready to switch because the only thing keeping them on was that device giving them service indoors. At least we know Sprint is going all in on the Magic Boxes and they treat it as a part of their network instead of as just another device.

This is a reach. AT&T and Verizon still have twice as many customers as T-Mobile and even if they added 2 Million customers per quarter it would take 8 years before they got to VZ and AT&T's current size, assuming VZW or AT&T don't have any growth at all. We can acknowledge T-Mobile's accomplishments without making it seem like they're nearly on par with the big two. In terms of data speed, sure. In terms of price, they're approaching it too. However, you won't be able to find the consistency of the duopoly's network nationwide on T-Mobile right now. That'll take quite a bit more infill sites. That's why given Sprint's "non-announcement" of 8K macro sites for expansion, I'm glad to see it's not a huge expansion because we know that they're going for reliability over square mileage.

I don't recall anyone saying they expect pricing to further reduce in either scenario...Sprint going alone nor a merger with Tmo.

Munitions Workers

Munition Duds

The total percent of subscribers graph shows everything you need to know about the current US wireless industry. Verizon has ~35%, AT&T has ~35%, and all the other competitors are competing for the final 25% to 30%. This also means that 70% to 75% of all the profits are split between AT&T and Verizon which gives them the money to keep deploying and keeps them with much larger, stronger networks. If AT&T and Verizon can each afford to spend $10 billion+ on their networks each year, no smaller competitor can hope to keep up.

I see the purple on the Minuteman Site. I've been to it many sites. Very friendly horse next to it. It's a well established AT&T Guyed Wire Site. It's possible this might be AT&T LTE Roaming pollution on Sensorly. Especially given the strength of the report. I was expecting the Sprint site in this area to be in the town site of Wall itself. I guess it's possible Sprint chose this site instead. If I still lived in the area, I'd go check it out. But alas..

From the graph above it is evident that contrary to popular belief, T-Mobile has been cannibalizing Sprint mainly. That's not really competing against the big 2 now, is it?

So, made progress today on my MB. I decided to take it out of the box after it being in it for a couple weeks. After a couple days I noticed last night it is at 80%!!!! But damn, it's been there at least 12hrs at "Connecting LTE".

An interesting read from Seeking Alpha Business... Here is a snippet. I would post the entire article link but you have to subscribe to see it in it's entirety. This was interested as it measured the 4 main carrier's spectrum holdings... Article Link Edited by staff to comply with fair use. Don't post 3/4s of an article and always link to the source.

Yay! That time of year again

At&t buying Dish? Not a chance! Now if Dish were to divest their unused spectrum, then that's a different story.

Just wanna say this has been one of the best purchasing decisions I've ever made. Equal or better specs than my broken 5X for the most part at literally half the cost, and I'm confident it won't self-brick in the middle of an all night high school parking pass registration stakeout. ( @ my dead 5X) The camera does suck. I can get decent shots out of it in pro mode but that requires adjusting a bunch of little sliders and it's a pain when you just want a photo. Pretty much the only drawback. (Unless you rely heavily on NFC. Don't buy this phone if you need NFC.) Battery life is phenomenal. I can go 2 days. It charges as fast or faster than my 5X with quickcharge. No noticeable speed difference from the 5X. And I use the flashlight wave gesture all the time. Very convenient.

So I leave for a few weeks because AP calculus runs my schedule now, and... this happened? Huh. It looks pretty good. I'll get used to it.

I am extremely pro-merger. I would have rather 3 very good networks than two good networks and 2 hit and miss networks, even if prices go up(this isnt a for sure thing). Further, with the amount of spectrum the new company would have (and hopefully the capital to deploy it!) They could compete against traditional fixed line broadband, a plan masa aluded to last time he attempted to merge the two companies. The low end of the market can be served by MVNOs. Remember this is a capital intensive business, which means the market is better served by fewer players with larger scale and there is another round of massive capital expenditures right around the corner.

So a lot of news sources are saying that Softbank is giving up most control of Sprint to T-Mobile on the merger. Do you think Softbank has a long term plan on buying T-Mobile once the merger is complete? I'm not in favor of this merger if it does go through.

Could be announced tomorrow... http://www.androidpolice.com/2017/09/20/google-acquisition-htc-announced-tomorrow-trading-halted-taiwan/

I believe I am going to wait until 11.1 is released unless I purchase a new 8 Plus in the next week or so. I have seen a few videos discussing some of the glitches that are being experienced with 11 and with the 6S Plus, it may be a bigger issue versus a 7 or the new 8.

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.

Duh, why else would it be called a watch? AJ

Hot off the Goldman Sachs Investor call with Marcelo Claure... Highlights at 35 mins into the call (11:05 Eastern) -Sprint will add 2000 Macro sites (no time frame given) - Will have EVERY cell site with 800, 1.9 and 2.5 (No time frame given) - Will deploy many thousands of mini macro and such in addition to the Macro sites. -Capex will be $5-7 billion this year and "At least that much next year or more".... Marcelo's thoughts were that now that Sprint is growth positive and cash positive (his words) Sprint can now invest heavily and expand it's footprint.

I have mine on all the time, so.....all the time, I guess?? It's been working fine for me and I have only had 1 dropped call, but I usually have a dropped call here or there before Calling Plus too. The connection between my wife's phone and mine is always so crystal clear. Especially through our car bluetooth kits now, which was starting to be a problem with the S8 and S8+ before Calling Plus.

All outstanding G-block licenses checked show granted by FCC effective 5/19/2017 for expiration 3/3/2026. :tu: