Mr.Nuke

The problem there is that it matches a site 50 miles away.

I'm sure you'll disagree, but at home you shouldn't be relying on 2.5 at home for internet service.

Quit quoting multiple long posts. Your post here didn't need to quote anyone at all.

You are talking about a really niche market segment. It is akin to people who care enough about wireless networks to post on a site dedicated to one carrier. I don't believe Deval's "on one cares" was meant to be taken literally. That said, the needs of a niche market shouldn't outweigh the economic and network realities of the company as a whole.

It is McMahon and he has responded to me via twitter in the past.

Yeah they only lost $302 million in the quarter...

You called an entire state a top 50 market. By that metric every state is equal. Furthermore, I don't know that I'd use media market DMAs to define wireless markets.

That isn't what it says at all. If indeed they do limit it so that you only upgrade via telesales or online in some aspects they are making it more difficult for the average consumer to upgrade via subsidy. In other aspects the savvy existing customer will enjoy the experience of not having speakers, screen protectors, and other random add-on products jammed down their throats. Sprint isn't in a position right now to cut off subsidized upgrades all together in the near term. This move seems like a smart business decision right now as if you get someone in the store seeking an upgrade the staff has the chance to up-sell on offers or new plans. For everyone else that is smart enough or does the research the previous upgrade path remains.

Iowa is an interesting situation given the iWireless. As is Nebraska given that they've historically run a protection network here. Omaha and Lincoln are seeing mass T-Mobile building permits filed that would seem to indicate a full build out for both cities fairly soon.

Even if you agree with that, fierce wireless, essentially a professional trade publication was hardly the appropriate outlet for their "venting."

I don't think anyone is advocating Sprint throw money around. You said throwing money at it wouldn't get sites done any quicker. That is the statement people are taking issue with. Although a sunk cost, I'd call permitting several thousand sites and not doing anything with them spending a bit haphazardly. Given that it was Claure's original plan to put band 41 panels on the majority of sites to leverage Sprint's "vast asset" the spending haphazardly argument for that approach falls a bit flat for me. That is what he wanted to do... We'll see how the small cell strategy plays out over the coming years; it certainly is initiative. That said, it is also fairly clear it isn't Sprint's optimal strategy either.

They haven't exactly said they're still going to either. When asked on the earnings call last quarter if we should consider this a deferral he said no. The potential issue here is even it wasn't a deferment for financial reasons at the time, in effect it is. Marcelo has done a great job of cutting costs, but fairly soon you run out of things to cut. Spending $3 billion this year means you can still get to $15 billion by spending $6 billion each of the next two years. Delay it further and the math starts becoming more dubious especially if Sprint is still bleeding money elsewhere. We'll see what the guidance is on the next earnings release.

Yeah it would if the reason or even a factor in sites not getting upgraded faster was reducing capital expenditures in an effort to minimize overall losses. Sprint had initially said they were going to spend $15 billion on network expansion over 3 years ($5 billion a year on average). In May, they lowered their guidance to $3 billion for this year. At the time Claure brushed it off that they were using data to strategically target where to put additional sites and thus deferring the expense as well as looking at lower cost options like femtocells. This is in pretty stark contrast to the previous strategy where Claure had said we are going to put 2.5 on every site we possibly can and Sprint walked away from many already permitted sites*. It seems pretty evident that more money would've allowed Claure to carry out his original plan and would've indeed lead to sites getting upgraded faster. Instead, Sprint is once again forced to try and do the best with what they've got. *I realize Omaha isn't a major market and will never be a big market for Sprint, but just as an example they walked away from about 45 permitted 8T8R sites here and there hasn't been any observed Band 41 site activity for 10 months.

That would be for the PRL thread that has been pinned to the top of this sub-forum for years...

I've still yet to connect to US Cellular LTE with my Note 5.

I know that Sprint store...

Yeah if not having access to 402 numbers was the excuse surely they should be able to get 531 numbers. If you zoom in far enough on the T-Mobile coverage map you get a really good idea of where their sites are at here. By-and-large it is designed to cover I-80 and I-680, which to a large degree makes sense. You have the ability to cover customers driving through on the interstate and cut down on roaming. As you note West of I-680 things drop off quickly. Your analysis of the market is significantly better than the reddit post. Omaha has a history of being a crowded wireless market. I think they'd do fine here if they wanted to compete. It is a bit ridiculous for them not to be here given the size of the city.

It is a decent post, but I don't buy this at all. They've done nothing of the sort to my knowledge. They still run a protection network here. There haven't been any new permitted sites and literally they don't sell service here. So if you are on a T-Mobile tower you are a visitor to the city or someone who moved here and foolishly kept your T-Mobile service. He mentions having coverage inside Westroads Mall, but that is right next to one of their few sites here. Without digging through permits, based solely on T-Mobile's coverage map I think they have roughly 9 sites on the Nebraska side of the Omaha metro area. Omaha is a market where they likely could beat Verizon in RootMetrics if they finished deploying band 41.

It isn't for Omaha either.

Read the link...

No but given the pickup in South Dakota I'd speculate that things are on track. By-and-large per the FCC ULS database they've lined up partners where they needed to.

http://www.iowadot.gov/about/traffic.html

No a spur from Iowa City to Cedar Rapids is probably not one of the heaviest traveled interstates in the country. http://mobility.tamu.edu/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/ccr-all-table-rankings.pdf#page=3 Edit: David's link has I-380 statistics and indeed it isn't the most traveled section of interstate in Iowa.

Then they pretty clearly have some sort of lease agreement Motower http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/license.jsp?licKey=2590133