Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[Paynefanbro]

Quote

T-Mobile said Wednesday that its shutdown of Sprint’s 3G network is proceeding as planned, beginning on March 31st. As part of the shutdown process, the company said in a statement emailed to The Verge, it will migrate customers over the next 60 days “to ensure they are supported and not left without connectivity, and the network will be completely turned off by no later than May 31.”

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/30/23002956/tmobile-shutdown-date-push-back-sprint-3g-dcma-network-dish

[RedSpark]

On 3/30/2022 at 5:55 PM, Paynefanbro said:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/30/23002956/tmobile-shutdown-date-push-back-sprint-3g-dcma-network-dish

What does this 3G shutdown mean in terms of overall network improvements/changes?

[RedSpark]

Quote

.....Our Extended Range 5G covers 310 million Americans across 1.8 million square miles of the country — nearly 94% of the U.S. population! And we expect our Ultra Capacity 5G, which covers 210 million people, to reach 260 million by the end of this year and 300 million next year. We tripled our Ultra Capacity square mileage in 2021 and plan for 3x again in 2022. Three times more!

......

.....More than 40% of our postpaid phone customers have a 5G device, and 5G traffic already accounts for about HALF of all traffic carried on our network. In the space of 12 months, our 5G traffic has increased 6x while average download speeds have doubled.

Our industry-leading capacity allowed us to introduce plans like Magenta MAX, the first 5G unlimited plan that won’t slow you down no matter how much data you use. Our customers love that they’re getting a truly differentiated 5G experience. About 55% of our new customers are choosing this plan when they come to us, and those who have it are using 5x more gaming, 2x more video and 2.5x more social media.

 

[radem]

59 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

What does this 3G shutdown mean in terms of overall network improvements/changes?

T-Mobile is currently operating 5 networks.  Sprint 3G CDMA, Sprint LTE, T-Mobile 3G GSM/UMTS, T-Mobile LTE, T-Mobile 5G. 

Each network requires licensed wireless bandwidth, antennas, site leases, cabling, networking and compute power at the antenna site.  Each network also requires networking from the antenna site to the core network location and compute power, data, messaging and voice call routing from the core network location.   They cannot decommission a large number of Sprint sites freeing up the licensed bandwidth and all the equipment to run those networks until they shut down the 3G CDMA network. 

The Sprint LTE network appears to be mostly integrated with the T-Mobile LTE network but some of the Sprint site leases cannot be ended as they are still running Sprint 3G services.  The goal of the Sprint 3G CDMA shut down will be to decommission all the Sprint equipment and networking for 3G and the Sprint LTE equipment that they no longer require.  This will also free up additional licensed wireless bandwidth that can be used by the T-Mobile systems.  When they are done with the Sprint 3G CDMA shutdown there should be no Sprint networks running for either 3G or LTE.

Following this work, T-Mobile has announced that they are shutting down the T-Mobile 3G GSM/UMTS network starting in July 2022.  This will eliminate the licensed wireless bandwidth, some antennas, cabling, networking, and the T-Mobile 3G core network.  This will significantly simplify T-Mobile's operations from operating 5 networks and all the associated equipment to operating just 2 networks consisting of LTE and 5G.  All of this simplification and eliminating unnecessary parts of their operations are a large part of the cost savings from the merger.

[wispiANt]

6 hours ago, radem said:

This will significantly simplify T-Mobile's operations from operating 5 networks and all the associated equipment to operating just 2 networks consisting of LTE and 5G.

And 2G! No shutdown date just yet.

For the T-Mobile network, at least, the UTMS shutdown shouldn't spell much of a change on a per-tower basis. In most cases, the same radios and antennas that are broadcasting midband (B2/B66) LTE are also being used to for 2G/3G. RAN shutdown and spectrum reallocation shouldn't be more complicated than pushing some changes in firmware.

[PedroDaGr8]

T-Mobile isn't joking about rolling out 5GUC to cover as many as possible. I was out in the middle of nowhere Washington this weekend to do some hiking in some of the interesting parts of the Columbia River Flood Basalts. I was surprised to see they had deployed n41 in a number of small rural towns like Othello (pop 7500) and Connell (pop 5500). 

[Trip]

Was just poking at the Montgomery County, MD tower list and observed that T-Mobile is installing strand-mount gear.  See, for example:

https://montgomerycountytfcg.s3.amazonaws.com/Applications/MC2022031709.pdf

- Trip

 

[dewbertdc]

6 hours ago, Trip said:

Was just poking at the Montgomery County, MD tower list and observed that T-Mobile is installing strand-mount gear.  See, for example:

https://montgomerycountytfcg.s3.amazonaws.com/Applications/MC2022031709.pdf

- Trip

 

Good find - I saw someone near me in NE DC posted this on the cellmapper Reddit, too:  

 

[greenbastard]

T-Mobile turned off a bunch of Sprint towers somewhere between Sunday evening and Monday noon in Houston. All equipment is still physically there's, it has just been shut off. The remaining network is now extremely bare bones. B41 seems to have also been turned off from the few remaining Sprint towers I can still access (but I am still able to see fringe B41 neighboring cells coming from somewhere from time to time). I've gone from having great B25 coverage in my house to fringe B26. Putting the phone in my pocket creates "No Signal" situations.

I'm not sure why T-Mobile is doing this. Maybe they want to annoy the very few CDMA users left into switching to T-Mobile devices? Or maybe a bunch of leases expired? It doesn't make sense to just turn off large parts of the network like that.

[dkyeager]

8 hours ago, greenbastard said:

T-Mobile turned off a bunch of Sprint towers somewhere between Sunday evening and Monday noon in Houston. All equipment is still physically there's, it has just been shut off. The remaining network is now extremely bare bones. B41 seems to have also been turned off from the few remaining Sprint towers I can still access (but I am still able to see fringe B41 neighboring cells coming from somewhere from time to time). I've gone from having great B25 coverage in my house to fringe B26. Putting the phone in my pocket creates "No Signal" situations.

I'm not sure why T-Mobile is doing this. Maybe they want to annoy the very few CDMA users left into switching to T-Mobile devices? Or maybe a bunch of leases expired? It doesn't make sense to just turn off large parts of the network like that.

Are you on an original Sprint sim or the TNX sim?

I personally expect T-Mobile to accelerate the shutdown of Sprint only sites where it has no conversion plans.  The number of new T-Mobile permits in Columbus this year is greatly reduced, while Dish permits have greatly increased.

Pressure on Sprint users has been occuring for a year or so.  Priority of Sprint plans was reduced.  Video throttling in Sprint plans with no throttling.  Test shutdowns of parts of the Sprint network.  At some point soon I expect "free" 5g phones to disappear.  Automatic conversion of Sprint to T-Mobile billing has now started according to a Reddit post.  The train is leaving the station.  T-Mobile is now focused on getting their synergies. 

Have they handled the network conversion properly? We should know by early fall, if not sooner.  First up will be rural coverage with the loss of 1x800.  Hopefully n71 will be enough.  Hopefully there is enough capacity in urban areas. Hopefully any holdouts have an alternate carrier chosen if T-Mobile leaves them in the dust of abandoned Sprint sites.  T-Mobile is trying to avoid falling on their sword like AT&T did with their 3g conversion and VoLTE allow list snafus especially with MVNOs.  Business can be brutal.

[Trip]

They've been turning off sites around here for some time now.  My home site was one of the first decommissioned--gear is long gone.  After initially having blocked ROAMAHOME on my account, which also blocked MOCN when that came along, around the time I realized the gear was gone, I had them add MOCN back to my account so I could use T-Mobile sites without dropping to roaming.  I'm still on a Sprint SIM but mostly live on T-Mobile towers in this area.

Sites running 312250 are still going strong.  And very little has happened in the Shentel region where the T-Mobile network is the inferior partner.  I spend a lot of time on 312250 from Shentel in those areas.

- Trip

[davidtm]

This again affirms my choice to remain on Sprint SIM here in Shentel land. I dread the trauma of changeover when it occurs . . .

[clbowens]

That interesting.

I'm on a Sprint plan, with a Sprint phone and T-Mobile SIM.  My phone LOVES to stay on Sprint B25/B26 while in my basement, even though I can get much stronger B/N 71 or B12...or even B2 T-Mobile.  Sometimes even on my main floor, where I definitely get much strong T-Mobile signals.   Looks like they are still using the Sprint network very much here.

[chamb]

11 minutes ago, davidtm said:

This again affirms my choice to remain on Sprint SIM here in Shentel land. I dread the trauma of changeover when it occurs . . .

Same here.   I still have an S9 with Sprint Sim in Shentel territory. The phone sticks to Shentel sites almost all the time but it will occasionally find its way onto a T-Mobile site.  Shentel always was very very good and T-Mobile was very very bad in this area.  T-Mobile is only upgrading sites where they are already located.  No upgrades to Shentel sites yet in this area. 

If I lock out the 3 Sprint bands in the DATA menu of my phone and force it to scan for T-Mobile, the service is totally awful. Mostly only 600-700 from the few sites they are using.  Congested too.  I do see some aggregation and it does help, but they really really need to convert all the old Shentel sites. 

T-Mobile needs the site spacing that Shentel had to make the PCS,AWS, and Band 41 work. Shentel had it right and T-Mobile was skimping on everything.

I am sitting on the Shentel service until it either goes away or get combined with T-Mobile service.  I will go with T-Mobile only if & when they combine the networks properly. If not, I will move on.

T-Mobile has already sent me new Sims several times and I just received a new e-mail telling me I have more coming. Maybe one will go in my phone eventually or they all will go in the trash.

 

[jonathanm1978]

I've noticed the past 2 weeks or so..using that Tmobile femtocell (I forget the name they call it, but it provies B66 using my home internet connection) must be having issues or something. My GN20 5g keeps needing to be airplane cycled because texts error out.  Even using wifi calling it still happens. It's been fine all this time and suddenly it's doing this. Also... people aren't able to call me when it's hung and needs to be cycled.. I've tried to call when it's happening and it immediately hangs up without the call going through.

[dkyeager]

7 hours ago, Trip said:

They've been turning off sites around here for some time now.  My home site was one of the first decommissioned--gear is long gone.  After initially having blocked ROAMAHOME on my account, which also blocked MOCN when that came along, around the time I realized the gear was gone, I had them add MOCN back to my account so I could use T-Mobile sites without dropping to roaming.  I'm still on a Sprint SIM but mostly live on T-Mobile towers in this area.

Sites running 312250 are still going strong.  And very little has happened in the Shentel region where the T-Mobile network is the inferior partner.  I spend a lot of time on 312250 from Shentel in those areas.

- Trip

 

6 hours ago, davidtm said:

This again affirms my choice to remain on Sprint SIM here in Shentel land. I dread the trauma of changeover when it occurs . . .

 

5 hours ago, chamb said:

Same here.   I still have an S9 with Sprint Sim in Shentel territory. The phone sticks to Shentel sites almost all the time but it will occasionally find its way onto a T-Mobile site.  Shentel always was very very good and T-Mobile was very very bad in this area.  T-Mobile is only upgrading sites where they are already located.  No upgrades to Shentel sites yet in this area. 

If I lock out the 3 Sprint bands in the DATA menu of my phone and force it to scan for T-Mobile, the service is totally awful. Mostly only 600-700 from the few sites they are using.  Congested too.  I do see some aggregation and it does help, but they really really need to convert all the old Shentel sites. 

T-Mobile needs the site spacing that Shentel had to make the PCS,AWS, and Band 41 work. Shentel had it right and T-Mobile was skimping on everything.

I am sitting on the Shentel service until it either goes away or get combined with T-Mobile service.  I will go with T-Mobile only if & when they combine the networks properly. If not, I will move on.

T-Mobile has already sent me new Sims several times and I just received a new e-mail telling me I have more coming. Maybe one will go in my phone eventually or they all will go in the trash.

 

Hopefully T-Mobile gives Shentel land more time for conversions. But they are no longer the cuddly uncarrier, rather a large corporation.  They could send in a large number of crews to work on their desired sites at the end. T-Mobile has historically done rural areas last.

I would watch the markets that now cover the area. For West Virginia that appears to be Cincinnati and Pittsburgh based on T-Mobile market maps. Likely Richmond on the east side and DC. Maybe Philly etc. Less likely Columbus.  I would watch Huntington, Charleston, and Roanoke iirc.

I think we all would have preferred that Shentel been kept as an affiliate. Would have given them a model for large parts of the west where T-Mobile does poorly. Analogous to regional carriers for the major airlines.

[greenbastard]

10 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Are you on an original Sprint sim or the TNX sim?

Neither. I switched to T-Mobile a month before the merger was announced back in 2018. Using NSG, I have forced my phone to roam on Sprint bands since the merger closed. Partly for nostalgic reasons, but mostly to track the decommissioning of the network. 

Until earlier this week, I have only see one Sprint site get turned off and have it's equipment removed (and that happened last summer). But the latest tells me T-Mobile is moving forward.

It's the end of an era boys 😟. I still remember the days where many of us were organized and carefully mapping B26 or 8T8R equipment sightings. Using custom PRLs on my Evo3D just to track 1x800 was peak S4GRU for me.

Goodbye Network Vision... it's almost like it was all in vain.

[dkyeager]

4 hours ago, greenbastard said:

Neither. I switched to T-Mobile a month before the merger was announced back in 2018. Using NSG, I have forced my phone to roam on Sprint bands since the merger closed. Partly for nostalgic reasons, but mostly to track the decommissioning of the network. 

Until earlier this week, I have only see one Sprint site get turned off and have it's equipment removed (and that happened last summer). But the latest tells me T-Mobile is moving forward.

It's the end of an era boys 😟. I still remember the days where many of us were organized and carefully mapping B26 or 8T8R equipment sightings. Using custom PRLs on my Evo3D just to track 1x800 was peak S4GRU for me.

Goodbye Network Vision... it's almost like it was all in vain.

Here in Columbus, Sprint site decommissioning has been going on for a while.  Bare poles rising in some cases.  Dish has been building new sites like crazy.  Permits indicate many of the bare pole sites won't stay that way.  The one area that I think will largely be dropped is power sites (plus small cells unless T-Mobile uses them for n77).  We also have Starry.com, a mmWave WISP on many sites, done during the last year.  Columbus continues to grow rapidly and Intel's new fab here should keep that going.

There is still cell carrier and phone interest here, but most of that is on Google Hangouts.  Occasional reports.  Simply not the same without Goggle Fusion Maps.  We cover all carriers now. 

[Trip]

So which one of you is this?

https://imgur.com/a/KDrbEng

- Trip

 

[S4GRU]

On 4/7/2022 at 7:53 AM, jonathanm1978 said:

I've noticed the past 2 weeks or so..using that Tmobile femtocell (I forget the name they call it, but it provies B66 using my home internet connection) must be having issues or something. My GN20 5g keeps needing to be airplane cycled because texts error out.  Even using wifi calling it still happens. It's been fine all this time and suddenly it's doing this. Also... people aren't able to call me when it's hung and needs to be cycled.. I've tried to call when it's happening and it immediately hangs up without the call going through.

I actually was having the same issue here in Washjngton State yesterday with my T-Mobile LTE Cellspot.  But it wasn't affecting every device.  Strange.

I've had this Cellspot since 2015 before I moved from South Dakota.  In general, it's been pretty error free.

Robert

[S4GRU]

On 4/7/2022 at 1:30 PM, greenbastard said:

Neither. I switched to T-Mobile a month before the merger was announced back in 2018. Using NSG, I have forced my phone to roam on Sprint bands since the merger closed. Partly for nostalgic reasons, but mostly to track the decommissioning of the network. 

Until earlier this week, I have only see one Sprint site get turned off and have it's equipment removed (and that happened last summer). But the latest tells me T-Mobile is moving forward.

It's the end of an era boys 😟. I still remember the days where many of us were organized and carefully mapping B26 or 8T8R equipment sightings. Using custom PRLs on my Evo3D just to track 1x800 was peak S4GRU for me.

Goodbye Network Vision... it's almost like it was all in vain.

Definitely not in vain.  Sprint never would have had the number of customers and value without it to be sold.  It would have been bankruptcy.  But after all these years and effort, it kinda feels like it.

But for most of us, it sure was fun.  T-Mobile network hunting is also fun.  Just not quite in the same way.

Your post made me nostalgic, though.  Making me think back on all the years we have been tower chasing.  I have moved from Nevada to New Mexico to South Dakota to Washington State in all this time.  Some of us have gotten married, had kids.  Some have lost spouses and kids.  There have been car accidents out there on the roads chasing towers.

But the joy when finding a WiMax signal where there wasn't supposed to be one.  Or the first Sprint LTE signal to light up your phone.  And you may have driven hundreds to miles to get to it.  Or that 1x 800 signal from over 50 miles away that you wondered if it was real.  Or seeing activity at your local Sprint site.  Or falling asleep at your keyboard updating map pins.  Or zooming in and out of layers in Sensorly to see if all your recently laid trails appear.

It was a blast!  And though I single handedly am responsible from draining oil from one part of the Alaskan wilderness, I am glad to have done it all.

Now I am ready to start to get back to it.  Part Deux.  I traded in my full size Lincoln pickup for a compact Ford Maverick with much better fuel economy and teaching my youngest to drive.  I got out my spectrum analyzer, binoculars and started watching towers again.  I got to pass this on to the next generation.

"Son, come here for a moment.  Let me tell you about the magic inside your cellphone..."

Robert

[RedSpark]

Just upgraded one of our lines from a Pixel 5 to a Pixel 6 on a good trade-in deal. It was cool that I could use the QR Code on T-Mobile's website to download the eSIM to the device: https://www.t-mobile.com/support/devices/t-mobile-esim#heading4

However, it certainly didn't help that the current activation instructions on Sprint's website "activation flow" specifically said to select "Sprint" as the mobile network for Pixel devices (even though all of our lines are TNX'ed). Following those instructions in the activation flow actually caused an activation error, so I erased and reset the eSIM to do it again. Contacted the Support Chat and they said to select T-Mobile as the network and then to download the T-Mobile eSIM from the T-Mobile website using the QR Code. That worked and the device activated. Pretty ridiculous that you have to use two separate websites to activate a new device on a Sprint account that uses TNX and eSIM: 1) Sprint's site for the Account Level Upgrade where you click to switch over/activate the new device onto the line/account; 2) T-Mobile's site for the QR Code to actually download the T-Mobile eSIM to the new device. This QR Code should at least be linked to in the Activation workflow on the Sprint website. Seriously, has anyone there actually "use tested" this? It's terrible. Dare I say that it's worse now than Sprint's activation process pre-merger was?

It also didn't help that you still can't enter/update the E911 Address for WiFi Calling directly on Pixel devices. You have to do on the Sprint website from the account dashboard, and the website still uses the pre-historic Sprint website interface for doing this. They didn't even bother re-skinning it. It's just contained and virtualized inside the "newer" page design, but you can tell it hasn't been touched in 10+ years. It's pretty awful.

I'm actually looking forward to getting this legacy stuff shut down and switched over as part of the merger/synergy. It's being held together with bubble gum at this point and it really hinders the overall user experience. Since I specifically knew to go to my account dashboard and manually enter an E911 address, I did it. Otherwise, the WiFi Calling would not have been enabled with a "registered" address even though it said "enabled" on the device itself. That's ridiculous and dangerous.

Edited April 12, 2022 by RedSpark
Added additional detail Version 3.0

[RedSpark]

Interesting bit about who's working on what for the Merger.

[RedSpark]

The other side of the grass is looking really green...

[jf15219]

On 4/10/2022 at 11:55 PM, RedSpark said:

It also didn't help that you still can't enter/update the E911 Address for WiFi Calling directly on Pixel devices. You have to do on the Sprint website from the account dashboard, and the website still uses the pre-historic Sprint website interface for doing this. They didn't even bother re-skinning it. It's just contained and virtualized inside the "newer" page design, but you can tell it hasn't been touched in 10+ years. It's pretty awful.

I'm actually looking forward to getting this legacy stuff shut down and switched over as part of the merger/synergy. It's being held together with bubble gum at this point and it really hinders the overall user experience. Since I specifically knew to go to my account dashboard and manually enter an E911 address, I did it. Otherwise, the WiFi Calling would not have been enabled with a "registered" address even though it said "enabled" on the device itself. That's ridiculous and dangerous.

I think on TNX *everyone* had to update their E911 addresses that way.

There must have been something amiss prior to 2022. I TNX-ed in Nov 2021 (LG v60) but in Jan 2022 got a text from 6772 asking me to make sure my E911 was updated.

After completing this task, SOC TMOVOWIFI was added to the line. (XP Wi-Fi calling T-Mobile). This changed nothing for my user experience; Wi-Fi Calling worked the same before and after.