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


joshuam

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No, the Qualcomm baseband was one of the first to support uplink CA, but I do not recall that it was ever tested and authorized in the Sprint variant HTC One A9.

 

AJ

Hhhmmm. I'm just going but, the older article that says it supports it.

 

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Hhhmmm. I'm just going but, the older article that says it supports it.

 

Baseband.  And supported does not equal enabled.

 

AJ

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Baseband. And supported does not equal enabled.

 

AJ

Why put something in a phone yet not make it useful makes no since. I have no clue what Baseband is

 

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Listening to John Saw right now, more details about band 41 uplink CA coming out in coming weeks.

 

I was curious about it too when I heard it. Does this mean there will be a software update soon? Hope they will this roll out the same time as 3xCA.

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http://seekingalpha.com/article/4028377-sprints-s-management-presents-ubs-44th-annual-global-media-communications-conference

 

Transcript of CFO speaketry at UBS the other day.

Executives

Tarek Robbiati - Chief Financial Officer

Analysts

John Hodulik - UBS

John Hodulik

Okay. Thank you for joining us. I’m John Hodulik, the telecom and cable analyst here at UBS and I’m very pleased to announce that Tarek Robbiati is our next speaker. Tarek is the CFO of Sprint. Tarek, thanks for being here.

Tarek Robbiati

Thank you, John, for having me. Good morning.

John Hodulik

So, I’ve got a list of some questions we’re going to run down. And then, as always, we’ve got the crowd mic app activated. So, I’ll be taking any questions that you have from the audience here on this tablet.

So, let’s dig right in. So, Tarek, 2016 has been a year where you’ve seen Sprint regain a lot of both subscriber and financial momentum. Frankly, the momentum has surprised a lot of people. Could you talk about what the priorities for the company are in 2017 versus what has occurred here in 2016?

Tarek Robbiati

So, we still have to finish fiscal year 2016, which for us finishes in March 2017. We still have a few more months to go before the end of our fiscal year, but you can expect more of the same, more focus on topline growth, more focus on cost take-out, more focus on rolling out our network.

John Hodulik

The previous speaker that I spoke with was T-Mobile that, obviously, going into Black Friday had some pretty aggressive, what I would say, promotions out there. Sprint also had in five lines – they had two actual lines [indiscernible] and you guys came back with something even more aggressive. Can you just talk about competitive environment, especially as it relates to what we’ve seen recently?

Tarek Robbiati

Certainly. Black Friday this year was not any different than the prior year. It’s always an intense period of market promotion. The promotions that you had on the multiple lines are to be seen in the context where multi-product holdings are important. So, the more lines you have with a particular account, it has a benefit for churn. The promotion that we put out is just a normal one, in normal circumstances, not particularly aggressive if you think about how it is constructed. The lines that are effectively at $20 per line are involving the waiving off what we used to call out-of-line fee and that is away for a period of 12 months and then it goes back up again to $30 per line. So, these are marketing tactical promotions that happen during the course of this period of the year. And every year, you had an intense period of offers from various players. There’s no difference this year [indiscernible].

John Hodulik

So, do you think – you have postpaid phone ARPU in sort of in the high 50s. That’s usually different than where sort of the new customers are coming on board. How do you feel about the stability of that number going forward?

Tarek Robbiati

There is, obviously, always a difference between the headline price plan, the MRC, the monthly recurring charge, and the ARPU. A lot more gets into the ARPU than the headline price plan. We monitor the sales activity in our channels every day and we look – are we loading customers on the right price plans. And so far, we are very satisfied with the loading of customers on the plans that we sell and we feel very good about this from an ARPU perspective moving forward in the longer run.

John Hodulik

And then maybe as far as the postpaid subscriber trends are concerned, you’ve seen churn come down to the 1.5% level, which is a big improvement over there – we were over 2% going back a couple of years. Maybe talk first about what drove that improvement? And it seemed to have flattened out a bit lately, is there room for another sort of move downward in that metric?

 

Tarek Robbiati

Yeah. Churn is one of the most important metrics in our industry. It’s very, very critical for us to keep driving that down over time. And there are very different drivers around churn. The first and foremost important driver is the network quality. If you don’t give reasons for customers to churn you because they like the network that they are on, then this has a positive impact on churn.

The second main driver is price and the third one is the overall service offering that we provide. We’ve made progress we feel on all three, the network in particular, which is the most important driver. Also, on price, we’re price competitive. And on service, we’re improving every day as we continue to digitize our offer and provide better self-service capabilities to our customers.

Overall, churn will trend down over time. But, remember, this third fiscal year quarter, fourth calendar year quarter, is always a quarter where you have a fair bit of market decisions. It’s normal. It was driven by promotional activity around Black Friday an also the Christmas season. So, you can expect churn for this quarter to be similar to last year. So please do not look at it on a sequential basis, look at it on a period-over-period basis. And, overall, look at our trend in churn over time. We feel good about it. We’ve had seven years of consecutive period-over-period churn reductions and this is boding well for the future.

John Hodulik

Does being focused on the value segment of the postpaid market, does that prevent you from closing the gap that – from where you are now at 1.5% down to – closer to 1% versus AT&T and Verizon which are thought of as less value focused, maybe even more business focused?

Tarek Robbiati

Yes. The figure you're quoting for AT&T and Verizon is also inclusive of all the corporate sector contracts that they have, right? So, you really have to distinguish between the consumer part of the market and the corporate part of the market. I think there is more headroom for improvement in churn over time and we’ll work through that as we continue to deploy our network, as we continue to refine our service, and we continue to be a competitive on price.

John Hodulik

And family plans, I think, play a role as well, right? In the past, you’ve been under-indexed at family plans, where does that stand now and is that something that maybe these promotions are being to help close that gap?

Tarek Robbiati

Yeah. That’s precisely the point. This is – family plans are all around multi-product holdings with a particular – singular account. These promotions are designed to go for – penetrating more the families and we feel good about them. We’re not that far behind. We already have a fair bit of customers who have a number of lines with us. You can see, for example, how our average billing per account has trended and the number of accounts and how they’ve trended over time. Our average billings per account September 16, over the prior period, September 15, in dollar terms, has increased by 4%. So, we continue to see aggregate revenue growth and account growth already at Sprint and we want to continue to accelerate the trend.

John Hodulik

Now, you said that network performance is a big driver in the churn improvement you’ve seen. How would you stack up your network to your competitors and is it where you needed to be to continue to drive churn lower?

Tarek Robbiati

So, we are very close where the competition is. We’re right on the tails of Verizon, but you haven’t seen anything yet. There is a lot a lot of work going on in building the Sprint network and our team from our Chairman Masa, Günther and John, are driving a very different network to what the US market has been accustomed to so far. Our densification optimization program is in in-flight and we are going to put more spectrum than any other player on air over the upcoming quarters, which is really, really important from a customer experience, both in terms of speed and in terms of capacity.

 

John Hodulik

So, at this point, would you say – I think we’ve got you down in the sort of $3 billion range in terms of CapEx spending. Are you keeping up with the traffic growth at this point because you’re, obviously, adding a lot of subscribers on the postpaid side and then they’re using more with all these new plans? Are you eating through excess capacity you’ve had in the network or are you keeping up? How should we think of that equation?

Tarek Robbiati

There’s a lot in your question, John. So, first of all, we never said that the guidance that we gave for CapEx this year is the norm of CapEx spend that we will have for Sprint moving forward. We already foreshadowed that we would be spending more in CapEx terms next year, fiscal year 2017 relative to fiscal 2016. But it's important to understand our starting point. Our starting point was, back on the Network Vision program where we had invested an enormous amount of money in building capacity. Now, there has been a shift from the Network Vision days. We’ve deployed our 2.5 spectrum in a very different way. Before it was used as WiMAX spectrum. It’s no longer a WiMAX spectrum. Right now, it's used for LTE and it carries more than 40% of the Sprint data tonnage. And there is more to come with that. As you deploy more spectrum, given the deep spectrum holdings that we have, you don't need to invest a lot in the electronics, right? We have already made the investments in the antennas and we already made the investments into the electronic cards that are sitting behind those. And as we want to put more capacity on air, it cost a fraction of dollars for us to put more capacity on air because we have such a large spectrum holding relative to any other player, right?

So, this is really the key of the Sprint story, is to understand the capital intensity advantage that we would have relative to the competition because of the depth of the spectrum holdings that we have. And so far, I would say, depending on the market, in some cases, we’ve rolled out two carrier aggregation; in some markets, with 2.5 GHz; in other markets, we’ve rolled out three carrier aggregation. Overall, our 2.5 spectrum capacity is around the 25%, 30% mark. So, we have a long way to go before we light up all the spectrum that we have. That figure that I just quoted, you have to contrast it with other players in the US who are running very close to being short of spectrum capacity. It’s very different position that we are in relative to any other player.

John Hodulik

No, I’ve heard some of the larger carriers cite this 15% of sales and sort of the CapEx intensive wireless business over a long-term business, going from 2G, 3G, 4G. So, would you say that the 2.5 spectrum holdings you have fundamentally changes that equation for Sprint?

Tarek Robbiati

I think that ratio is a ratio that is being quoted regularly and it’s fine. You can see that in across the globe. And as you remember, in my old days in Australia, it was around that time. But having said so, when you have in excess of 200 MHz of spectrum and you are riding on the back of the largest ecosystem in the world, which is 2.5, you have many different benefits that come into the equation that can lower your capital intensity. So, I’m not saying necessarily that that assumption is wrong. Could we be better than this or hovering around this? Probably. Because 2.5 right now is an ecosystem that may not be easy for understand unless you are at Sprint or you’re a Sprint customer. It’s an ecosystem that is very, very widespread in China, with two operators -- China Mobile and China Telecom – in Japan, with our parent company, Softbank, also in other markets of Asia, in India, and ourselves over here in the United States. So, when you have such a nice – and hundreds of millions of devices, more than 500 million devices, that are 25 capable that were shipped last year, then you have enormous amount of innovation that comes on both sides, the WAN part of the network, but also the OEM part of the devices, which make use of the spectrum in many, many different ways. That, in itself, will contribute to lower capital intensity over the long run and we look forward to that.

 

John Hodulik

So, with the focus on 2.5, can you give us an update in terms of how many POPs you have that rolled out to? And maybe, perhaps, well what’s the plan over time? How does that – and maybe even in terms of number of towers, where it’s deployed and what it looks like over the next three to five years kind of thing.

Tarek Robbiati

So, pretty much everyone in the US is around 300 MHz POPs. The question is not so much to invest to achieve incremental coverage or materially incremental coverage, it’s really around capacity. When you have every player who are at – covering pretty much the entire population, that's what you have to do. So, right now, our plan with respect to 2.5 is to continue to push on the penetration of 2.5 across our footprint, adding more carrier aggregation sites in various markets. Like I said, we have started to deploy two carrier aggregation and three carrier aggregation. You don't have that many three carrier aggregation capable devices, right? So, this has to play out that gives us a nice runway over the upcoming quarters and we feel very, very positive about that.

John Hodulik

And what about the deployment of small cells? Where are we with that and are you hoping to get some help on the regulatory side?

Tarek Robbiati

So, thank you for reminding me of this. So, our network deployment plan is what we call the DO plan, the densification and optimization plan. It is around putting in vast amounts of spectrum on air by building small cell sites around towers. We will, yes, invest in towers as the case may be and as the need is. But, in general, it's all around building a very dense network with smaller cells that are connected to towers. So, so far, we're pretty happy with the permitting process. We’ve had permits – we’re receiving permits every day and it’s been doubling on a regular basis for the past few months.

From a regulatory standpoint, so far, there is no single process across the United States that facilitates the site acquisition process. You have to go state by state and city by city to get those permits done. So, we are encouraged by new forms of regulation which are starting to be discussed. They’re not yet legislated, but just like the Dig Once initiative, which is all around streamlining the process of site acquisition. It’s something that we would be very keen on seeing happening.

John Hodulik

Sprint has a relatively low or a relatively little low band spectrum. Obviously, you’re not taking part in the auctions, meaning you’re one of the few companies that can actually talk about them. What’s your view on the value of low band spectrum and is it something that you may look to sort of fill in the future?

Tarek Robbiati

So, we have – if you look at our 800 MHz holdings, we actually have more 800 MHz spectrum than T-Mobile does. And when you really look at the spectrum capacity of 800 per subscriber and when you adjust for the scale of AT&T and Verizon, we’re not that far off either from them too.

Look, spectrum is a scarce asset. Whether you’re in low band or mid-band, it's a scarce asset. There is always need for a spectrum. And spectrum, we’ll continue to appreciate. But what we have witnessed is greater appreciation of mid to high band spectrum, like 2.5 because the world where we're evolving towards is a world of high-capacity network, high-capacity available over-the-air and that world can only be attained by putting in sub 3 GHz spectrum over the air in large quantity.

And that is the backbone or the bridge towards the world of 5G. And if you look at the world of 5G, it’s very, very high spectrum frequencies, possibly in the 20 GHz range. But that spectrum, it’s brilliant to carry on a lot of data traffic, but it doesn't travel very far. So, you really need to have mid-band spectrum, sub 3 GHz spectrum to see 5G being deployed. And there is no shortcutting of densifying your network to do that. And if you ask any operator today, what stands in the way of 5G deployment, I would say most operator would answer, we need more mid-band spectrum because you would need that bridge between those mini cell sites where you have 20 GHz spectrum that carries an enormous amount of capacity, but doesn’t travel very far in every other site that you have in your network.

 

John Hodulik

We’ve heard a lot about 5G certainly from Verizon, a little bit from some of the other carriers. How does 5G fit into the network at Sprint over the next five years? What kind of deployment could we think of or services can we envision?

Tarek Robbiati

So, our network has already many elements that are built to pave the way for 5G. So, technically speaking, when you look at technologies like beamforming, which is the capacity to direct a single where demand is, this is a 5G technology. When you look at Massive MIMO – and it's not here yet, but it will come – it is a 5G technology.

How is Massive MIMO evolving? It will probably see the light faster on unpaired TD spectrum than on paired spectrum and we're having plans in accordance. In fact, if you really turn your attention to Asia and China, there are already areas where you can see Massive MIMO pilot. So, you take beamforming, Massive MIMO and then you had technologies like mini metric wave spectrum, you start to really have very much what is a 5G network. But what's really, really, really important is to have that continuum between that world of 5G and the existing world of 4G.

And there is a difference when you move into the 5G world. We always had evolutions in what we did. We had 2G, then 3G, then 4G. The world of 5G is a bit more bifurcated because you’re going to have a lot of capacity over the air with spectrum that does not travel very far. And, therefore, what happens to your experience if you are out of range, it will deteriorate unless you have a mid-band spectrum. And that's really, really, really important.

And there's a lot of talk right now in Europe around the other 3.5 GHz spectrum bands, which is very much in focus in Europe. I don't think it's going to be the same over here in the United States because it's unfortunately the band that is used by US Navy. So, there is a lot of constraints as to what you can do with a 3.5 GHz band in the medium to long term over here.

But, therefore, this points to the fact that there is no real sub 3 GHz spectrum, but the 2.5 spectrum.

John Hodulik

So, we talked a little bit about the postpaid market turning around and growth in subs, prepaid has been a more – a rougher spot for the company. You saw double-digit declines in revenue in that category. Can you talk about your strategy for turning that business and what you’re seeing from a competitive standpoint?

Tarek Robbiati

So, prepaid is a very competitive business and I would not want you or anyone to look at this business judging it solely by customer numbers. And the simple truth is that even if you look at the best player in the industry, which is one of our competitors, their churn level is at about 3% to 4%, more 4% than 3%. And so, with a 4% market churn, essentially, the customer base of our competitor washes out – half of it washes out almost every year. So, this isn't about customer numbers. This is really around driving revenue and being very selective around the customers you acquire to make sure that the customer investment that goes into driving the growth in prepaid is not really inefficient.

And we are going to grow our prepaid business. There is no silver bullet there. It’s going to take a bit of time. It’s a combination of revamping the value proposition, revamping the branding, revamping the distribution, revamping also our ability to be selective in segmenting and targeting customers that will get us there. This will take a few quarters to play, but we are resolute that we’re going to be turning around our prepaid business because as my boss says, as Marcelo says, there is no point taking two steps forward in postpaid to have dilution in services revenue growth from prepaid, and that’s pretty obvious.

John Hodulik

 

And that’s really the goal, right? At the end of the day, you guys got to get the service revenues growing again. I guess, how does the turn in prepaid play a role in that – postpaid trends have been very good. Prepaid has obviously been something of an anchor. How do those two segments come together and what kind of timing can we expect to we’re growing the business again?

Tarek Robbiati

So, overall, on our service revenue growth, I would say this: if you look at the postpaid side, we still have to lap the point where the majority of our customers are on device finance plan. 67% of our base is financed today, but there is more headroom to go before we get to a point where we feel it’s a point of stability. Probably, it has to be around the 90% mark, right. And there will always be an element of our base that won’t be subsidized because we have business customers and there are segments of the market that continue to require subsidized phones.

Once that dynamic plays out, then you will see three steps happening in our P&L. First, continuous growth in operating revenue. And that you’re already observing this today. Then, eventually, services revenue will stabilize as we are today shifting services revenue into equipment revenue because of this device financing trend. And then, finally, eventually, ARPU will turn the corner and will hopefully resume on a growth path. That is the dynamic that you see in postpaid. In parallel, you have the dynamic that takes place in prepaid which behaves just like a subsidized market. But, there, you have to be really careful because it's a subset of the market where you have no customer contracts and, therefore, you have to be, as we were saying a moment ago, a lot more focused and diligence in the way you acquire customers.

John Hodulik

So, all these pieces together, is the return to service level revenue growth a fiscal 2018 event or a 2019 event or…?

Tarek Robbiati

I won't be flagging a specific timeframe, but it's a matter of quarters more than anything else. You will see this playing out in our results as we move forward.

John Hodulik

Got you. You brought the move to handset financing. Specifically, Sprint has been a pioneer on the leasing side. Can you just talk a little bit about the economics that you’ve seen in those? And I think you’ve recently stopped leasing Android devices, still focusing on, obviously, iOS devices, but do you like what you see in terms of the overall economics of that sales method?

Tarek Robbiati

So, the reason why a company leases assets is it effectively – it hinges effectively on the view that you have on the second-hand value of those assets. And so, when we embarked on our leasing journey, it was a little less than two years ago, a little bit more than two years ago, we knew that this was something that had to play out over time. And we constantly monitor, on a daily/weekly basis, the secondhand value of devices in the market. And so, we formed the view that – and that was back in August, it’s not new news. We formed a view that Android devices were holding their value from a residual value standpoint less well than iPhones. And so, we decided to stop leasing Android devices. And it was actually almost prescient because it happened just before the Galaxy 7 events took place. So, it was actually – we were a little bit lucky, I would say, around that one. We had no insight on that.

But with respect to iPhones, we're pleased with the way of our leasing portfolio is performing, And the rationale behind leasing is that second-hand market value, which can take different shapes, you can either reuse those devices to acquire new customers with different types of programs and we are certainly envisioning doing that, or using those devices for insurance purposes. We insure devices to all our customers and there is a lot of value in making sure that the same unit repair or substitution of a broken phone with a phone of equivalent vintage, but refurbished and made good is a very interesting opportunity for us to reduce costs. And by the way, every operator in the US is taking a look at this because insurance programs of mobile phones are expensive, if you don't pay attention to that.

 

And thirdly, you can always sell the phones on the market. And we have great insights with our group companies, thanks to Softbank and Brightstar, to truly understand the value of devices in the second-hand market.

John Hodulik

We can turn our attention for the remaining time maybe to the balance sheet and free cash flow. First, you recently conducted a – finalized a very attractive financing, raised $3.5 billion at 3.4%. Talk a little bit about 36%. Every basis point counts. What kind of interest cost savings can we expect maybe now and maybe over the next couple of years? Do you expect more of this? Do you have some room under the existing facility? And just, overall, your view of the sort of cash flow trajectory of the company?

Tarek Robbiati

So, specifically, with this transaction, I'm very pleased and very proud of the outcome because it's the world’s first securitization of spectrum. It’s one of the largest securitizations in the world since, I think, 2008, from memory – recent memory. And also, when you look at the interest savings, we raised this money at 3.36%. We’re paying off the December 2016 bonds, which are 6% bonds. We’re paying the March 17 bonds, which are 9.125% bonds. We’re also retiring $300 million very expensive Clearwire 14.75% bonds. So, when you do the math, we saved about $170 million – or north of $170 million of interest expense with that issue alone.

And then, we’ve designed a program to go all the way to $7 billion. So, we will be issuing a second tranche fairly soon, and that is a very nice way to fund our business moving forward. So, in our financing strategy, we were last year in a very different position than today. Last year, it was around shoring up liquidity. That’s why we embarked on the MLS transactions, as you know. As we progress during the course of the year and liquidity was addressed by way of also the network lease goal and other finance facilities that we obtained, we shifted our focus to lowering cost of interest. And, right now, I really want – I’m determined to lower our overall cost of debt. It’s really important that we do so because we have $19 billion of NOLs that we would like to utilize. And as we continue to take cost and our operating income trajectory improves into fiscal year 2017 and we continue to lower our interest expense and cost of debt, then we will fairly quickly get to a point where we will be pretax positive, and that's a very important goal for us as a company.

John Hodulik

One last question. Part of the ongoing theme here at the conference, with the new administration, there is an expectation that we’re likely to see some consolidation. Wireless is, obviously, one of the focal points. So, Sprint – let me figure out the best way to ask this. Sprint could play a number of roles in that role. Sprint and its larger parent, Softbank, either as a buyer as was rumored in the past or potentially as a seller. Given your role, how do you – would you expect it to see sort of Sprint – its role and what could be future consolidation in the industry?

Tarek Robbiati

So, look, it’s way, way, way too early to speculate on what the new administration would do. It’s not even installed yet. We need to see what plays out. And we don't manage our business with a view to do an M&A transaction. We manage our business for the long run. We’re there to build a really cracking network platform. And the one question I would invite you all to take a look at is, who in the wireless sector in the US can address the issue of data traffic doubling every 18 months and how do you address the capital intensity of the industry? I think we are very well positioned, given the spectrum holdings that we have. So, I'm not worried about this. We just have to focus and deliver.

 

John Hodulik

Great. Well, thank you, all, for being here. And, Tarek, thanks for coming.

Tarek Robbiati

Thank you.

 

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The CFO spoke on December 5th. You've actually linked to that transcript.

The CTO spoke today (December 7th). That transcript isn't up yet.

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I'm hoping for a major announcement/carrier settings update here in the near future. Sprint has got to release simultaneous voice and date, VoLTE, expanded LTE partners, etc to stay competitive

 

 

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Is sprints network ready to offer volte ? I think we all want them to offer volte , but not if it offers a bad experience. Sprint can't afford anymore loses... I'm sure there are a bunch of markets/ cities out there that are not dense enough to be running volte for quite some time

 

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Is sprints network ready to offer volte ? I think we all want them to offer volte , but not if it offers a bad experience. Sprint can't afford anymore loses... I'm sure there are a bunch of markets/ cities out there that are not dense enough to be running volte for quite some time

 

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The user experience would be very lacking.  They are #1 or #2 when it comes to voice as it is now.  I feel if they turned it on now, they'd drop to #3 and mostly #4.  As we have seen with TMobile, VoLTE doesn't fix everything. This seems to be an area that TMobile was struggling with before VoLTE and still is with VoLTE. If you have quality issues it is even recommended to turn VoLTE OFF. 

 

I have a feeling we won't really see VoLTE on a large scale until 3G starts to officially die off.  Roaming LTE should help with users VoLTE experience on Sprint.

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The user experience would be very lacking. They are #1 or #2 when it comes to voice as it is now. I feel if they turned it on now, they'd drop to #3 and mostly #4. As we have seen with TMobile, VoLTE doesn't fix everything. This seems to be an area that TMobile was struggling with before VoLTE and still is with VoLTE. If you have quality issues it is even recommended to turn VoLTE OFF.

 

I have a feeling we won't really see VoLTE on a large scale until 3G starts to officially die off. Roaming LTE should help with users VoLTE experience on Sprint.

That's to long in my opinion. I think they should make the feature optional. I'm connected to LTE 98% of the time so I won't have severe issues.

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I looked at both the CFO and CTO transcripts. Basically, what they leasing transactions have enabled them to do is to retire high interest rate debt and replace it with very low interest debt. They are also lowering their opex. Because of the way they have designed the network the capex was up front and they can enable new functionality like 3xCA via a software upgrade. They will add more macro sites as needed but they are concentrating on densification via small cells and optimization. They expect to spend more capex in sprint's financial year 2017 (starting in March). 

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That's to long in my opinion. I think they should make the feature optional. I'm connected to LTE 98% of the time so I won't have severe issues.

You might be connected to LTE 98% of the time, but if your receive level drops to -116 or worse, you might wish you still were using the old CDMA 1X network.    Right now, nothing beats the CDMA 1x network on the 800 band.  I never get dropped on 1X anymore.

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It wouldn't be bad if they let people opt into it in markets that are dense or becoming dense. Too if they were work out how to make the call fall back to what we have now if the signal isn't strong enough that'll be cool.

 

 

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The user experience would be very lacking. They are #1 or #2 when it comes to voice as it is now. I feel if they turned it on now, they'd drop to #3 and mostly #4. As we have seen with TMobile, VoLTE doesn't fix everything. This seems to be an area that TMobile was struggling with before VoLTE and still is with VoLTE. If you have quality issues it is even recommended to turn VoLTE OFF.

 

I have a feeling we won't really see VoLTE on a large scale until 3G starts to officially die off. Roaming LTE should help with users VoLTE experience on Sprint.

Have you used VoLTE on T-Mobile?

 

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Have you used VoLTE on T-Mobile?

 

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I've used VOLTE on my Vzw work phone. It has dropped calls at work sometimes. Vzw loses LTE sometimes where I work.

 

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Yeah, an opt in option would be cool. This way it doesn't effect regular users, and it would give Sprint a lot of valuable real world data.

This could be a question to ask for the AMA.

 

 

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You might be connected to LTE 98% of the time, but if your receive level drops to -116 or worse, you might wish you still were using the old CDMA 1X network. Right now, nothing beats the CDMA 1x network on the 800 band. I never get dropped on 1X anymore.

Yup! It would need to be much denser for smooth hand off for volte

 

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I've used VOLTE on my Vzw work phone. It has dropped calls at work sometimes. Vzw loses LTE sometimes where I work.

 

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Even T-Mobile drops calls on volte..even based on the claim that there network has the density out of all carriers

 

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I am dropped on Tmo VoLTE all the time. We have a lot of B12 LTE/EDGE sites in my area with no WCDMA. Even with B12, there are tons of places where we get EDGE but no LTE. My area on Tmo is very similar to what VoLTE would be like on Sprint (in a good market). Because B12 VoLTE does not successfully hand off to EDGE here. Painful.

 

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Pretty sure T-Mobiles VoLTE falls back on to HSPA+ and/ or wifi calling.

T-Mobile doesn't have hspa+ footprint as large as there LTE, they sacrificed some for other, it was either or, which is why you drop to Edge losing lte in some places

 

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T-Mobile doesn't have hspa+ footprint as large as there LTE, they sacrificed some for other, it was either or, which is why you drop to Edge losing lte in some places

 

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Ahh i didn't know that. Learn something new every day on this site

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