mozamcrew

A little off topic for this forum but I am dying to know why Sprint errr Softbank I guess, wants to buy TMobile.  When ATT wanted TMobile they wanted their spectrum, and they had compatible networks to absorb their subscribers.  Sprint has already made a series of acquisitions designed to gain spectrum assets (Nextel & Clearwire & USCC midwest) and fulfill their LTE goto market strategy of Network Vision and Tri Band LTE.

 

I don't understand what Sprint wants from TMobile, does Sprint really want Tmobile's AWS that bad?  Because I doubt they want the HSPA and HSPA+ network that bad, it isn't compatible with anything Sprint has.  Am I missing something here?  Is this just a move to remove a competitor?

 

The only reason I can see to buy them is for the customers. They must know that a combined company will be required to make spectrum concessions, and as you said, I don't think Sprint wants to maintain two separate networks. Thus the only possible reason I see for acquiring TMUS is for the customers. IMHO it might be less expensive, although much slower, to grow organically, but I think that is the main motivation.

 

I think Softbank would like a Sprint that is closer in size to the big two. If nothing else, it would mean better leverage when negotiating site leases, backhaul, and equipment. I'm sure there are also efficiencies to be gained by eliminating redundant site locations.

As mentioned in AJ's article about the USCC spectrum deal, it is always advantageous to have your spectrum holdings be as contiguous as possible, as spectrum dedicated to guard bands can instead be used by the network to carry voice or data traffic. Seeing that very soon the number of PCS operators in Chicagoland will decline from 6 5 to 4 (not including the new H block licensee), it seems timely to evaluate how the remaining cellular providers can work together to improve all of their positions in this market. I'm sure similar deals could be struck in other areas as well.

 

Here is the current (post-USCC) allocation of PCS in Chicago, as of February 1, 2014:

 

A: 1850–1865 MHz x 1930–1945 MHz- AT&T*

D: 1865–1870 MHz x 1945–1950 MHz- Sprint

B (lower 20 MHz): 1870–1880 MHz x 1950–1960 MHz- Sprint (from USCC)

B (upper 10 MHz): 1880-1885 MHz x 1960-1965 MHz- VZW

E: 1885–1890 MHz x 1965–1970 MHz- Sprint

F: 1890–1895 MHz x 1970–1975 MHz- AT&T

C: 1895–1910 MHz x 1975–1990 MHz- TMUS

G: 1910–1915 MHz x 1990–1995 MHz- Sprint

    

If my calculations are correct, this would give Sprint room for 6 CDMA carriers (which is what they have now) and *two* more 5 MHz FDD LTE carriers, including guard bands. With that much LTE capacity, the current number of CDMA Ev-DO carriers would likely be adequate. If only one additional LTE carrier is needed, then the remaining spectrum could be used for a handful of extra 1xA or Ev-DO carriers.

 

Sprint will need to maintain the existing 5MHz LTE G block carrier for quite some time, thanks to the large number of Samsung devices in use that were never certified for larger channel widths. As such, the no-merger proposal does not bother to ask T-Mobile to move from the adjoining C block. If the time comes when Sprint is interested in merging the C and G blocks for a wider LTE carrier, they may be able to persuade T-Mobile to swap their 30 MHz C block for the 30 MHz B block, assuming the companies have not merged by then.

 

Sprint currently can run 6 1xA/EVDO channels (3 each in the D and E blocks they currently have). Once the USCC network is shut down, Sprint can put up to 7 CDMA carriers (1xA or EVDO) into the B block spectrum formerly occupied by USCC. They gain an extra carrier by being able to straddle adjoining 5Mhz spectrum slices.

 

I like an even swap of the D block for the F block, it's a win-win for both parties so their is no reason it should cost either party any money. Once that is done Sprint will have a 10x10 availble in the E & F blocks available for LTE.  I'm not keen on paying Verizon to move out of the B block though, because it doesn't gain Sprint much of anything. If they merge with TMUS, then you just divest the B block eventually anyhow.

We have our share of oil.  And also, a lot of the oil industry and oil fields in SE Montana, NE Wyoming, SW North Dakota and Western South Dakota base themselves in Rapid City.  Oil is becoming an increasing factor in our economy.  Especially as North Dakota runs out of resources and housing for the boom.

 

Robert

 

True, I just meant that the bakken formation that is getting all the attention right now is almost all in ND and MT.

South Dakota? For Oil?

 

Wrong Dakota!

rain man

Because I end up paying more. But now that it is becoming apparent that the status quo wont stay that way for to much longer I need to figure out what is going to be the best situation. I also shudder to think about financing for three phones at one time. I think I may just end up buying my phones out right. Especially as "cheap" as the N5 is.

 

That's what I did. I was on the Everything Data 450, moved to My Way since it was the same price but with unlimited minutes. Now I moved to Framily to save myself the $5 /month. I lose the phone subsidy, but I assumed that it would be going away before I was eligible for my upgrade next January anyhow. I'm planning to purchase a 32GB Nexus 5 this spring/summer once I start to see band 26 or band 41 in my market.

 

 

That is only true if multi-carrier technology is enabled on the cell site. Otherwise you have to hope that the UE would pick the right carrier to get good performance. As far as I know, only Samsung cell sites have it.

No to both. Multi-carrier (load balancing across multiple independent carriers) provides a linear capacity boost while not providing any bandwidth improvements. Carrier aggregation (bonding multiple independent carriers together) provides slightly less than linear boost to downlink performance and capacity.

However, wider carriers provide a noticeably higher than linear boost in downlink and uplink performance (compared to aggregating multiple independent carriers covering the same amount of spectrum), and capacity is experiences a higher than linear boost because the ratio of data subcarriers to overhead substantially increases. This is why wider carriers are preferable to multi-carrier and carrier aggregation.

With LTE, the network can tell your phone to move to a different carrier so it can balance the load that way. In this way adding another carrier will improve network speeds. Simply moving users from a very congested carrier to a less congested one will improve the speeds for the users. Their THEORHETICAL top speed won't improve, but simply dividing up the load (not through aggregation, just moving some users to the other 5x5 carrier) will improve their real life performance.

I know they were using 4:1 in initial FIT testing and were hitting 100Mbps consistently.  However, they must have thought it was worth sacrificing some of the top end of the performance to maintain solid upload performance and settled on 3:2.

 

Robert

 

Wouldn't MIMO mean higher download speeds, relative to upload speeds, than the 3:2 time allocation (or spectrum allocation on FDD) might suggest?

AFAIK, almost everything in the market that doesn't have LTE is waiting on backhaul. All the equipment is in because they are all 3G accepted, lots of places have 800Mhz too. I think GF is just far enough south that they should get 800?? It's close.

I would love to see Sprint divest most to all of its EBS to Dish that is not necessary.  However that may satisfy Dish and part of the FCC concerns.  I was just curious what your opinion is if these discussions become serious and Verizon and AT&T throwing a fit and throwing fuel into the fire.  How should Verizon and AT&T be dealt with since I know for sure all they want is spectrum concessions?

 

Tmobile will have to remain separate even if a transaction goes through until both companies can complete their LTE nationwide rollout.  Sprint couldn't divest all of Tmobile's AWS spectrum anyways nor should they.  I feel that AWS spectrum is still valuable for mid band.

 

To me there is little sense in divesting the EBS spectrum because it WON'T satisfy the FCC (there's a reason it's not included in the spectrum screen). If I thought that divesting down to about 100Mhz of EBS/BRS (from as much as 200Mhz in some markets) would allow them to keep 40-60Mhz more midband spectrum then it might be worth contemplating.

 

IMHO, the relative value of higher frequency spectrum will increase over time as cell networks become more dense. Low frequency spectrum is important for economically covering large areas and in building signal. Frankly, Sprint only needs more of it because they don't have a full 7x7 of 800 or a 6x6 700Mhz block in every market nation wide. As cell networks get denser to deal with increasing data usage, the things that make 2.6Ghz spectrum less valuable (propagation) are suddenly an advantage, not a disadvantage.

I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place.  I'm on a plan with my brother-in-law now, 5 lines, been on it for a year.  If we add the sister-in-law and her 3 lines, I'm guessing the sis and I will save cash.  However because the bro and I split the base plan and his mom's line, but I pay my 2 line charges it doesn't split evenly.  Long story short he won't save anything, I will, but he won't.  So I can't see him wanting to do it.

 

I thought about breaking out into my own plan basically forcing him to but for $30 a month its probably not good for family relations lol.

So share some of your savings with him....

I love the "fool's errand" turn of phrase.  I have not heard that in a while.

 

Whether or not the T-Mobile acquisition happens, I do not think that it will turn out to be a fool's errand, though.  Now, the magenta lovers think that their Sonny Crockett CEO will be able to swindle SoftBank-Sprint out of another big cash and spectrum breakup fee.  But that is not going to happen again.

 

AJ

I certainly hope not! Sprint doesn't have the cash/spectrum to just give out like ATT.

I do not recall all of the specifics, but USCC is not privately owned.  It is a subsidiary of TDS -- a publicly traded corporation.  And I believe the founding family still holds a supermajority share in all of the above.  So, it largely controls what happens to TDS and USCC.

 

AJ

This is what I mean, the Carlson Family that owns most of it hasn't been interested in selling in the past. Maybe they will change their mind?

I will use a few personal anecdotes to draw my point...

 

The more direct one is this -- I have a Nexus 5 purchased through Google Play and activated on Sprint.  But Sprint ostensibly does not know that.  My online account does not recognize the identity of my current handset, and it prevents me from adding/changing optional services because those may be incompatible with my unrecognized handset.  Now, many of you want Sprint to open its arms to an even larger Nexus 5 pool.  In my opinion, you are just asking for Sprint to exceed its level of competence.  You are just asking for a big bag of hurt.

 

AJ

 

I'd agree with you about them opening up to all phones in general, but we know that all Nexus 5 phones of this model are identical in their capabilities and should work just fine on the Sprint network. Google should give them a comprehensive list of all the MEIDs and let Sprint import them all into it's database.

Didn't know that. I wonder why sprint hasn't try and bought them

They are privately owned and they haven't been interested in selling.

Well it seems that the banks are ready to finance the bid:

 

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702304603704579325031776937484?mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702304603704579325031776937484.html

 

Interestingly, according to the articles, one of the options is for T-Mobile to acquire Sprint rather than the other way around. I guess the large investors like their aggressiveness. Don't be suprised if their management team prevails.

 

I expect that one of the first victims of the merger is the divestment of the EBS spectrum to Dish and others. Also somewhere down the road the divestment of the T-Mobile network without the spectrum to Dish.

 

I don't get why everyone thinks they will divest the EBS spectrum. The CEO of Softbank has been Clear how important that band 41 is for him, both because of its urban capacity advantages and because it's a common band between Softbank and Sprint plus the Chinese carriers (and potentially those using the global band 38 as well). Also, doing so won't win them any points with the FCC since it was never counted against them in the spectrum screen. They aren't giving up their 800 Mhz spectrum either (or any of the 700Mhz spectrum TMoblie bought) for obvious reasons.  Mark my words, they will end up divesting some combination AWS and PCS spectrum.

Well, that would even strengthen the appeal of US Cellular it seems to me, since some existing Sprint handsets even have Band 5.

 

Of course you could argue that US Cellular hasn't made any money recently so why try to inherit their mess, but at least an acquisition of USCC would be largely complementary instead of roughly the same coverage area of T-Mobile.

 

Oh well, it appears this T-Mobile thing is going to happen whether we like it or not, unless it gets stopped by the regulators.

Band 26 is a superset of band 5, so any Spint devices with band 26 should be able to use the USCC network just fine.

Does anyone know what kind of pings would be considered 3g with fiber backhaul before lighting up the lte side of things?

 

There is no such thing as a 3G or 4G ping. Latency varies by the distance between the endpoints and the quality/congestion of the network between them.

Sadly this.  I would have loved to see Sprint fully execute NV, and once complete try to pick up some regional CDMA carriers (I know there aren't too many options here) that have complementary technologies.   Perhaps even US Cellular would make a lot more sense.  Hell, on day 1 you could just (ignoring handoffs, etc) update the PRLs of Sprint devices and suddenly have native coverage in a huge swath of the midwest (minus LTE, which is largely on 700mhz).  So much easier than trying to figure out how to run two totally separate networks with completely different technologies for an extended period of time.  Even if Sprint starts putting T-Mobile AWS LTE capability in their handsets, they would have to solve the ecsfb/ehrpd issues to allow Sprint customers to be able to use existing T-Mobile LTE towers--which seems like the very first logical step in integration.

 

I know USCC has a bunch of 700Mhz A block spectrum, but I think they rolled out their LTE on band 26 (using their existing Cell spetrum). The combination of the lack of band 12 device support and the channel 51 interferance issues seem to be the cause.

Yea they are part of the rural lte program but doesnt someone else own the 700mjz here besides at&t. Ithought it was c spire. But i dont know who uses it.

Verizon owns the upper 700Mhz C block nationwide (also called the 750Mhz band). They sold their Lower 700 Mhz spectrum to TMobile. Lower 700 is owned by a variety of carriers.

You said you aren't getting any error messages when you try to connect to the network?

Not really a Sprint related topic, but it is networking...

 

I've got a Lenovo W510 laptop for work and can connect to wi-fi everywhere I go except for one location.  Our County has 3 libraries and I have no problems at 2 of them but at the 3rd, which just happens to be closest to our kids school and where I go with them sometimes, I just cannot connect with my laptop.

 

Our other laptops connect fine, my phone connects fine, our tablets connect fine but for whatever reason my laptop and this library's wi-fi just seem to hate each other.  Last time I went, I asked them to reboot the router (which they did) and I rebooted my laptop all without success.  The librarians aren't very tech savvy, so beyond resetting the router they weren't much help.

 

I assume you are able to see the SSID of the library wireless? Does the wireless actually not connect, or do you simply not have internet access after you connect to the wifi? Also, is the access point open, or using some kind of authentication like WPA2/WPA/WEP? I'd bet the wireless access point is actually separate hardware from the router.

A+

 

i really wish folks will stop on this "If the merger goes through I want them it to keep the T-Mobile name, not Sprint (name), they suck" bandwagon. 

The newly merged company (if it comes to that) will retain the Sprint name, or give the new company a new name, but it will never use the T-Mobile one. As for upper management,  Legere will never be the top cheese, especially since Hesse and Son are close friends so folks wishing Legare be in charge, get that idea out of your heads as well.

 

TS

 

This won't happen since Deutsche Telecom owns the T-Mobile brand. If Sprint bought them out they'd have to give up the use of the trademark eventually.

It'd be difficult to leave behind their trifecta of perfection: sweet tea, fried chicken and potato salad.

 

It is interesting how this topic has turned completely to supermarket brands.

 

But on topic, I feel that Boost can go away since it's just a negative image of a sub prime customer base. Virgin isn't really a household name here in the States like it is in Europe. I can see Sprint merging and re-branding the two. It's a shame, though. Having multiple brands seems like an easy way to ensure more people choose a MVNO under the Sprint umbrella.

 

There are lots of other MVNOs that use the Sprint network that aren't owned by Sprint. Also, they pay money for the use of the Virgin brand, so I can see why they might want to combine Boost and Virgin. Either they can kill the Virgin brand and move them all to Boost, or kill both of them and convert them to some new brand.

I resolve to ::1