Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[clbowens]

1 hour ago, jreuschl said:

I must have missed it.  What does T-Mobile plan on doing with B26?

Very occasionally I used the Band Selection app to force B26 in an area that T-Mobile hasn't upgraded a tower.  Obviously with the shut down that is probably not going to work anymore.

B26 will be sold to Dish as part of the merger deal.

[PedroDaGr8]

1 hour ago, jreuschl said:

I must have missed it.  What does T-Mobile plan on doing with B26?

Very occasionally I used the Band Selection app to force B26 in an area that T-Mobile hasn't upgraded a tower.  Obviously with the shut down that is probably not going to work anymore.

I believe one of the merger conditions was they had offer to sell it to Dish. 

EDIT: Oops didn't see that this had already been answered. 

[dkyeager]

2 hours ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

I believe one of the merger conditions was they had offer to sell it to Dish. 

EDIT: Oops didn't see that this had already been answered. 

Actually, you are correct. It is possible Dish won't take it. Meanwhile both Dish and T-Mobile pretend they don't want it for negotiation purposes.

[dkyeager]

Known non-keep powerline site site near a powerful T-Mobile site in NW Columbus OH still operating on band 25 today.

[BucketHead25]

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/1/23191183/sprint-network-shutdown-t-mobile-sunset-lte-3g-cdma

[Dkoellerwx]

6 hours ago, BucketHead25 said:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/1/23191183/sprint-network-shutdown-t-mobile-sunset-lte-3g-cdma

Not the greatest article... yeah Sprint was a little late to LTE but they're unnecessarily rough. In most cities it was at least competitive with the other carriers, if not better in some cases by the time the B41 rollout reached its peak.

[Dkoellerwx]

Sprint B25 and B26 still alive and kicking in Omaha, NE.

[IrwinshereAgain]

2 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Not the greatest article... yeah Sprint was a little late to LTE but they're unnecessarily rough. In most cities it was at least competitive with the other carriers, if not better in some cases by the time the B41 rollout reached its peak.

Agreed.  I happily relied on Sprint LTE Hotspot for several years for all of my internet needs.

[clbowens]

The Sprint coverage map now says "T-Mobile coverage".  Basically, the same as T-Mobile's coverage map

[bigsnake49]

On 6/30/2022 at 4:26 PM, dkyeager said:

Actually, you are correct. It is possible Dish won't take it. Meanwhile both Dish and T-Mobile pretend they don't want it for negotiation purposes.

It's a small channel size and it's just yet another frequency they have to support. They should just sell it to AT&T/Verizon/USCC and be done with it. 

Or sell it to the government and have it incorporate it in the 700/800 Public Service frequencies.

Edited July 3, 2022 by bigsnake49

[dkyeager]

2 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

It's a small channel size and it's just yet another frequency they have to support. They should just sell it to AT&T/Verizon/USCC and be done with it. 

Or sell it to the government and have it incorporate it in the 700/800 Public Service frequencies.

The FCC should consider ways to consolidate many bands into larger bandwith channels.

[S4GRU]

Sprint still alive on all 3 bands here in the South Puget Sound area this morning.

Robert

[iansltx]

3 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

It's a small channel size and it's just yet another frequency they have to support. They should just sell it to AT&T/Verizon/USCC and be done with it. 

Or sell it to the government and have it incorporate it in the 700/800 Public Service frequencies.

Dish has base stations and antennas already set up for n26, and phones are starting to come out supporting that. Yes, it's a 5x5 patchwork, but it can basically provide an anchor for higher-frequency NR that augments n71, which in many places is only 5x5 on Dish.

[iansltx]

29 minutes ago, S4GRU said:

Sprint still alive on all 3 bands here in the South Puget Sound area this morning.

Robert

Just cycled through where I'm sitting...not near any keep sites...and 25/26 don't exist...locking to them but.ps me over to AT&T MFBI (why TMo isn't doing 2/25 MFBI here I don't know...maybe Nokia equipment can't do it?). TMo B41 is visible, but Sprint isn't.

Two nights ago I saw 10 MHz Sprint B41 at the top of the band. Not sure whether that's live today.

[dkyeager]

T-Mobile is asking FCC for approval to obtain Watch TV 2.5 spectrum in Ohio to meet its 5G rural merger obligations in 29 Ohio and 2 Indiana counties. https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsEntry/attachments/attachmentViewRD.jsp?applType=search&fileKey=1979344942&attachmentKey=21484155&attachmentInd=applAttach

This implies that T-Mobile will aggressively go after 2.5 rural spectrum in the upcoming FCC auction 108 even more than I thought.

[dkyeager]

B25 no longer visible to my G2s with Sprint Sims except when rooted using NSG.  These were last used on MVNO Tello.  My LG G4 which was last used on Sprint with a Sprint Sim is unregistered on Verizon 3g.

[bigsnake49]

Is T-Mobile still trying to swap band 2/25 allocations to create larger adjacent blocks to band 25? 

[PedroDaGr8]

1 hour ago, bigsnake49 said:

Is T-Mobile still trying to swap band 2/25 allocations to create larger adjacent blocks to band 25? 

Here they canibalized all of but the PCS G-block for B2 but they already had everything contiguous.

[Dkoellerwx]

2 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

Is T-Mobile still trying to swap band 2/25 allocations to create larger adjacent blocks to band 25? 

I believe they have made a few attempts, but I don't think there has been a large scale effort so far.

[iansltx]

Just cycled through here and there's a Sprint Keep Site within range with 25+26+41. 25 is still 10x10, while 41 is the same 10 MHz at the top of the band that I saw at the airport on Friday night. Speeds aren't great, but signal isn't bad, so my guess is that they turned up the power on the site vs. where it was before (B26 is -101 RSRP and I know the site nearest me is gone).

Will be downtown for fireworks tonight, so will see how networks perform. I have mmW-enabled VZW and AT&T SIMs to play with.

[PedroDaGr8]

Several T-Mobile upgrade sites in my area came online last week. Interestingly, every single one used a single eNB for all LTE bands including B41. This is extremely unusual for my area and, from my understanding, most areas. Typically, B41 and the second B2 carrier will be on a different eNB than B2(first carrier)/B12/B66/B71. I've never understood the logic T-Mo has used for splitting eNBs but here's hoping it leads to them consolidating a number of the existing sites under single eNBs rather than creating even more chaos.

[RedSpark]

On 7/2/2022 at 1:05 PM, BucketHead25 said:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/7/1/23191183/sprint-network-shutdown-t-mobile-sunset-lte-3g-cdma

I guess this news means that all of the Sprint DAS installations are now offline as well? Can T-Mobile assume ownership of these installed systems and retool them for T-Mobile network access?

[Paynefanbro]

26 minutes ago, PedroDaGr8 said:

Several T-Mobile upgrade sites in my area came online last week. Interestingly, every single one used a single eNB for all LTE bands including B41. This is extremely unusual for my area and, from my understanding, most areas. Typically, B41 and the second B2 carrier will be on a different eNB than B2(first carrier)/B12/B66/B71. I've never understood the logic T-Mo has used for splitting eNBs but here's hoping it leads to them consolidating a number of the existing sites under single eNBs rather than creating even more chaos.

I've always hated the split eNBs. They make it that much harder to track upgrades of sites and more importantly it also makes it slightly worse for carrier aggregation. While T-Mobile has enabled the ability to aggregate bands across eNBs, it seems like the network avoids doing that as much as possible.

[mdob07]

36 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

I've always hated the split eNBs. They make it that much harder to track upgrades of sites and more importantly it also makes it slightly worse for carrier aggregation. While T-Mobile has enabled the ability to aggregate bands across eNBs, it seems like the network avoids doing that as much as possible.

Agreed on the split eNBs being a pain. AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile all do it around here, I've always wondered what the technical reasoning was for it. AT&T and Verizon's follow a pattern at least which helps. Still better than the 5 eNBs Sprint sites had around here. 

[Trip]

Around here, the GCIs are a complete mess, with some sites having 5 or more.  I do hope they come back and tidy them; I know that some of the newer upgraded sites are not getting separate 600/700 GCIs like previous ones were. 

I'd be nice if they tidied the PCIs also, as they seem to be completely random and have no consistency across bands (or sometimes even within bands).

- Trip