Marcelo Claure, Town Hall Meetings, New Family Share Pack Plan, Unlimited Individual Plan, Discussion Thread

[WiWavelength]

48 minutes ago, radem said:

Are you saying that Son drinks Pete's Sake?

Coverage.  COVERAGE!  I drink your sake.  I drink it up.

AJ

[jebr]

58 minutes ago, Fraydog said:

Given that competition is as fierce as it is, Sprint simply can't afford a weak front. If I wanted to distill my argument to one sentence that would be it. If you think Sprint can slack on rural and grow to 65-75 million customers, that's fine. That's your opinion. I have my opinion and have stated the facts I have to back it up. Henceforth my respectful disagreement. 

What would be "not slacking" on rural coverage? I don't disagree that Sprint should have coverage along rural highways and in some of the populated towns in the area, but it seems foolish for Sprint to go crazy on adding towers in small towns off the beaten path. Better to be the value carrier and utilize roaming agreements for the people that don't live in those areas but may need coverage a couple times a year.

Sprint has a ways to go to have all the major roads covered, but that should be their focus, not just trying to push up square miles covered for the sake of covering them.

[twospirits]

19 hours ago, WiWavelength said:

Extending native footprint along I-80 is one thing.  But building new footprint off the beaten path in Fumblebuck, WY, as T-Mobile is doing, is another thing.  It has Magentans cheering, even though most of them will never ever use that coverage.

AJ

The residents of Fumblebuck need service. Don't Hate. 

 

 

[RedSpark]

5 hours ago, fizzicsguy said:

Exactly!   Now if only we see follow through with the attitude portrayed in the call.

And +1 for using "cathartic."

Yeah. He sounded fired up! Really encouraging to hear this. “Once and for all” is the attitude and approach we really need.

Thanks for the +1! 

[RedSpark]

1 hour ago, Fraydog said:

Masa Son is the chairman of both SoftBank and Sprint. He sets the capital budget of both companies, he has said as much to investors meetings numerous times. 

Under his ownership Sprint hasn't set forward a large geographic expansion and he has controlled Sprint for four years. The evidence on the table, as of now, shows he is not much to care about it. 

Now if there is a reversal of policy, I will be the first to credit Masa for making changes to Sprint's policy. That said, other competitors serve a larger geographic region and all have more connections. Now I'm not saying Masa Son has to have Sprint cover every square mile of America with B41. I am saying Sprint could make modest improvements with B26 and not lose money on rural areas. And even in small towns, triband deployment will make sense in a lot of cases given the cost of that deployment will decrease over time. 

Given that competition is as fierce as it is, Sprint simply can't afford a weak front. If I wanted to distill my argument to one sentence that would be it. If you think Sprint can slack on rural and grow to 65-75 million customers, that's fine. That's your opinion. I have my opinion and have stated the facts I have to back it up. Henceforth my respectful disagreement. 

Masa’s desire all along was to merge with T-Mobile and run the combined entity. That wasn’t going to happen under the prior administration.

So the plan became make Sprint lean for the future for another go around at this merger attempt under a new administration. Get rid of all the waste. Do a low cost “non traditional” upgrade program with small cells as a holding strategy and try again under more favorable conditions. Wait it out essentially.

Unfortunately, it seems the low cost “non traditional” upgrade plan didn’t make as much progress as hoped for. Marcelo effectively said that... and the merger didn’t happen, not because of a new admin opposing it, but because T-Mobile didn’t want to cede control to SoftBank.

It’s true that Marcelo needed to get Sprint’s house in order over the past few years. However, I do think there was a holding strategy in terms of CapEx and Network builds per Masa’s guidance in the hopes for a merger.

Marcelo was in a tough spot for the last year... and he finally sounds relieved that he can execute a real network plan for Sprint that receives full funding and attention from Masa.

Edited November 9, 2017 by RedSpark
Clarity

[IamMrFamous07]

39 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Masa’s desire all along was to merge with T-Mobile and run the combined entity. That wasn’t going to happen under the prior administration.

So the plan became make Sprint lean for the future for another go around at this merger attempt under a new administration. Get rid of all the waste. Do a low cost “non traditional” upgrade program with small cells as a holding strategy and try again under more favorable conditions. Wait it out essentially.

Unfortunately, it seems the low cost “non traditional” upgrade plan didn’t make as much progress as hoped for. Marcelo effectively said that... and the merger didn’t happen, not because of a new admin opposing it, but because T-Mobile didn’t want to cede control to SoftBank.

It’s true that Marcelo needed to get Sprint’s house in order over the past few years. However, I do think there was a holding strategy in terms of CapEx and Network builds per Masa’s guidance in the hopes for a merger.

Marcelo was in a tough spot for the last year... and he finally sounds relieved that he can execute a real network plan for Sprint that receives full funding and attention from Masa.

2018 should be great. I’m crossing my fingers. I wonder if they will move 8t8r antennas to lower priority towers and add 64x64 antennas to all high priority towers / densely populated areas.

 

Not sure about the cost of 64x64 antennas. Also will there ever be 3xCA capable small cells? 

[gusherb]

3 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

One thing that Marcello talked about is that the small cell strategy while successful in some areas was not as successful in others and that basically forced the pivot to traditional macro sites.

“The last year and a half, two years have been a great learning experience. We’ve tried to disrupt the way networks get built. We’ve been successful in certain areas and, to be fair, we haven’t been successful in others,” he conceded. “So we’re going to go toward a more traditional network build-out. Our friends at the tower companies I think are going to be very happy.”

http://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-s-claure-tower-companies-going-to-be-very-happy-our-capex

Glad they figured that out. Small cells are a poor substitute for making up for bad macro coverage, but a great supplement to already good macro coverage. Verizon deployed a bunch of metrocells in my area 3-4 years back and seems to have figured out that they're pretty much useless unless one is within 500-1000' of one. They've replaced at least one that I'm aware of with a macro site. 

[bigsnake49]

Meanwhile, DT chairman has left open the possibility of merger:

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Deutsche Telekom (DTEGn.DE) left the door open to a merger of its T-Mobile US business (TMUS.O) days after the collapse of a deal between its U.S. business and Sprint Corp (S.N).

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/deutsche-telekom-raises-guidance-collapse-061452645.html

[bigsnake49]

2 minutes ago, gusherb said:

Glad they figured that out. Small cells are a poor substitute for making up for bad macro coverage, but a great supplement to already good macro coverage. Verizon deployed a bunch of metrocells in my area 3-4 years back and seems to have figured out that they're pretty much useless unless one is within 500-1000' of one. They've replaced at least one that I'm aware of with a macro site. 

I believe that working with cable cos to implement strand and pole mounted small cells is the way to go forward. But yeah they cannot substitute for well spaced macros.

[lilotimz]

14 minutes ago, gusherb said:

Glad they figured that out. Small cells are a poor substitute for making up for bad macro coverage, but a great supplement to already good macro coverage. Verizon deployed a bunch of metrocells in my area 3-4 years back and seems to have figured out that they're pretty much useless unless one is within 500-1000' of one. They've replaced at least one that I'm aware of with a macro site. 

Plopping down 75-125' poles for small cells without asking local entities for permission is a great idea. We're going to use right of ways and not care about the locals. Lets see them fight this. ~mobilitie

>> gets all small cells deployment blocked and while deployed ones are forced to be removed by local authorities <<

^^ TLDR of sprints small cell deployment via mobilitie

[RedSpark]

26 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

Plopping down 75-125' poles for small cells without asking local entities for permission is a great idea. We're going to use right of ways and not care about the locals. Lets see them fight this. ~mobilitie

>> gets all small cells deployment blocked and while deployed ones are forced to be removed by local authorities <<

^^ TLDR of sprints small cell deployment via mobilitie

Spot on here.

What kind of oversight did Sprint actually have on this deployment?

Was Masa overseeing it directly, and did word of these delays/events get back to him?

[gusherb]

20 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

Plopping down 75-125' poles for small cells without asking local entities for permission is a great idea. We're going to use right of ways and not care about the locals. Lets see them fight this. ~mobilitie

>> gets all small cells deployment blocked and while deployed ones are forced to be removed by local authorities <<

^^ TLDR of sprints small cell deployment via mobilitie

Yeah that did NOT go over well... 

I never did see any of those pop up in the Chicago area though. 

I guess Sprint probably has no choice but to go macro dense using existing towers in several places now. 

[bigsnake49]

35 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

Plopping down 75-125' poles for small cells without asking local entities for permission is a great idea. We're going to use right of ways and not care about the locals. Lets see them fight this. ~mobilitie

>> gets all small cells deployment blocked and while deployed ones are forced to be removed by local authorities <<

^^ TLDR of sprints small cell deployment via mobilitie

For some reason neither Verizon nor T-Mobile had those problems with their small cell deployments. It's what happens when you go with the low cost bidder.

[lilotimz]

14 minutes ago, gusherb said:

Yeah that did NOT go over well... 

I never did see any of those pop up in the Chicago area though. 

I guess Sprint probably has no choice but to go macro dense using existing towers in several places now. 

In chicago and a few other areas they often used existing infrastructure. Chicago area has quite a number of Airspan small cells deployed.

 

Just now, bigsnake49 said:

For some reason neither Verizon nor T-Mobile had those problems with their small cell deployments. It's what happens when you go with the low cost bidder.

Neither Verizon nor Tmobile attempted to do what Mobilitie did because they did it the standard way of mass permitting with local authorities for small cell approval. Something Sprint tried to avoid via Mobilitie and their public right of way shenanigans.

[gusherb]

39 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

In chicago and a few other areas they often used existing infrastructure. Chicago area has quite a number of Airspan small cells deployed.

Ok here's the re-write: 

I don't see very many of those Airspan small cells, the ones I have seen look like this:  

 Something I have seen ALOT of recently are these Nokia small cells, which TMO is on SOME of them, but not all. Is there any possibility Sprint has been using these too? If not, then I'm really at a loss as to what in the world they're doing for small cells since I don't see alot of those Airspan setups. 

 

 

[lilotimz]

29 minutes ago, gusherb said:

Ok here's the re-write: 

I don't see very many of those Airspan small cells, the ones I have seen look like this:  

 Something I have seen ALOT of recently are these Nokia small cells, which TMO is on SOME of them, but not all. Is there any possibility Sprint has been using these too? If not, then I'm really at a loss as to what in the world they're doing for small cells since I don't see alot of those Airspan setups. 

 

 

Negative. Only Nokia units currently used in Samsung land are the Nokia mini macros on macros.

Sprint doesn't use many of the Nokia flexi zones either. Mostly mini macros.

Tbf, you probably aren't at the areas where most the sprint small cells are listed. They like deploying em in tiny clusters but since you frequent the area I'll defer to your observations. 

 

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

 

 

 

[gusherb]

13 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

Negative. Only Nokia units currently used in Samsung land are the Nokia mini macros on macros.

 

Sprint doesn't use many of the Nokia flexi zones either. Mostly mini macros.

 

Tbf, you probably aren't at the areas where most the sprint small cells are listed. They like deploying em in tiny clusters.

 

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

 

 

 

No I'm probably not near them. But I also don't notice many of them downtown, in the most touristy areas. I see far more Crown Castle and AT&T oDAS nodes. 

 

Do we have any maps of Sprint small cells around here, for my market or any market? 

[lilotimz]

No I'm probably not near them. But I also don't notice many of them downtown, in the most touristy areas. I see far more Crown Castle and AT&T oDAS nodes. 
 
Do we have any maps of Sprint small cells around here, for my market or any market? 

Some have permits or zoning. Other electrical stuff. We've also got unconfirmed information too that's sometimes helpful (Robert got a lot of juicy stuff recently!).

Maybe PM me if you have inquiries and I can see if we know anything.

Sent from my Pixel using Tapatalk

[Mr.Nuke]

2 hours ago, gusherb said:

Do we have any maps of Sprint small cells around here, for my market or any market? 

Some of the premier threads are tracking them on a local level i.e. the Columbus guys. Omaha is here. Like Tim said, in Omaha we are tipped off by a electrical permits, the city also added a GIS layer initially for the actual small cell permits but it hasn't been updated. Permitting is going to vary from place to place, and their is any indication at all.

[RedSpark]

5 hours ago, IamMrFamous07 said:

2018 should be great. I’m crossing my fingers. I wonder if they will move 8t8r antennas to lower priority towers and add 64x64 antennas to all high priority towers / densely populated areas.

 

Not sure about the cost of 64x64 antennas. Also will there ever be 3xCA capable small cells? 

Curious about this too.

Hopefully Sprint is able to efficiently repurpose the Mini Macro and 8T8R antennas that they’ve already deployed to other areas as new gear is rolled out.

[IamMrFamous07]

Looks like Marcelo had a town hall meeting today. 

 

[danlodish345]

19 hours ago, IamMrFamous07 said:

Looks like Marcelo had a town hall meeting today. 

 

i have a question. what is it called a town hall meeting?

[tybo31316]

I like how it says “No more distractions, now it’s our time. “

Hopefully Sprint goes full steam ahead on upgrading their network as stated after the merger ended.

[grapkoski]

40 minutes ago, danlodish345 said:

i have a question. what is it called a town hall meeting?

Not sure if it is sarcasm or not, but when you work at corporate HQ high level executives usually hold town hall meetings where employee groups can get an update and ask questions directly to them.

[danlodish345]

No it's not sarcasm one bit.

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