Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[cyclone]

So he's cool with a mega company controlling home internet, home phone, mobile phone, satellite/steaming tv, and an entertainment media company which includes a news broadcasting company...but two smaller mobile phone companies merging to offer better competition to mobile phone service is a surprise? Color me shocked that he's "surprised" that the merger was allowed 🤯🙄

[dro1984]

When you've been "King" for a long time without any competition, it's not surprising that he's a little "shocked"... LOL...     I'm like a kid a few days before Christmas anticipating my presents....      I'll be interested in seeing some of the upcoming T-Mobile advertising addressing exactly this...(John Legere's words): New T Mobile vs Dumb and Dumber"...         I'm also anxiously awaiting T-Mo to put some sort of press event together soon.   I'm sure it won't be for a little while until all the dust settles.... but I can't wait!   😎   

Edited February 20, 2020 by dro1984

[BlueAngel]

Can't wait for the New T-Mobile to wipe the floor with AT&T and Verizon.

[BlueAngel]

https://www.wsj.com/articles/sprint-t-mobile-near-agreement-on-new-merger-terms-11582230987 good news!

[RedSpark]

 

[dro1984]

Merger closing is scheduled "for on or before April 1, 2020" according to the press release.      I'm assuming they are going to work hard to finish up the CPUC approval by then.    

[BlueAngel]

One less bs thing to deal with.

[bigsnake49]

1 hour ago, dro1984 said:

Merger closing is scheduled "for on or before April 1, 2020" according to the press release.      I'm assuming they are going to work hard to finish up the CPUC approval by then.    

The merger will close with or without CPUC approval.

[twospirits]

I wonder if the CPUC will make their ruling before then. Does it usually take this long for the California Commission to do a ruling? 

[Brad The Beast]

I'm quite curious as to whether or not T-Mobile will keep the network feedback feature. It's quite valuable and I'm surprised they don't have something like it already. 

[floorguy]

10 hours ago, cyclone said:

So he's cool with a mega company controlling home internet, home phone, mobile phone, satellite/steaming tv, and an entertainment media company which includes a news broadcasting company...but two smaller mobile phone companies merging to offer better competition to mobile phone service is a surprise? Color me shocked that he's "surprised" that the merger was allowed 🤯🙄

And yet they are running Direct into the ground.. looking to sell it off actually..  AND they still dont carry the PAC 12 network.. (which some of the issue lies with PAC 12 being stupid... but still..

They are idiots.. surprised they can even run what they are running.. Same with comcast... glad I dont deal with any of them 

 

[bigsnake49]

All these cable cos and direct satellite cos are losing a lot of customers and  I don't think it will stop any time soon. I can see ala carte as one thing that might stanch the flow out. At least Dish is trying the Sling skinny bundle technique. I can see me dropping cable altogether with their cable box rental and relying strictly on my Apple TV+HBO+ESPN+Disney+Netflix. 

 

Back to the subject at hand. I, along the rest of you can't wait for the merger to close so I hear the technical details about network integration and any new plans and offerings by the New T-Mobile.

[bigsnake49]

For those that are interested, Kelly Hill has been running a series called Insights from the Sprint/T-Mobile US merger ruling on rcrwireless.com. The judges ruling is a 170 pages long. In part 4 what stood out to me is that T-mobile has a network efficiency model (NEM) that it used to predict sector congestion in order to direct investment to alleviate it. It is used to predict traffic patterns over a a 5 year period. A version called the Montana Model incorporated a combined network model. The Montana Model calculated that New T-Mobile’s network marginal costs would be 1/10 of standalone T-Mobile and the value of its increased speeds would be more than $15 per month per subscriber. Sprint of course did not have such a model for its network and were flying by the seat of their pants. Why am I not surprised!

Another nugget was the fact that by the time Claure came on board in 2014 Sprint was already $33B in debt and was losing $5B a year. That's when they decided on small cells and monopoles. But, "That plan, Marrero wrote, “failed massively.” Sprint, he went on, “installed only 2,000 of its projected 75,000 small cells and only one of its projected 35,000 monopoles, which was also removed in short order.” While that effort was failing, Sprint was only spending about $1.3 billion in traditional network investments, he said, while competitors were putting at least $6 billion each on their respective networks. In addition, Marrero wrote, Sprint is currently underperforming on its five-year infrastructure plan from 2018: it has deployed only 14,000 of a projected 24,000 small cells and only 200,000 of its projected 776,517 Magic Boxes. In 2019, it underspent the five-year plan’s network investment by about $1.5 billion."

While underinvesting in its network, Sprint went on a massive price cutting and handset subsiding spree that denied the revenue to invest in its network.

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200220/carriers/insights-from-the-sprint-t-mobile-us-merger-ruling-part-4

Like I said, a fascinating series. 

Edited February 21, 2020 by bigsnake49

[nexgencpu]

30 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

For those that are interested, Kelly Hill has been running a series called Insights from the Sprint/T-Mobile US merger ruling on rcrwireless.com. The judges ruling is a 170 pages long. In part 4 what stood out to me is that T-mobile has a network efficiency model (NEM) that it used to predict sector congestion in order to direct investment to alleviate it. It is used to predict traffic patterns over a a 5 year period. A version called the Montana Model incorporated a combined network model. The Montana Model calculated that New T-Mobile’s network marginal costs would be 1/10 of standalone T-Mobile and the value of its increased speeds would be more than $15 per month per subscriber. Sprint of course did not have such a model for its network and were flying by the seat of their pants. Why am I not surprised!

Another nugget was the fact that by the time Claure came on board in 2014 Sprint was already $33B in debt and was losing $5B a year. That's when they decided on small cells and monopoles. But, "That plan, Marrero wrote, “failed massively.” Sprint, he went on, “installed only 2,000 of its projected 75,000 small cells and only one of its projected 35,000 monopoles, which was also removed in short order.” While that effort was failing, Sprint was only spending about $1.3 billion in traditional network investments, he said, while competitors were putting at least $6 billion each on their respective networks. In addition, Marrero wrote, Sprint is currently underperforming on its five-year infrastructure plan from 2018: it has deployed only 14,000 of a projected 24,000 small cells and only 200,000 of its projected 776,517 Magic Boxes. In 2019, it underspent the five-year plan’s network investment by about $1.5 billion."

While underinvesting in its network, Sprint went on a massive price cutting and handset subsiding spree that denied the revenue to invest in its network.

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200220/carriers/insights-from-the-sprint-t-mobile-us-merger-ruling-part-4

Like I said, a fascinating series. 

Despite all of that..

Sprint basically forced all the other carriers to announce massively under-performing and premature 5G launches. Its quite amazing, even after nearly a year of 5G being a thing, Sprint is waay ahead according to opensignal..

https://www.opensignal.com/2020/02/20/how-att-sprint-t-mobile-and-verizon-differ-in-their-early-5g-approach

[bigsnake49]

5G is underperforming, and is underbaked both on the handset and the network side. The new Qualcomm chipset X60 is finally a chipset worth incorporating on the handset side.

[nexgencpu]

33 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

5G is underperforming, and is underbaked both on the handset and the network side. The new Qualcomm chipset X60 is finally a chipset worth incorporating on the handset side.

This also shows just how tight and narrow a rope Masa had to walk. If he approves more funding early, Sprint would surely grow organically. But completely starve the company, you would devalue your own asset costing you a sh$t ton of cash. (Which it did to a certain degree)

Sprint has never been in danger of collapse, the issue has always been short term profits. These folks just could not fathom investing in Sprint and waiting 10 years for a turn around, so Masa did the next best thing in his eyes, starve the companies capex and put on a dog and pony show for the public to convince them that this merger is not only a great idea, but the only way Sprint would survive (and Tmobile to a certain degree)

Yes I'm still salty 😒 lol

[dro1984]

 

😝    I cannot feel sorry for a multi-billionaire and a company that has made so many blunders.   

Closing cannot happen fast enough.

 

Edited February 21, 2020 by dro1984

[nexgencpu]

1 hour ago, dro1984 said:

 

😝    I cannot feel sorry for a multi-billionaire and a company that has made so many blunders.   

Closing cannot happen fast enough.

 

If that's the impression that I gave off that was definitely not my intention. Just illustrating that Sprint never needed this, they just wanted to put profit ahead of true competition.

[nexgencpu]

3 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

5G is underperforming, and is underbaked both on the handset and the network side. The new Qualcomm chipset X60 is finally a chipset worth incorporating on the handset side.

If you saw how well Sprint 5G performs on current handsets you would not say that, no overheating, good battery life and solid network performance, in my opinion considering how little funding Sprint has gotten, it's very impressive how well they are performing from handset and network standpoint. 

But alas; "Sprint sucks" is the mantra everyone has adopted and higher ups are good with that.  Just makes this merger thing that much easier to make happen if as many people as possible believe that.

[dro1984]

57 minutes ago, nexgencpu said:

If that's the impression that I gave off that was definitely not my intention. Just illustrating that Sprint never needed this, they just wanted to put profit ahead of true competition.

It kinda did.  Thanks for clarifying.   I, however,  still think Sprint needed to cash in the chips.   They have never been able to fully utilize the spectrum they had since the Nextel days and would probably ended up selling some of band 41 off  as Masa Son wanted to do.    They have been financially constrained big time for the last 8-12 years or more.  They have been a constant 3rd place or 4th since they began offering full scale cellular service in 1998 or so.   Growth and possible improvement all seem to point to having to merge to improve.  They did.      Perhaps,.... maybe now, the 2.5 G will get fully implemented to our delight and we'll all enjoy a much better network.   

I don't even like to discuss this "should of been", "could of been" or "what if's"  ...I'm guilty of it myself!   It's just such a waste of time.   Lets move on and hope for better things to come.

Edited February 21, 2020 by dro1984

[dro1984]

Was on one of the tech channels on YouTube...   

A Sprint tower tech was saying speaking in anonymity that on closing (April 1) they are setting up to open the networks.   Meaning, via software update, Sprint will have access to T-Mobile and vis-a-versa... on April 1st.   Hoping this is true!   

 

On Tower Integration... 

They are setting up  Integration do begin nearly immediately as they are set to do market by market tower integrations   (combining towers/ moving equipment to best site). They will be doing massive mimo upgrades as much as possible at the same-time on 2.5, band 41, Band 25 (1900 sprint) band 2 (1900 T-Mo.) and Band 4 (TMO 1700/2100)   According to him, they have the maps ready and will only be combing towers that are very nearby each other to avoid interference.   The network integration will take approx 2 years, but realistically less.   Again, this is market by market... (Metro area- by Metro area).    Thoughts?  ...

Edited February 25, 2020 by dro1984

[bigsnake49]

43 minutes ago, dro1984 said:

Was on one of the tech channels on YouTube...   

A Sprint tower tech was saying speaking in anonymity that on closing (April 1) they are setting up to open the networks.   Meaning, via software update, Sprint will have access to T-Mobile and vis-a-versa... on April 1st.   Hoping this is true!   

 

On Tower Integration... 

They are setting up  Integration do begin nearly immediately as they are set to do market by market tower integrations   (combining towers/ moving equipment to best site). They will be doing massive mimo upgrades as much as possible at the same-time on 2.5, band 41, Band 25 (1900 sprint) band 2 (1900 T-Mo.) and Band 4 (TMO 1700/2100)   According to him, they have the maps ready and will only be combing towers that are very nearby each other to avoid interference.   The network integration will take approx 2 years, but realistically less.   Again, this is market by market... (Metro area- by Metro area).    Thoughts?  ...

Sounds about right. We know they have been stocking up on M-MIMO antennas and they will try to minimize the number of visits/climbs on the same site. So something tells me they will be probably be staging all the equipment somewhere in a warerhouse in a particular market and then hoisting them on each site. Roaming on each other's networks is a great first step towards integration. 

[dewbertdc]

1 hour ago, dro1984 said:

Was on one of the tech channels on YouTube...   

Do you have a link to the video?

[dro1984]

I want to keep the guy's identity safe for work reasons.. you can understand that....  I'd rather not blast it around as to who he is.  If I give the link, everyone can go there and replay...then you'll find out   You'll just have to wait and trust.   Like I said, he was live and speaking remotely...    He's a tower tech for Sprint... soon to be transitioned to T Mobile.     He said their jobs are safe due to the extensive work scheduled after April 1.  Lots of overtime.     

[JDP121]

1 hour ago, dro1984 said:

Was on one of the tech channels on YouTube...   

A Sprint tower tech was saying speaking in anonymity that on closing (April 1) they are setting up to open the networks.   Meaning, via software update, Sprint will have access to T-Mobile and vis-a-versa... on April 1st.   Hoping this is true!   

 

On Tower Integration... 

They are setting up  Integration do begin nearly immediately as they are set to do market by market tower integrations   (combining towers/ moving equipment to best site). They will be doing massive mimo upgrades as much as possible at the same-time on 2.5, band 41, Band 25 (1900 sprint) band 2 (1900 T-Mo.) and Band 4 (TMO 1700/2100)   According to him, they have the maps ready and will only be combing towers that are very nearby each other to avoid interference.   The network integration will take approx 2 years, but realistically less.   Again, this is market by market... (Metro area- by Metro area).    Thoughts?  ...

That’s one thing I like about where my apartment is. The tower I connect to 75% of the time is right behind my apartment and sits right at the mall so it’s about 1/4 mile up the street. The tower has Verizon, ATT, Sprint, T-Mobile and US Cellular on the tower. And T-Mobile already has 5G up and running on that tower and a few others already in town.