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Tmobile to buy Shentel Wireless

 

https://www.lightreading.com/services/t-mobile-to-buy-shentels-wireless-biz-but-price-isnt-set/d/d-id/763498

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T-Mobile said it would purchase Shentel's wireless business, including its 1.1 million mobile customers, but the companies continue to bicker over the price of the transaction.

In a filing with the SEC, Shentel said that T-Mobile on Wednesday "delivered to the company notice exercising its option to purchase the assets of our wireless operations." T-Mobile also disclosed the action in its own SEC filing. The transaction doesn't come as a surprise considering T-Mobile had been widely expected to purchase Shentel following its acquisition of Sprint in April.

However, the deal between Shentel and T-Mobile – which stems from a complex, 21-year-old arrangement between Sprint and Shentel – isn't done.

Shentel is a Sprint affiliate. That means the company operates its own wireless network and retail operation, but it sells services under the Sprint brand. Sprint inked several such affiliate deals years ago to expand its wireless footprint without incurring the cost of new network builds. Over the years, Sprint acquired a number of its affiliates including Ubiquitel, iPCS and US Unwired, but Shentel is one of the few independent Sprint affiliates that remains standing

 

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6 minutes ago, PhillipJames89 said:

This seems like the only logical outcome.  T-Mobile was never going to continue the affiliate arrangement, and since they don't have a huge native footprint in Shentel's service area (and where they do have service, it's pretty terrible) it is much cheaper for them to buy the network, stores and employees than to construct their own.  Shentel wasn't going to survive on its own as a regional carrier, especially as they would need to build out their own billing and other support systems.  It sounds like they're still arguing over the price of Shentel's wireless business, let's hope that gets resolved quickly.

 

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12 hours ago, DurhamHusker said:

Well ... If you're like me and have a CDMA (non VoLTE) device on Sprint, I can still wait around ... But for how long?

That's totally subjective for anyone depending on where they live and what changes/activity to the towers/equipment in your area take place (for better or worse) going forward at what rate of speed.  I did say 'Unless network changes make things so bad you have no choice'.   

I was just speaking in generalities for anyone reading though....I guess my inferred point underneath that is, as long as you can get enough signal and service at 4G level for whatever you absolutely need, and you don't fall into either the categories of (a) both have and are willing to throw surplus money at high end 5G phones and/or (b) also possibly work in the industry and/or are just a wireless tech enthusiast to the point you insist on staying on the bleeding edge and experiencing everything as it happens (obviously its a given for many here they may easily fall into that 2nd category - but that's not me personally), to me there's no compelling intelligent reason to have to go blow much money on a 5G phone still this early.  Outside of 5G phones, my last personal hurdle with phones otherwise was when I could finally get a phone with 128GB of internal storage as standard.  There's so little differential between phones otherwise in terms of my own personal needs that I really have no need to upgrade.

I should give a disclaimer here too, that my approach/perspective, particularly as it relates to 'in the now/present' circumstances, to all this may be a bit unique (or perhaps some might think it unorthodox) compared to many other site members here though.  For one, I've been a part of this community/fellowship for just about 8 years now. I'm a an IT guy in a former (work) life, and thus I do have an interest to a point with all of this stuff, but its been more from a more personal casual perspective and gaining information and insight from that perspective about the network I use and its growth - I'm not one of the elite wireless tech guru members such as Robert, Trip or others that have connections in the industry, or are actively going around mapping cell towers or gathering information about them or equipment changes involving them, and speaking GCI's and other such jargon in their sleep.  I find it interesting and fascinating from a distance to read and learn a bit about, and certainly make use of it if/when it suits me, but I just don't have the same level of dive-in drive (or time availability) that many of the more well established senior members here do, or at least the ones that don't already work in the industry directly (for which I have the utmost respect for all of you that qualify either way here btw, because without you guys, I'd have been at a loss to have learned what I have here - S4GRU has been the most unique forum community I've been a part of in my life by far (and I've been part of many covering various genres and subjects, including even having been a moderator for several years on a nationally-recognized college sports network forum - I'll refrain from stating which however).

At any rate, the above context in mind, and speaking for myself - if my area gets to a point that 5G equipment deployment is more universal and things are more skewed across the board towards better service via 5G connections than 4G/LTE and I'm being hindered somehow whether it be voice or data connections or both not having moved to a more expensive 5G device, that's when I'll start seriously researching my options and probably look for either a new midrange or a used/refurbished version of a higher end model 5G device.  I've for probably nearly 2 years now cut out all payments for 'equipment protection' and instead use a Cap One 360 account to put $10 out of every paycheck into for each device we carry, and let that money just sit and accrue - I don't touch it for anything else (unless a worst case absolute emergency arose that I didn't have the funds for otherwise).  Instead of it going into a vacuum I'll never see again and given in 95% of my phone-owning experience thus far in my life I've never had to employ use of anyway, I then have that money available if either (a) my phone is lost, damaged or destroyed, or (b) I just want to upgrade either mine or my wife's phone for any reason.  But even in scenario (b), I'm frugal when doing so.  And the last time I bought a brand new/newly released phone was the LG G5 in 2016.  

TL;DR response:  If you're an average Joe like me, don't go all-in on the 5G hype train just yet, monitor your regional home situation primarily unless you regularly travel alot, stay abreast to changes on the greater national level as our esteemed (S/T)4GRU membership here roots out over time, and make the best informed decision based on your unique scenario.  There are no 'one-size-fits-all' answers, regardless of which wireless carrier you pay money to.

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1 hour ago, PythonFanPA said:

TL;DR response:  If you're an average Joe like me, don't go all-in on the 5G hype train just yet, monitor your regional home situation primarily unless you regularly travel alot, stay abreast to changes on the greater national level as our esteemed (S/T)4GRU membership here roots out over time, and make the best informed decision based on your unique scenario.  There are no 'one-size-fits-all' answers, regardless of which wireless carrier you pay money to.

One advantage with T-Mobile for 5g: it is like being a new freeway with almost no traffic. AT&T and Verizon use DSS for their non mmWave spectrum so almost no advantage except in a few places.

As always, test signal in the areas you need it first.

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Does anybody know whether T-Mobile partition their M-MIMO between NR41 and B41?
Yes some 2.5 is showing up on LTE as well as 5G

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk

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3 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

Yes some 2.5 is showing up on LTE as well as 5G

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk
 

So what's stopping them from putting M-MIMO on all their sites in a market, maybe even host 20Mhz on their band 2/25, and then re-sim all Sprint phones in the same market.

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So what's stopping them from putting M-MIMO on all their sites in a market, maybe even host 20Mhz on their band 2/25, and then re-sim all Sprint phones in the same market.

What makes you think they aren't? It's only been 4 almost 5 months since the merger was approved, this stuff takes time..

 

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk

 

 

 

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5 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

What makes you think they aren't? It's only been 4 almost 5 months since the merger was approved, this stuff takes time..

 

Sent from my SM-G975U1 using Tapatalk

 

 

 

What market have they completed in the manner we have discussed? 

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So what's stopping them from putting M-MIMO on all their sites in a market, maybe even host 20Mhz on their band 2/25, and then re-sim all Sprint phones in the same market.
Sprint's 8T8R radios have been recertified for NR. If Sprint was still independent they could flip a software switch and basically have N41 coverage everywhere... but a more likely scenario is that T-mobile will redeploy the 8T8R equipment as they decommission Sprint sites. Either to add N41 to a T-Mobile site, or to add it in addition to a M-MIMO unit to add B41 and eventually additional N41 carriers (M-MIMO units can't utilize the full 160 MHz of B41). Having that much equipment already should hopefully speed up the deployment and number of sites they put it on.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk

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6 hours ago, dkyeager said:

One advantage with T-Mobile for 5g: it is like being a new freeway with almost no traffic. AT&T and Verizon use DSS for their non mmWave spectrum so almost no advantage except in a few places.

As always, test signal in the areas you need it first.

Are S20+ 5G devices running natively on T-Mobile's network now out of the box?

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4 hours ago, RedSpark said:

Are S20+ 5G devices running natively on T-Mobile's network now out of the box?

If they aren't right out of the box then they will be with a profile update. Easy enough to force B25/26/41 if needed though.

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14 hours ago, ingenium said:

Sprint's 8T8R radios have been recertified for NR. If Sprint was still independent they could flip a software switch and basically have N41 coverage everywhere... but a more likely scenario is that T-mobile will redeploy the 8T8R equipment as they decommission Sprint sites. Either to add N41 to a T-Mobile site, or to add it in addition to a M-MIMO unit to add B41 and eventually additional N41 carriers (M-MIMO units can't utilize the full 160 MHz of B41). Having that much equipment already should hopefully speed up the deployment and number of sites they put it on.

Sent from my Pixel 4 XL using Tapatalk
 

Are the 8T8R and 64x64 MIMO radios compatible between vendors? Like can Samsung radios be used in Ericsson markets, Ericsson radios in Nokia markets, etc? Or does each vendors radios have to be used only with their own enodeBs? In that case what happens with all the Samsung radios?

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On 8/27/2020 at 12:15 PM, bigsnake49 said:

So what's stopping them from putting M-MIMO on all their sites in a market, maybe even host 20Mhz on their band 2/25, and then re-sim all Sprint phones in the same market.

T-Mobile has been installing M-MIMO equipment for PCS/AWS for a while. There are quite a few sites in Northern Utah that received these upgrades as part of the 600 rollout. 

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2 hours ago, the_intern said:

T-Mobile has been installing M-MIMO equipment for PCS/AWS for a while. There are quite a few sites in Northern Utah that received these upgrades as part of the 600 rollout. 

Seeing lots of Nokia AAFIAs going up in Seattle too. 

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2 hours ago, the_intern said:

T-Mobile has been installing M-MIMO equipment for PCS/AWS for a while. There are quite a few sites in Northern Utah that received these upgrades as part of the 600 rollout. 

8Tx8R is not exactly Massive MIMO.

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So this is new, at least to me:  https://imgur.com/a/Nnuvwrr

Looks like, much like Sprint's MMIMO gear, these require separate GCIs for each sector.  I have yet to see all three sectors of any.  It looks like they're using the same PCIs as the AWS sectors, which is nice as it helps with IDing them.

- Trip

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Verizon tries to prevent T-Mobile from getting more 600 MHz spectrum

Verizon says the FCC should not allow T-Mobile access to additional 600 MHz spectrum to “dramatically expand” its lead “in many of the country’s largest markets without subjecting these arrangements to the same rigorous competitive analysis the Commission normally applies to transactions that exceed the spectrum screen.”

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