Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[dkyeager]

46 minutes ago, floorguy said:

Yes, BUT remember it goes the other way as well... Tmo customers to hit the sprint towers as well.. which should take the hit off of some Tmo towers..

They will want to avoid the quagmire of supporting two networks longer than they have too.  Do low hanging fruit improvements to Sprint only where needed and convert Sprint Markets as rapidly as possible.

The real question for us is which ones get converted first? Many ways to choose. T-Mobile has more of an eye for ROI/cash flow.

Edited March 12, 2020 by dkyeager
corrected spell check error

[floorguy]

3 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

They will want to avoid the quagmire of supporting two networks longer than they have too.  Do low hanging fruit imprisonments to Sprint only where needed and convert Sprint Markets as rapidly as possible.

The real question for us is which ones get converted first? Many ways to choose. T-Mobile has more of an eye for ROI/cash flow.

I was talking more in terms of the data side... As I understand it a band is a band is a band.. and if your phone supports it, It uses it right??

Just a simple PRL update, setting the priorities and such??

Or am i over simplifying it??

[dkyeager]

4 minutes ago, floorguy said:

I was talking more in terms of the data side... As I understand it a band is a band is a band.. and if your phone supports it, It uses it right??

Just a simple PRL update, setting the priorities and such??

Or am i over simplifying it??

For areas with only T-Mobile or Sprint signal you are correct.  The question is more for areas with both carriers.  My assumption is they basically want to keep Sprint users in a holding pattern where both networks are workable until market is merged.  Do basically emergency site upgrades for broken Sprint markets that are far down their market merging list to retain customers.  Goal one was more spectrum closely followed by goal two of retaining customers needed for better economies of scale.

[RedSpark]

On 3/11/2020 at 1:57 PM, briank86 said:

Anyone know what's happening to Saw? Does it make sense to have 2 CTO's either in the short term or long term? 

 

Seems like Saw will be part of New T-Mobile!

https://newtmobile.com/senior-leadership-team/

JOHN SAW
EXECUTIVE VICE PRESIDENT OF ADVANCED AND EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES 

[bigsnake49]

Of the 18 executive positions only 4 will be former Sprint executives:

• Deeanne King, chief human resources officer for Sprint (NYSE: S), will hold the same position in the New T-Mobile. The 30-year-plus Sprint employee also will have the title of executive vice president and report directly to Sievert.
• Nestor Cano, Sprint’s COO, will be executive vice president of integration and transformation and a strategic adviser to Sievert.
• Dow Draper will be executive vice president of emerging products, reporting to Sievert. Draper has had a number of roles with Sprint, including chief commercial officer and leader of the carrier’s prepaid services.
• John Saw, who led Sprint’s network efforts, will be executive vice president of advanced and emerging technologies for the merged company. He will report to Neville Ray, president of technology at T-Mobile and the New T-Mobile.

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2020/03/12/leadership-of-new-t-mobile-will-include-few.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo

[RedSpark]

3 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

Of the 18 executive positions only 4 will be former Sprint executives:

• Deeanne King, chief human resources officer for Sprint (NYSE: S), will hold the same position in the New T-Mobile. The 30-year-plus Sprint employee also will have the title of executive vice president and report directly to Sievert.
• Nestor Cano, Sprint’s COO, will be executive vice president of integration and transformation and a strategic adviser to Sievert.
• Dow Draper will be executive vice president of emerging products, reporting to Sievert. Draper has had a number of roles with Sprint, including chief commercial officer and leader of the carrier’s prepaid services.
• John Saw, who led Sprint’s network efforts, will be executive vice president of advanced and emerging technologies for the merged company. He will report to Neville Ray, president of technology at T-Mobile and the New T-Mobile.

https://www.bizjournals.com/kansascity/news/2020/03/12/leadership-of-new-t-mobile-will-include-few.html?ana=yahoo&yptr=yahoo

I’m glad that Dr. Saw is involved from a network perspective, given his knowledge of 2.5 GHz for 5G and his knowledge of how Sprint’s network is set up. This will enable integration to go more quickly. This I’m fine with.

I’m surprised they went with a Sprint person for HR. Given Sprint’s financial challenges over the past years, this should be a much more positive work environment for her.

Nestor Cano is clearly Marcelo’s pick for the role.

As for Dow Draper:

Brandon “Dow” Draper is the Executive Vice President of Emerging Products at T-Mobile. Previously, he was the Chief Commercial Officer at Sprint, responsible for commercial strategy, including marketing and sales for the Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile brands. In his role, Dow focused on delivering a cohesive and coordinated go-to-market strategy for Sprint’s sales and marketing segments.

Previously, he served as President of Sprint Prepaid Group, including the Boost Mobile, Sprint Prepaid and Virgin Mobile brands. Under his leadership, Prepaid returned to growth.

Was the disastrous ”Free Year” program his idea or did Marcelo come up with that? This pick comes as a shock to me given Sprint’s ineffective marketing initiatives and poor social media presence compared to T-Mobile.

[BlueAngel]

Good news 

[dkyeager]

2 hours ago, RedSpark said:

As for Dow Draper:

Brandon “Dow” Draper is the Executive Vice President of Emerging Products at T-Mobile. Previously, he was the Chief Commercial Officer at Sprint, responsible for commercial strategy, including marketing and sales for the Sprint, Boost Mobile and Virgin Mobile brands. In his role, Dow focused on delivering a cohesive and coordinated go-to-market strategy for Sprint’s sales and marketing segments.

Previously, he served as President of Sprint Prepaid Group, including the Boost Mobile, Sprint Prepaid and Virgin Mobile brands. Under his leadership, Prepaid returned to growth.

Was the disastrous ”Free Year” program his idea or did Marcelo come up with that? This pick comes as a shock to me given Sprint’s ineffective marketing initiatives and poor social media presence compared to T-Mobile.

 The court decision said Boost Mobile was the most profitable part of Sprint.

[greenbastard]

5 hours ago, RedSpark said:

I’m surprised they went with a Sprint person for HR. Given Sprint’s financial challenges over the past years, this should be a much more positive work environment for her.

I'm surprised too. There have always been rumors of Sprint HQ being somewhat dysfunctional.

[clbowens]

I would not be surprised if the merger gets delayed because of COVID-19

[RedSpark]

5 hours ago, dkyeager said:

 The court decision said Boost Mobile was the most profitable part of Sprint.

That doesn’t mean it was well run.

The churn that Boost and Sprint both had (and still have) is ridiculous compared to the competition. Both companies have been bleeding out customers for years through churn and expiring promos.

On top of that, Virgin Mobile was effectively nerfed under his tenure when it went iPhone only. Virgin never should have been its own brand anyway. All of that money spent on it should have gone into the Sprint network. Doesn’t matter now I guess.

[RedSpark]

3 hours ago, greenbastard said:

I'm surprised too. There have always been rumors of Sprint HQ being somewhat dysfunctional.

Considering that Marcelo was able to trim so much bloat and waste from the company during his tenure, I’m curious what her role was in that. Maybe she was picked to do the same thing when the companies combine.

Of course, the other side of that coin is that she oversaw a workforce in an HR capacity that had serious morale issues over the years.

Maybe there was only so much she could do...

[bigsnake49]

Dish is letting T-Mobile use its 600Mhz free of charge for the next 60 days.

Dish Network announced that it is providing its entire portfolio of 600 MHz spectrum to T-Mobile at no cost for 60 days in order to bolster wireless capacity during the coronavirus pandemic. A Dish spokesperson said the additional spectrum would help T-Mobile add extra capacity in its existing footprint.

 

And she added that Dish has 600 MHz spectrum in every partial economic area (PEA) in the United States. PEAs are areas that the FCC has designated to handle its spectrum auctions.

Ookla analyst Milan Milanovic said in order for T-Mobile to quickly tap this spectrum, “It would only require over-the-air reconfiguration, which would widen the existing 600 MHz channels in T-Mobile's network. This could be done late nights. This is assuming that Dish's spectrum licenses have been cleared.”

https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/dish-lets-t-mobile-tap-its-600-mhz-spectrum-response-to-covid-19

Now that last little tidbit means that the Tmobile+Sprint PCS spectrum can be reconfigured remotely for each and every T-Mobile site + the Sprint sites they will keep. They can do that rather quickly.

[chamb]

28 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

 

Now that last little tidbit means that the Tmobile+Sprint PCS spectrum can be reconfigured remotely for each and every T-Mobile site + the Sprint sites they will keep. They can do that rather quickly.

I might question this statement at least slightly.  My question is:   if t-mobile subscribers are given access to Sprints PCS sites, will the T-mobile VOLTE work?    If Sprint subscribers are given full access to T-Mobiles Band 2, will Sprint's VOLTE work?  Maybe it will, but I would question it.  Also, adding Sprint's band 25 channels to a T-mobile site could even require more radios at some sites.

I just have  a gut feeling that some locations may be easy to deal with, but others may not.

[ingenium]

I might question this statement at least slightly.  My question is:   if t-mobile subscribers are given access to Sprints PCS sites, will the T-mobile VOLTE work?    If Sprint subscribers are given full access to T-Mobiles Band 2, will Sprint's VOLTE work?  Maybe it will, but I would question it.  Also, adding Sprint's band 25 channels to a T-mobile site could even require more radios at some sites.
I just have  a gut feeling that some locations may be easy to deal with, but others may not.

I'm pretty sure it won't work until they merge the core networks. It results in a hard drop in data connections switching between Sprint and T-Mobile sites now. They might be able to configure it to allow a VoLTE call while on a T-Mobile site, but the user would have to stay on T-Mobile sites for the duration of the call. And vice versa.

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[bigsnake49]

46 minutes ago, chamb said:

I might question this statement at least slightly.  My question is:   if t-mobile subscribers are given access to Sprints PCS sites, will the T-mobile VOLTE work?    If Sprint subscribers are given full access to T-Mobiles Band 2, will Sprint's VOLTE work?  Maybe it will, but I would question it.  Also, adding Sprint's band 25 channels to a T-mobile site could even require more radios at some sites.

I just have  a gut feeling that some locations may be easy to deal with, but others may not.

No need for more radios to accommodate more PCS spectrum.

[bigsnake49]

T-Mobile will probably be adding M-MIMO Band 41 RRH/antennas to all of their sites and all the Sprint sites they are keeping as soon as they can. If as Milan has intimated the combined PCS spectrum hosting is a matter of configuration that can be done remotely the only question is the 800Mhz spectrum. I know that the agreement with Dish gives Dish the option of purchasing it or not with penalties if they don't, I wonder if that time frame might not be accelerated a bit. 

Edited March 14, 2020 by bigsnake49

[ingenium]

T-Mobile will probably be adding M-MIMO Band 41 RRH/antennas to all of their sites and all the Sprint sites they are keeping as soon as they can. If as Milan has intimated the combined PCS spectrum hosting is a matter of configuration that can be done remotely the only question is the 800Mhz spectrum. I know that the agreement with Dish gives Dish the option of purchasing it or not with penalties if they don't, I wonder if that time frame might not be accelerated a bit. 

New T-Mobile will be hosting it for a while, so my guess is they will just leave it all in place on colocated or existing Sprint sites that they keep, and put it on the T-Mobile core like B41 equipment (and shutoff 1x800 at the same time). I somewhat doubt they'll deploy it on new sites. Or at the very least they won't purchase more equipment, and would just reuse what they have from decommissioned Sprint sites. It does give them added low band capacity that they can use, so why not use it while they can if they already have the equipment.

Presumably then Dish will purchase the equipment from New T-Mobile. And then I guess they'd move it to their own rack on the tower eventually? Unless Dish decides to move B26 to NR only and replace it all.

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[bigsnake49]

3 minutes ago, ingenium said:

New T-Mobile will be hosting it for a while, so my guess is they will just leave it all in place on colocated or existing Sprint sites that they keep, and put it on the T-Mobile core like B41 equipment (and shutoff 1x800 at the same time). I somewhat doubt they'll deploy it on new sites. Or at the very least they won't purchase more equipment, and would just reuse what they have from decommissioned Sprint sites. It does give them added low band capacity that they can use, so why not use it while they can if they already have the equipment.

Presumably then Dish will purchase the equipment from New T-Mobile. And then I guess they'd move it to their own rack on the tower eventually? Unless Dish decides to move B26 to NR only and replace it all.

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So the only ports on an tri-band Sprint RRHs that will be used will be the 800Mhz ports. I would not move them over to T-Mobile racks and then have to take them down 2-3 years later. Leave them on the Sprint racks until they are taken down or taken over by Dish.

Now Dish has 600MHz spectrum, 700MHz Block E and 800Mhz I am not sure they want to deal with all of those different lower frequencies and the expensive antennas and RRHs. They might want to simplify their lower frequency spectrum holdings. I personally think Sprint/Dish 800Mhz spectrum should be sold, auctioned off to the cellular (850Mhz) spectrum holders and let the resulting spectrum be rationalized to form two 15Mhzx15Mhz channels with couple of MHz left over for guard bands. 

`

[ingenium]

So the only ports on an tri-band Sprint RRHs that will be used will be the 800Mhz ports. I would not move them over to T-Mobile racks and then have to take them down 2-3 years later. Leave them on the Sprint racks until they are taken down or taken over by Dish.
Now Dish has 600MHz spectrum, 700MHz Block E and 800Mhz I am not sure they want to deal with all of those different lower frequencies and the expensive antennas and RRHs. They might want to simplify their lower frequency spectrum holdings. I personally think Sprint/Dish 800Mhz spectrum should be sold, auctioned off to the cellular (850Mhz) spectrum holders and let the resulting spectrum be rationalized to form two 15Mhzx15Mhz channels with couple of MHz left over for guard bands. 
`

I think part of the agreement is that New T-Mobile is required to host B26 for several years. So they can't just take it down or reduce the footprint. Until they have MMIMO units on all sites, I don't see why they wouldn't keep using the triband antennas. I guess it depends how they perform on B2/25 relative to what T-Mobile is using now, but they can definitely keep doing B26 and B41 on them. Possibly put HSPA on B2 on the triband if their current antennas have any sort of power limitations or something running both LTE and HSPA together.

Also, having separate B41 and N41 might be advantageous. Current MMIMO units have BW limitations and I don't think they can use the full 160 MHz of B41 (possibly soon to be more if the auction goes through). Or at least they can't in dual mode with full MIMO (N41 drops to 32t32r from 64t64r). So they'd be better off doing 100-120 MHz of NR on a MMIMO unit, and 40-60 MHz B41 on current antennas.

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[bigsnake49]

4 minutes ago, ingenium said:

I think part of the agreement is that New T-Mobile is required to host B26 for several years. So they can't just take it down or reduce the footprint. Until they have MMIMO units on all sites, I don't see why they wouldn't keep using the triband antennas. I guess it depends how they perform on B2/25 relative to what T-Mobile is using now, but they can definitely keep doing B26 and B41 on them. Possibly put HSPA on B2 on the triband if their current antennas have any sort of power limitations or something running both LTE and HSPA together.

Also, having separate B41 and N41 might be advantageous. Current MMIMO units have BW limitations and I don't think they can use the full 160 MHz of B41 (possibly soon to be more if the auction goes through). Or at least they can't in dual mode with full MIMO (N41 drops to 32t32r from 64t64r). So they'd be better off doing 100-120 MHz of NR on a MMIMO unit, and 40-60 MHz B41 on current antennas.

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Yes I know they are supposed to host B26 for at least 3 years. If they are only hosting B26 on a Sprint site because B25 and B41 is served by a Tmobile site then they will probably move the B26 equipment to the T-mobile site. 

Is the bandwidth limitation on M-MIMO a function of the backhaul bandwidth, the enodeB/NnodeB or the RRH? Or maybe the vendors?

Also they probably don't need M-MIMO on every site they could probably reuse 8x8 RRH/antennas on more rural sites.

[RAvirani]

7 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Is the bandwidth limitation on M-MIMO a function of the backhaul bandwidth, the enodeB/NnodeB or the RRH? Or maybe the vendors?

It is a limitation of the active antenna radio. 

[Brad The Beast]

7 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Yes I know they are supposed to host B26 for at least 3 years. If they are only hosting B26 on a Sprint site because B25 and B41 is served by a Tmobile site then they will probably move the B26 equipment to the T-mobile site. 

I thought they were selling b26 to Dish and they only thing they had to keep up was CDMA.

7 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Is the bandwidth limitation on M-MIMO a function of the backhaul bandwidth, the enodeB/NnodeB or the RRH? Or maybe the vendors?

There's a 120MHz spectrum limit on current M-MIMO equipment. Also, N41 and B41 could be faster if they had better backhaul. 

[ingenium]

Is the bandwidth limitation on M-MIMO a function of the backhaul bandwidth, the enodeB/NnodeB or the RRH? Or maybe the vendors?

It's a physical limitation of the antennas I believe. Current antennas used for LTE are the same. There's also a power limit per port, but I don't know how that translates to all in one units like MMIMO.

For example, on PCS, when Sprint had more CDMA carriers on air, they were limited in what they could deploy for LTE in the same way. No 4x4 for example until CDMA carriers were pruned down. I'm pretty sure it was because of power limitations per port that would be exceeded.

As I think about it more, I think the B41 MMIMO equipment can now do 160 MHz, but it definitely drops to 32t32r in dual mode. If there are gaps in the spectrum where Sprint doesn't own it all (such as in SF), and they need more carriers on air as a result, they might run into the same power restrictions and need a second antenna for LTE.

Also, with PCS, T-Mobile's current antennas might have power restrictions with the additional Sprint spectrum and the number of carriers that would have to be on air (LTE + HSPA). They might need 2 antennas anyway.

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[JimBob]

On 3/13/2020 at 4:26 PM, clbowens said:

I would not be surprised if the merger gets delayed because of COVID-19

Why?