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

[Fraydog]

CDMA would likely be supported in a skeletal fashion for 800 MHz voice. VoLTE would be the new hotness with UMTS voice fallback through eSRVCC.

 

Most Sprint smartphones support UMTS voice so I think the transition would be a little easier than people may think. Unlike CDMA/IDEN/WiMAX, New Sprint would be transitioning to open standards.

[kct1975]

Pardon me if this seems to be a dumb question, but does anyone know what the timeline is for the merger at this point?

 

In the last few weeks, I really have not heard anything from the media.

[WiWavelength]

Besides, Son is not going to let Sprint wipe out the CDMA network after such a massive investment in rebuilding it from the ground up.

 

Nope.  If Son can ram through a Sprint-T-Mobile merger, then he might do just that -- scrap CDMA2000, including all of the progress that has been made this past year with CDMA1X 800.

 

I will use a personal anecdote.  I took a holiday drive yesterday evening along some heavily wooded bluffs above the Kansas River.  I have driven this river road before, but it had been several years and handsets ago.  Still, the Sprint coverage was about what I expected.  It fell from LTE 1900 to LTE 800 to CDMA1X 800.  But I never lost Sprint signal.  In years past, my handset would have been doing a dance between unusable Sprint signal and marginal VZW signal.

 

Now, had I taken my T-Mobile SIM with me, I would have experienced a whole lot of "No Service" -- because T-Mobile has no low band spectrum deployment.  And even when it does roll out the Lower 700 MHz A block in some parts of the country, that will be LTE, which we know is considerably more fragile than is CDMA2000.

 

AJ

[Fraydog]

Nope. If Son can ram through a Sprint-T-Mobile merger, then he might do just that -- scrap CDMA2000, including all of the progress that has been made this past year with CDMA1X 800.

 

I suspect CDMA 800 could be left in place. Sprint just wouldn't have to burn as much in way of resource to keep it around. They could run that 800 CDMA network around in perpetuity.

[WiWavelength]

I cannot stand Qualcomm's patent philosophy even though CDMA...

 

Meh, 3GPP is not that much better.  The easy, inexpensive licensing option was through IEEE with WiMAX.  Just like Wi-Fi, it would have been included in nearly all devices at no "cellular tax."  But we know what happened with WiMAX.  And Sprint gets no credit from the peanut gallery for even trying to be a "maverick" -- unlike that operator with the girly color.

 

AJ

[WiWavelength]

I suspect CDMA 800 could be left in place. Sprint just wouldn't have to burn as much in way of resource to keep it around. They could run that 800 CDMA network around in perpetuity.

 

I still doubt that.  If Sprint-T-Mobile happens, the T-Mobile side would not get CDMA2000 compatible devices.  That would be one knock against it.  And the Sprint side would likely be weaned off CDMA2000 devices.  That would be the death blow right there. Even if the CDMA1X 800 infrastructure remained in operation, only those with antique devices would be able to use it.

 

Then, Sprint-T-Mobile users would be left with VoLTE 700/800 and eSRVCC or eCSFB to W-CDMA 1900/2100+1700.  Yeah, that would stink like hot shit.  Low band LTE is not incredibly robust, and mid/high band W-CDMA is not any better.  Handoff or fallback would be just from one weak signal to another.

 

One possible solution -- not that I would favor it -- would be to scrap Sprint's LTE 800 for W-CDMA 800 that all Sprint-T-Mobile subs could eventually use.  In that case, VoLTE 700 and eSRVCC or eCSFB to W-CDMA 800 would not stink so much.

 

AJ

[MacinJosh]

I don't like the voice quality of either US W-CDMA network. If Sprint were to switch, I sure hope they change to a better voice codec so calls aren't so garbled.


Sent from Josh's iPhone 5S using Tapatalk 2

[milan03]

I don't like the voice quality of either US W-CDMA network. If Sprint were to switch, I sure hope they change to a better voice codec so calls aren't so garbled.

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 5S using Tapatalk 2

When was the last time you've tried T-Mobile's W-CDMA voice? Because for more than year and a half they've had 12.65kbps HD Voice turned on for calls within T-Mobile network with HD Voice capable devices, otherwise they've been running 12.2kbps AMR-NB Full Rate voice codec for almost three years. 

[MacinJosh]

When was the last time you've tried T-Mobile's W-CDMA voice? Because for more than year and a half they've had 12.65kbps HD Voice for calls within T-Mobile network, otherwise they've been running 12.2kbps AMR-NB Full Rate voice codec for almost three years. 

 

My best friend lives in Vegas. He's constantly complaining about echo's in his calls and can't stand it. I had the same issues with my other friend who has been using AT&T for years up until early this year when I got her to switch to Sprint for Framily. I personally don't have to use either to know their are issues.

[Paynefanbro]

 I personally don't have to use either to know there are issues.

 

 

Fixed it for you.

[MacinJosh]

Fixed it for you.

Thanks!

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 5S using Tapatalk 2

[milan03]

My best friend lives in Vegas. He's constantly complaining about echo's in his calls and can't stand it. I had the same issues with my other friend who has been using AT&T for years up until early this year when I got her to switch to Sprint for Framily. I personally don't have to use either to know their are issues.

I see. I was under impression that you were talking about your own experience with voice quality over W-CDMA.

[MacinJosh]

I see. I was under impression that you were talking about your own experience with voice quality over W-CDMA.

Just AT&T on and off over the last 2 years when using my friends phone to talk to people.

 

 

Sent from Josh's iPhone 5S using Tapatalk 2

[Fraydog]

I'll say this: I haven't really made any voice calls the few times I put the T-Mobile SIM into the iPhone 5S in St. Louis, but I have really crap voice quality on Verizon's CDMA right now. They're compressing everything down to the lowest level of EVRC-C here. It sounds like old analog cellular. What's sad is I remember when Verizon first came to Southern Illinois, and they swapped out TDMA networks from Douglas Cellular to newfangled and great CDMA networks. I remember getting a Kyocera and remembering how clear the calls were at the time and how it blew TDMA out of the water. I made a voice call driving home from work that night and was blown away by how clear the calls were. It's sad how far the quality has fell here.

 

Maybe VZW can wow me with VoLTE but, like what I'm sure has been brought up, that has its own issues.

 

On a side note, this Twitter convo.

 

https://twitter.com/Dan_LRMobile/status/461156359640449024

 

Not so much Dan's tweet but the replies. Our old buddy Doug Mohney chimes in!

[utiz4321]

I actually love these plans and I still love the framily concept (seperate billing, savings for each member). Keep it up Sprint!!

 

- random, but I honestly don't want the merger with tmobile anymore to happen. I really want the sprint brand to make a comeback

I don't see how they can have a dense enough network with out the tmoble merger.

[Fraydog]

I actually love these plans and I still love the framily concept (seperate billing, savings for each member). Keep it up Sprint!!

 

- random, but I honestly don't want the merger with tmobile anymore to happen. I really want the sprint brand to make a comeback

Not to mention the major headaches with disparate legacy technologies (CDMA2000

Vs. UMTS) and disparate spectrum holdings (2600 vs. 2100/1700).

[kct1975]

Any updates on merger talk?

[IamMrFamous07]

Not to mention the major headaches with disparate legacy technologies (CDMA2000

Vs. UMTS) and disparate spectrum holdings (2600 vs. 2100/1700).

Exactly. Sprint should just use the 30+ billion to expand coverage for a bigger foot print and maybe negotiate a deal to buy US cellular or Dish's spectrum holdings before VZW gets to either.

[DanielB]

Any updates on merger talk?

 

Nope. Nothing in the past couple of weeks. If a deal is to be formally announced, time-frame was end of July through sometime in August. I've also been scouring the googlewebz for any new or updated rumors, and there's nothing.

[Fraydog]

I'd rather SoftBank either wait a year, or just let Charlie have T-Mobile and let him ruin it. Then you could poach people out of T-Mobile's executive team that are good if need be. Charlie would run Legere out the door almost instantly.

[Fraydog]

Exactly. Sprint should just use the 30+ billion to expand coverage for a bigger foot print and maybe negotiate a deal to buy US cellular or Dish's spectrum holdings before VZW gets to either.

Or let Charlie get T-Mobile. He would ruin T-Mobile. Then maybe do a USCC deal, as well as go full speed with 8T8R. I'd see if Sprint could get to 200 MM POP's of 8T8R by a year from now.

[bigsnake49]

Exactly. Sprint should just use the 30+ billion to expand coverage for a bigger foot print and maybe negotiate a deal to buy US cellular or Dish's spectrum holdings before VZW gets to either.

That's all well and good, but it still does not get you 40million customers. How much more will they have to pay to convince them to come over? It really, really bothers me that after almost 10 years the SMR spectrum is still not unencumbered at the IBEZ boundaries. WTH have the FCC and Sprint been doing?

[Paynefanbro]

That's all well and good, but it still does not get you 40million customers. How much more will they have to pay to convince them to come over? It really, really bothers me that after almost 10 years the SMR spectrum is still not unencumbered at the IBEZ boundaries. WTH have the FCC and Sprint been doing?

iDEN was using it so Sprint didn't really think about LTE or 1x on 800MHz at the time. Sprint was being very shortsighted. At least they've changed that perception of themselves.

[bigsnake49]

Sorry, I did not mean to contribute to sidetracking this thread.

[Fraydog]

Hopefully we're sitting here with 200 MM POP's of 8T8R and laughing at the thought that SoftBank was serious about buying T-Mobile.