Sprint Reportedly Bowing Out of T-Mobile Bid (was "Sprint offer" and "Iliad" threads)

[WiWavelength]

Fixed again!

 

 

AJ

[richy]

 

 

I'm saying that it would cost less than 40B to complete NV in all of its current phases and add towers to expand sprint's current footprint to match/overbuild what it would gain with the addition of t-mobile. 

It would but the bigger picture is more complicated. Buying tmo removes the biggest / most similar competitor, the get instant gratification (immediate bump in subs,  revenue etc, ) and financially is easier to borrow against because they are buying something rather than the prospect of something. It's like asking the bank for money to buy a house vs asking them for money to buy some land and hire a builder,  the latter can be better but it's harder to assess the value of the final house so the loan is generally on stricter terms and more expensive. 

 

There are also economies of scale and 'synergies' which will factor into it.  Personally I'm not 100% sure about it but I can see it could be a good move. The regulators will probably can it,  especially if it doesn't happen before the next changing of the guard at Pennsylvania Ave. 

Edited June 24, 2014 by richy

[Fraydog]

You know what would be nice? Using the old Nextel towers on a much greater scale. Time for Hesse to make that happen.

[JThorson]

You know what would be nice? Using the old Nextel towers on a much greater scale. Time for Hesse to make that happen.

I was thinking the exact same thing. It would be awesome if they could do that. One can wish.

[gnoj]

You know what would be nice? Using the old Nextel towers on a much greater scale. Time for Hesse to make that happen.

 

I would imagine most of the leases for those sites have expired by now, unfortunately.

[anthony.spina97]

I would imagine most of the leases for those sites have expired by now, unfortunately.

That may be true, but I'm sure it wouldn't be terribly hard to reinstate those leases. It would also be a heck of a lot cheaper than having to construct a completely new tower.

 

-Anthony

[dnicekid]

I would imagine most of the leases for those sites have expired by now, unfortunately.

In my area I see several just there ... bare I am sure they could renew the leases at a cheaper price as well. The owners aren' t collecting anything right now but I bet they would something...

 

But I am sure those will go to charlie too.

[Fraydog]

I would imagine most of the leases for those sites have expired by now, unfortunately.

Considering that lots of those towers, especially in urban areas where other carriers are now on them, are still around, it's not to hard to get back to where they belong.

 

It is my opinion Sprint should get to a 65,000 site density, mostly in urban but also shoring up Sprint's signal on the borderline areas it has that are populated. That's another 25,000 sites. Guess what 25,000 could most easily be used? Get 65,000 TD-LTE sites and Sprint can finally start delivering on the promise it has. Get to this total by June 31, 2016.

[JeffDTD]

Oh , the nextel site debate. The wealth of knowledge on this site indicates that some of the sites were converted while most were either redundant or served areas that sprint struggled to find revenue to support the capex. And its important to remember that all of this planning was done long before softbank came into the picture.

 

If the money is there for expansion, way more than legacy nextel areas are going to be up for consideration. Think about it: What did nextelians who held onto an iden device until the bitter end, having never had sprint cdma native service, think about sprint now? I would venture to say that bringing them back to sprint would be more difficult than the average customer acquisition.

 

Atleast in my state, just erecting pcs coverage on the forgotten nextel sites would have created coverage islands, leaving considerable gaps that would have required additional sites to fill in or careful smr tuning and reliance. Sprint would never have gotten that transition and tuning to be seamless at the iden shutdown.

 

Sent from my SM-N900V using Tapatalk

[Josh]

Considering that lots of those towers, especially in urban areas where other carriers are now on them, are still around, it's not to hard to get back to where they belong.

 

It is my opinion Sprint should get to a 65,000 site density, mostly in urban but also shoring up Sprint's signal on the borderline areas it has that are populated. That's another 25,000 sites. Guess what 25,000 could most easily be used? Get 65,000 TD-LTE sites and Sprint can finally start delivering on the promise it has. Get to this total by June 31, 2016.

 

As much as many of the readers of this site would like to see this happen, I believe what you have laid out is a pipe dream... and a costly one at that.  They only have just south of 40,000 towers right now and have gotten down to that number in order to have operating revenue greater than costs.  I  was thinking more of surrounding current areas and filling in holes in coverage with a few more towers to lessen the roaming costs and provide better service in the areas they already serve.  There are a few areas that t-mobile serves and Sprint does not, that could be targeted for deployment as well, as long as they thought the population could support sprint with a certain percentage switching.  Then make sure that they have coverage along all interstate highways with a few extra towers in towns close to those highways (around hotels for travelers), because people traveling from areas that are covered with sprint should be covered while traveling to their destination.  It should not take a 50%+ increase in towers to accomplish this, as revenue would not increase by the same percentage.  

 

The only way that they would ever have 65,000+ towers is if they are allowed to merge with t-mobile.  This would be because they would keep all non-redundant towers... and they might still have to put up a few extra towers as outlined above. 

[DaQue]

65000 sites counting those mini cell B41 sites I could see happening.

 

Sent from my Nexus 5 using Tapatalk

[bigsnake49]

T-Mobile has 65,000 sites. I am not sure they need to keep all of them. If a lot of them are capacity sites and not coverage sites, then they need to be thinned since they will not be needed for capacity.

Sprint if they ever merge with T-Mobile will have to stop thinking about revenue justification and think more strategically. The reputation for weak coverage is hard to overcome and they will have to do something about it. They are playing with the big boys.

[lordsutch]

The beginning of the end of T-Mobile's network.

 

http://www.androidcentral.com/t-mobile-confirms-speedtest-data-no-longer-counts-against-data-allowances

[dstar2002]

Way to piss on net neutrality. High speeds today, buckets of cash you pay tomorrow.

 

Sent from my HTC M8

[dstar2002]

Just wait until Spotify doesn't count against your data use, but you have to pay T-Mobile 2.99 a month to use it, and Spotify goes up 2 bucks a month as well.

 

Sent from my HTC M8

[Fraydog]

There were about 10,000 Nextel sites that fit in none of the above categories. They were sites that would have clearly boosted urban capacity. It's probably not too late to at least use some of those sites.

 

I'll give a longer reply when time allows me to do so, but it's about time Sprint goes back on the aggressive. Sprint may or may not have been justified to let some of these go, but that's in the past. Time to densify starting now.

[Fraydog]

 

Are you kidding me? You don't even realize who you're talking to?

 

Way to go Sprintcare.

[cletus]

Way to piss on net neutrality. High speeds today, buckets of cash you pay tomorrow.

 

Sent from my HTC M8

I totally agree. This singles out Ookla's speedtest utility while not allowing others in on the freebie action which makes the path for a competitor harder. What if I want to use testmy.net (which is much more useful) to test my connection? Or DSLReports? Guess I have to use my data.

 

The telecoms ALREADY game the system by giving preferential treatment to speedtest.net. Seriously, that site tests ~10% higher than ANY other website for me on TWC. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Ookla also runs the speedtest on TWC's actual website?

[JWMaloney]

I totally agree. This singles out Ookla's speedtest utility while not allowing others in on the freebie action which makes the path for a competitor harder. What if I want to use testmy.net (which is much more useful) to test my connection? Or DSLReports? Guess I have to use my data.

 

According to Android Central, this is not the case -- "The Ookla Speedtest.net application is designed to measure true network speed--not show that a customer has exceeded their high-speed data bucket. Other speed test providers are also whitelisted."

 

The telecoms ALREADY game the system by giving preferential treatment to speedtest.net. Seriously, that site tests ~10% higher than ANY other website for me on TWC. Maybe it has to do with the fact that Ookla also runs the speedtest on TWC's actual website?

 

That has nothing to do with "preferential treatment" and everything to do with peering interconnects. Try speed testing to a server located near the data centers of "ANY other website" that you're referring to.

[CaptainSlow]

I wonder if FCC's speed test app is exempt from the data cap as well. It would be awkward for T-Mobile if it isn't.

Edited June 27, 2014 by CaptainSlow

[cletus]

According to Android Central, this is not the case -- "The Ookla Speedtest.net application is designed to measure true network speed--not show that a customer has exceeded their high-speed data bucket. Other speed test providers are also whitelisted."

 

 

That has nothing to do with "preferential treatment" and everything to do with peering interconnects. Try speed testing to a server located near the data centers of "ANY other website" that you're referring to.

Yes but it doesn't say which are allowed. Is it only applications or is it whole websites? This type of treatment, like the treatment of music services, means that potential up and comers are not on the special no bandwidth counted lists and are thus at a competitive advantage. In my eyes raising some services above others is the same as throttling other services such as Netflix.

 

So you don't think that because TWC has a business relationship with Ookla to provide speedtests that it could be a reason why TWC customers speedtest higher on Ookla? I understand peering can have an impact for these speedtest providers but when I test with other websites by selecting Dallas for example Ookla always is noticeably higher. TWC and T-Mobile both have incentives to provide the best connection they can to Ookla servers now. Oh, and my speedtests on TWC become normalized when I use a VPN for all speedtests through Dallas. I don't see how T-Mobile's approach is much better at all. Sure, it lets people post picture links to forums of their AMAZINGSPEEDS but it doesn't do much else for anyone except Ookla and the other unnamed speedtest providers.

[JWMaloney]

So you don't think that because TWC has a business relationship with Ookla to provide speedtests that it could be a reason why TWC customers speedtest higher on Ookla?

 

Not for the reason you're insinuating, no. I think that because they have a business relationship, they probably have a direct interconnect, which would give you better results.

 

Oh, and my speedtests on TWC become normalized when I use a VPN for all speedtests through Dallas.

 

Yes, because you've now altered the route your speed test follows, taking you outside of TWC's network.

[EvanA]

Ookla does not own the servers that are used to speed test. All of servers are independently operated. This makes it impossible to have preferential treatment via peering because the independent servers may have different providers/peering agreements.

[cletus]

Not for the reason you're insinuating, no. I think that because they have a business relationship, they probably have a direct interconnect, which would give you better results.

 

 

Yes, because you've now altered the route your speed test follows, taking you outside of TWC's network.

Isn't the result the same? My point relating to T-Mobile is that they have essentially picked the winners here by whitelisting the most popular speedtest app that very likely has the best results for their service. Just like how the Spotify and others enjoy a competitive advantage over Google Music (until it gets "voted in" to the whitelist), Ookla and the unnamed services get an advantage as well. If you are on a limited data plan why would you ever use anyone but these services?

[sbolen]

Are you kidding me? You don't even realize who you're talking to?

 

Way to go Sprintcare.

 

Probably some social media summer intern. Still, though. Yikes.