Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[greenbastard]

1 hour ago, Trip said:

I was under the impression that most of the spectrum swaps necessary had already happened--many of which happened without Sprint in the mix.

- Trip

There will be more, especially now that the merger looks like it's going to happen.

[Trip]

21 minutes ago, greenbastard said:

There will be more, especially now that the merger looks like it's going to happen.

If Verizon is contiguous now, having conducted several previous spectrum swaps to its satisfaction, I'm not sure how the merger would make them less contiguous and thus more likely to help their now-stronger competitor.

- Trip

[greenbastard]

6 hours ago, Trip said:

If Verizon is contiguous now, having conducted several previous spectrum swaps to its satisfaction, I'm not sure how the merger would make them less contiguous and thus more likely to help their now-stronger competitor.

- Trip

There will likely be a few areas where the new T-Mobile will have to dump some midband spectrum. When that happens, swaps and realignment will likely have to happen in order to pair both the seller and the buyer.

[bigsnake49]

26 minutes ago, greenbastard said:

There will likely be a few areas where the new T-Mobile will have to dump some midband spectrum. When that happens, swaps and realignment will likely have to happen in order to pair both the seller and the buyer.

There won't be any divestments. Now there might be some horse trading between AWS and PCS. There might be a case where a 5x5 block might be non contiguous so it would make sense to sell it to the carriers near it.

[dro1984]

I saw in the news headlines today, from Law 360 news,  that Senator Mike Lee from Utah has asked the FCC and DOJ to weight the benefits of the proposed Sprint and T Mobile merger.     The article seemed to state that the Senator is on the same side as Sprint and T Mobile (pro merger?)

This might be a good positive for the merger!  

once in,  You can hit the "x" to read the partial article.   

Senator Lee (Utah) wants the DOJ and FCC to weight the benefits of merger. 

Edited August 9, 2018 by dro1984

[greenbastard]

13 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

There won't be any divestments. 

There probably will be in a few markets.

[utiz4321]

2 hours ago, dro1984 said:

I saw in the news headlines today, from Law 360 news,  that Senator Mike Lee from Utah has asked the FCC and DOJ to weight the benefits of the proposed Sprint and T Mobile merger.     The article seemed to state that the Senator is on the same side as Sprint and T Mobile (pro merger?)

This might be a good positive for the merger!  

once in,  You can hit the "x" to read the partial article.   

Senator Lee (Utah) wants the DOJ and FCC to weight the benefits of merger. 

Mike Lee is very libertarian when it comes to economics. I would have been surprised if he didn't weight in positively. 

[dro1984]

There will be enough opposition.   It's nice to see some clear thinking where a politician says, look at this merger from a benefit angle as well.   

[tyroned3222]

Wanted to give a quick summary on what sprint has done since the merger was announced and see what you guys think :

 

Q1 Sprint spent 1.1 billion capex on network improvements. In Q2 ( Sprint is rumored to spend 1.5 billion) much needed..

 

Sprint is aggressively pushing towards network competition.. Sprint has been very close to at&t on national average speeds..this was when band 41 was around 50% complete

Now Sprint should be able to pass at&t as they get close to 70% and beyond

As Terrell pointed out higher uplink is active in his market Ericsson

 

I've been seeing people post that Sprint in adding new tower in Reno Nevada which they havent done so in 10 years.. and now also confused as to why Sprint is merging with TMO

 

 

Marcelo was recently interviewed on Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-08-09/softbank-coo-claure-talks-turnaround-efforts-t-mobile-deal-video

And he was asked what if the merger is not approved.. and he said we have Analyze That.. and I think part of the analyzing was what they are doing now on the network in case the merger doesn't go thru... But Sprint is making strides now they should of made in 2015/2016

 

[bigsnake49]

It was probably part of the merger discussions. As in you better get your network in decent shape or the merger is off. Decent shape as in put band 41/26 on all your sites. 

[tyroned3222]

It was probably part of the merger discussions. As in you better get your network in decent shape or the merger is off. Decent shape as in put band 41/26 on all your sites. 

Ya, that makes sense.. I mean here in my market El paso.. we went from 9% band 41 mini macros. To between 55-70% band 41/26 complete with 8t8r equipment band 26 not live yet tho ... This all happened in like 4 months

 

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[derrph]

4 minutes ago, tyroned3222 said:

Ya, that makes sense.. I mean here in my market El paso.. we went from 9% band 41 mini macros. To between 55-70% band 41/26 complete with 8t8r equipment band 26 not live yet tho

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Wow thats a major jump! With what is live, hows the experience? 

[tyroned3222]

Wow thats a major jump! With what is live, hows the experience? 

With the small cell added on all Sprint stores and the band 41 site .. for me speeds have quadrupled... Of course I can't speak for the entire area.. I will test more of the city soon.. but I wouldn't be surprised if Sprint makes a huge gain on rootmetrics here

 

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[nexgencpu]

42 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

It was probably part of the merger discussions. As in you better get your network in decent shape or the merger is off. Decent shape as in put band 41/26 on all your sites. 

I do not believe this, Tmobile will decommission a ton of sites. This is more Sprint covering their own ass just in case this merger does not go through.

[RedSpark]

1 hour ago, tyroned3222 said:

Wanted to give a quick summary on what sprint has done since the merger was announced and see what you guys think :

 

Q1 Sprint spent 1.1 billion capex on network improvements. In Q2 ( Sprint is rumored to spend 1.5 billion) much needed..

 

Sprint is aggressively pushing towards network competition.. Sprint has been very close to at&t on national average speeds..this was when band 41 was around 50% complete

Now Sprint should be able to pass at&t as they get close to 70% and beyond

As Terrell pointed out higher uplink is active in his market Ericsson

 

I've been seeing people post that Sprint in adding new tower in Reno Nevada which they havent done so in 10 years.. and now also confused as to why Sprint is merging with TMO

 

 

Marcelo was recently interviewed on Bloomberg

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2018-08-09/softbank-coo-claure-talks-turnaround-efforts-t-mobile-deal-video

And he was asked what if the merger is not approved.. and he said we have Analyze That.. and I think part of the analyzing was what they are doing now on the network in case the merger doesn't go thru... But Sprint is making strides now they should of made in 2015/2016

 

Funny thing is that Marcelo is in an influential position as SoftBank COO to determine if Sprint will receive any infusions of capital should the merger fail to be approved.

He sure didn’t sound too happy at the idea of Sprint going it alone and having to spend billions of dollars on network improvements for 5G....

Sprint’s not in a financial position to spend that kind of money, right? Perhaps that money would have to come from SoftBank?

[bigsnake49]

22 minutes ago, nexgencpu said:

I do not believe this, Tmobile will decommission a ton of these sites. This is more Sprint covering their own ass just in case this merger does not go through.

Move the equipment over to their racks yes. Stop paying the rent yes. But totally decommission them, no. Remember T-Mobile has 65,000 macro sites. Sprint has 45,000. The merged company will have 85,000. So even if they add another couple thousand of new sites, they still will need new equipment so they can go from 47,000 to 85,000. So if Sprint and T-Mobile are on the same tower they will just move Sprint's equipment to T-mobile's racks. If Sprint is on a tower nearby they will also move them. If Sprint is on a desirable location that T-Mobile needs for coverage or capacity then they will add T-mobile equipment to that tower (they have identified 10,000 of those sites). The resulting company will have a hell of a network. They will move everybody to low/mid frequencies on LTE while they clear band 41 for 5G bu they will start adding 5G to unused spectrum on band 41 fairly quickly after the merger closes, and they get 5G capable devices. 

Edited August 12, 2018 by bigsnake49

[tyroned3222]

Funny thing is that Marcelo is in an influential position as SoftBank COO to determine if Sprint will receive any infusions of capital should the merger fail to be approved.
He sure didn’t sound too happy at the idea of Sprint going it alone and having to spend billions of dollars on network improvements for 5G....
Sprint’s not in a financial position to spend that kind of money, right? Perhaps that money would have to come from SoftBank?

Ya, Marcelo didn't seem to really want to comment on that. What he said most of us here could of taken a guess and got that one right ( that they analyze the situation). I think 5G is just about marketing and and letting people know that Sprint won't fall behind this time around. If they keep spending the way they are and maybe a just a little more,I think they will be fine. SoftBank won't invest because it is very risky as nextgencpu said before.. SoftBank has no way of knowing how much market share will result from that investment in the next 3-5 years..

if sprint starts posting 400-800k quaters then softbank will certainly revalue the situation. As of late even the most recent quarter most of sprints post paid adds came from pre paid conversions.. don't know if that is a healthy buisness model for the future .. although it's not bad, but sprint needs new port in from the other carriers.

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[tyroned3222]

Move the equipment over to their racks yes. Stop paying the rent yes. But totally decommission them, no. Remember T-Mobile has 65,000 macro sites. Sprint has 45,000. The merged company will have 85,000. So even if they add another couple thousand of new sites, they still will need new equipment so they can go from 47,000 to 85,000. So if Sprint and T-Mobile are on the same tower they will just move Sprint's equipment to T-mobile's racks. If Sprint is on a tower nearby they will also move them. If Sprint is on a desirable location that T-Mobile needs for coverage or capacity then they will add T-mobile equipment to that tower (they have identified 10,000 of those sites). The resulting company will have a hell of a network. They will move everybody to low/mid frequencies on LTE while they clear band 41 for 5G bu they will start adding 5G to unused spectrum on band 41 fairly quickly after the merger closes, and they get 5G capable devices. 

10,000 thousand sites on a nationwide scale isn't a lot if you think about it.. So, Sprint is really only bringing spectrum a shit load of debt to the table for TMO

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[bigsnake49]

Just now, tyroned3222 said:

10,000 thousand sites on a nationwide scale isn't a lot if you think about it.. So, Sprint is really only bringing spectrum a shit load of debt to the table for TMO

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And about 55M customers. The whole thing is about scale. Yes spectrum as well but Capex spread over 120M customers is much better than spread over 55M.

[tyroned3222]

And about 55M customers. The whole thing is about scale. Yes spectrum as well but Capex spread over 120M customers is much better than spread over 55M.

Ya that is true, but the combined company will also carry close to 100 billion in debt.. which means that the new TMO won't be so generous anymore on their un-carrier moves

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[bigsnake49]

13 minutes ago, tyroned3222 said:

Ya that is true, but the combined company will also carry close to 100 billion in debt.. which means that the new TMO won't be so generous anymore on their un-carrier moves

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About $68B-$70B which is a lot lower than the $100B that Verizon has.

[tyroned3222]

About $68B-$70B which is a lot lower than the $100B that Verizon has.

Combined carriers will have total debt of as much as $77 billion.. and I believe with spectrum auction coming up both will go into more debt

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[NYC126]

1 hour ago, bigsnake49 said:

About $68B-$70B which is a lot lower than the $100B that Verizon has.

When you are Verizon with 152 million customers, 132 billion on revenue, and spend 17 billion on CAPEX annually without having to do expansions since you already cover the whole US everything comes in handy.

[bigsnake49]

38 minutes ago, tyroned3222 said:

Combined carriers will have total debt of as much as $77 billion.. and I believe with spectrum auction coming up both will go into more debt

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Net debt $63-65B.

[red_dog007]

Seems like everyone is forgetting about AT&T.  End of 2017 they were at 165billion in short/long term debt on $160 billion in revenue.  This year they have acquired some more companies so will be adding billions more debt.  Why doesn't AT&T get these doom and gloom debt talks?

Companies are in Sprint's situation.  Or even AT&Ts. Its so common it's expected. A combined New-TMobile will be in a good spot.  If Sprint still had to go at it alone, they still could be in a better spot, but they aren't going to go anywhere.  Sprint doom and gloom over debt has existed on forums or poo poo article writers for years now, but look at where Sprint is.  Still here.