Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[RedSpark]

On 11/1/2020 at 6:46 PM, dewbertdc said:

Your data is being routed through the T-Mobile network core now, so the phone Speedtest identifies the network as Sprint but the Internet provider as T-Mobile. Your hotspot speed test only knows which Internet provider it’s using, so it shows only as T-Mobile. 

That's what I think I'm seeing on my iPhone 12 Pro now as well.

Ran some speed tests:

Seeing speeds of 227 Mbps/70 Mbps on 5G....

Seeing speeds of 138 Mbps/48 Mbps on LTE....

I was actually seeing faster peak download speeds on my iPhone 11 Pro on LTE (Of course, the upload was a mere fraction of this), but it was close to 300 Mbps at the same location I'm testing from now. Perhaps they're working on integrating the network?

Edited November 9, 2020 by RedSpark
Added speed tests

[bigsnake49]

T-Mobile have initiated the third party appraisal of Shentel assets:

 

Regional US operator Shentel and T-Mobile US have agreed to initiate a new appraisal process as they seek to establish an agreeable valuation ahead of T-Mobile’s planned takeover of the wireless unit. On 3 November the parties ‘aligned in principle to resolve such disputed items’. For the purpose of the exercise, the appraisers will assume the T-Mobile/Sprint merger did not occur, and that Shentel remains an affiliate of Sprint. The appraisers expect to complete their valuation on or about 20 January 2021 and the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021, subject to receipt of customary regulatory approvals.

https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2020/11/09/shentel-t-mobile-deal-going-ahead-sale-should-conclude-in-2q21/?

[RedSpark]

59 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

T-Mobile have initiated the third party appraisal of Shentel assets:

 

Regional US operator Shentel and T-Mobile US have agreed to initiate a new appraisal process as they seek to establish an agreeable valuation ahead of T-Mobile’s planned takeover of the wireless unit. On 3 November the parties ‘aligned in principle to resolve such disputed items’. For the purpose of the exercise, the appraisers will assume the T-Mobile/Sprint merger did not occur, and that Shentel remains an affiliate of Sprint. The appraisers expect to complete their valuation on or about 20 January 2021 and the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021, subject to receipt of customary regulatory approvals.

https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2020/11/09/shentel-t-mobile-deal-going-ahead-sale-should-conclude-in-2q21/?

Looking forward to having this come together. T-Mobile is definitely earning its position alongside AT&T and Verizon through effective management and network building/planning.

[Trip]

I am, by contrast, extremely wary of T-Mobile buying Shentel.  Shentel is a known quantity, and T-Mobile is not.  I'm very concerned they will try to cover the area as cheaply as possible rather than providing the best service as Shentel does today. 

If they keep all the Shentel sites, then great.  If they decide to thin them... that's bad.

- Trip

 

[RedSpark]

1 hour ago, Trip said:

I am, by contrast, extremely wary of T-Mobile buying Shentel.  Shentel is a known quantity, and T-Mobile is not.  I'm very concerned they will try to cover the area as cheaply as possible rather than providing the best service as Shentel does today. 

If they keep all the Shentel sites, then great.  If they decide to thin them... that's bad.

- Trip

 

That's a good point. I guess it comes down to the quality of the RF modeling and drive-testing that T-Mobile does?

Edited November 10, 2020 by RedSpark
Clarity

[chamb]

4 hours ago, RedSpark said:

That's a good point. I guess it comes down to the quality of the RF modeling and drive-testing that T-Mobile does?

I am with "TRIP" on this one.  T-Mobile COULD have had good coverage in the Shentel area in the past. Shentel/Sprint was a competitor.  T-Mobile was not even trying to compete.  Service most places was horrible. Shentel almost always had twice the number of sites to cover an area while T-Mobile done it the cheap way. Shentel had a network that was even better then Sprints network elsewhere.  T-Mobile was not even competition. Just very very poor.

   So, this is the reason I have no faith that T-Mobile will step up and do it right.  The Shentel network needs to be the base to build on.  Add T-Mobile spectrum to almost ALL of the Shentel sites.  What I hate is all the Shentel employees knew what they were doing and could be proud of it.  If T-Mobile trashes the Shentel network, all the employees will see many years of hard work disappear.

I hope the buyout price that T-Mobile has to pay is very high. It is a great network and it should bring  a premium price.

[BlueAngel]

6 minutes ago, chamb said:

I am with "TRIP" on this one.  T-Mobile COULD have had good coverage in the Shentel area in the past. Shentel/Sprint was a competitor.  T-Mobile was not even trying to compete.  Service most places was horrible. Shentel almost always had twice the number of sites to cover an area while T-Mobile done it the cheap way. Shentel had a network that was even better then Sprints network elsewhere.  T-Mobile was not even competition. Just very very poor.

   So, this is the reason I have no faith that T-Mobile will step up and do it right.  The Shentel network needs to be the base to build on.  Add T-Mobile spectrum to almost ALL of the Shentel sites.  What I hate is all the Shentel employees knew what they were doing and could be proud of it.  If T-Mobile trashes the Shentel network, all the employees will see many years of hard work disappear.

I hope the buyout price that T-Mobile has to pay is very high. It is a great network and it should bring  a premium price.

Well that's what they need to do, add T-Mobile to all of their sites boom problem avoided!

[RAvirani]

1 hour ago, chamb said:

What I hate is all the Shentel employees knew what they were doing and could be proud of it.  If T-Mobile trashes the Shentel network, all the employees will see many years of hard work disappear.

This is exactly how I feel about the Sprint team in Seattle. 

T-Mobile has an internal model they use to predict usage trends/growth, and they use that model to prioritize their network buildout. If Shentel coverage areas don't have relatively high usage compared to other areas within that market, that part of the network will likely be neglected. 

[Paynefanbro]

Anecdotally, it looks like T-Mobile has stopped being picky about deployments and started just throwing money at their network.

In NYC it seems like T-Mobile is modernizing virtually every site right now, swapping out older antennas and adding every band available to every site in the process. In my grandmother's market in eastern North Carolina (pretty rural area), they long neglected it and only put up Band 2 on every tower years ago during their initial coverage expansion. Then In the past 3 months they've already gone ahead and added Band 71 to most sites and even started adding n41.

[1dante]

I was able to add TNX to my account last night. Got an R15 SIM card from T-Mobile, then had a sprint rep activate it before inserting into my phone. I was able to add my watch also even though it’s not paid in full. 

[RAvirani]

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

Anecdotally, it looks like T-Mobile has stopped being picky about deployments and started just throwing money at their network.

Perhaps in New York; in the rest of the country (especially outside major metros) they continue to only deploy as needed. Across the country, there have been many instances of sites getting 2500 panels without 600 and vice versa. 

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, RAvirani said:

Perhaps in New York; in the rest of the country (especially outside major metros) they continue to only deploy as needed. Across the country, there have been many instances of sites getting 2500 panels without 600 and vice versa. 

I understand how NYC can be an outlier which is why I also mentioned eastern NC as well. My grandmother lives in a city of about 90k people and the area surrounding it is farms and towns with <1,000 people and T-Mobile has upgraded a large amount of towers there in the past 3 months. They went from having one site with 600MHz (near the city's convention center) to having near contiguous coverage across the entire city in about 3 months and they started n41 deployments this month.

In NYC we also have sites that get 600MHz upgrades without getting n41 (not so much the opposite) however when these sites get 600MHz, they always simultaneously get new mid-band/700MHz antennas too. What I was trying to say is that it doesn't appear that T-Mobile is being very picky or deploying only as needed. It seems like they're putting up new antennas as fast as they can get the equipment in workers' hands.

I understand the skepticism though. When I switched to T-Mobile I was disappointed in their deployment because they were only deploying as needed. My home tower never got any upgrade since 700MHz was put on it in 2015. However, I think that if the idea is that midband will eventually be nationwide and the foundation of a 5G home broadband network, then you can't do that by strictly deploying only as needed and I would hope T-Mobile understands that.

[RAvirani]

21 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

I understand how NYC can be an outlier which is why I also mentioned eastern NC as well. My grandmother lives in a city of about 90k people and the area surrounding it is farms and towns with <1,000 people and T-Mobile has upgraded a large amount of towers there in the past 3 months. They went from having one site with 600MHz (near the city's convention center) to having near contiguous coverage across the entire city in about 3 months and they started n41 deployments this month.

In NYC we also have sites that get 600MHz upgrades without getting n41 (not so much the opposite) however when these sites get 600MHz, they always simultaneously get new mid-band/700MHz antennas too. What I was trying to say is that it doesn't appear that T-Mobile is being very picky or deploying only as needed. It seems like they're putting up new antennas as fast as they can get the equipment in workers' hands.

I understand the skepticism though. When I switched to T-Mobile I was disappointed in their deployment because they were only deploying as needed. My home tower never got any upgrade since 700MHz was put on it in 2015. However, I think that if the idea is that midband will eventually be nationwide and the foundation of a 5G home broadband network, then you can't do that by strictly deploying only as needed and I would hope T-Mobile understands that.

Pretty much all T-Mobile new builds use a single 600/700 RRU and a single 1900/2100 RRU. If you get lowband, you get both 600 and 700. If you get midband, you get both 1900 and 2100. 2500 uses its own massive MIMO antenna, of course.

While not having 1900/2100 fragmentation or 600/700 fragmentation is a a step in the right direction, T-Mobile isn't consistently adding lowband, midband and highband to sites. With the imminent influx of Sprint users to their network, I don't doubt they're going that route in major metros, but less busy areas are not getting the same treatment.

[belusnecropolis]

I'm ready for them to update those crappy L850 radios into the old antennae they threw up here to n5 already. Lot's of old sites with 2 bands. Many such cases.

[1dante]

I was able to add TNX to my account last night. Got an R15 SIM card from T-Mobile, then had a sprint rep activate it before inserting into my phone. I was able to add my watch also even though it’s not paid in full. 

[bigsnake49]

My iPhone 6s prompted me for a Carrier Settings update. It is now at 44.1. Has anybody had the same update prompt? What changed in 44.1? Or was it a PRL update? My PRL is now 55576. I have not seen any outward changes.

Edited November 11, 2020 by bigsnake49

[RedSpark]

20 hours ago, chamb said:

I am with "TRIP" on this one.  T-Mobile COULD have had good coverage in the Shentel area in the past. Shentel/Sprint was a competitor.  T-Mobile was not even trying to compete.  Service most places was horrible. Shentel almost always had twice the number of sites to cover an area while T-Mobile done it the cheap way. Shentel had a network that was even better then Sprints network elsewhere.  T-Mobile was not even competition. Just very very poor.

   So, this is the reason I have no faith that T-Mobile will step up and do it right.  The Shentel network needs to be the base to build on.  Add T-Mobile spectrum to almost ALL of the Shentel sites.  What I hate is all the Shentel employees knew what they were doing and could be proud of it.  If T-Mobile trashes the Shentel network, all the employees will see many years of hard work disappear.

I hope the buyout price that T-Mobile has to pay is very high. It is a great network and it should bring  a premium price.

My download speeds have improved somewhat over the past couple of days. Obviously, T-Mobile is in the midst of merging things together.

I'm now seeing 250-260 Mbps for download over 5G, but more importantly, I'm seeing 76 Mbps for upload, which is about a 7x improvement over what I was seeing on Sprint before. This makes my iPhone substantially more usable for common tasks like sending photos, etc.

If T-Mobile can deliver a similar experience to Shentel's territory, I think customers will be happy with it.

Maybe T-Mobile will deploy some mmWave here in DC as well (if they haven't already)... That would be nice to check out. Anyone know if they have?

Edited November 11, 2020 by RedSpark
Clarity

[BlueAngel]

Check your bill if you've added TNX to your account they tried charging me an "upgrade support charge" for $20, I called and had them remove it but yeah they say it's "free" but they try to get you on your bill.

Edited November 11, 2020 by BlueAngel

[BlueAngel]

Damn this place is glitchy.

Edited November 11, 2020 by BlueAngel

[bigsnake49]

OK I was moved to TNX on the iPhone 6s. Did a few speedtests. Most of them averaged around 10 down/5 up but then there was that 77 down/24 up that I got close to a site. The latency is pretty bad almost all above 100ms. The process itself was fast and painless.

Edited November 11, 2020 by bigsnake49

[dewbertdc]

3 hours ago, RedSpark said:

My download speeds have improved somewhat over the past couple of days. Obviously, T-Mobile is in the midst of merging things together.

I'm now seeing 250-260 Mbps for download over 5G, but more importantly, I'm seeing 76 Mbps for upload, which is about a 7x improvement over what I was seeing on Sprint before. This makes my iPhone substantially more usable for common tasks like sending photos, etc.

If T-Mobile can deliver a similar experience to Shentel's territory, I think customers will be happy with it.

Maybe T-Mobile will deploy some mmWave here in DC as well (if they haven't already)... That would be nice to check out. Anyone know if they have?

There's no mmWave that I know of here in DC, but I do have to say the 5G experience on T-Mobile has been much better than I was anticipating on my iPhone 12.  There appears to be quite a bit of mid-band 5G deployed in DC proper, at least in neighborhoods I frequent: Brookland, 16th Street Heights, Takoma Park...

[BlueAngel]

55 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

OK I was moved to TNX on the iPhone 6s. Did a few speedtests. Most of them averaged around 10 down/5 up but then there was that 77 down/24 up that I got close to a site. The latency is pretty bad almost all above 100ms. The process itself was fast and painless.

I think it's time to move on a 6s is what 5 years old? I think you're limited by the modem in the phone at this point probably maxing out.

[Trip]

On 11/10/2020 at 4:45 PM, BlueAngel said:

Well that's what they need to do, add T-Mobile to all of their sites boom problem avoided!

And as long as they do that, then all will be well.

I'm just not putting money on it happening.

- Trip

[RedSpark]

1 hour ago, dewbertdc said:

There's no mmWave that I know of here in DC, but I do have to say the 5G experience on T-Mobile has been much better than I was anticipating on my iPhone 12.  There appears to be quite a bit of mid-band 5G deployed in DC proper, at least in neighborhoods I frequent: Brookland, 16th Street Heights, Takoma Park...

I agree. So far, my experience has been much better. With Sprint's network, I routinely ran into congestion or coverage issues in a number of areas in the DMV, especially the Central Business District (Downtown DC), Columbia Heights and National Harbor. Indoor coverage has definitely been better too. Curious where T-Mobile would put mmWave....

Edited November 11, 2020 by RedSpark
Clarity

[bigsnake49]

OK I was moved to TNX on the iPhone 6s. Did a few speedtests. Most of them averaged around 10 down/5 up but then there was that 77 down/24 up that I got close to a site. The latency is pretty bad almost all above 100ms