bretton88

Maybe Masa should sell all of his stake to a buyer that's actually going to invest in the company. Not just sit on the company as he's doing with minimal investment hoping to buy out T-Mobile. So that he can create a wireless market with only 3 players to milk the American consumers out of billions of dollars.

If Warren Buffet is involved, he's in for the long haul, not looking for a buyout. Probably will take the company private too. Judging by the success of the other companies he owns, there will definitely be investment into the Sprint product.

 

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So apparently all TV meteorologists are hacks. This would be a surprise to all of them that spend hours looking over their equipment, running the models, and prepping for their segments to keep the public informed with accurate (as much as they can be) information. There's a reason the local meteorologist is often a community stalwart.

 

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From USA TODAY

 

Sprint to be exclusive carrier of 'Essential' phone

 

https://usat.ly/2taGi7y

 

NEW YORK—The Essential phone that is the brainchild of Android co-founder Andy Rubin now has an exclusive U.S. carrier — Sprint.Why Sprint?“We like to bet with where we think the market is going as opposed to where the market was,” Essential President Niccolo de Masi told USA TODAY. “I feel like we are a new brand and a new consumer electronics company and we are partnering with the network of the future.”Sprint has been making progress in advancing its network but it still trails Verizon Wireless, AT&T and T-Mobile in subscribers.De Masi points as well to the friendship Rubin has with SoftBank CEO Masayoshi Son. SoftBank owns 83% of Sprint and Rubin is an advisor to the SoftBank Vision Fund.

 

 

 

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It's"exclusive" like the Pixel was exclusive to Verizon. They will still sell the phone unlocked.

Signalcheck likes to freeze on my Note 5 whenever it is on B25 and I try to open up the app from the notification bar.

 

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BGR is an unashamed Apple fanboy site and T-Mobile loving site. In their minds, everything those companies do is perfect.

 

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I don't believe this is in error because I never had the ability to roam on USCC LTE. Suddenly this appears after others have been reporting AT&T roaming. I just didn't expect to see it in USCC​ territory. I have a note 5, so I have srlte.

At&t must be giving Sprint a good roaming deal. I'm roaming on them in uscc territory.

I don't see any graphics showing $3.5 billion, but I think you might be thinking of this one on page 26 here, it shows overall Capex was $3.875 billion. However that is broken down into two segments: devices leased through indirect channels, and network expenditures. For our purposes we are concerned with the network portion. That was $1.95 billion in FY2016 and it is what they're projecting spending $3.5 to $4 billion on this year.

That's the one I was thinking of. I guess I thought that their 3.5-4 B$ number was also broken down like that. So this is positive news.

 

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CapEx for the network last year was $1.95 billion. Sprint is projecting they'll spend $3.5 to $4 billion over the 12 month period beginning last month. So no as of right now CapEx isn't the same. Sprint is expecting to spend nearly if not more than double what they spent on the network last year.

Oh! Their graphic showed that they did 3.5 Billion in FY16. I guess the real number was much lower.

Would I be able to get a magic box for my office (which is a black hole for cell signal) instead of my home? There's B25, but you can only get it near the walls, and then the drop off is to zero. I should also note my office WiFi is close to useless (thank you Centurylink).

CapEx info:

 

$3.5 Billion to $4 Billion

 

Page 28 of Presentation: http://s21.q4cdn.com/487940486/files/doc_presentations/2016/2-Fiscal-4Q16-Earnings-Slides-Final.pdf

 

Page 18 of Investor Update: http://s21.q4cdn.com/487940486/files/doc_financials/quarterly/2016/Q4/3-Fiscal-4Q16-Sprint-Quarterly-Investor-Update-FINAL.pdf

 

Some other interesting stats from the Investor Update:

 

Page 8:

 

• Postpaid smartphones^ represented 94 percent of the ending postpaid phone connection base compared to 92 percent at the end of the year-ago period and 94 percent at the end of the prior quarter. During the quarter, 98 percent of postpaid phones sold were smartphones.

 

• Postpaid tri-band LTE phones^ represented 84 percent of the ending postpaid phone connection base compared to 69 percent at the end of the year-ago period and 82 percent at the end of the prior quarter. During the quarter, 96 percent of postpaid phones sold were tri-band.

 

This means that just under 16 percent of Sprint's customer base is on a single or dual band LTE device.

 

• Postpaid carrier aggregation capable phones^, which allow for higher download data speeds, were 72 percent of postpaid phones sold during the quarter, increasing the number of these phones within the phone base to 55 percent.

 

Sprint has to keep people upgrading to increase this number. According to this Investor Update from the prior quarter (http://s21.q4cdn.com/487940486/files/doc_presentations/2016/3_Fiscal-3Q16-Sprint-Quarterly-Investor-Update-FINAL.pdf), "Postpaid carrier aggregation capable phones^, which allow for higher download data speeds, were 78 percent of postpaid phones sold during the quarter, increasing the number of these phones within the phone base to 50 percent."

 

Page 9:

 

• Postpaid phone connections on unsubsidized service plans^ represented 74 percent of the base at the end of the quarter, compared to 61 percent in the year-ago period and 71 percent in the prior quarter.

 

~1 in 4 Sprint Postpaid customers is on a plan like Everything Data or Unlimited My Way. That's still a very surprising number.

Looks like capex is the same this year as last year.

 

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There are also some B25 small cells. But they have deployed them for some time. Never probably again, though. El Paso is a place with some B25 only small cells.

 

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Why never again? Cedar Rapids has no B41 available, but has the usual amount of B26 and B25, would Sprint be able to deploy B25 small cells there?

Not really.

 

Sprint is not and do not want to be in the game of home isp.

 

Att is due to its landlines holdings and DO NOT want to invest in its rural or low priority copper infrastructure that has fast deteriorated and would cost too much to replace. So they're offering this to replace old legacy DSL service in areas where they have no plans to ever really invest in.

 

So this wireless service is a cheap way for them to eventually abandon the maintainence and operation of the expensive copper network.

 

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Verizon has done the same thing with their copper lines. Users with breakdowns or failures are now getting wireless modems as replacements (much to their chagrin).

 

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I am kinda disappointed that the carriers decided to go with Android 7.0 build number instead of 7.1.1 after all this time. It seems like 7.1 had some significant changes and was hoping for at least Android 7.1.1. Carriers should never go with the base build of the first Android release since there are always improvements and bugs that they need to be incorporated. Normally the carriers go with at least the X.1 build version.

Judging by the fact the S8 is being launched with only 7.0, I think Samsung doesn't even have a 7.1 build ready for their phones.

 

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Nice catch there.

 

If Sprint can do this for International Roaming Usage, why is it so restrictive on Domestic Roaming Usage.

Because Sprint isn't a competitor for your dollar in non USA markets so the roaming rate Sprint gets charged is probably much lower (if not straight up reciprocity).

 

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To note this is designed as a convenience for people who vacation, not for long term stays. If you're going to really be abroad for over a month, they definitely are pushing you to get a local SIM. Sprint even states that they are not to be your foreign provider.

Uhh not from experience abroad...google maps was more than sufficient with roaming speeds. And I was in vancouver before.

I should have noted that it works in some places. Vancouver is one that it did really well. I think it depends on how they handle the throttling.

 

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I am sure they chose 64kb/s (8,000 bytes per second) for a reason. It can do almost everything on your telephone other than stream video but it will send and receive data much slower than normal. That speed is more than fast enough to stream audio, send and receive text messages, send and receive email without attachments, and even do VoLTE if the correct compression codec is used. It is fast enough to run just about anything you want in the background on your phone such as email refreshes or streaming your favorite compressed music.

 

64kb/s just operates very slowly if you upload or download even moderately sized pictures or other files and is nearly worthless for any type of video uploads or downloads. Much of the internet is designed for connections slower than 64kb/s. An example is that a single 5MB picture could take more than 10 minutes to upload or download. However as long as you get the full 64kb/s and your connection does not break, it should work if you wait long enough.

 

On connections of this speed you can expect the following:

• Sending or receiving MMS messages will likely not work or will very slowly and may timeout before it completes
• Email with attachments will be terribly slow and could take an unbearably long time to finish sending or receiving a single email in the background with an attachment
• Downloading anything including app updates will be terribly slow
• Facetime, Skype or other video chat will not work
• Any type of streaming video including video embedded in web pages, Facebook, etc. may timeout
• Most streaming audio should work as long as it is set at a lower quality but it may take a while to start as it may have to buffer for a while before it starts.
• VoLTE if enabled should work fine. AT&T VoLTE uses the AMR-WB codec, which consumes variable data rate of up to 23.85kbps upload or download data while that side of the conversation is sending over the voice channel depending on the range of the sounds it is sending. Generally only one person is talking at a time so either your upload or download is in use on a VoLTE call unless you are talking over each other and then both are in use.
• Mapping and direction applications should work fine unless you are downloading satellite view which will be very slow
• All of your other games and apps should work but may work slower than normal

Normally I'd say that's fine, but Google maps doesn't even work at that speed (which is pretty much all I use my phone data for overseas). Most of the time things just time out instead at 64kbps.

 

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I noticed that too…I'm surprised they aren't allowing us to use any lowband LTE - I know rogers has B12/17 and B5 LTE live in most of Canada...

Rogers probably doesn't want roaming customers congesting their low band spectrum. That part makes sense to me. I think the whole "doesn't work in Canada" message might be a glitch because it claims the iPhone won't work their either.

 

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An interesting little note, Sprint is using band 7 with Rogers for their LTE roaming, as a consequence, they claim most phones don't work in Canada. Looks like only the most modern of Sprint phones (i.e, the S8) support B7.

Since me plan qualifies, this is a better plan, it just needs one improvement: increase the 2g speeds to 128kb/sec. 64 is unusable.

 

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To note, T mobile seemed to be the only notable carrier that got the spectrum. This might make it hard for them to procure phones with that boutique band. Especially since it's not going to be a band used worldwide.

 

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I've gotten an "invalid SIM" warning a couple times post update. Never seen one before, likely unrelated but wanted to post it up here. Reboot seems to fix it, obviously I'll head into a store if it persists.

 

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I used to have this all the time. Open up the SIM slot and re-seat the SIM card. It fixed my problem.

Edit: I just noticed you already did that. Hopefully it fixed the problem, I haven't seen the error message for months now.

Does that mean Sprint let their licence expire for the spectrum?

http://www.verizon.com/about/news/switch-verizon-unlimited-and-get-hottest-phones-free

Guess what? Verizon is even offering a free phone. I have a feeling that Verizon is going to see a big increase in customers because of this plan.