Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[towerhugger]

1 hour ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Is Scottsbluff new? It kind of blended in with their Wyoming coverage I didn't notice it. Rather odd they added it without showing any 5G layer.

I know what you're talking about, there was definitely some coverage that bled into Nebraska from their eastern Wyoming sites.  And while I haven't been there yet to check it out myself, I am quite confident this is new and wasn't on the previous version of the map.  If you zoom into the Tmobile coverage map just north of Scottsbluff, you can see coverage patterns emanating outward.  The patterns you see there suggest they may be broadcasting from the same ~180ft tower at 41 56 25.0 N , 103 39 22.2 W that Verizon uses.

For what it's worth, each of these 3 towers I mentioned was originally built by Nebraska Cellular in the mid-90s to provide bag phone coverage for the 3 respective towns.  Nebraska Cellular was purchased by Aliant Cellular, later Alltel, and then Verizon.  I think American Tower purchased many if not all of those old Alltel/Verizon towers.

Edited January 2, 2023 by towerhugger

[dkyeager]

For those concerned about AT&T's challenge to T-Mobile's auction 108 winnings in 2.5GHz and their challenge to T-Mobile's overall spectrum position, please see https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/ApplicationSearch/applAdmin.jsp?applID=13719003#  which is approval for W.A.T.C.H. TV transferring some BRS and ED licenses to T-Mobile. This was consented on December 7.

[dkyeager]

T-Mobile wins a state: Montana. Here is the list (slide from metro to state) https://rootmetrics.com/en-US/rootscore/map

Note that two states are remaining to be completed.

[RedSpark]

One more month until the actual earnings figures come out.

[RedSpark]

Also announced: 

Free for everyone who's a SkyMiles member, regardless of carrier.

[dkyeager]

4 more long forms for the auction 108 2.5GHz auction announced.  This brings it up to 55 out of 68 firms.  Does not include T-Mobile, winner of about 90% of the licenses in this public auction.

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-23-12A2.pdf

Here are the others previously released:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-22-1243A2.pdf

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-22-1269A2.pdf

Here is the process for challenging after each batch is released (dates will changes of course):

Petitions to deny the applications listed in Attachment A must be filed no later than December
19, 2022, ten (10) days after the date of this Public Notice.3 Oppositions to a petition to deny must be
filed no later than December 27, 2022, five (5) business days after the filing date for petitions to deny.
Replies to oppositions must be filed no later than January 4, 2023, five (5) business days after the filing
date for oppositions. All pleadings filed regarding any of these Auction 108 long-form applications
should reference the file number of the application. Each application is a restricted proceeding under the
Commission’s rules.4 A petitioner shall serve a copy of its petition to deny on the applicant and on all
other interested parties pursuant to 47 CFR § 1.47. Oppositions and replies shall be served on the
petitioner and all other interested parties....

...We request that one copy of each pleading be delivered electronically, by email to: Madelaine
Maior and Nadja Sodos-Wallace at Madelaine.Maior@fcc.gov and Nadja.SodosWallace@fcc.gov.
The applications listed in Attachment A are available to the public for electronic viewing through
ULS. Any amendments to an FCC Form 601 application also must be filed electronically through ULS.
For technical assistance in using ULS for viewing an application or filing an amendment to an
application, contact the ULS Licensing Support Hotline at (877) 480-3201. The ULS Licensing Support
Hotline is available Monday through Friday, from 8:00 A.M. to 6:00 P.M. Eastern Time. All calls to the
ULS Licensing Support Hotline are recorded. Questions regarding procedural issues should be directed
to Madelaine Maior, (202) 418-1466 or Madelaine.Maior@fcc.gov. Copies of materials can be obtained
from the FCC’s Reference Information Center at (202) 418-0270. Press contact: Anne Veigle at (202)
418-0500 or Anne.Veigle@fcc.gov.

Edited January 7, 2023 by dkyeager
Edit: From other FCC documents: Press may also direct questions to the Office of Media Relations (OMR): MediaRelations@fcc.gov. Questions about credentialing should be directed to OMR.

[dkyeager]

Lots of new "NE" microwave "CF" licenses for T-Mobile: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-390506A1.pdf

new AWS leases for T-Mobile in PR: https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-390480A1.pdf

[dkyeager]

T-Mobile continues to buy up ED licenses plus a few AW and WT in the middle of the country (Iowa etc).

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-390578A1.pdf

[Dkoellerwx]

1 hour ago, dkyeager said:

T-Mobile continues to buy up ED licenses plus a few AW and WT in the middle of the country (Iowa etc).

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-390578A1.pdf

Where do you look up what area the licenses cover? I see ones for Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. At least, I think I do. I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at.

[dkyeager]

4 hours ago, Dkoellerwx said:

Where do you look up what area the licenses cover? I see ones for Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, and Nebraska. At least, I think I do. I'm not entirely sure what I'm looking at.

Plug in the license or lease "number" here near the top into call sign: https://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchAdvanced.jsp

Then go to the map tab.

Edited January 12, 2023 by dkyeager
edited for clarity

[ctcomputers]

I live in western Nebraska and very interested in the T-Mobile expansion.  As indicated it appears the most recent tower that was lit up is an American Tower Company tower that was being used by Verizon.  Does this mean that T-Mobile co-locates or shares the tower space with Verizon or will it typically be exclusive use?  Would it be a safe assumption that the other American Tower locations in the vicinity may soon be T-mobile or is there anywhere to track or confirm filings and such?  Very exciting to see some changes and progress in the rural area! 

[dkyeager]

36 minutes ago, ctcomputers said:

I live in western Nebraska and very interested in the T-Mobile expansion.  As indicated it appears the most recent tower that was lit up is an American Tower Company tower that was being used by Verizon.  Does this mean that T-Mobile co-locates or shares the tower space with Verizon or will it typically be exclusive use?  Would it be a safe assumption that the other American Tower locations in the vicinity may soon be T-mobile or is there anywhere to track or confirm filings and such?  Very exciting to see some changes and progress in the rural area! 

The carriers typically don't own their own sites anymore but rather lease space from tower management companies like Crown Castle or American Tower.  However these companies will build new sites if desired for carriers, but with permit  and construction time and costs, that is much less frequent these days.  Much more common to use an existing tower. Sharing is typically no problem  The tower management companies have lots of data on their clients preferences, thus will often build speculative towers so the carriers can move quicker.

[towerhugger]

On 1/13/2023 at 6:59 AM, ctcomputers said:

 Would it be a safe assumption that the other American Tower locations in the vicinity may soon be T-mobile or is there anywhere to track or confirm filings and such?  Very exciting to see some changes and progress in the rural area! 

For the panhandle at least, it seems like digging permits are a good way to track.  I've seen some activity as recently as the last couple weeks, for example I see a new one in an extremely rural area about 17 miles north of Scottsbluff on Hwy 71 in Sioux County.  There are 2 towers there right now (one for AT&T, one for Viaero) and I could be wrong but I do not believe this is an American Tower location.  If not, it seems encouraging that they're open to locating on other sites.  The ones they have been choosing so far tend to be geared more toward providing 3w analog phone coverage back in the day than robust service in town.

[Dkoellerwx]

30 minutes ago, towerhugger said:

here are 2 towers there right now (one for AT&T, one for Viaero) and I could be wrong but I do not believe this is an American Tower location.  If not, it seems encouraging that they're open to locating on other sites.

They are going after American Tower sites pretty heavily, but they are using others as well so they're not limiting their options as best I can tell.

The coverage map updated to better show the Scottsbluff coverage yesterday, looks like they did full build with n71 and n41!

[dkyeager]

50 minutes ago, Dkoellerwx said:

They are going after American Tower sites pretty heavily

 

1 hour ago, towerhugger said:

I could be wrong but I do not believe this is an American Tower location

 

On 1/13/2023 at 8:59 AM, ctcomputers said:

I live in western Nebraska and very interested in the T-Mobile expansion

In case you don't have one, I keep an iPhone for the sole purpose of the American Tower app which gives their sites along with a few details such as height and lat long. I can share some sites for all of you to look at if needed. Just let me know the area and I will get back to you within a few days typically.

[RedSpark]

Scheduled!

[dkyeager]

https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/t-mobiles-5g-network-gets-capacity-boost-mu-mimo-report

It sounds like the T-Mobile Home Internet is forcing them to change the TD down up ratio to favor more download speed. Yet another reason for n25. Wonder if some of these advanced features will require a s23?

Sometimes lately I have noticed my n41 SA gets stuck (no download) despite good signal. If I switch to wi-fi and the back a few minutes later it is fine again. Any one else noticing this?

[BucketHead25]

I've been using T-Mobile home internet for a month now.  This is typical in the middle of the day.  No drop outs or outages so far.  At $25/month you can't beat it.

[schmidtj]

On 1/19/2023 at 8:04 AM, dkyeager said:

https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/t-mobiles-5g-network-gets-capacity-boost-mu-mimo-report

It sounds like the T-Mobile Home Internet is forcing them to change the TD down up ratio to favor more download speed. Yet another reason for n25. Wonder if some of these advanced features will require a s23?

Sometimes lately I have noticed my n41 SA gets stuck (no download) despite good signal. If I switch to wi-fi and the back a few minutes later it is fine again. Any one else noticing this?

I’ve tried 3 of the last 4 T-mobile home internet devices over the past few years. Two common but separate problems for me were the router overheating and the routers would periodically stop passing traffic over Ethernet. I usually just rebooted the router and that would fix the Ethernet issue until the next time it would happen. I installed a cooling fan and that improved but did not totally fix the overheating issue. I eventually went to Verizon as I was lucky enough to be in an area served by C-Band. Yes, it’s twice the price as I have no Vzn Cellular plan but neither of the above issues either.    

[S4GRU]

On 1/19/2023 at 6:04 AM, dkyeager said:

https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/t-mobiles-5g-network-gets-capacity-boost-mu-mimo-report

It sounds like the T-Mobile Home Internet is forcing them to change the TD down up ratio to favor more download speed. Yet another reason for n25. Wonder if some of these advanced features will require a s23?

Sometimes lately I have noticed my n41 SA gets stuck (no download) despite good signal. If I switch to wi-fi and the back a few minutes later it is fine again. Any one else noticing this?

I haven't had n41 SA get stuck, but on my work tower the speeds have steadily dropped over the past 6 months. Was consistently 300+ mbps, now mostly under 100.  However, n25 from the same tower is consistently over 300 from the same site without dropping.  I assumed the difference is due to Home Internet traffic on n41.  Since it doesn't seem to be backhaul.

Robert

[PedroDaGr8]

1 hour ago, S4GRU said:

I haven't had n41 SA get stuck, but on my work tower the speeds have steadily dropped over the past 6 months. Was consistently 300+ mbps, now mostly under 100.  However, n25 from the same tower is consistently over 300 from the same site without dropping.  I assumed the difference is due to Home Internet traffic on n41.  Since it doesn't seem to be backhaul.

Robert

Seeing similar speed drops. Towers that used to be 600+ any time of day are now 300-400.

 

[Paynefanbro]

Seems like in my neighborhood T-Mobile has been scaling backhaul to maintain ~575/100 all times of day. The only time I’ve noticed an appreciable difference in speed was when T-Mobile went from 40MHz to 60MHz n41. Since then, T-Mobile has added tons more spectrum.
 

Upload speeds keep increasing and ping keeps dropping but download speeds consistently peak in the mid-600’s. No higher. 

[dkyeager]

My peak speeds have dropped as well, even at 3 to 5am.  I assume this is PCs downloading things like Microsoft and antivirus updates over home internet.

[dkyeager]

2 hours ago, schmidtj said:

I’ve tried 3 of the last 4 T-mobile home internet devices over the past few years. Two common but separate problems for me were the router overheating and the routers would periodically stop passing traffic over Ethernet. I usually just rebooted the router and that would fix the Ethernet issue until the next time it would happen. I installed a cooling fan and that improved but did not totally fix the overheating issue. I eventually went to Verizon as I was lucky enough to be in an area served by C-Band. Yes, it’s twice the price as I have no Vzn Cellular plan but neither of the above issues either.    

The other advantage of Verizon is you could use bridge mode on some of their devices, which is great for corporate style VPNs using IPv4.  Unfortunately they have been eliminating some of this.

[floorguy]

On 1/19/2023 at 9:27 AM, BucketHead25 said:

I've been using T-Mobile home internet for a month now.  This is typical in the middle of the day.  No drop outs or outages so far.  At $25/month you can't beat it.

I need them to "find" my moms house... She lives down the street from where sprint had the wimax tower (b41) and uesd that internet.. So I know just about everything is there... But man they cant seem to say "its in your area" and the signal is a little wonky... Sprint service was good there, on a hill good LOS.. But TMo cant get it together for that spot.... .its buggy, I am tired of deal with Comcast, and my mom is on a fixed income type thing, so the $25 would be awesome for here