mozamcrew

The existing network footprint should be pretty much fixed by the end of this year, but perception always lags reality.

How dumb. They should want at least ONE more wired internet provider beyond the local cable and telephone monopolies. Those two have built up telephone and cable wiring assets that they are now using to provide last mile internet access. Certainly the market has room for a pure play fiber/ethernet last mile solution too?

Those wimax protection sites won't provide enough coverage to satisfy the all buildout requirements. They might for the Casper WY BEA, but I doubt it will for those other BEAs. Three of the BEAs didn't even have a single clearwire protection site. So we know Sprint will have to do something else in those areas. Frankly, Just covering the interstates and the cities along them in ND, SD, and MT would make their coverage map LOOK a lot better. It wouldn't require more than maybe 100-200 sites to do it well either. For example, If you wanted to cover just the city of Bismarck ND, you'd probably want at least 3 sites around the city (N, SE, and SW maybe), plus a site east and west of the city on I94. In ND, if you just covered i29, i94, US2, and all the towns along them, you'd be doing very well. Maybe add about 5 more sites and you'd look really good (I'm thinking a pair on US83 between Minot and Bismarck, and a pair on US 85 between Dickinson and Williston, and one in Carrington which is on US 281 between Devils Lake and Jamestown.

Sprint will have to build some coverage in those areas by 2016 due to the PCS G block buildout requirements. See here http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/3703-potential-sprint-rural-buildout-by-2016/ I just assumed since they are smack in the middle of the Samsung area on that map that Samsung would be the OEM for those sites.

I think he is looking at the areas of the US that have large gaping holes in native Sprint coverage (ND, SD, MT, WY) and noticing they are all in Samsung territory. Those four states have most of the MSAs yet to get a buildout in the PCS G block as well, so Sprint will be doing SOME kind of footprint expansion in this area. Much of those areas used to be served with "like native" Alltel coverage up until the Verizon merger/divestment a few years back.

Thank you Lilotimz, I knew I'd heard something to that effect before. I just didn't remember what the deal was exactly.

I was under the impression that TMUS was only doing that on some of their sites. But yes, the backhaul is Sprint's biggest obstacle.

1. The sites T-Mobile is putting LTE on already had fiber backhaul for HSPA and they didn't need to replace their 3G gear either, so what they are doing is much easier. Sprint's biggest problem is the sheer volume of work (antennas, rrus, base stations, and new backhaul), and the slowness of certain backhaul vendors. Ideally, the backhaul could all have been completed right before work started on a site, then as a cluster of sites is completed, they are all turned on in a bunch (or as they are ready in markets that don't have legacy CSFB issues.) Because backhaul is so slow to arrive, you had to make multiple trips to a site. 2. There wasn't enough spectrum to do ANY 800 LTE until Nextel was shutoff last June (2013). So there was no way to put 800 LTE on the initial sites, even though the antennas and rrus all supported it.

If I were Sprint, I'd want USCC and C-Spire, some of the other "independents" are already part of Verizon's LTE in rural america program and thus are not good candidates, as they are already in the VZW pocket. If you can buy out those two, then you go to TMUS and offer to take their 700Mhz A block spectrum they bough from Verizon, or sell the 700Mhz you acquired from your regionals. If one of them can get substantial band 12 buildout, they won't both need to bid against each other in the 600 Mhz auction.

Band 41/TD-LTE is their plan for competing with other carriers AWS LTE networks in the long term. They will be more spectrum and denser deployments in urban areas leading to way more capacity. Band 25/26 is for urban fallback and rural coverage, much like Verizon and ATT have 700 Mhz, and eventually repurposed Cell spectrum.

Currently, low and mid frequency spectrum are treated the same, but Sprint managed to get its high frequency spectrum discounted by having the FCC not count leased EBS. Verizon WAS very happy with this situation, because up to this point, lower frequency spectrum has always been of equal (urban) or greater (suburban/rural) value than higher frequency spectrum because of the economics of building out coverage. They were happy to throw Sprint a bone on BRS/EBS in return for Cell spectrum remaining equal to the AWS/PCS that Sprint and TMUS were stuck with. Verizon is looking down the road, seeing increased urban density and data usage, and looking at how that will decrease the value of its holdings of lower frequency spectrum, beyond a certain limited amount. Thus, the grand spectrum screen bargin it cut suddenly looks less and less attractive, especially now that Sprint has managed to acquire a sliver of lower frequency spectrum. If they build out, they will suddenly be in a much more adventageous position that the duopoly anticipated. Hence the sudden hurried lobbying for the FCC to change the spectrum screen. On a side note, no provider should have ever been allowed to acquire both the A and B sides of Cell spectrum license in a market. That was anti-competitive on its face. Why split the license if you are going to allow one company to own both sides.

The FCC/DOJ can stop them from merging, but it can't FORCE TMUS to stay in business, can it. If the shareholders decide TMUS is worth more dead than alive ... they might elect to break themselves up and sell the pieces to various regional providers, or investors who want to become a regional provider, or they could simply liquidate their spectrum and gear on the open market.

<nerd voice> Well actually, you really should say Say, Jean-Baptiste I mean, and not Milton Friedman </nerd voice> And now the obligatory semi-related video link.

I see I'm not the only crazy one here ...

There are still sites in Fargo that don't have new backhaul, and thus don't have LTE yet either. Most of them do, but there are still a bunch of them that don't have it yet.

Yes.

Some Anger Manningment sessions ought to help...

They reserve the right to throttle video, but they won't necessarily be doing it all the time. h.264 at 720p is approximately 2Mbps.

I guess I'm fine with those acquisitions, I just think they need to be much tougher on the divestments and conditions. For example, I would never let ATT or VZW own both sides of a cellular license in a market, or allow them to acquire too much of a spectrum position in a given market. To me these mergers are a perfect time for the FCC and DOJ to set higher buildout requirements and require divestments of spectrum or other assets that make competition impossible.

If they want it bad enough they will get it. It's a question of whether it's worth doing given the costs that will be imposed.

Here are the conditions I imagine from the FCC. 1. Buildout to over 300 Million, compared to 250 currently. 2. Divesting most of AWS and PCS spectrum gained by the merger within X number of years. (Thus the existing TMUS network will have to be merged with Sprint's, and TMUS sites will either be converted to Sprint NV/Spark sites or closed. Maybe some Sprint sites will be closed in favor of using NV converted TMUS sites instead) 3. Agree to host a broadband network for Dish. Dish has its own spectrum, but maybe allow them to use a TD-LTE EBS carrier for capacity/overflow. Sprint would basically only keep the customers, the 700Mhz spectrum, and a small amount of the PCS/AWS spectrum.

FYI, 1700/2100 are a single band, and there is not 1800 band in the US, so it's not QUITE that bad. Also, Dish's 700 Mhz is downlink only.

No way the FCC bites on EBS only divestment. You can't build a competitive carrier with EBS. Sprint struggled to do it without the 800 Mhz Nextel spectrum. Especially if your goal is rural coverage.

They certainly can't clear both of them at once, you are right about that. I was thinking they clear the E block first for LTE like you suggested. It looks like they will be doing that by adding CDMA carriers to the top of the B block which is what I was hoping for. That means they could eventually move the D block CDMA carriers into the B block as well, and do a D for F block spectrum swap with ATT as suggested earlier in this thread. I think the fact that they put the CDMA carriers in the top of the B block disaggregation, as opposed to the bottom where they adjoin the D block, suggests they might be undertaking to move all their CDMA into the B block in the long term. Doing that would allow them to swap/sell the D block to ATT.

This is exactly the trouble with this merger. Because of the need to make regional/replacement providers viable and calls for spectrum divestment from ATT/VZW, I predict Sprint will be forced to divest nearly all of the spectrum acquired from TMUS. Whether or not such a merger is worthwhile depends on the price they pay, what Sprint will be required to divest, what $$ they get for the divested assets when they are sold, and what they are able to keep in terms of customers and low frequency spectrum.