Sprint Q3 report discussion (was Sprint loses subscribers in the third quarter")

[irwinshere]

The third quarter is the last quarter that subscriber counts can be directly attributable to iDEN shutdown. However, there will continue to be financial impacts in current quarter and even future quarters.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Does sprint still have leases on old iden towers to pay off?

 

Jim, Sent from my Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

 

 

 

[S4GRU]

Does sprint still have leases on old iden towers to pay off?

 

Jim, Sent from my Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

I don't know if Sprint has already completely terminated all their iDaEN site leases and would need to renogotiate new, or if they kept some, or if they still need to finalize the lease cancellations.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[squigey]

I hope they still plan to take 2.5 nationwide

That's still the plan:

 

Jonathan Chaplin - New Street Research

Thanks. I am wondering if I could just follow up on Brett's question on the network strategy. So I think we are all looking forward to the point in time where Sprint has a really compelling network advantage over everybody else with a lot more capacity and faster speeds than AT&T and Verizon. And in order to get there, in my mind it seems like a very dense deployment of 2.5 gigahertz spectrum is what gets you there. It sounds like from your comments Steve, that what you are talking about is more of a hotspot deployment, with 2.5 only in dense markets. Is that what you meant to express? And if so, how do we -

Steve Elfman

No.

Jonathan Chaplin - New Street Research

Right. Go ahead.

Steve Elfman - President of Network, Technology and Operations

Sorry, Jonathan. No, then I expressed myself incorrectly. Today it was a hotspot market as when we just did it with Clearwire. But our approach will be to really densify and really, in the urban areas first, to be able to get the speed and the capacity in those areas. But now the goal is to build out 2.5 and use that 120 megahertz across the nation. So now if I left the impression with you that it's only a hotspot then that's incorrect.

 

 

[digiblur]

I hope they still plan to take 2.5 nationwide

 

Yes, but is it going to all sites like stated last call? No.

[digiblur]

It's never too late. Now that Sprint has SoftBank money, I really do wish Sprint would go back and reexamine IDEN site conversion, especially in areas where Sprint coverage is greatly reduced from IDEN. 

 

All the iDen sites I pass on my commute still have the antennas installed, hut on location, meter still seated in the meter pan and the breaker still locked in the "on" position.  One of them did have the copper exchange coils on the two A/C units on the hut missing though

[jefbal99]

 

In the 1.9 on LTE, as we have said, we are seeing consistently about 6 to 8 megabits per second. 

And I just spit coffee on my laptop, reading that tripe.  I'm in a launched market and any urban LTE site is so overloaded, that legacy 3G is typically faster.  I'm talking 0.05mbps down and 0.50mbps up, that is how slow legacy 3g was before the "network maintenance" fixes.  Every msg to CS is "NV is underway, more towers are being upgraded."  Utter crap, we have sites, like every market, that are waiting on backhaul.  Antennas and RRUs are/have been up for months, but no backhaul or acceptance.  Sprint needs to either get on their backhaul vendors to complete work or get a different vendor!.

 

I'm ranting, mods do what you need with this post...

[jefbal99]

All the iDen sites I pass on my commute still have the antennas installed, hut on location, meter still seated in the meter pan and the breaker still locked in the "on" position.  One of them did have the copper exchange coils on the two A/C units on the hut missing though

I have more empty racks than antennas from the original iDen thinning in Michigan, but there is still a lot out there that they could do NV to, but as my previous post, Sprint can't get vendors to complete the sites in process right now, why add more on top?

[Ascertion]

Later today, we will announce groundbreaking advancements in network and device technology.

 

"Introducing Samsung Knox for all of pur current Samsung devices." I can already see that.

[Fraydog]

http://www.rcrwireless.com/article/20131030/carriers/sprint-posts-dour-q3-results-investors-appear-unfazed/?elq=82a859670f984dfcad1b1f24a91ff762&elqCampaignId=2280

 

RCR Wireless (whoever that is) thinks Sprint's results are dour. 

 

Compared to the last few years, they're actually pretty good. If you exclude ATNI from AT&T, Sprint lost fewer postpaid customers than AT&T did. That's a point lost on nearly everyone but not lost to me. I'd be surprised if most AT&T investors knew what ATNI was, given that $780 million is little more than a speed bump on the Death Star's radar. 

 

Furthermore if you exclude USCC and Clear losses, Sprint's picture is even more positive. 

[Fraydog]

All the iDen sites I pass on my commute still have the antennas installed, hut on location, meter still seated in the meter pan and the breaker still locked in the "on" position.  One of them did have the copper exchange coils on the two A/C units on the hut missing though

 

Same with my closest IDEN sites.

 

They're either legacy synergy sites like Red Bud's or sites like the Nextel site around Perryville, MO where they still have all the Nextel gear in place. Of course that Nextel site is not needed for conversation since there's a Sprint tower recently converted to Network Vision 1000 feet away. 

[digiblur]

And I just spit coffee on my laptop, reading that tripe.  I'm in a launched market and any urban LTE site is so overloaded, that legacy 3G is typically faster.  I'm talking 0.05mbps down and 0.50mbps up, that is how slow legacy 3g was before the "network maintenance" fixes.

 

Trust me, I understand.  I have a -95 LTE signal at my desk.  Works great at 6:30am.  Dead by 9am or 10am.  I switch to EVDO and hope I don't get stuck on the broken EVDO channel 100 (1 year as of tomorrow).  EVDO works pretty good on this site since I assume everyone else is stuck on the dead LTE.  I found a trick that once I get on channel 75 or 175 EVDO I open a ping session to keep the EVDO session active so I don't get kicked to the broken channel 100.  Waste of bandwidth yes, but it saves me rebooting 7 or 8 times in a row. 

 

On other sites around town in the city I see the typical 3-4 megabits.  Some sites on the outskirts of coverage (not the outskirt of the city anymore) where not many Sprint users reside I can snag a 20 megabit stream.  3-4 works fine for me for what I need my phone to do.  Really waiting on 800LTE though to fix most of the issues as I find myself using EVDO more than LTE here in the launched market.

[jefbal99]

Trust me, I understand.  I have a -95 LTE signal at my desk.  Works great at 6:30am.  Dead by 9am or 10am.  I switch to EVDO and hope I don't get stuck on the broken EVDO channel 100 (1 year as of tomorrow).  EVDO works pretty good on this site since I assume everyone else is stuck on the dead LTE.  I found a trick that once I get on channel 75 or 175 EVDO I open a ping session to keep the EVDO session active so I don't get kicked to the broken channel 100.  Waste of bandwidth yes, but it saves me rebooting 7 or 8 times in a row. 

 

On other sites around town in the city I see the typical 3-4 megabits.  Some sites on the outskirts of coverage (not the outskirt of the city anymore) where not many Sprint users reside I can snag a 20 megabit stream.  3-4 works fine for me for what I need my phone to do.  Really waiting on 800LTE though to fix most of the issues as I find myself using EVDO more than LTE here in the launched market.

I wish Sprint, with this modern network and all these new monitoring capabilities would either increase the bandwidth at the overloaded sites to alleviate the strain (isn't this backhaul supposedly scalable within days?!?!) or get after their vendors to complete work.  You can't blame Samsung and their subcontractors as Cabinets/Antenna/RRUs etc are all in place.  I seem to remember reading from you that your vendor just stopped working, i.e. Antennas installed, but then no RRUs or cabinets.

 

I'm Sprint's biggest supporter and I fully understand the "shotgun" plan of hitting as many sites as possible, then reloading, but it seems like they either forgot to reload or have run out of ammunition.

[WiWavelength]

I found a trick that once I get on channel 75 or 175 EVDO I open a ping session to keep the EVDO session active so I don't get kicked to the broken channel 100.  Waste of bandwidth yes, but it saves me rebooting 7 or 8 times in a row. 

 

Instead of rebooting, why not use my airplane mode trick to generate a new data session, hence a new EV-DO carrier hash?

 

AJ

[digiblur]

Instead of rebooting, why not use my airplane mode trick to generate a new data session, hence a new EV-DO carrier hash?

 

AJ

 

Tried that many times before even leaving it in airplane for 5-10 minutes.  It seems the reboot is what gets me out of the 75-100-75-100 handshake/handoff loop then it's a 1 in 3 chance it will happen again upon bootup.  Some of that Samsung "Enginerring"?

[Fraydog]

At least the rants here are documented with real, on the ground data. 

 

Yeah, Sprint needs to go around and fix that. I realize it's going to be a year before we see the real fruits of Network Vision, but if Ericsson doesn't fix the red stickied sites and start demanding more excellence from its backhaul suppliers on the ground, then someone like Elfman, Azzi, or Hesse himself will have to intervene personally. 

 

That's not a rant, from my point of view. It is legitimate, constructive criticism. Sprint just can't afford many more mistakes with this buildout. The learning process should be over by now.

[digiblur]

At least the rants here are documented with real, on the ground data. 

 

Yeah, Sprint needs to go around and fix that. I realize it's going to be a year before we see the real fruits of Network Vision, but if Ericsson doesn't fix the red stickied sites and start demanding more excellence from its backhaul suppliers on the ground, then someone like Elfman, Azzi, or Hesse himself will have to intervene personally. 

 

That's not a rant, from my point of view. It is legitimate, constructive criticism. Sprint just can't afford many more mistakes with this buildout. The learning process should be over by now.

 

I will say that in our market we have had a much higher percentage of working accepted sites that in the past so they did fix an issue with integrating sites here.  I believe we only have one known red-sticked LTE site in our market now.  It shows up on Sprint.com coverage but is still dead.  No one has gone back to fix the botched installs though that were accepted.  Still look at my "Gangsta' Lean" site with mixed up RRUs daily on my way home along with the NYC coverage designed site in a rural setting.  Maybe QC will snag a bunch of this stuff... but if it's Ericsson doing the QC, they'll just sign off on it like they do for a lot of their work here.  Nuff said for me for the day...

[bigzeto]

Tried that many times before even leaving it in airplane for 5-10 minutes.  It seems the reboot is what gets me out of the 75-100-75-100 handshake/handoff loop then it's a 1 in 3 chance it will happen again upon bootup.  Some of that Samsung "Enginerring"?

 

Surprised I haven't thought of this before now, but we should take a short video of the engineering screen when the EVDO channel is bouncing between 75 and 100 and send it to Ticket support.  If anything, it would just provide the network dispatch folks a better picture of what exactly is happening.

[S4GRU]

And I just spit coffee on my laptop, reading that tripe. I'm in a launched market and any urban LTE site is so overloaded, that legacy 3G is typically faster. I'm talking 0.05mbps down and 0.50mbps up, that is how slow legacy 3g was before the "network maintenance" fixes. Every msg to CS is "NV is underway, more towers are being upgraded." Utter crap, we have sites, like every market, that are waiting on backhaul. Antennas and RRUs are/have been up for months, but no backhaul or acceptance. Sprint needs to either get on their backhaul vendors to complete work or get a different vendor!.

 

I'm ranting, mods do what you need with this post...

Sounds like Sprint is not the best choice for you. Since we get called out for not being fair to everyone, note this is a warning for violating the posting guidelines.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[jefbal99]

Sounds like Sprint is not the best choice for you. Since we get called out for not being fair to everyone, note this is a warning for violating the posting guidelines.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Unfortunately, it is the best choice for me (both VZW and AT&T won't work due to the data tiers and not having any HSI available at my home.  My cell phone and hotspot are all I have for any internet access.  I only tether to my hotspot legally, all cell phone usage is just apps on the device).

 

I know that S4GRU can't do anything about NV, this is just the only place that has people that understand what is actually going on.  I'm frustrated that what was a wonderful NV experience has gone to crap.  I'm sorry for the rant

[S4GRU]

I wish Sprint, with this modern network and all these new monitoring capabilities would either increase the bandwidth at the overloaded sites to alleviate the strain (isn't this backhaul supposedly scalable within days?!?!) or get after their vendors to complete work. You can't blame Samsung and their subcontractors as Cabinets/Antenna/RRUs etc are all in place. I seem to remember reading from you that your vendor just stopped working, i.e. Antennas installed, but then no RRUs or cabinets.

 

I'm Sprint's biggest supporter and I fully understand the "shotgun" plan of hitting as many sites as possible, then reloading, but it seems like they either forgot to reload or have run out of ammunition.

I believe that Sprint has a lot of bundled copper used earlier in NV to tie over until fiber arrives. That's what they were going to use in New Mexico at first, but then that got pulled because it was a "failure" in earlier markets, according to an Ericsson integration tech in ran into once. That guy said that in new markets, like Albuquerque, they are bypassing bundled T3's and will just bring LTE up on each site when the fiber arrives.

 

This could be a reason why there are a lot of dog slow LTE sites out there in places that just don't seem that the air link could be already saturated. Like rural Michigan. It wouldn't take much to bog down 20-25Mbps from some bundled T3's on three sectors.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

[jefbal99]

I believe that Sprint has a lot of bundled copper used earlier in NV to tie over until fiber arrives. That's what they were going to use in New Mexico at first, but then that got pulled because it was a "failure" in earlier markets, according to an Ericsson integration tech in ran into once. That guy said that in new markets, like Albuquerque, they are bypassing bundled T3's and will just bring LTE up on each site when the fiber arrives.

 

This could be a reason why there are a lot of dog slow LTE sites out there in places that just don't seem that the air link could be already saturated. Like rural Michigan. It wouldn't take much to bog down 20-25Mbps from some bundled T3's on three sectors.

 

Robert via Samsung Note 8.0 using Tapatalk Pro

Rural Michigan sites are fine, its the Urban sites that went from great service in the Spring/Summer to dog slow this fall.  I'm pretty sure that part of it is related to Michigan State University being back in session, bandwidth went straight to hell in late August when the students showed up.  If the sites that were currently built could get their backhaul, the network stress would be gone because the load would be shared across an additional 4-7 sites.

 

(I hope my sarcasm in the post you quoted was noted )

[Fraydog]

I'll add this. Very few sites have had any red stickie issues around my region. The ones in this area that have been red stickied, were fixed quickly. YMMV. The St. Louis area installers have to be congratulated for a job well done.

 

I'm hoping to get a FreedomPOP hotspot soon for TD-LTE testing.

[afazel]

I've seen the term yesterday and today, but what is a "red-stickied" site?

[digiblur]

I've seen the term yesterday and today, but what is a "red-stickied" site?

 

Another one of those damn terms the NOLA market started..donut sites..red sticked sites.

 

Baton Rouge translates to Red Stick.  We had a bunch of sites at the beginning of the market rollout that didn't work.  I was marking them on our market map as red pins.  Looked like a bunch of red sticking out the map in Baton Rouge so the irony stuck.  We started calling any broken site in our market, "red sticked".

[afazel]

Another one of those damn terms the NOLA market started..donut sites..red sticked sites.

 

Baton Rouge translates to Red Stick.  We had a bunch of sites at the beginning of the market rollout that didn't work.  I was marking them on our market map as red pins.  Looked like a bunch of red sticking out the map in Baton Rouge so the irony stuck.  We started calling any broken site in our market, "red sticked".

 

Ah, thanks. I like that.