Mr.Nuke

Same here. I saw LTE serving cells in signal check pro. Airplane mode cycled and I'm back on 5G.

I'm on edge right now in Omaha.

It honestly seems like a giant vanity exercise right now to fill in a gaping hole in their coverage map, one that had existed for various (may legitimate) reasons.

Omaha must be severely lagging, which @Dkoellerwx and I track fairly closely must be significantly lagging then.

Yes. https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/t-mobile-to-buy-swiftel-assets-as-lone-sprint-affiliate-remains

I spotted another one today that is a co-located site. Unfortunately T-Mobile is still only running B2/66 on a lower rack to boot. To me at least, the even more odd thing is Omaha has a significant amount of sites permitted right now, but this one is not.

Anecdotally based on permits there is reason to believe that may be happening in Omaha sometime soon.

T-Mobile has the entire BRS/EBS spectrum in Omaha so that isn't the issue.

He mapped them on cellmapper.

Omaha probably isn't indicative of an "average" market in this merger. T-Mobile HAS to keep a fair amount of Sprint sites here or else they'll fail.

I actually stumbled on the affiliate agreement tonight in edgar (I was surprised to find it). Note what goes into the calculations on 11.7.2 and 11.7.3 and especially what doesn't in 11.7.3 (e) https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/354963/000114036115031058/ex10_2.htm

Entire Business Value itself appears to be a relatively made up term that I've only seen associated with Sprint affiliate agreements.This part isn't accurate. EBV is a defined calculation, and it is Shentel's wireless business only.

And that is where this potentially gets really complicated pending the agreement in place with them. I would be very surprised if they could just simply both go their own ways in the market as going concerns with any agreement still in effect. We know from the Shentel negotiations right now that with them there are basically 4 potential options: 1) Continue to be an affiliate 2) If an affilate agreement can't be worked out, T-Mobile has the option to purchase at a pre-agreed upon process price 3) If T-Mobile fails to exercise the purchase option Shentel has the option to purchase T-Mobile's network and subscribers in their service area 4) If no agreements on 1 through 3 are reached, T-Mobile has to walk away from Shentel's market. The terms may be slightly different with Swiftel, but I wouldn't be surprised if they very similar. If that is the case, it is quite possible they literally can't go their own ways very easily. This type of situation is what led to the affiliate lawsuits that led Sprint to buy nearly everyone out after the Nextel and to some extent Clearwire acquisitions. As an aside, this is also a market where Sprint only acquired any BRS/EBS very recently due to the SpeedConnect acquisition. And in the case, of Sioux City, new T-Mobile still does not have any BRS/EBS spectrum at all.

Where is that coming from? It isn't accurate... And the T-Mobile AT&T situation isn't really analogous here at all. Correct. They're basically getting the best MVNO deal in the history of U.S. wireless, paying very favorable wholesale rates, but they're still paying.

More often than not, that setting does very little other than the initial scan by the device and then the network puts the device where it wants it. T-Mobile from the start has said they don't want to degrade the network for customers on either side. Phasing out band 41 lte right now would be a serious degradation.There is more than enough BRS/EBS spectrum in most places especially in the near-term to allow Sprint customers to remain on 3 carrier band 41 LTE.

I'll take that back a bit, because it also appears to me via ULS that Sprint/T-Mobile have the entire BRS in San Angelo as well...

It looks like that in addition to SpeedConnect letting leases drop, a few months after this post Sprint outright took control of the BRS they had been leasing from SC as well as assuming the lease on the EBS A block that SpeedConnect had.

Sprint T-Mobile has EBS in San Angelo. BRS and especially EBS is inherently messy for tracking, but I don't see anything that jumps out as inaccurate on those maps i.e. in the Concho Valley, Sprint not having any BRS is accurately reflected, etc.

That would make sense. T-Mobile has a site at that intersection.

TACs match in Omaha too at 46335.

You don't need to post this multiple times. This also doesn't appear to be a signal check pro issue. Those GCIs are consistent with valid T-Mobile GCIs in your area.

Try going into the system app settings for SCP and under location permissions change it to allow all of the time. That seems to have resolved a similar issue for me on 3 XL.

Well post merger, what Sprint in effect did was sell wireless equipment and spectrum to newly created Sprint subsidiaries and lease back equipment or spectrum to itself. The subsidiaries borrowed money by putting up the newly acquired equipment/spectrum as collateral. This allowed the subsidiaries to borrow at a substantially lower rate as their debt was secured by said collateral. Investors (including Softbank) bought bonds issued by the subsidiaries. The subsidiaries in turn leased equipment/spectrum back to Sprint and Sprint's lease payments to the subsidiaries are effectively paying the subsidiary's bondholders. So yes in the context to what you were asking, New T-Mobile is going to acquire some equipment/spectrum that is being leased via shell companies, but no the shell companies aren't owned by outsiders i.e. Softbank. And at that point, much like Sprint, T-Mobile will probably be fairly happy to continue lease payments given it is effectively debt payments at an extremely low rate. As of right now there are 3 outstanding Spectrum Co issues due in 2021, 2025, and 2028 totaling $6.125 billion. All 3 of these represent Sprint's lowest outstanding long-term debt issues interest rate wise. Read more here: https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article107700387.html#storylink=cpy

If a given Sprint tower would be giving T-Mobile users "extra coverage" odds are it is probably going to be kept post merger. Probably not in that sense... This is one area that they were fairly forthcoming the day the intent to merge was announced. The combined company is going to have approximately 110,000 macro sites at the time of the merger. 35,000 of these sites will ultimately be decommissioned either due to co-location or redundant coverage (not on the same tower, but close enough). These sites will almost certainly be predominantly Sprint sites; which makes sense because they're effectively being acquired and T-Mobile's management and network teams are going to be running the show. Like I said in the article at the time though in terms of co-location, In actuality we'll see what they do. All things equal, if two sites are co-located the greater synergies are in eliminating the tower rack with less favorable lease terms or worse rack location. But to circle back to your question, basically in your terms T-Mobile's network is the one getting what you are calling a "coverage and capacity audit." They'll fill their network with selected Sprint keep sites they've identified that will add coverage or capacity or both, plus an additional approximately 10,000 new macro sites in the first several years post-merger. I expect this process is probably quite far along on T-Mobile's end in terms of site identification as their numbers were pretty specific at the time of the merger and they've had an additional year plus to work on this.

It really isn't strange at all given recent developments.