Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[PhillipJames89]

24 minutes ago, derrph said:

So July 31st is the last day to do anything Sprint related to your account, plan changes, upgrades etc.


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I assume so. 

[jbahlman]

On Band 12 this morning and 3mbps DL and 800kbps UL

 

Edited April 29, 2020 by jbahlman

[RedSpark]

11 hours ago, PhillipJames89 said:

Just in case if you haven’t seen it

"One brand" in time for the annual iPhone upgrade cycle... and the adoption rate should be huge given that it's expected to be 5G this year.

T-Mobile is showing us how things are done when you have real capex and effective, competent management. Sprint never had a chance with the clowns it had running things. Shame on you Masa/Marcelo.

[RedSpark]

7 hours ago, lilotimz said:

It's not as if Sprint engineers themselves didn't want to get things done. Top down decisions were made which basically precluded sprint employees from doing anything useful to improve the situation of the network. It was a multi year process but Son got what he wanted in the end after the "merger" was rejected the first time around.

 

Not that it matters anymore. It's one for the history books.

 

We'll just have to wait and see what New TM does with all the former Sprint assets they acquired.

 

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I completely agree and I'm glad it's finally over.

[PhillipJames89]

26 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

"One brand" in time for the annual iPhone upgrade cycle... and the adoption rate should be huge given that it's expected to be 5G this year.

T-Mobile is showing us how things are done when you have real capex and effective, competent management. Sprint never had a chance with the clowns it had running things. Shame on you Masa/Marcelo.

I hope NT restructures their downpayments. It’s too expensive. I may go through Apple for the new iPhone.

[dewbertdc]

13 minutes ago, PhillipJames89 said:

I hope NT restructures their downpayments. It’s too expensive. I may go through Apple for the new iPhone.

For what it's worth, I've been very happy with the iPhone Upgrade Program - you're eligible for a new phone every year, the payments include AppleCare, and it doesn't cost any more than buying the phone outright + AppleCare in the end, even if you don't upgrade yearly.  Carrier integration is perfect with T-Mobile - just turn on the new phone and it's activated, the old SIM is disconnected, and you never have to interact with customer service (or get charged the $10 SIM fee and $20 assistance fee!). The device is fully unlocked, so you're free to leave T-Mobile whenever you want.

Edited April 29, 2020 by dewbertdc

[xdfgf]

Tmobile this morning. Better signal at work

[RedSpark]

25 minutes ago, dewbertdc said:

For what it's worth, I've been very happy with the iPhone Upgrade Program - you're eligible for a new phone every year, the payments include AppleCare, and it doesn't cost any more than buying the phone outright + AppleCare in the end, even if you don't upgrade yearly.  Carrier integration is perfect with T-Mobile - just turn on the new phone and it's activated, the old SIM is disconnected, and you never have to interact with customer service (or get charged the $10 SIM fee and $20 assistance fee!). The device is fully unlocked, so you're free to leave T-Mobile whenever you want.

If we weren't doing iPhone leases through Sprint, we'd be doing the iPhone Annual Upgrade Program. That being said, I hope they keep the lease program the way it is. I don't want to have to pay off the entire device and do a trade-in/sell-back to upgrade.

[derrph]

If we weren't doing iPhone leases through Sprint, we'd be doing the iPhone Annual Upgrade Program. That being said, I hope they keep the lease program the way it is. I don't want to have to pay off the entire device and do a trade-in/sell-back to upgrade.

I’ll more in likely take the Apple upgrade route this year as well. I just don’t see T-Mobile letting Sprint customers upgrade through them and letting you keep your plan. Plus if they keep their current down payment model, then they can keep that ish.


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[red_dog007]

17 hours ago, Paynefanbro said:

Looks like I was right in thinking that the update would pretty much give S20's full access to T-Mobile's network. One thing I hate about T-Mobile's network is that because they are using 2/4/66 as anchor bands and have activated EN-DC on nearly all of their sites in 5G markets, the 5G icon is pretty much always there regardless of if 5G is on the site or not.

Can a phone not connect to LTE on Tower 1 and 5G on Tower 2?  With how dispersed 600MHz deployments are, seems like this would actually improve n71 coverage on NSA devices. 

Might be a trade off worth having? Otherwise n71 coverage really goes down the toilet.

[bmoses]

9 minutes ago, red_dog007 said:

Can a phone not connect to LTE on Tower 1 and 5G on Tower 2?  With how dispersed 600MHz deployments are, seems like this would actually improve n71 coverage on NSA devices. 

Might be a trade off worth having? Otherwise n71 coverage really goes down the toilet.

 

thats how t-mobiles implementation of 5G works. ALL towers have the EN-DC stuff enabled to be anchors for 5G, even if they aren't broadcasting 5G themselves. So you can be connected to LTE from an anchor tower and 5G from a different tower. Thats why you see so many complaints about the 5G speeds, your phone says 5G since you are connected to a LTE anchor thats close, but the 5G could be coming from miles away. EDIT: plus you don't have to be connected to 5G for the 5G icon to show, just being connected to LTE with EN-DC enabled will show the 5G icon.

what i haven't figured out is when you do a speedtest, is your speed only coming from the 5G carrier? or is it aggregating the LTE from the close tower plus the 5G from the further tower?

I know for sure if you are connected to LTE and 5G from the same tower it is all aggregated together, I've almost hit 400mbps connected that way.

[RedSpark]

21 minutes ago, derrph said:

I’ll more in likely take the Apple upgrade route this year as well. I just don’t see T-Mobile letting Sprint customers upgrade through them and letting you keep your plan. Plus if they keep their current down payment model, then they can keep that ish.


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We'll see what they're offering this Fall. They said we could keep our plans/pricing for 3 years (5 in the case of CA apparently). I don't think they'd mandate a plan switch to upgrade devices. Even so, T-Mobile's plans may be better, especially with taxes/fees included.

[derrph]

We'll see what they're offering this Fall. They said we could keep our plans/pricing for 3 years (5 in the case of CA apparently). I don't think they'd mandate a plan switch to upgrade devices. Even so, T-Mobile's plans may be better, especially with taxes/fees included.

That’s fair. I’d switch plans if they offer full HD streaming and They somehow work Tidal into the mix.


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[red_dog007]

12 minutes ago, bmoses said:

 

thats how t-mobiles implementation of 5G works. ALL towers have the EN-DC stuff enabled to be anchors for 5G, even if they aren't broadcasting 5G themselves. So you can be connected to LTE from an anchor tower and 5G from a different tower. Thats why you see so many complaints about the 5G speeds, your phone says 5G since you are connected to a LTE anchor thats close, but the 5G could be coming from miles away. EDIT: plus you don't have to be connected to 5G for the 5G icon to show, just being connected to LTE with EN-DC enabled will show the 5G icon.

It makes since.  Kinda funny too cause when your device says 5G, but not actually connected to 5G that's even worse than AT&Ts 5GE icon.

[PhillipJames89]

13 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

We'll see what they're offering this Fall. They said we could keep our plans/pricing for 3 years (5 in the case of CA apparently). I don't think they'd mandate a plan switch to upgrade devices. Even so, T-Mobile's plans may be better, especially with taxes/fees included.

I hope we have Tmobile 5G (2.5ghz) in the fall. Does Tmobile have MMwave here?

[RedSpark]

28 minutes ago, PhillipJames89 said:

I hope we have Tmobile 5G (2.5ghz) in the fall. Does Tmobile have MMwave here?

I hope so too! I think we will. The S20 devices are going to go through the teething process on this more than Apple launching this Fall devices will. I expect the networks to be in a very different place come this Fall.

I'm not sure if we have MMwave here yet.

[swintec]

Didnt we sort of know tmo 5G was not anything to write home about?  I remember that being a big thing about the merger.  Without sprint, tmo was not going to be able to provide a decent 5G service as time went on.  They just were not in a good position spectrum wise.

[RedSpark]

52 minutes ago, swintec said:

Didnt we sort of know tmo 5G was not anything to write home about?  I remember that being a big thing about the merger.  Without sprint, tmo was not going to be able to provide a decent 5G service as time went on.  They just were not in a good position spectrum wise.

Oh that's certainly true. T-Mobile had low-band 5G (which has great propagation but doesn't have the speeds of 2.5 GHz 5G) and MMwave (for which the economics of widespread deployment for 2.5 GHz compare poorly with 2.5 GHz for 5G).

What T-Mobile did have going for it was competent management and network deployment, quarter after quarter of customer additions and a tremendously successful social media presence. All it had to do was wait for Sprint to flame out and to grab its spectrum assets through the merger... and it did.

Now you'll have T-Mobile's competent management and engineers managing and building out Sprints network assets that were tremendously underutilized when they were held by Sprint. T-Mobile properly managed the windfall of Spectrum/Cash it got from the breakup fee when AT&T failed to acquired it. It also was successful in efficiently integrating MetroPCS into its core network.

If this merger had failed, Sprint would have continued to stagnate without billions of capital from Masa... and even then, the network wouldn't come close to what this combined network will be.

Edited April 29, 2020 by RedSpark
Added some thoughts for clarity

[BlueAngel]

It's weird I wasn't getting any 5G at my house last night or even this morning and I go out and run into 5G and now that's pretty much all I am connected to now 4 bars in my house 130 down / 10 up. Interesting.

[swintec]

36 minutes ago, BlueAngel said:

It's weird I wasn't getting any 5G at my house last night or even this morning and I go out and run into 5G and now that's pretty much all I am connected to now 4 bars in my house 130 down / 10 up. Interesting.

you know, i wasnt even going to mention it because i thought it was a fluke but i have the same thing happening to me.  left to a 5G area this afternoon (none at home since the update last night) and since i got home the device has been showing 5G now unless it is on band 71 (it will just show LTE in that case).

i was not necessarily expecting 5G coverage at home since the coverage maps has me in this weird area where 5G is everywhere else except the middle of town.

Maybe once the phone finally gets a taste of 5G  (and uses the icon) everything is essentially 5G.  Seems Tmo likes to play fast and loose.

[jamesinclair]

Im a little worried about how the global plans will transfer.

I still have Open World which gives me high speed data in all of Latin America.

[BlueAngel]

9 minutes ago, swintec said:

you know, i wasnt even going to mention it because i thought it was a fluke but i have the same thing happening to me.  left to a 5G area this afternoon (none at home since the update last night) and since i got home the device has been showing 5G now unless it is on band 71 (it will just show LTE in that case).

i was not necessarily expecting 5G coverage at home since the coverage maps has me in this weird area where 5G is everywhere else except the middle of town.

Maybe once the phone finally gets a taste of 5G  (and uses the icon) everything is essentially 5G.  Seems Tmo likes to play fast and loose.

Yeah it's weird for sure but I don't mind I guess, just don't know why I wasn't getting 5G last night but suddenly I find it and boom nothing but 5G and occasionally I will go onto B71.

[jamesinclair]

I did a test that someone here suggested, where I turned off the Sprint bands

 

Only got me onto Tmobile band 12 and speeds were atrocious. Like 0.3 atrocious.

[xdfgf]

Spectrum has had a major outage in Nicholasville and I've had to rely on hotspot to do my daily work emails. Very pleased with service now. When at work I roamed on Verizon 2G exclusively, I had to have wifi. This mornings surprise switch to T-Mobile has been a blessing.

 

B66, B71, and B2 have all rotated out and been at least useful speed. 

[Yuhfhrh]

I'd kill for a source on individual T-Mobile N71/N41 sites going live. Was so spoiled with all the Sprint information during network vision.