irev210

Reminds me of when I was on channel 476 and couldn't get a data connection going. Couldn't figure it out but didn't think much of it.

Very good point. This is a much more measured approach vs. the old "build like hell" clearwire days not realizing they were way off on their consumption forecast.

That's my whole point. As consumers, it's our job to just sit back and enjoy the benefits of competition. Management of these billion dollar wireless companies can decide how to price their services and if they are appropriately priced to grow the business in the long-term. Just arbitrarily saying that a $100 cellphone plan costs too much is sort of silly. If they could price it for $50 and generate a nice return, sign me up! I doubt wireless companies are going to create cost structures that are not sustainable. Everything that T-Mobile has done seems to be very creative while maintaining margins. The fact that Sprint is about to go on an all out price war while continuing NV2.0 is a telling sign that we haven't hit bottom in terms of pricing. I think what clearwire did with microwave and site leasing was very innovative (for the time). I suspect there is lots of room to innovate further to reduce costs and increase performance. Also, at some point, with all the old T-1 lines ripped out and all the base stations from a decade ago replaced, capital spending will normalize. I can't wait for lower prices and better services from Sprint and T-Mobile.

Why don't you want a race to the bottom? As a customer, don't you want the lowest bill possible? How do you figure that $100/month family plans are not profitable for sprint? Last quarter T-Mobile made 3.517 billion in gross profit, earned $2.113 billion before interest, taxes, and depreciation (29.4% margin), generated a net income of $5.4 million. It generated $970 million in cash from operations, spent $940 million on capital projects, generating free cash flow of $30 million. In a lot of cases, they lease from the same tower cos, get backhaul from the same ILECs and cable cos, etc. There is a lot of sharing between the two. I want competition - I want them figuring out new ways to drive the costs down. T-Mobile has been really good at that. To just say "well, a $100 plan isn't profitable" without explaining why it isn't profitable is sort of like saying "well, a $1000 plan isn't profitable".

Do you have any specific examples of the backhaul fiasco? I would love to hear some stories/examples of how things went wrong - such as examples about bad contracts, or grace periods, or other things that really caused this issue. I think it is an exciting time for sprint. I'll be curious to see what Saw can do with Sprint's network and how the new CEO and finance guys can come up with new innovative pricing/services to lure customers back.

And if they merge, there is no incentive to compete against the big two because it will just be a big three. You'll have AT&T, Verizon, and T-Bank acting as a tri-opoly. If you want higher prices, less choice, worse services, etc. you would want only three carriers. All T-Bank would need to do is just offer prices slightly below VZN/AT&T while having more spectrum to offer faster speeds to maintain their relative market share. It would become the status quo. While you always site how they need to "spread capex and opex over 100 million customers" to be profitable - you never really explain why they need to? If they were both profitable last quarter during one of the most capital intensive periods of wireless history - why is it that they need to merge to be profitable? Or is it that you just want them to be uber profitable like AT&T and Verizon? I just don't understand "how profitable" they need to be for you to not want four national competitors. What level of profitability would you like to see? I think we need to start with that. I asked before if you thought T-Mobile should spend $70k every year on each tower for capital spending and I didn't get a response

I hope that T-Mobile and Sprint both succeed. I hope both end up having world class networks and are both awesome. Just hope that half of Verizon's subscribers switch to Sprint and half of AT&T's subscribers switch to T-Mobile. That would be fantastic.

Please expand on why you think they are selling service below their long-term cost of O&M+capex. You are basically saying that T-Mobile needs to spend the equivalent of $70,000 on each tower for upgrades, every year, and assuming that T-Mobile's revenues are flat. That doesn't really make sense to me.

Interesting opinion - it seems like their lower churn, improving margins, strong customer growth don't really support your facts...

-96dB in open area vs. competitors isn't that great imho. At packards corner, for example, you get -76dB all day long and it's not even a high traffic area like the common. But yeah, backhaul isn't upgraded in a bunch of places. Capacity is nice to have though. With B26 fired up and B41 up and running now, B25 is probably getting a nice breather. Most areas around here B25 is beyond cooked.

Yeah, I avoid the B line. C line is the way to go. If you are on the B line, at packards corner, they have a nice B41 alive and well, though it is backhaul limited to around 35mbit or so. Boston Common has always been pretty poorly covered by clearwire, which is odd. They have odd cell spacing around the common. Other carriers blast signals from roofs around the common where as sprint/clear sort of dance around it. They have one site at the end of charles street that does the heavy lifting. Poor spacing.

Robert was spot on - it's a TMO FIT Our 700 megahertz A-block spectrum covers 158 million or about 50% of the population in 70% of the existing T-Mobile customer base. It covers in 9 of the top 10 and 21 of the top 30 metros in the US. I'm thrilled to report the that first 700 megahertz sites are already on air, compatible handsets are being field tested right now and are expected to be available for sale by the fourth quarter. About half of the markets covered by A-block spectrum are covered by channel 51, limiting our ability to use the spectrum until after the incumbent broadcasters are relocating. However, Neville and his team have already entered into agreements to relocate broadcasters in to new frequencies in five markets covering more than 13 million people making those markets available for launch in 2015. This is an addition of many markets which are already free and clear today such as Washington DC, Miami, Dallas and Houston just to name a few. We have recently entered into agreements to acquire A-block spectrum and additional markets from multiple parties covering 8.7 million POPs for approximately $15.5 million. That translates into an average megahertz per POP price of approximately 0.48 compared to 1.85 per megahertz POP price we pay in the Verizon A-block transaction. As we've said before, we will be opportunistic and discipline price. And I believe we have several options for adding low band spectrum to our portfolio, including the 600 megahertz incentive auctions next year.

Congrats on the BC admission! Let me know if you have any specific questions about the area. I live fairly close to BC (but far away enough from you hooligans).

From all the leaks - everything is in place. The M&A talks are done. I thought it was interesting that T-Mobile already has first 700MHz A block sites on air. I am wondering how many 700MHz sites T-Mobile will be able to get on air by the end of the year. Doesn't seem like much but will be interesting to see. AJ could probably chime in here - he is much more familiar. I know he mentioned that not a significant amount of A block will be available until 600MHz auction time.

They did well. Added 1.323 million postpaid, 465k prepaid, total 1.788 million customers. Some how postpaid churn improved to 1.5% from 1.6% a year ago. Hrm, do I have this right? T-Mobile at 50.545 million customers, Sprint at 54.553 million?

Good thought. I suspect that maybe the contract was valued at $180 million? Maybe something along those lines. I wish we knew more of what was going on. The telephone fund has about 17 million in cash. They could definitely start moving towards network vision if they decided to. Again, definitely seems like Sprint/Swiftel need to work out a long-term agreement. With the growth that is happening in ND/SD, I am surprised that Sprint isn't just moving towards full build-out of highways and major cities.

I'll leave it at "sorta". If they were acquired, yes - DK would get paid. If not, there is a lot of "flexibility" with the money that is owed to DK. Yes, sorry I missed reading the net. I missed the switch from debt to net debt - sorry about that. Bottom line - 20 billion or not, it's sort of irrelevant to this conversation. $13.6 billion in bonds $19.6 billion in total long-term debt $16.9 billion in net debt /end arguing about how much debt they have - doesn't really matter which was my original point. All these capital intensive businesses have tons of debt, which is fine, as they kick off a lot of cash to repay their debt. How much extra they should have after it is all said and done is what we were originally arguing about. Let's stay focused on that

I see what you did - you added payments to DK. Hard to really count affiliate debt. MetroPCS Wireless Inc 7.88 9/1/2018 1,000,000 USD 1,000,000 T-Mobile USA Inc 5.25 9/1/2018 6,759 USD 6,759 T-Mobile USA Inc 5.25 9/1/2018 493,241 USD 493,241 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.46 4/28/2019 1,250,000 USD 1,250,000 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.54 4/28/2020 1,250,000 USD 1,250,000 MetroPCS Wireless Inc 6.63 11/15/2020 1,000,000 USD 1,000,000 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.25 4/1/2021 1,750,000 USD 1,750,000 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.63 4/28/2021 1,250,000 USD 1,250,000 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.13 1/15/2022 1,000,000 USD 1,000,000 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.73 4/28/2022 1,250,000 USD 1,250,000 MetroPCS Wireless Inc 6.63 4/1/2023 5,925 USD 5,925 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.63 4/1/2023 1,744,075 USD 1,744,075 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.84 4/28/2023 600,000 USD 600,000 T-Mobile USA Inc 6.5 1/15/2024 1,000,000 USD 1,000,000 Ok - I see what you are saying - they took net debt. Missed that the first time. Saying how much debt they have then talking about how NET debt they took the conversation in a different direction...

Or make their stock price go up faster, higher dividends, etc Hence my point, if I was a stockholder, I would be singing a much different tune. Just different ways of looking at it.

1,000,000 6,759 493,241 1,250,000 1,250,000 1,000,000 1,750,000 1,250,000 1,000,000 1,250,000 5,925 1,744,075 600,000 1,000,000 Total Debt 13,600 Total Issues 15

They cannot spread their capex over 100MM people (and maintain the same wireless margins that VZ and T have*). I think that T-Mobile wants to gain market share and say "yeah, we'll make less per customer but ultimately,we'll have more customers, so overall we will make more in the long-term." What is wrong with 33 billion in debt? What is wrong with 14 billion in debt? AT&T has 75 billion in debt. Verizon has 94 billion in debt. The little two companies are only around because they are highly attractive assets worth billions. It's not charity - nobody "bailed out" T-Mobile or Sprint. Softbank looks at Sprint as an investment, not charity care. T-Mobile had 35 million in net income after 4 billion in capital expenditures. T-Mobile spent more on capital in 2013 than the last three years COMBINED. Sprint's issues are well documented and well compounded - took many years to "right the ship" and we've already started to see margin expansion even with customer losses. It's not that these two entities can't be stand alone - they would be more profitable as combined entities, sure. But in no way would they not be self-supporting on their own. As a customer, I'll take them on their own and take the cheaper prices. Again, as a stockholder, I would take them as a combined entity.

That's all well and good but given the current industry gross margins, none are in danger of not making enough "profit". Do you really think that T-Mobile's pricing strategy is them attempting to drive themselves into bankruptcy? What's wrong with a 10% operating margin? Why does VZ need a 63% gross margin and a 26.5% operating margin? Why does ATT need a 60% gross margin and a 23.67% operating margin? That's my view, as a customer. Sure if I was a stockholder in VZ or T, I would want highest return possible. If I was a S stockholder, i would want them to buy TMUS all day long. But as a customer - no way. I'll take lower margins, more competition, better pricing. None of them are going bankrupt.

I suspect that there is a bit more to this. Considering the entire Telephone Fund for the city is $50.756 million in assets, it would be absolutely foolish to spend $180 million to upgrade the system without a long-term contract to repay the debt in place. Even with that, it is amazing that the city with General Fund revenues of $10 million would be willing to take on that much risk. As far as rates - it's obviously cheaper to borrow money for 15 years vs. 30 (think of your mortgage). Bottom line, I am guessing Sprint is just playing hard ball to get the city to sell the Swiftel at a low price. Makes sense. The city should just move on.

I am not sure why people on this forum care about wireless margins. If anyone says "because that will lead to a faster/better network" I will quickly point to AT&T as a leading example of where profits go. As far as I am concerned, people should be thrilled that T-Mobile is kicking up some dust on how to price out plans. The fact that Hesse is talking about changing plan pricing (yet again) is encouraging. It's competition guys. We want the fastest data, best coverage, best call quality, all at the lowest price.

I've noticed a lot more B41 popping up. Airport, pike, etc. It doesn't seem to work much better than WiMAX (signal comes and goes very quickly) but anything to take off load from B25 is a plus. I think they really need to get 8T8R setups going fast.