Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[greenbastard]

1 hour ago, dro1984 said:

SDX Central News article:   T-Mobile Details $40B Network Upgrade Strategy

From that article;

...through redundant site decommissions on the back half of its network integration project, which it expects to wrap up

before the end of the current quarter.

Sprint customers are about to have a bad time.

[dro1984]

Not sure I follow you?    If the site is "redundant" meaning there is a T-Mobile site there too or very near by, why would it cause problems?   We will all be on one network soon, ... some sooner than others.    

[cyclone]

8 minutes ago, dro1984 said:

Not sure I follow you?    If the site is "redundant" meaning there is a T-Mobile site there too or very near by, why would it cause problems?   We will all be on one network soon, ... some sooner than others.    

With network upgrades being 5G centric as well as Sprint subs being left off the T-Mo network unless no other Sprint signal can be found, will result in an even smaller footprint. Yes this is assuming that majority of the redundant sites torn down being that of Sprint's network. Until there is consistent network sharing, Sprint subs will be weaned off the network through 5G device upgrades or through leaving due to shrinking service.

[bigsnake49]

4 minutes ago, dro1984 said:

Not sure I follow you?    If the site is "redundant" meaning there is a T-Mobile site there too or very near by, why would it cause problems?   We will all be on one network soon, ... some sooner than others.    

That assumes that hey move over band 26 or replace it by band 12 or b71 (if you have a compatible phone) they move over band 25 spectrum and possibly add another RRH and move over B41 panels/RRHs or replace them with T-Mobile compatible panels/RRHs with b41/n41 MMIMO and give you access to them via a SIM swap or something. Roaming is not working real well right now since you have to lose coverage before it will switch you over.

[bigsnake49]

3 minutes ago, cyclone said:

With network upgrades being 5G centric as well as Sprint subs being left off the T-Mo network unless no other Sprint signal can be found, will result in an even smaller footprint. Yes this is assuming that majority of the redundant sites torn down being that of Sprint's network. Until there is consistent network sharing, Sprint subs will be weaned off the network through 5G device upgrades or through leaving due to shrinking service.

If I am AT&T or Verizon, I'd devise some attractive incentives to bring disgruntled Sprint customers over.

[bigsnake49]

51 minutes ago, greenbastard said:

From that article;

 

 

Sprint customers are about to have a bad time.

I don't think that they will be able to decommission all redundant sites by the end of the current quarter. Maybe they can decommission redundant sites whose leases end this quarter. But the question still remains. Will the Sprint subscribers it served be given full access to the T-Mobile Network or not? Will Boost subs be given full access to the T-Mobile network before Sprint subs?

 

Edited August 13, 2020 by bigsnake49

[JonnygATL]

1 hour ago, bigsnake49 said:

That assumes that hey move over band 26 or replace it by band 12 or b71 (if you have a compatible phone) they move over band 25 spectrum and possibly add another RRH and move over B41 panels/RRHs or replace them with T-Mobile compatible panels/RRHs with b41/n41 MMIMO and give you access to them via a SIM swap or something. Roaming is not working real well right now since you have to lose coverage before it will switch you over.

Just turn off Sprint bands on your phone. 

[bigsnake49]

1 hour ago, JonnygATL said:

Just turn off Sprint bands on your phone. 

Not everybody has a phone that can do that. 

[greenbastard]

30 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Not everybody has a phone that can do that. 

Or is savvy enough to do it or understand the process. Phones without VoLTE are going to be severely handicapped moving forward (which is a massive amount of Sprint users). Decommissioning Sprint towers means removing 1xRTT coverage (specifically, indoor coverage).

It's a bold move by T-Mobile. Especially since Verizon is also killing off CDMA in major urban areas, so there isn't any roaming to fallback on.

Edited August 13, 2020 by greenbastard

[bigsnake49]

55 minutes ago, greenbastard said:

Or is savvy enough to do it or understand the process. Phones without VoLTE are going to be severely handicapped moving forward (which is a massive amount of Sprint users). Decommissioning Sprint towers means removing 1xRTT coverage (specifically, indoor coverage).

It's a bold move by T-Mobile. Especially since Verizon is also killing off CDMA in major urban areas, so there isn't any roaming to fallback on.

I would have long left Sprint if it was not for their 1x voice coverage which is very good.

[iansltx]

1 hour ago, greenbastard said:

Or is savvy enough to do it or understand the process. Phones without VoLTE are going to be severely handicapped moving forward (which is a massive amount of Sprint users). Decommissioning Sprint towers means removing 1xRTT coverage (specifically, indoor coverage).

It's a bold move by T-Mobile. Especially since Verizon is also killing off CDMA in major urban areas, so there isn't any roaming to fallback on.

Dunno about that. BC10 1x carries a long ways, and easy enough to optimize that 1xA channel for coverage rather than capacity as the number of folks needing CDMA for voice drops. I'd be a lot more concerned about fringe data issues than voice coverage.

[greenbastard]

5 minutes ago, iansltx said:

Dunno about that. BC10 1x carries a long ways, and easy enough to optimize that 1xA channel for coverage rather than capacity as the number of folks needing CDMA for voice drops. I'd be a lot more concerned about fringe data issues than voice coverage.

Depends on the terrain. But for every tower removed, my guess the nearby vicinity will have indoor coverage issues (1x800 or not). You also run into issues with voice capacity. As more users crowd an enlarged sector, the more calls will fail to go through/drop. 

[iansltx]

1 minute ago, greenbastard said:

Depends on the terrain. But for every tower removed, my guess the nearby vicinity will have indoor coverage issues (1x800 or not). You also run into issues with voice capacity. As more users crowd an enlarged sector, the more calls will fail to go through/drop. 

I'd be really surprised if the 1x network is operating anywhere near capacity basically anywhere, even with people making more phone calls due to the pandemic. I wish I had stats to support/oppose this conjecture, but sadly no way to know without being on the internal network engineering side.

[dro1984]

I'm shocked that there is no faith in T-Mobile's ability to manage and farm their network almost like they don't have network engineers??   Sprint was by no means great with fixing or tuning their network (except the last 8 months of their existence).   

If the network does get really bad, then it's time to move to a different carrier.     I am staying only because of my Sprint plan that for $60 gives me pretty high priority and allows 1080p streaming on LTE.         But if the service gets so nasty then I will move on.    I'm thinking of AT&T because I hear they are really boosting and densifying their network.    Consumers Cellular for $30 or $40 sounds fine to me with an AT&T sim card.       I did call them and they can prioritize which network you favor with their sim (AT&T or T-Mobile)

[Dkoellerwx]

5 hours ago, dro1984 said:

Not sure I follow you?    If the site is "redundant" meaning there is a T-Mobile site there too or very near by, why would it cause problems?   We will all be on one network soon, ... some sooner than others.    

Unless you have a Samsung Galaxy S20(+, Ultra), Galaxy A71 or LG V60, you only get access to T-Mobile roaming. That means if there is even a hint of Sprint signal, you are stuck on that. So if several of the infill or capacity sites are decommissioned, suddenly you're stuck on crowded B26 or 3G instead of B41 or CA B25. Not good.

3 hours ago, JonnygATL said:

Just turn off Sprint bands on your phone. 

Yeah... most of us can't do that easily.

[though]

3 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Unless you have a Samsung Galaxy S20(+, Ultra), Galaxy A71 or LG V60, you only get access to T-Mobile roaming. That means if there is even a hint of Sprint signal, you are stuck on that.

Because those are the only phones you can completely (and semi-easily) disable Sprint bands on?

[tommym65]

12 minutes ago, though said:

Because those are the only phones you can completely (and semi-easily) disable Sprint bands on?

No, because these phones are set up to run natively on T-Mobile, even though they are sold by Sprint. 

[though]

23 minutes ago, tommym65 said:

No, because these phones are set up to run natively on T-Mobile, even though they are sold by Sprint. 

"set up"? are you saying that other phones that support the same bands as those can't be set up to run on T-Mo natively?

[JossMan]

4 hours ago, dro1984 said:

I'm shocked that there is no faith in T-Mobile's ability to manage and farm their network almost like they don't have network engineers??   Sprint was by no means great with fixing or tuning their network (except the last 8 months of their existence).   

If the network does get really bad, then it's time to move to a different carrier.     I am staying only because of my Sprint plan that for $60 gives me pretty high priority and allows 1080p streaming on LTE.         But if the service gets so nasty then I will move on.    I'm thinking of AT&T because I hear they are really boosting and densifying their network.    Consumers Cellular for $30 or $40 sounds fine to me with an AT&T sim card.       I did call them and they can prioritize which network you favor with their sim (AT&T or T-Mobile)

I ended up bailing with 3 lines to AT&T, I can attest that AT&T has been busy adding capacity to its network.  When I left AT&T back in 2016 only LTE band was 700MHz and a couple sites had 1900MHz for capacity.  Since I've came back to AT&T every site here has B2 1900MHz, B66 AWS, and some B30 WCS sprinkled in along with FirstNet B14.  I get speeds well over 100Mbps pretty much everywhere I go, and I'm not use to that lol 

[tommym65]

14 minutes ago, though said:

"set up"? are you saying that other phones that support the same bands as those can't be set up to run on T-Mo natively?

No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying (and I'm no expert) is that Sprint/T-Mobile has provisioned these phones to run natively on the T-Mobile network (so they can use T-Mobile 5G), while all other Sprint phones are currently provisioned to run natively on the Sprint network. My Sprint-purchased A71 5G almost never connects to Sprint (even though it says it is a Sprint phone), it is virtually always on T-Mobile. 

[newyork4me]

On 8/11/2020 at 10:46 PM, JonnygATL said:

And TMobile has quite the temporal leg up on deploying said mid band, pre-existing spectrum with an already well seeded device portfolio that can take advantage of their 2.5 mid band spectrum. Will the other 2 eventually catch up? Probably. Money does talk, after all. But not before TMO enjoys its solitary vacation for 18 to 24 monts!

Verizon is currently deploying CBRS equipment faster than T-Mobile is doing 2.5ghz.  There's something like 80mhz unlicensed and they can bid on up to 40 MhZ for PALs...so, real spectrum advantages might be rather limited...

[JonnygATL]

5 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Unless you have a Samsung Galaxy S20(+, Ultra), Galaxy A71 or LG V60, you only get access to T-Mobile roaming. That means if there is even a hint of Sprint signal, you are stuck on that. So if several of the infill or capacity sites are decommissioned, suddenly you're stuck on crowded B26 or 3G instead of B41 or CA B25. Not good.

Yeah... most of us can't do that easily.

Samsung  phones are extremely widespread.  For others I am assuming it requires root access. But MSL =000000 and that's the simple key if you're on Samsung.  One of the many reasons I have always been with them. 

[Dkoellerwx]

5 hours ago, though said:

"set up"? are you saying that other phones that support the same bands as those can't be set up to run on T-Mo natively?

 

5 hours ago, tommym65 said:

No, I'm not saying that. What I'm saying (and I'm no expert) is that Sprint/T-Mobile has provisioned these phones to run natively on the T-Mobile network (so they can use T-Mobile 5G), while all other Sprint phones are currently provisioned to run natively on the Sprint network. My Sprint-purchased A71 5G almost never connects to Sprint (even though it says it is a Sprint phone), it is virtually always on T-Mobile. 

Tommy is correct, the listed phone are provisioned to run on T-Mobile only, and will "roam" on Sprint when there is no T-Mobile signal even though they were sold as Sprint phones. This has caused issues for some users where the T-Mobile network is decidedly worse capacity wise than Sprint since they haven't put B41 into use in many places yet. 

For everyone else, you are limited to only roam on T-Mobile, so if they are decommissioning "redundant" Sprint sites that served as in-fill or capacity boosts for Sprint users, the experience for those of us still on Sprint only phones will have a much degraded network experience. 

[Dkoellerwx]

4 hours ago, JonnygATL said:

Samsung  phones are extremely widespread.  For others I am assuming it requires root access. But MSL =000000 and that's the simple key if you're on Samsung.  One of the many reasons I have always been with them. 

The vast majority of people won't know that, they'll just know their network keeps getting worse as Sprint sites are taken offline, so I really hope the T-Mobile network team is taking that into account as they decommission sites. They're not really offering any good incentives for people to upgrade to new devices at the moment (that I'm aware of) so it's not going to go well if they start making the Sprint network worse before giving people a way to get on the T-Mobile network without scrapping their plans.

[bigsnake49]

It's not the way I would have done it. I would have targeted one market at a time and integrated the network completely (including 5G) at which time they would have been migrated to the T-Mobile billing system which would have contained all the different Sprint plans and discounts. Then on to the next market and the next.

Edited August 14, 2020 by bigsnake49