Mr.Nuke

Marcelo went to Japan last year to get funding for it...

We have no evidence either way, but my guess is roaming agreements don't have a base fee. Verizon or whatever carrier wants to make it as easy as possible to roam on their network to generate the consumption based roaming revenue. There is little incentive for them to charge a base fee and potentially turnoff other carriers.

The fact that they've historically lagged in reporting at the beginning of reporting periods.

It depends what type of analysis you are seeking. I responded to jreuschl's post saying Sprint should be drive testing large markets to "test network performance and recommend improvements." If that is the goal, Root's biannual testing is likely sufficient for both purposes. There is going to be a huge diminishing return in doing it more often than that. And if for some reason you want data in between those 6 month windows you can either do it internally or contract RootMetrics to retest. This was brought up months ago here and I thought it was a good idea, but it is also a heck of a lot more complicated than this. Who is going to analyze the data? Is it going to give them anything more meaningful than what their NV equipment diagnostics or customer feedback be it sprint zone, twitter, phone, and chat is already giving them?

I have a strong suspicion they already get what you are proposing twice a year from RootMetrics.

It would still take a while. First, as it stands right now it has been about 3 months since any progress has been observed in Iowa or Nebraska. Second, you'd have to go through the entire process that comes with any site work i.e. permitting, scheduling crews, potentially upgrading backhaul, budgeting, etc.

The PCS B block is split with Verizon there so they shouldn't. That said bretton88 has posted a 2nd carrier shot he said was from Iowa City. There was also a similar sighting in Western Iowa of what appeared to be a second carrier from somewhere that theoretically shouldn't have it. It is hard to say if it is a signal check error or if some spectrum was refarmed without seeing engineering screens. Also lets not go overboard with things like "abysmal." Site spacing in Iowa City is fairly standard. No and other than being a college town Iowa City would be pretty low on the list.

There is no evidence of that...

Pretty much as far as I know...

No. The PCS B spectrum is split in Linn County with AT&T.

That was me. SpeedConnect literally has everything but the BRS 2 and EBS G blocks. Hypothetically something could be worked out i.e. BRS 2 for BRS H3 or the EBS for BRS spectrum next to BRS 2.

Tim only did a BRS search. There is a 15 Mhz contiguous channel of leased EBS spectrum when Wimax shuts down in the Quad Cities as well. This is one of a few markets where a local WISP got to BRS/EBS instead of Clearwire. Still substandard spectrum for a standard Band 41 carrier though.

What do you want them to do? They've already added a 2nd band 25 carrier on multiple sites, something many markets aren't capable of having. Other than a potential 15 Mhz band 41 carrier (which is questionable if it makes financial sense, and likely not possible until Wimax is shutdown) they can't do anything more. And we've been over that last sentence multiple times now...

Business customers on average are going to have more lines on an account and spend more than your average retail consumer customer. Even a small business that has people in the field may have 10+ lines. It absolutely makes sense to cater to them. The market obviously isn't open today, but for a company in Sprint's current position that needs to cut costs (and management has said they'll cut $2.5 billion in costs) things like this are going to be acknowledged favorably by investors and analysts.

Because when you think of chat you think of instantaneous or near instantaneous communication. If they have a certain number of people already waiting to chat, and it is clear they cannot offer that near instantaneous experience, from a customer service stand point it makes a lot more sense not to present the option to further people until queues decline (and preventing people from getting in line is a very effective way of doing that).

Which shows you how fickle the selloff was.

Long-term perhaps. But it isn't like it all of the sudden became known that Sprint has high yielding debt with a chunk of it nearing maturity. This has been known for years and is public record through Sprint's SEC fillings. Short-term, the stock this week absolutely was about the re-code article which appears to be sketchy on accuracy at best and several analysts downgrading earnings estimates.

They're trying to deploy 10x10 using 1700 (4) and 1900 (2). Their spectrum holdings vary a bit depending on the part of Iowa so it isn't going to be universally standard. Band 2 is a subset of band 25 so in the theoretical sense, Sprint could roam on that. In reality, I don't see it happening. T-Mobile still owns 50% of iWireless. 1) It is still unclear whether even their own customers can access iWireless 2) They have no incentive to help Sprint 3) Us Cellular other than extreme Northwestern Iowa already provides Sprint LTE roaming in virtually the entire state. Like AJ said, maybe because they are. Excluding Omaha, Lincoln and Des Moines and even if you lived in one of those cities and regularly traveled to rural areas; in Iowa you'd want to be on Verizon or US Cellular (maybe iWireless if you are in the East part of the state). In Nebraska you'd want to be on US Cellular, Verizon, or Viaero. Those carriers have ridiculous rural buildouts.

It depends where it is relation to current Sprint sites.

Hence the intent of my disclaimer. People get excited about the earning calls as well. The slight difference here over an earnings call is that in an earnings call an analyst typically gets to ask 1 or 2 questions at the most. Here one analyst gets to ask multiple questions and follow up, etc. Sometimes these situations lend themselves to equipment and deployment strategy updates, but often they do not. Given the importance of NGN, I wouldn't be surprised to see it come up. That said, I'd expect a lot more focus on cost-cutting measures and details on the leasing vehicles they've been setting up.

And just a word of caution. This is an investment bank sponsored forum moderated by an investment bank analyst. Sometimes good information comes out of these. Often it does not.

"Higher speed" as defined here is largely irrelevant. On Down + Up T-Mobile would've technically been ahead of Verizon in this test too. Data usage is asymmetrical and as such most people would want higher download speeds. It wouldn't be unreasonable to have some weighting there. That doesn't explain something like Topeka this round of testing though. It is hard to tell what Root is doing without access to their data sets.

Where in SD and ND? Both are fairly large states with highly varying levels of coverage depending on location.

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-90-fcc-ready-to-give-sprint-official-go-ahead-on-smr-800-mhz-wideband-operation/

And that type of situation is what the last sentence in my post was directed towards. Here in Omaha we are in a great situation to benefit from the US Cellular Roaming deal (look at the coverage map for why). However, I don't and still wouldn't recommend Sprint to friends or family that regularly travel to smaller cities for work. If you find yourself hitting or coming close to hitting the roaming cap "all the time" to me that is a sign you need a different carrier. Echoing AJ, 300 MB is 300 MB. I tried showed how much "regular" stuff you could do with 300 MB in a week assuming vacation usage. LTE just lets you accomplish those tasks quicker.