dro1984

Softbank leaving? I didn't get that feeling at all!

The other thing I found in his video presentation was the clear lack of anything "Sprint". John jabbed at AT&T and Verizon but nothing on or against Sprint. Also, I don't know if you guys noticed, but the word "Duopoly" is the power word of late and is being used with more frequency! (no pun intended).... I think it's about conditioning the FCC and DOJ by hearing it.

Sprint has reported to Wall street that they will do the same. Marcelo and company will tape a quarterly earning report as well to avoid questions around the merger. Strange behaviors. I have never seen this before.

Good article with open mindedness: By Bronwyn Howell; Are three mobile networks necessarily less competitive than four? https://www.aei.org/publication/are-three-mobile-networks-necessarily-less-competitive-than-four/

I fall back to Verizon in my area with Roaming... I only have 1X voice when this happens.. no data available? Is this correct? Or is there a setting on my Note 5 i have to flip on? My "Data Roaming" is turned on and allowed?

What was the outage all about? Anyone know?

Yeah.... looks like it may be coming back up... Not sure what was going on??... lots of outages in Reddit all starting last night around 3 or 4am.... I'm in Dearborn MI now.. service is ok here.. ... can't say for sure what's happening back in home area...

Sprint Network down this morning in the Rochester/Auburn Hills area. 5am- 6:? am... No Service.

Okay... Let's be "that way"... if you insist... Do you really need proof that Masa Son has talked to just about every possible available non-merged Cable and Teleco? ! Let's see... he's talked or tried with Dish (See below,) Charter, Comcast, T-Mobile, probably others... https://www.cnbc.com/2017/08/01/dish-network-becomes-latest-telecom-stock-to-spike-on-report-softbank-may-buy-it.html

I agree with Bigsnake... What would partnering with USCelluar do? Having AWS spectrum is great, but again... You need funding to put it up on the towers and use it! Sprint has tons of 2500 spectrum. They just don't have all the funding to use it. It sits. .. and sits... ... and we wait... More over, if the merger fails, or they walk away, how do you think this will make Sprint look? They (Sprint) already looks incredibly desperate as they've tried hoping in bed with just about every available opportunity. Masa has tried sweet talking to Cable Co's, Dish... T-Mobile... who knows who else.... everyone up until now, has said "No thank you!". T-Mobile still might say no thanks... It's like a Three Stooges short where the Bride is about to get hitched, then the groom pulls the veil back and she's ugly with missing teeth! Yikes! But with the mass majority of wireless customers on Verizon or AT&T in the US Market (2/3's of the subscribers) I don't see many of them migrating to Sprint when all this dust settles. Stagnant growth... very small... As an investor... the stock will probably settle around $2-$3 bucks a share if this fails. I don't know folks... it's just not looking good without any action. Those Investor meetings will be getting pretty ugly!

If they were to be able to merge... I see T-Mobile using much of their 1700 mHz, 1900 mHz and (Sprint's 1900) and 2100 mHz mid-band for LTE... but what will be used for voice, what will be used for LTE Data...etc... I think this would be a great time to rearrange and re-utilized what they will have for LTE and for VoLTE and well and regular voice. Basically they will have a ton of Spectrum (think of it... they will have 600, 700, 800, 1700, 1900, 2100, and 2500 ! ) from very low "Beach front" to plenty of higher end (Sprint's 2500 mHz)... They can do some serious things! It's exciting!!! I don't see them wasting any time getting all the sprint customers on to thier versions of GSM/LTE phones quickly and start re provisioning Sprint's CDMA Network over and maybe getting rid of their GSM/ Edge etc... ... T-Mobile isn't known to drag it's feet... but how do you see them redoing the network as a whole?

IBEZ is getting worked out too. We now have 800 mHz here in Detroit, which up till now was a no go! To all those freaking out of possible price increases due to this merger,... what make you think that prices aren't going up regardless? Did you think Free service for a year is maintainable financially? Free unlimited Data at HD level? Sustainable? Verizon, T-Mobile and AT&T are already buffering speeds down to 480p or less...(unless you willing to pay more $$$) You think Sprint isn't smelling this and going to wait? I doubt it. I just can't image you guys are deep thinking this situation very well and your own personal greed is driving your fears. Get over it or take on a Mobile Mart prepay phone and ease your fears. I whole-heartily agree with Snake and others on here... Sprint's Network isn't the most dense or even complete. They have the spectrum... they just don't have the ways and means (read $) to execute and put it to use. And all the 2500 mHz is great, but it travels very short distances unless you densify the network using Macro and Mini's.

Snake... I think Sprint has approached them... for what every reason, Dish's CEO, Charlie Ergen , doesn't seem to like Sprint. It usually is rejection. Sprint has always wanted to host other's spectrum... Dan Hesse tried many players... Never really panned out. Here's a snippet from October 7, 2011... from Egaget: " Sprint finally went public with plans to "simplify its network" by converting its 1900MHz holdings and LightSquared's 1600MHz spectrum ("pending FCC approval") to LTE, an industry favorite. " Does anyone know what ever happened to Lightsquared and their unusable spectrum (it affected GPS) but I thought they found a way around it...?

Think of it this way: The higher the Spectrum band, the more people that can use it at same time. It allows huge amounts of data to flow to multiple users. It doesn't travel very far and will have difficult time penetrating structures. The higher the band the more these two things extrapolate. Lower bands, great at traveling long distances, but not very good at supporting multiple users at one time. ...

I agree with both of you. Sprint "might" be able to do okay for the short term, but as T-Mobile launches is 600 mHz, and expands it nationwide reach, I just don't see Sprint growing. This might be as good as it gets.... Softbank will not allow anymore investment. They have set up private holding companies on phones, etc...the creativity will come to an end. Next could only be mortgaging some of their high band spectrum... or selling some of it. I also don't believe everything that is promised by Marcello about all the cells etc... Too many empty promises over the years. Won't until proof is out there... I rather have three really good choices than 2 monsters and a medium player and small distant carrier that is treading water.

Don't know why, but GSM phones on the whole seem to support more bands than our CDMA level phones.(I know... mostly the LTE side of the phones...)... LTE is supported more widely but that why you have phones released for Sprint or for Verizon... etc... I think that's why many bought unlocked apple phones... the unlocked versions had most of the bands available to them. More and more phone manufacturers are doing the now...

Snake.... don't you think they won't do any network openings until the Merger is finalized and "closed"... meaning complete? I'm not thinking they will immediately open LTE or any of their network for Sprint for just "announcing" a plan to merge... Just my thoughts.. I'd love it if they did, but I'm not feeling it...

Agreed! Canada has a HUGE land mass, and a very small population! Many areas are total wilderness... Lets see... Lots of equipment needed to have a cohesive network... and not a lot of people to pay for it. Then you add in the GST, PST and any other of their 15 taxes on everything... and there you have it. Rogers and Bell Canada ... who is the Third? Telus? Not really comparing Apples to Apples Tom. You need to have users pay for the network. In Canada's case it would have to be immense!

Wish I would have heard that. I just wondered because they utilize so much of Sprint's Spectrum in their service area. Can you share what the options were? I cannot pull up the transcripts.

Food for Thought: What will happen to Shentel Wireless (does Sprint have any others?) if the merger gets announced? I see T-Mobile just bought out the remaining intereste of Iowa Wireless... (sounds like prepping for you-know-what)... I thinking back of the debacled Sprint/Nextel merger where Sprint ended up getting sued multiple times until it had to buy 99% of it's and Nextel's Affiliates out? Have a feeling Shentel will have an issue with Sprint because T-Mobile has coverage in their area. What do you all think?

What a combined T-Mobile and Sprint network would look like from BGR: What a combined Network of T-Mobile and Sprint would look like

But Verizon and At&T were investing $7-9 Billion on their networks, which, arguments aside, are/were in much better shape than Sprints weak neglected network... If memory serves, wasn't Sprint's capital outlay was 1-2 billion the last 2 years? Now we are at about $5 Bill'n in investment.

Did any of you ever wonder like I just did now if this was said on purpose by Marcelo in the last call? What did he say ... like 20,000 or more Macro adds? It almost feels like carrot dangling again when in fact he was literally asked question #1 about merger status. They can make all those wild claims of huge number of cell site additions so they look good to the Investment company's and communities with no real intention of holding true to that promise... Whats your thoughts about this? Was it real or was it just thrown out there to look great ? I'm very suspicious now as the renewed on again merger info broke a matter of 2 days later!

Yes, my concern too, but I'm counting on Sprint doing what they do best. Halt all network improvement work. That's their standard operating procedure. Did it when funds were low... did it with Nextel Merger... So I plan on this, because then anything else will NOT be a disappointment. But once again, unfortunately, we the user have no say in the way the company will handle the situation. Hopefully they will realize that they can't afford to stop network improvements because it will be detrimental to customer adds and retention. I don't think they will want to loose customers due to an ugly and poorly planned merger. (lets hope not at least... ) Scary, but being a Sprint customer for 17 years,... I've been down this road before with them.

Folks... get a grip! Even if the merger is announced in a couple of weeks, why would you immediately think staff will start getting trimmed? It's an "announcement" not a completion. We are at least until September 2018 before it's finalized IF it announced in a few weeks. The companies remain separate entities until then.