Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[dkyeager]

2 hours ago, RedSpark said:

If Dish doesn't buy it, then what happens to it? T-Mobile gets $72 Million and keeps it on-air with supporting equipment? How would that work with its radio sets?

https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/tmobile-sprint.pdf

 

see pages 12 and 13.  There may be further deals that are technically public, but we can not easily find.

 

Seems to be that it has now become cheaper for Dish to decline.  If it does so, the AGs in the various states may have a say on it.

[RedSpark]

3 hours ago, dkyeager said:

https://www.courthousenews.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/04/tmobile-sprint.pdf

 

see pages 12 and 13.  There may be further deals that are technically public, but we can not easily find.

 

Seems to be that it has now become cheaper for Dish to decline.  If it does so, the AGs in the various states may have a say on it.

Very interesting read. Thanks!

Is this enough 800 MHz spectrum to do anything useful with? Dedicated voice channel?

[dkyeager]

3 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Very interesting read. Thanks!

Is this enough 800 MHz spectrum to do anything useful with? Dedicated voice channel?

It certainly would help T-Mobile with VoNR (VoLTE) , given that 700MHz always appears over capacity.

[RedSpark]

22 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

It certainly would help T-Mobile with VoNR (VoLTE) , given that 700MHz always appears over capacity.

That makes sense. I guess we'll see how much Charlie wants to open his wallet. Getting Masa vibes here....

[Paynefanbro]

On 7/21/2022 at 10:35 AM, Paynefanbro said:

I'd love to see them release a separate report showing data for 5G separately like how Ookla and OpenSignal do. 

They did just that. T-Mobile (to no one’s surprise) has the best 5G network  

https://rootmetrics.com/en-US/content/US-state-of-5G-1H-2022

[iansltx]

Upgraded to One UI 5 earlier tonight, which allows me to see when I'm connected to multiple NR carriers on NSA. T-Mobile n41 CA is definitely live here, with 2500-2600 and 2640-2680, roughly speaking, being the two channels. LTE from the same equipment is at 2600-2640, and supports UL CA, for ~19 Mbps up on 2CA B41 if you're close to the site. Then 2680-2690 is Sprint B41. So T-Mobile is using ~190 MHz of the 194 MHz they own here, and I expect a similar configuration in other places where they own or lease the entire band.

I figure they'll bump the higher n41 channel to 50 MHz once Sprint B41 is completely gone, then 70 MHz as VZW gets wider C-Band channels, then 90 MHz (dropping B41 LTE) as the final bump, as all of C-Band clears.

Before anyone asks, no, backhaul hasn't been bumped...no gigabit speeds in sight despite all that spectrum. And my phone can't do n25 yet either.

[dkyeager]

6 hours ago, iansltx said:

Upgraded to One UI 5 earlier tonight, which allows me to see when I'm connected to multiple NR carriers on NSA. T-Mobile n41 CA is definitely live here, with 2500-2600 and 2640-2680, roughly speaking, being the two channels. LTE from the same equipment is at 2600-2640, and supports UL CA, for ~19 Mbps up on 2CA B41 if you're close to the site. Then 2680-2690 is Sprint B41. So T-Mobile is using ~190 MHz of the 194 MHz they own here, and I expect a similar configuration in other places where they own or lease the entire band.

I figure they'll bump the higher n41 channel to 50 MHz once Sprint B41 is completely gone, then 70 MHz as VZW gets wider C-Band channels, then 90 MHz (dropping B41 LTE) as the final bump, as all of C-Band clears.

Before anyone asks, no, backhaul hasn't been bumped...no gigabit speeds in sight despite all that spectrum. And my phone can't do n25 yet either.

Does the Samsung Band Selection app work? (useful with Verizon and AT&T; this type of development takes a while thus they may not have blocked it yet.)

[dkyeager]

6 hours ago, iansltx said:

Upgraded to One UI 5 earlier tonight, which allows me to see when I'm connected to multiple NR carriers on NSA. T-Mobile n41 CA is definitely live here, with 2500-2600 and 2640-2680, roughly speaking, being the two channels. LTE from the same equipment is at 2600-2640, and supports UL CA, for ~19 Mbps up on 2CA B41 if you're close to the site. Then 2680-2690 is Sprint B41. So T-Mobile is using ~190 MHz of the 194 MHz they own here, and I expect a similar configuration in other places where they own or lease the entire band.

I figure they'll bump the higher n41 channel to 50 MHz once Sprint B41 is completely gone, then 70 MHz as VZW gets wider C-Band channels, then 90 MHz (dropping B41 LTE) as the final bump, as all of C-Band clears.

Before anyone asks, no, backhaul hasn't been bumped...no gigabit speeds in sight despite all that spectrum. And my phone can't do n25 yet either.

Great work. What where the upload speeds on the 140MHz (NR CA should do that much better than LTE)?  To be clear, were you able to access all 190MHz at this time? Any other bands in this CA mix? Thanks.

[iansltx]

4 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Does the Samsung Band Selection app work? (useful with Verizon and AT&T; this type of development takes a while thus they may not have blocked it yet.)

Nope. You have to band-select with *#2263#, and if you can't get there with a given SIM, you aren't selecting bands.

[jreuschl]

I think this is a new option - now allows to select NR - NRDC ONLY in the band selection menu.

[iansltx]

3 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Great work. What where the upload speeds on the 140MHz (NR CA should do that much better than LTE)?  To be clear, were you able to access all 190MHz at this time? Any other bands in this CA mix? Thanks.

No change in upload speeds. AFAIK the S22 doesn't aggregate uploads across NR carriers. You can CA LTE-LTE or LTE-NR but not NR-NR. The difference here was just that what was going on CA-wise was visible...no perf change to my knowledge (UL CA on B41 *might* be but that only works closer to the site).

I didn't actually see Sprint B41 at all last night (and I can't get it from where I'm sitting right now), but from earlier, elsewhere in town, I know that it's centered at ~2685 MHz. So last night I saw "only" 180 MHz, of which I was able to to connect to either 140 (n41) or 40 (B41) MHz at any given point...not both at the same time. For n41, I don't recall whether I was able to lock onto an LTE SCC on top of the NSA PCC (the 40 MHz carrier won't show up in SA), but 99% sure I was at least able to use B2 (20x20) in addition to the two n41 carriers. Definitely was able to anchor with B66 (10x10).

[iansltx]

7 minutes ago, jreuschl said:

I think this is a new option - now allows to select NR - NRDC ONLY in the band selection menu.

Yep, that's new as of this rev. Doesn't matter much for T-Mobile yet, unless you're in NYC I guess.

[Paynefanbro]

T-Mobile forks over $3.5B for more 600 MHz spectrum

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/t-mobile-forks-over-35b-more-600-mhz-spectrum

Between Auction 108, this purchase of 600MHz licenses, and Shentel selling their 2.5GHz licenses, it seems like a lot of things are lining up for T-Mobile this year. 

[RedSpark]

From a few days back: https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/deutsche-telekom-aims-50-t-mobile-ownership-2024

DT Chief Executive Timotheus Hoettgas said buying the majority stake in T-Mobile US was the group's most important strategic project at present, according to Reuters. He said that stake should top 50% much sooner than its previous projection of 2024.

Earlier this year, DT paid $2.4 billion to SoftBank Group to increase its stake in T-Mobile US to 48.4%.

[C.A.R]

How long does it normally take from the time they put up new panels until they turn them on. We live in Northern Indiana and are almost right in the middle of 4 towers, so our service is not great at best but right now it seems that at least 2 of the towers are not broadcasting so the service is non existent in our immediate area. The 2 that I know are not broadcasting were Sprint towers. The one had the new racks with the big pannels attached sitting on the ground at the base of the tower for almost a year before the finally put them up.

[dkyeager]

2 hours ago, C.A.R said:

How long does it normally take from the time they put up new panels until they turn them on. We live in Northern Indiana and are almost right in the middle of 4 towers, so our service is not great at best but right now it seems that at least 2 of the towers are not broadcasting so the service is non existent in our immediate area. The 2 that I know are not broadcasting were Sprint towers. The one had the new racks with the big pannels attached sitting on the ground at the base of the tower for almost a year before the finally put them up.

At my home site (Sprint) they literally made the decision to change their approach in the middle of installing it.  Prior to that sites were changed immediately to T-Mobile. My home site has been operating about 15 months with the Sprint cabinet on a pallet feeding the T-Mobile antennas with b25 (which serves Sprint phones and 5g T-Mobile phones). The T-Mobile cabinets are installed but unused with some wires to the antennas iirc. New fiber has been run and a Nextel hut has just been demolished to make room for a generator.

Time flys by while the setup gathers dust, just like my other pain point - not being on T-Mobile billing. Second class citizens in one our larger cities. Sigh.

[jf15219]

21 hours ago, dkyeager said:

At my home site (Sprint) they literally made the decision to change their approach in the middle of installing it.  Prior to that sites were changed immediately to T-Mobile. My home site has been operating about 15 months with the Sprint cabinet on a pallet feeding the T-Mobile antennas with b25 (which serves Sprint phones and 5g T-Mobile phones). The T-Mobile cabinets are installed but unused with some wires to the antennas iirc. New fiber has been run and a Nextel hut has just been demolished to make room for a generator.

Time flys by while the setup gathers dust, just like my other pain point - not being on T-Mobile billing. Second class citizens in one our larger cities. Sigh.

They went from incentivizing self-migration to banning it for imminent automatic migration to barely migrating anybody in a mere matter of months.

For a merger that took years to finalize you'd have thought there was an actual plan that didn't suck so bad it had to be changed multiple times.

[dkyeager]

Just now, jf15219 said:

They went from incentivizing self-migration to banning it for imminent automatic migration to barely migrating anybody in a mere matter of months.

For a merger that took years to finalize you'd have thought there was an actual plan that didn't suck so bad it had to be changed multiple times.

Banks hire consultants to do migrations.  T-Mobile should have done the same.

While it appears much better, the jury is still out on the network migration.  Supply shortages have not helped.  By fall we should know as the last Sprint non keep sites are retired (been dropping like flies in my area).  Any bad PR can be papered over by implementing auction 108 winnings, which should be in place quickly.  This stands to dramatically change the internet landscape for rural folks along with Verizon C-band.

[jf15219]

10 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

Banks hire consultants to do migrations.  T-Mobile should have done the same.

While it appears much better, the jury is still out on the network migration.  Supply shortages have not helped.  By fall we should know as the last Sprint non keep sites are retired (been dropping like flies in my area).  Any bad PR can be papered over by implementing auction 108 winnings, which should be in place quickly.  This stands to dramatically change the internet landscape for rural folks along with Verizon C-band.

They have taken forever northwest of Pittsburgh near Ohio where T-Mobile barely existed

There's still a spot on the interstate that requires a Sprint Keep tower to fill in a gap in coverage.

[iansltx]

Saw a bit more Sprint B2 both in Austin (at the airport) and in MO/IA/IL north/west of St. Louis.

Also saw a site (Quincy, IL) capped at 100 Mbps backhaul despite broadcasting 140 MHz n41. The 20x20 n71 site 45 minutes north had better speeds. Fair amount of n71+n41 in NSA configurations. USCC roaming data didn't work at all, so seems like T-Mobile is restricting when they (think they) have a network of their own.

 

[Dkoellerwx]

2 hours ago, iansltx said:

Saw a bit more Sprint B2 both in Austin (at the airport) and in MO/IA/IL north/west of St. Louis.

T-Mobile widened Sprint's second B25 (technically B2) channel to 10Mhz here in Omaha recently. It used to be only 5Mhz due to CDMA I think. However, the original B25 G-Block carrier wasn't showing for me on the remaining keep sites.

[though]

3 hours ago, iansltx said:

Saw a bit more Sprint B2 both in Austin (at the airport) and in MO/IA/IL north/west of St. Louis.

Also saw a site (Quincy, IL) capped at 100 Mbps backhaul despite broadcasting 140 MHz n41. The 20x20 n71 site 45 minutes north had better speeds. Fair amount of n71+n41 in NSA configurations. USCC roaming data didn't work at all, so seems like T-Mobile is restricting when they (think they) have a network of their own.

 

USSC roaming here in Neb is throttled down to 2Mb or less, however Viaero has been excellent.

[Dkoellerwx]

First confirmed conversion of a Sprint site that was co-located with an existing T-Mobile site in Omaha, NE! We had permits for it, but had yet to see one happen. Sprint had the top tier on this monopole, while T-Mobile was at the bottom. You can see the Nokia Air antenna and Commscope antenna still on the bottom tier with the new install including the Nokia AEHC on top. The original T-Mobile equipment was still broadcasting today on top of the new signal, making it a little hard to confirm but it was live across all bands! (B2/66/71/41)

[Paynefanbro]

I'm sure nobody saw this one coming. From the loss of it, it's something big since it'll be announced by both Elon Musk and Mike Sievert. Any guesses for what it could possibly be? 

 

[cyclone]

T-Mobile wifi service for those rich enough to afford a ride on one of Elon's rockets?