Official Tmobile-Sprint merger discussion thread

[derrph]

39 minutes ago, SprintNYC said:

The stock price is tanking today on the fear that less than 40% of this merger getting approved by the DOJ. 

ouch, 40% or less? Thats pretty much saying "give it up Deelishis, you look like a man" (flavor of love quote). All jokes aside, if its predicted to be that low then its going to be BAU. Sprint lacking scale and T-Mobile lacking resource for 5G.

[WillM]

I think that’s just Wall St. knee jerk pessimism. I’d bet the odds are greater than 50/50 for sure. The CEOs were on tv this morning and they are hitting all the talking points hard. No job cuts, increase investment leading to job creation, rural buildout, etc. Plus they really are pushing the 5G angle and working in national security fears of China gaining the upper hand. And behind closed doors they’ll push the idea that they can’t compete without it which will cause the industry to stagnate. 

[Trip]

To the earlier discussion about the number of cell sites being turned off, I did a little bit of an analysis.  I used Spotsylvania County, VA as my example case, excluding the Shentel area.  I put both the Sprint and T-Mobile sites on a map.  The total number of sites is 18.  Of those, 12 are shared between Sprint and T-Mobile.  Of the remaining six, 5 are Sprint-only and 1 is T-Mobile only.  While the 1 T-Mobile only site is kind of near one of the Sprint-only sites, both are on I-95 and AT&T is actually on both towers, so I would expect them to keep both.

So even though 2/3 of the Sprint sites would presumably go away in Spotsylvania County, the actual change in service would be effectively zero.

- Trip

[jroepcke51]

13 minutes ago, Trip said:

To the earlier discussion about the number of cell sites being turned off, I did a little bit of an analysis.  I used Spotsylvania County, VA as my example case, excluding the Shentel area.  I put both the Sprint and T-Mobile sites on a map.  The total number of sites is 18.  Of those, 12 are shared between Sprint and T-Mobile.  Of the remaining six, 5 are Sprint-only and 1 is T-Mobile only.  While the 1 T-Mobile only site is kind of near one of the Sprint-only sites, both are on I-95 and AT&T is actually on both towers, so I would expect them to keep both.

So even though 2/3 of the Sprint sites would presumably go away in Spotsylvania County, the actual change in service would be effectively zero.

- Trip

Great analysis. I will do this for the ABQ market as well. I am interested in the New Co coverage.

[jroepcke51]

My biggest question is when the FCC and DOJ will start review?

[Arysyn]

38 minutes ago, Trip said:

To the earlier discussion about the number of cell sites being turned off, I did a little bit of an analysis.  I used Spotsylvania County, VA as my example case, excluding the Shentel area.  I put both the Sprint and T-Mobile sites on a map.  The total number of sites is 18.  Of those, 12 are shared between Sprint and T-Mobile.  Of the remaining six, 5 are Sprint-only and 1 is T-Mobile only.  While the 1 T-Mobile only site is kind of near one of the Sprint-only sites, both are on I-95 and AT&T is actually on both towers, so I would expect them to keep both.

So even though 2/3 of the Sprint sites would presumably go away in Spotsylvania County, the actual change in service would be effectively zero.

- Trip

Seeing those numbers really came to a shock for me. Granted I recently decided to fully support this merger, it does seem sad that so much of Sprint's network is going to be dismantled, regardless of the merger's advantages of having the spectrum being put to good use finally on all towers. Yes we will see the deployment numbers where we've been hoping for many years to have, but in terms of density - this isn't so good as some, including myself thought it would be.

So, as I understand it now - please correct me if I'm wrong about this  the "new" T-Mobile is in fact keeping 85,000 of Sprint's network sites, but eliminating the rest, or 35,000 of them? I'm curious how many T-Mobile sites there currently are and how much there will be after this convergence. Also, how many sites does AT&T and Verizon singularly have? I'm interested in the density figures too, not just spectrum.

[Trip]

What I've been reading is that the combined network would have 120,000 sites, and they're planning to shut down 35,000 of them, leaving 85,000.  That's about 30%.

Going back to the Spotsylvania County example, counting it that way, there are 30 sites.  12 of the Sprint sites are co-located with T-Mobile sites.  Turning those off would decrease the total number of sites by 40%, but there would be no change in coverage.

- Trip

[RedSpark]

4 minutes ago, Trip said:

What I've been reading is that the combined network would have 120,000 sites, and they're planning to shut down 35,000 of them, leaving 85,000.  That's about 30%.

Going back to the Spotsylvania County example, counting it that way, there are 30 sites.  12 of the Sprint sites are co-located with T-Mobile sites.  Turning those off would decrease the total number of sites by 40%, but there would be no change in coverage.

- Trip

Yup. That's what's laid out here in the bullet points on Slide 22: https://allfor5g.com/content/uploads/2018/04/CREATING-ROBUST-COMPETITION-IN-THE-5G-ERA.pdf

I guess Magic Boxes are dead as part of this?

What about HPUE?

[RedSpark]

19 hours ago, notsrealinc said:

Why is no one asking about Pual? 

RIP Pual. 

And there was just this article about him too:

https://www.wealthsimple.com/en-us/magazine/money-diary-paul-marcarelli

Perhaps we'll see him in a T-Mobile ad?

[Arysyn]

4 minutes ago, Trip said:

What I've been reading is that the combined network would have 120,000 sites, and they're planning to shut down 35,000 of them, leaving 85,000.  That's about 30%.

Going back to the Spotsylvania County example, counting it that way, there are 30 sites.  12 of the Sprint sites are co-located with T-Mobile sites.  Turning those off would decrease the total number of sites by 40%, but there would be no change in coverage.

- Trip

120,000 sites is a great amount. Be neat to have figures for the Chicago area. I remember reading some time ago the number of Sprint sites was over 1,000 -maybe around 1,200, is that right?

Also curious about the AT&T and Verizon numbers too.

[Mr.Nuke]

3 hours ago, bigsnake49 said:

Well, every media outlet and their brother has an article about the merger.

We are working on ours (sorry for the delay).

[mnjeepmale]

So what's the chance that this merger does get approved and Masa down the road buys more shares into T-Mobile?

[bigsnake49]

52 minutes ago, Arysyn said:

120,000 sites is a great amount. Be neat to have figures for the Chicago area. I remember reading some time ago the number of Sprint sites was over 1,000 -maybe around 1,200, is that right?

Also curious about the AT&T and Verizon numbers too.

Well, to be more precise, right now they have a combined 110,000 sites. They will decommission 35,000 and build 10,000 new sites for a net of 85,000 sites. They will also add 40,000 small cells to their already existing 10,000.

[RedSpark]

http://newsroom.sprint.com/sprint-corporation-schedules-fiscal-2017-fourth-quarter-results-announcement.htm

May 2nd at 4:30 PM ET

Should be an interesting call...

[bigsnake49]

1 hour ago, Mr.Nuke said:

We are working on ours (sorry for the delay).

I expect that it will have a little bit more technical detail and informed speculation :).

 

[Mr.Nuke]

Just now, bigsnake49 said:

I expect that it will have a little bit more technical detail and informed speculation :).

This one will be a little more like all of the other ones just to get something up on the wall. We'll start to delve deeper technically later when we 1) have more time and 2) know more. Everything on that end has been pretty vague so far.

[bigsnake49]

8 minutes ago, Mr.Nuke said:

This one will be a little more like all of the other ones just to get something up on the wall. We'll start to delve deeper technically later when we 1) have more time and 2) know more. Everything on that end has been pretty vague so far.

That's where informed speculation and educated guesses come in. ?

[Paynefanbro]

1 hour ago, RedSpark said:

Yup. That's what's laid out here in the bullet points on Slide 22: https://allfor5g.com/content/uploads/2018/04/CREATING-ROBUST-COMPETITION-IN-THE-5G-ERA.pdf

I guess Magic Boxes are dead as part of this?

What about HPUE?

HPUE will stick around because it's part of the Band 41 spec at this point. Magic Boxes will probably continue as well as a small cell solution since they are a benefit to the network as a whole. One of the things about Magic Boxes that is notable is their ability to turn into WiFi hotspots so if the "New T-Mobile" decides it wants to go the WISP route down the line, they have the ability to do so using them.

[RedSpark]

40 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

HPUE will stick around because it's part of the Band 41 spec at this point. Magic Boxes will probably continue as well as a small cell solution since they are a benefit to the network as a whole. One of the things about Magic Boxes that is notable is their ability to turn into WiFi hotspots so if the "New T-Mobile" decides it wants to go the WISP route down the line, they have the ability to do so using them.

That's good to know about HPUE.

I've seen this about WiFi on the AirUnity Box spec sheets: https://www.airspan.com/airunity/

A free-standing unit with wireless backhual which can be placed on window sills, tables and shelfs. It supports LTE-A (FDD or TDD) and an optional WiFi AP (802.11n concurrent with 802.11ac). AirUnity is composed of an eNB for access, and a standard high-performance UE relay for wireless backhaul.

The brochure has more info on the WiFi specs: https://www.airspan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Airunity-Product-Spec-Sheets-Mar2018.pdf

Assuming this feature is built-in, why hasn't Sprint enabled it yet?

[Thomas L.]

42 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

That's good to know about HPUE.

I've seen this about WiFi on the AirUnity Box spec sheets: https://www.airspan.com/airunity/

A free-standing unit with wireless backhual which can be placed on window sills, tables and shelfs. It supports LTE-A (FDD or TDD) and an optional WiFi AP (802.11n concurrent with 802.11ac). AirUnity is composed of an eNB for access, and a standard high-performance UE relay for wireless backhaul.

The brochure has more info on the WiFi specs: https://www.airspan.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/Airunity-Product-Spec-Sheets-Mar2018.pdf

Assuming this feature is built-in, why hasn't Sprint enabled it yet?

Because they don't want a wifi hotspot that any device can connect to. Just to extend coverage for paying customers on their Sprint devices. 

[caspar347]

Well, assuming this goes through I can't wait for a bunch of non-redundant Sprint sites to be decomm'ed Nextel/clearwire style ?

[Thomas L.]

23 minutes ago, caspar347 said:

Well, assuming this goes through I can't wait for a bunch of non-redundant Sprint sites to be decomm'ed Nextel/clearwire style ?

Nah I don't think they'll actually do that. T-Mobile's coverage is generally already better than Sprint's for LTE, and their goal is to compete with AT&T and Verizon. They will at least maintain coverage.

[twospirits]

35 minutes ago, Thomas L. said:

Nah I don't think they'll actually do that. T-Mobile's coverage is generally already better than Sprint's for LTE, and their goal is to compete with AT&T and Verizon. They will at least maintain coverage.

[Mr.Nuke]

3 hours ago, RedSpark said:

http://newsroom.sprint.com/sprint-corporation-schedules-fiscal-2017-fourth-quarter-results-announcement.htm

May 2nd at 4:30 PM ET

Should be an interesting call...

There are certainly some interesting questions I can think of.

[RedSpark]

5 minutes ago, Mr.Nuke said:

There are certainly some interesting questions I can think of.

Are you going to try to submit some? ?

Say you're with "S4GRU & Partners".