newyork4me

Verizon is currently deploying CBRS equipment faster than T-Mobile is doing 2.5ghz. There's something like 80mhz unlicensed and they can bid on up to 40 MhZ for PALs...so, real spectrum advantages might be rather limited...

I just lost B41 LTE in downtown Los Angeles. Can’t even get it by forcing band selection—everything is B25 now...

Bingo. You are making my point for me. They have no market share, but a network that is now better than it would reflect. Their 5G launch will also put them way ahead of geographic coverage for 5G compared to their competitors too.

I think it's been reported that Sprint has more than that now, but yes, you often will make up for it with small cells. Many of T-Mobile's cites are rooftop urban sites for density...that's all addressed by small cells. Take Los Angeles...Sprint does not need more macros. They can use small cells to make up for all of their remaining deficiencies...hek, it's rare to get a macro above 45ft in height these days anyway. Instead, small cells are suitable to covering the canyons (more so than macros) and are better at spot coverage/capacity in certain neighborhoods (based on zoning issues). 4 million people live in Los Angeles City limits. There's no reason Sprint cannot provide the best network for every single one of those people. That's where Sprint has the true potential. Major metros. (And NY matters...they have 18 million folks in that metro area, and 19,000 small cells with Altice... Chicago has the density and good suburban network inherited from US Cellular). Targeting just a few key metro areas and having the best network will pull in subscribers. It's a strategy that has worked over and over. Not everyone wants the VZW coverage map at VZW prices and VZW congestion. Unlimited 4K streaming on Sprint 5G on the best urban network...that's a compelling value proposition.

Dear goodness, please stop misrepresenting what I said. For real. I said half should go to urban areas, after another full year of urban-only spending. Nowhere did I say the other half should go to rural areas. Nowhere. In fact, I said that was the flaw of Network Vision. There's urban, suburban, exurban, and rural areas. Neither of the latter two were in my mind for the other half of the spending, two years out from now. This, by the way, is the exact strategy T-Mobile used in 2013-2015, and it worked very well for them. Sprint, in fact, has an advantage they did not going into it--they already have low-band in the metro areas, and they have a large swath of beachfront spectrum for 5G with technology to make it far more useful than it has ever been (beam forming, etc.)

If you read what I wrote, it's literally the opposite of what your response tries to make it seem. I said they need to spend all their CapEx the next year in urban areas only and then at least half of it dedicated to urban areas going forward. NV 1.0 was exactly the wrong play, because it haphazardly spent resources (many times in rural areas that had no compelling reason). Please don't create strawman interpretations of what I said.

Again, I have to point you to Chicago and New York City as good examples of their density efforts. They have about a thousand mini-macros coming online in Chicago and 20,000 strand-mount small cells deployed in the NYC area on Altice fiber. It's cost effective and offers unmatched capacity.

I would never believe a sales-pitch argument to the FCC--that has almost no consequences for misleading statements--over those to investors that are subject to the threat of insurmountable criminal and civil liability. But, that's just the perspective of a successful businessman and lawyer.

See quotes from their transcripts.

This is really true. The image is a problem. I happened to have a free line that I was going to cancel to see the changes, and I've now kept it. Sprint made some good decisions with partnering with laptop makers to add free Sprint LTE though...that'll get people convinced....200 Mbps on their Windows Tablet...$15/mo? Hek yes! Otherwise, word of mouth. Same thing T-Mobile went through with their tarnished brand. Maybe. But, also just get people to talk about their experiences. For the first time, Sprint actually has a different network experience.

Ha. Sprint is discounting their prior disaster of NV, etc., and just focusing on their John Saw network improvement plan when they talk about it. I'm a believer. If you go back in my post history, I didn't think Sprint could turn it around. Los Angeles was a disaster. They've bumped capacity like crazy, fixed coverage holes, and now have low-band LTE and VoLTE live. It's night-and-day from a year ago.

Verizon had about $120 billion in debt and AT&T over $110 billion. It's not all due at once. Within the next year, Sprint only has $4 billion maturing, and that's easily reissued.

I've already read it. Sprint is trying to use a failing firm argument to have their objectively verifiable competition-reducing merger approved. It's hard to dispute the porting ratios, the HHI screen, and the spectrum screen, so they are doing the best they can by claiming they need it or else. It's literally hogwash. Read the earnings transcript from yesterday and closely pay attention to the words--Sprint is doing just fine. They are one year into their network improvement plan and they are already noticing it is working.

It's not. At all. And that is assuming an action nobody is seriously talking about--judicial restructuring. Sprint can, on their own, reissue new notes to pay off their current ones. That's not a restructuring; it's a retirement and reissuance.

So, for their last quarterly results (reported yesterday), they generated $10.429 billion dollars in net cash from their operations in the year. That means they had over $10 billion to invest in network CapEx, devices, or to service debt. They are also having revenue growth as customers are upselling into the Plus and Premium add-ons as the network gets stronger.