richy

So when should it be called 5G?

 

This isn't just about speeds. It's about capacity.

 

I guess when they ratify actual 5G standards and the equipment is developed and released. We probably will see some some trickle down of some of the technologies and as lte continues to develop we may see a '4.5G' service passed off as 5g. Tmobile did it with hspda, it wasn't really 4g, it was 3.5G with plenty of spectrum thrown at it. There's technology and there's marketing, one needs advanced degrees and talent, the other requires $20 coffees, a Prius and pretentious glasses with little rectangular lenses. One should be lauded and the other should result in mandatory drowning, sadly society seems to have it the wrong way round.

So if we throw formalities to the side, all Sprint is doing is getting a loan to pay off another loan??? 

 

Maybe a merger between #3 and #4 is the end game here.

 

This is standard practice, albeit not the only option. You can get two main types of mortgage for a house, principal and interest or interest only, companies have similar options for loans. Companies carrying large amounts of debt often opt for loans, notes, bonds that are in effect interest only. So month to month they pay interest and then refinance them when they become due in full at the end of the term. 

 

What happens is that companies hope that inflation and FCF will reduce the burden of the debt load so that at some point it can be paid off gradually by refinancing a smaller portion of the debt i.e. they have 8bn to repay but 4 bn in cash, they refinance 6bn of the 8bn using half their cash reserves. 

 

Sprints situation is that they are just coming out of a trough, the market is tough, their recovery is not certain. Sprint also has a shock to its books coming, they are going to be forced to count their site lease obligations on their books. While this in reality doesn't change anything, it makes their books look worse to the tune of about $20bn. This also affects their covenant on their existing finances, the agreements about their business and the shape they keep it in. What that means is they could face having to repay debt early and higher costs for all debt they need to refinance. Sprint has a lot of debt maturing i.e. the principal becomes due in full, in their immediate future. Paying higher interest rates would seriously hurt their balance sheet. They have hit upon a very smart (or desperate or creative depending on your viewpoint) option, they are effectively hocking assets at a lower interest rate to pay off maturing debt. They are also moving handset rentals off their books to make their books look better, its not a bad thing, they need to do it to cut costs and make debt cheaper in the future which gives them more money to improve their service. 

 

To you and me all this all means is they are being creative to get out of a tough situation and save money to reinvest. I'd have a hard time finding fault in it and I truly hate beancounteryness.

The fact anyone at Sprint approved it, is a very bad sign. CEOs have resigned/been fired for much less in the past. What makes the video worse though, is that Marcelo himself is in the video. He could have defended Sprint's ethics right then and there towards those customer. They want to leave Sprint because the CEO of Sprint tells them off about what is the right things to do, then oh well. Marcelo should have said something to that customer, cancelled the meeting, then never ran the ad. He could have stopped it at the past, but didn't.

 

Also, while I'm glad the staff here have issued a warning about politics and asked for civility among the forums, why hasn't this been done in the past when there were issues with bullying and other hurtful things said here. One oif the staff here has bullied other members, bringing his politics into threads, yet that was okay? Hopefully that staff member was warned, and if so, good. Again, I'm glad to see some moderating action being taken here, and I hope more of it continues to stop bullying/harassment before it gets bad.

 

I have been on this forum for a reasonable amount of time. I have had some interesting and robust conversations with people in here but I have never seen anything that would come close to bullying. This place is extremely tame, absolutely nothing compared to an ops or revmax meeting at work, those are genuinely fun but very enthusiastic. Now if the resident Tmobile troll doesn't feel harassed or bullied even after many enthusiastic interactions with senior members of the board then maybe a period of introspection would be beneficial. Ask AJ about discussing net neutrality with me

 

You are going to meet all kinds of personalities in life, some of them are going to be confident and assertive, thats a good thing, life needs those people. Some of these people will have lower tolerances. Thats just life, please don't mistake testing other peoples patience as being bullied or harassed. S4gru is a haven of sanity and tranquility on the internet.

I'm not entirely certain it is the best idea to denigrate the customers you are trying to lure away. Sprint is finally in a position where it can leverage it's network assets and TMO seems to be suffering from not enough capacity to coperform with their growth. They should be focusing on that, not slinging mud. As a T-Mobile customer looking at sprint it leaves a bad taste in my mouth, but that's probably just me.

Absolutely! Probably why my mother has had a major increase in dropped calls as well.

 

I want to point another thing out about BingeOn. Reminder though first, I'm completely in agreement with other S4GRU members here not favorable of BingeOn, though I don't mind Music Freedom, because it isn't hindering audio quality as BingeOn is hindering video quality. Plus, audio doesn't congest the networks quite as much.

 

 

I think you'll find it's the length of your posts that are bringing the network to its knees, the internet was never designed to deal with this volume of data. I hear john legere is working on a new product called ArysynOn which will zero rate your posts but remove all the consonants but seriously I hope things are better on sprint for you, sprint certainly seems to be the network to head to these days.

Let us be clear that some of those adds came from the MetroPCS merger, some from tablets, and some from "organic" growth. But, certainly, not all came for "organic" growth.  And along for the ride with those adds from the MetroPCS merger came copious amounts of additional spectrum.  You can read my fall 2012 article:

 

http://s4gru.com/index.php?/blog/1/entry-326-newco-needs-to-drop-some-of-the-pcs-from-metropcs/

 

Even with the subscriber adds, that additional spectrum extended the "runway" in many markets.  So, I feel little sympathy for T-Mobile.  Network congestion -- especially getting inverted on downlink versus uplink speeds -- has become a problem of its own creation.  Maybe T-Mobile should BingeOff both giving away free candy and adding new subs.

 

AJ

I don't feel sympathy for them but I am very glad they are here. If nothing else they have brought new ideas and some disruption to a fetid market. True they were desperate and had to get creative but they have had more hits then misses (although their misses have been pretty shocking). I don't love tmobile, but I have some respect for them coming out swinging hard and obviously having some success. Yes a lot has been fluff and I hate legere but he was given a job and delivered and frankly my service has been great for little outlay. The downside is locally the service is beginning to degrade, likely due to backhaul as they have plenty to refarm. My guess is they are holding off the opex to have fcf to spend on 600 MHz.

 

It would be very interesting to see their spectrum to subs ratio, they used to boast how much they had per sub compared to the duopoly.

It is still early in the year, but what all will t mobile accomplish this year by end of Q4? They haven't really spoken too much about the network progress this year.

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Deploy more 700 MHz and see how much the 600 MHz costs before they do much else. There is aws3 to deploy but that requires new equipment so maybe they wait and combine those two together except for congested markets.

Central maui is finally 15x15 Mhz however it's still slow like a turd

Probably haven't upped the backhaul yet. I noticed even off peak it hits a wall at about 50mbps. If large swathes of LA can routinely show 70mbps free during peak times then maui meadows should be fine with 15x15 It might the big city to us farm folks but Wailuku has less people than a mainland costco.

Theres a few factors which affect the price per GB. One of my jobs is a front desk manager for a hotel, the way we price is probably a lot similar. We have a fixed capacity like cellcos, we have variable usage (ours is by time but cellcos is by area and sub type) and when we have our yield meeting to set future pricing (usually 2 years out) we have a similar problem. We could price crazy low and run 100% occupancy all year round but this would upset some guests, be brutal on the hotel and staff, and also probably not get us as much money as charging a higher rate. We balance extra business against the change in revenue and the affect on our costs. Customers are smart, at least some of them are. If we gouge over the xmas period we risk upsetting people who come every year, even during the recessions. So we certainly could increase pricing at peak times but we would lose money in the long run. If cell subs see pricing that doesnt make sense they will bail, unless they are verizon subs, they just add an extra tablet. 

 

Tmobile and sprint have an idea how much their subs use, they have an idea how lowering or raising the price will affect usage. They want to balance how their pricing compares to the big two (they want a credible gap in pricing to justify any difference in service level) while still generating enough cash flow to cover their costs and grow. They could set the price at $1 per GB but the reality is that this would probably exacerbate capacity issues in higher usage areas as people would use more. It would also likely reduce overall income, even when factoring in an increase in subs. People who dont use much would be paying even less. In theory what you are asking for is a log \ sliding based pricing scale where the first 5 gb might cost $4 each, then the next 5gb costs $2 each and so on, increasing in price as it gets more. The problem is it is hard to justify that to the end users who dont use much. The actual cost per GB remains static.You can factor in some kind of bulk discount but if it gets too much you upset median and low users. 

 

Long story short, unless you accept limitations (such as 480p, or deprioratization in congested areas) or have a huge pile of money video over cellular makes little sense. Also never assume cellcos care for a second about our ideas, at least not on pricing. If they misstep on something like the 600kbps they will listen to a loud enough shout but on individual plan ideas honestly forget it. Its market and capacity driven. Expect gradual changes over time.

 

Now, on net neutrality, Bingeon may be against the wording of net neutrality, it may have been implemented very badly, but assuming they zero rate ALL video and music, keep the ability to turn it on and off, dont charge companies for access to it, and they dont launch their own video service then I think it is within the spirit AND way less of an issue than competitors service. tmo is in a mature market, its not like facebook offering free data in a developing country to monopolize the market. Tmo makes no money as it isnt preferring their own service like sprinttv or go90.  However, tmo makes so much noise about everything they do deserve more stick.

 

I don't know if they intended to be evil, I think its a very interesting idea and some welcome diversity to the market. It was implemented badly, almost with an appleesque arrogance, but I like the thinking if it was done right. I'm curious what the companies have to agree to and if the companies having to opt in is a legal issue?

While it isn't forcing directly, it is indirectly. Sure, there is an option to turn it off, but by T-Mobile raising rates and discussing about removing unlimited data in the media (or at least leading towards that), it is moving in the direction of not giving people a choice but to accept it. The other issue I haven't mentioned, is the 25gb deprioritization point on unlimited data plans. Now before I talk about it here, please everyone understand I'm not advocating for data misuse, and I'll agree 25gb of data is quite a lot of data to be used at full speed before deprioritization activates. It is enough for eight one and a half hour 3gb HD movies I'm basing from one I own that is 3gb. However, there are people who might want to watch more than that. The reported deprioritized speeds from people on Reddit, TmoNews, etc. are too slow even for 480p viewing, basically forcing those people to activate BingeOn, as T-Mobile doesn't offer additional non-throttled data purchase options, unlike AT&T and Verizon.

 

So yes, T-Mobile is indirectly forcing this. That is why I've advocated here that T-Mobile do either one of two things, perhaps even both. Up BingeOn to 3mbps, which would enable 1080p, essentially eliminating all complaints over the issue, except for those net neutrality issues. Also, T-Mobile could extend a promotional feature from last year where they were offering additional data packs of 10gb for $10 each. That basically is like charging $1 per 1 gb. Based on the example I used here earlier of the 3gb HD movie I own, that would cost $3 per viewing over wireless, which is reasonable. If T-Mobile did this, it would go a long way to resolve the issues being criticized regarding BingeOn. T-Mobile wouldn't even need BingeOn restricting resolution, if they offered plans based on speed caps. That is a third idea which would help them too.  

 

The reality for all cellcos is that true unlimited attracts too many people using it as a home isp rather than as a cell phone for it to be viable. So what you have is a compromise, if you want an unmetered connection you accept that if you go above the magic line you be be slowed down but ONLY when you are in a congested area. The alternatives would be pay by the gb or capped use. True unlimited is gone, video and cockwombles killed it. Thats life. Personally I like the capped concept, it seems a fair option. The same goes for att and sprint who do similar. Its a reality, it could go away or it could remain with safeguards for the carrier. For me unlimited is about no bills shocks rather than absolute use. I use about 6-10gb a month plus bingeon streaming.Sometimes I do use a lot more but my bill remains the same.

 

If you want to watch HD videos over your cell phone connection you need to pay for it one way or another. You are facing two problems, one if the companies need to bill in a manner which extracts enough money in a way that makes sense and the disparity between the size of a webpage and the size of a HD movie means (i.e. if they make it a sensible enough price to watch a movie non movie users wouldn't be paying enough for the carrier to make money ) that its not the most feasible way of getting that content (its basically like trying to use a pizza delivery scooter to carry the cows to market). The second issue is network capacity, you complain about speeds yet you want unlimited and lots of HD video delivery? That needs capacity which at a minimum needs investment. 

 

There are 4 main carriers, several decent sized regional carriers and a plethora of mvno's, none of them seem to offer the plans you suggest, that may be a reflection of how reasonable and rational your demands are. Most of us would like true unlimited for cheaps, I'd also love for honda to put 200hp and a 400 mile range in that new Africa twin and sell it at the same price but it aint happenin. Outside of an unlimited plan or a scheme like bingeon hd video over phones will remain economically unreasonable for some time (5g and h265 should help move it closer to reality).

 

Seriously next subject please

 

btw, for reference, business prices from tmo hover around $4 per gb, even from tmo. Wholesale isnt much lower. Pricing data is tough but basically $1 a gb wont happpen for a few years yet.

I thought about posting that link here too, but I was too upset about it.

 

I share nexgencpu's opinion about the BingeOn issue, and have learned from their posts as well. I think BingeOn while benefitting some with additional video watching, also is forcing people to accept watching a lower standard of video. To some, the new cost of the Unlimited plans are too expensive and may very well go away soon. Then the costs per gb of limited data plans are also too expensive to pay for HD video streams. A 3gb-5gb HD movie would cost around $15+ just for one viewing of that movie. When there are people here on S4GRU admitting that T-Mobile could get 720p in at around their 1.5mbps stream average for BingeOn, there isn't a good reason for T-Mobile not to enable that. They even could up that stream to 3mbps and get 1080p in that stream, which if they really cared for their customer's experience as they claim they do, then they ought to do that.

 

I'm not all pro-unlimited and I've certainly advocated for sensibly priced limited data plans, where an HD movie stream would only cost around $3 to $5 per stream. However, I really hate the hindrance in technology and forcing people to accept that and a lower standard in technological quality, which T-Mobile essentially is doing using BingeOn, with false pretense about it. Just like what T-Mobile has done with changing contracts into 2-year EIPs, including mostly unneeded features into plans then raising the prices on them rather than offering those features separately keeping the plan rates lower, then of course claiming its addressing "customer pain points", etc. As if T-Mobile were a doctor, when all they've done is by doctoring their image as though they care about the customer.

 

Again, how is it forcing anyone? All you have to do is cludge on button, although it should have been opt in.

 

There's a reasonable debate about it possibly being a danger to net neutrality (although less than sprinttv or go90)  but nobody is forced into anything. I'm getting a little tired of seeing the same misinformation. Can we try and not keep repeating bubbles and move onto something worth discussing.

If your good with low res video go right ahead and enjoy that, but please do not assume that suckage is fine for the rest of us..

How are you being forced to use it? 

Central maui is still crawling for T-Mobile.. I don't know why they're holding up on refarming ASAP.

 

Sprint is blazing so far, I've been to Kehei, and Wailuku + Kahului solid 30+Mbps each time

The only thing left that makes any sense is back haul cost or provisioning delay. 

 

With sprint not having lte for a long time when tmobile did, plus tmobiles predatory pricing spring t probably lost a lot of subs which contributes to the state of both networks. Tmo are risking losing their gains if they don't get a site or two out by hana and speed up their backhaul. There's also a dead spot by canoes beach in wahikuli which makes little sense. Let's see where they go with this, Sprint's an attractive proposition these days.

I've seen 480p on a 2k screen, which isn't a good image quality, in my opinion. Although, there a many people I've read on TmoNews and the T-Mobile Reddit who agree with my viewpoint on this. Then again, there are plenty of people who don't. It is something of a very subjective issue.

 

However, I've been pretty clear here of my dislike for how John Legere does business at T-Mobile, saying one thing to the customers as though he cares about their needs, while really intending elsewise, such as the price increases, worsening deals over time, etc. After all, T-Mobile is losing ranking in reports/reviews, while Sprint continues to improve, and still offering much cheaper rates than T-Mobile.

 

BingeOn is no different as just another bad deal disguised as a good one. I know enough when seeing a good quality image that optimization isn't going to fix a lesser quality image. 

 

Yeah its not as sharp. However for some folks there are upsides like we just had 3 kids streaming netflix off my phone and I was able to use my laptop tethered off it at the same time and watch a show on amazon. Not bad considering it didn't touch my hot spot allowance. For me thats actually worth the tradeoff, for others its not, but then again they can turn it off as well. There was and is a lot wrong with how they implemented bingeon, but it is not without its benefits. Frankly I think they killed a great idea with a piss poor implementation, but they could still fix it. Make it opt in and zero rate absolutely all video and audio.

 

The newest generation of codecs which are seeing broad support now should nearly halve bandwidth requirements so there is the potential for bingeon to work for 720p at 1.5mbps. I've seen h265 stream at lower than that for 720p.

Fun times, flew into LAX (yuck) and lucky to get 1 mbps with a strong signal. Once away from LAX it got interesting, speed tests between 50 and 90 mbps. 20x20 lte basically everywhere which based on speed tests seems to be overkill at least once you get away from central LA and head south. I'm curious, back home we have 10x10, I'm wondering if they are holding off due to backhaul because they desperately need to transition more spectrum to lte in places like central Maui where lte crawls (sub 1mbps). No point refarming if each tower is only hooked up to a T3 or similar I guess. #SoTmobile 

 

Tmo either seems to fly or suck. I can totally see why people love them and some people hate them. You go from flawless to useless and back again in 10 miles.

AJ,

 

You're not the one who has to deal with chronic pain every single day, forced to take the strongest pain medications given to humans, having to take those every single day, while worrying several times throughout the day if the medications you are on are going to be continuously effective enough at all times, without any moment of lack of medical strength enough to keep sharp, stinging, neurological pain volt throughout your body so intense you're screaming to be dead.

 

That is what I have to face. The other day, my neurologist told me that I cannot ever have any kind of surgery, because it can kill me. So, if I end up in a worse situation than I am in now, I'm stuck with it. You on the other side, can do things to make your life better, to change things if they are going bad for you. So, you can take your bullying and try it on someone else. Although, I hope you don't, because it isn't nice and just makes you look more like the person you really should try not to be. Seriously though, please leave me alone. If I violate a rule here, which I sincerely try to abide by this site's policies, so it isn't likely I'll ever do so, but if I do, by all means warn me. Otherwise, please leave me alone.

 

Just to echo AJ's comments, things don't always work perfectly. Honestly, you should never move to Hawaii Things here break lots. Life on a volcano 2500 miles from land. Cell phones are pretty much the most reliable things here. There power is off more than a whores panties, roads frequently closed for 6 hours. Its just life. Tmo messed up sending my my current phone, because I was feeling particularly cheeky I did call them and wangle some credits but it didn't sour my experience. They're shipping tens of thousands of phones across a huge country in one day. Stuff is bound to go wrong and it probably wont get fixed quickly. Thats just a reality.

 

At work I see it every day, parts we overnight take a week to turn up. People send the wrong stuff, or to the wrong place or a courier delivers it to the wrong place so they can go home early. If I got upset about that kind of stuff I'd have jumped off the pali years ago. You prepare for others to screw up and when it happens just take a deep breath and carry on. **** happens. Honestly you do seem to be very unlucky or have expectations that are a little too high, these types of service are offered on a best effort basis and for good reason.

 

If you are wanting verizon service for tmobile money then you are bound to be disappointed. I have tmobile and have had sprint and verizon. I know the difference and I am happy now with tmobile (although they are getting worse). There is a trade off for sure, but we each make our own choice and don't get belligerent when our own choice bites us in the ass.

 

Every day we get is a good one because no matter how bad it may seem its a hell of a lot better than not getting another day. 

I agree that Sprint is in a much better shape now than a year ago, especially with their much improved PCS spectrum holdings. I've especially been quite impressed by that particularly, and have spoken about how important I believe that is going to be for Sprint. It even has changed my mind about their PCS holdings, where last year I was suggesting they sell/trade it for something that could do more with somehow. However, I did also suggest trying to gain more PCS as an option to make their PCS well tolerable for its subscribers, as going from vast swaths of band 41 spectrum down to 5x5 PCS is a huge, and often miserable experience, at least from my point of view where I'd get 15mbps and up on band 41, down to less than 3mbps on PCS, often even less than 1mbps.

 

Yet, T-Mobile does not have Sprint's huge amount of band 41 spectrum. T-Mobile is in a bad position with the lack of the spectrum they have for the future. The only thing helping them right now is their generally good tower density and that they do not have the number of customers AT&T and Verizon have, which if T-Mobile did, their network likely would be worse than Sprint's network Sprint's worst times some years ago. Already, since T-Mobile has gained the customers they have in the past few years, their network has taken a hit. Especially in places where band 12 isn't available. T-Mobile needs to do a lot more spectrum swapping than even Sprint does, in order to get their networks at least to 15x15 for wideband. It is crucial to them, as 15x15 AWS and 15x15 PCS equaling 60mhz is the most on average they are going to get (with consideration some areas might be 20x20 on one and 15x15 on the other with lesser amounts than this taken into account, besides low band. Sprint has twice that amount around the same number of customers.

 

So to keep this post from becoming too long, I'll just add that I see this as Sprint needing T-Mobile for the financial incentives, T-Mobile needing Sprint for the spectrum, and both needing each other for the competitive aspects of business.

Re tmobile spectrum, this little pearl leaked out today, apparently TMobile has 200MHz of 28GHz and 39GHz to use for 5g. If they can refarm enough,  get aws3 in use,  use 4x4 mimo they may stand a chance of having enough capacity to last until they can deploy 600MHz (assuming they can afford any), which might tide then over until 5g is mature.  Then again they may not I'm curious if that 200 mhz is nationwide or just in one area for testing and if sprint has any!

 

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/wells-fargo-loose-credit-policies-caused-bit-disruption-t-mobile/2016-03-11

I respect your disagreement here, AJ, and appreciate you being respectful of me this time, as we can disagree without personal remarks, etc.

 

I understand the skepticism of T-Mobile on this, as I mentioned in the post I made here before this one. Although, seeing Veruca is a witty example of John Legere. and he/T-Mobile surely won't look good if they don't accomplish this in the time frame they seem to think they can do.

Tmobile is basing it's position from its limited experience moving a few stations for ch51. While they seem to have done it very quickly I would not bet on that being transferable to a much larger and more complex scenario. Especially as funds spent speeding up physical installs would likely come from the cash meant for broadcasters. Personally I would guess that the broadcasters want to be able to go slow so they can extract some extra money to speed up, but also there's going to be some serious demand for tower crews. When I plan a project I build in plenty of time for things to get respecced and also for things to go wrong. Tmo wants 600MHz asap and aren't willing to wait a second longer than the minimum. As much as I like tmo if I were a broadcaster I'd be holding my ground for a sane timetable rather than one devised by rainbow colored unicorns.

 John Legere ought to be more honest about, admit the issues, and deal with this professionally, etc.

 

Thank you I needed a chuckle today! There's more chance of verizon giving tmobile its entire spectrum holding for free than legere behaving himself. I agree with you, it would be a refreshing change but no CEO wants to get even close to doing a Gerald Ratner and legeres current persona seems to be working, at least until they hit a capacity wall which may be close. Tmobile is a house of cards, they have nearly doubled their number of subs via acquisitions and organic growth but they are again running up against capacity barriers that will cost them 10-20 billion to overcome in auction costs and buildout costs. Its a testing time for them and all the while sprint has again become a viable contender with a huge spectrum trove and a newly refreshed network. 

 

Sprint could in theory swap some of its high band spectrum for lower band but it would need to find someone who would stand to gain from it. Nobody really has low band to spare, midband perhaps but thats Dish and they have about as much use for highband as they do for their own midband. Like for like swaps can occur but by definition they dont add capacity unless it is between different markets. Sprint just needs to continue to get on with it, yes they would benefit from more low \ midband but densification can help with that. 

I couldn't call my mother at all yesterday, due to the issues that affected both of our lines. Than goodness I didn't have a health emergency, otherwise I would be switching to AT&T, as I've mentioned here on S4GRU a bit lately. This definitely has me thinking more about the possibility, especially now as the Microsoft Lumia 950xl I got has some serious charging issues, along with network connectivity issues I had with it on Thursday, though I'm not sure if that was related to the T-Mobile problems, or was prior to those. However, the charging issues are bad enough to warrant a return. More frustration I seem to have with these devices.

fwiw when I was on sprint my father in law was on at&t and their service was down more often than a hookers panties. It was especially noticeable during emergencies like tsunamis etc, sprint and Verizon were the two solid performers. I got a verizon table and was shocked how poor their network is here as well, spotty coverage, crazy slow and hella expensive. Things may be different now or where you live but don't bank on at&t being awesome unless you have past experience.

I agree that such would be difficult to implement, though that is what I've been hearing for a long time, that it would be Android Forever, not Galaxy Forever. Yet, this is definitely an easier plan to manage, I'd agree.

 

If there were to be one I think might work, is to have different classes of Android smartphone, where a person could only trade in an Android smartphone within its class, rather than by brand. Such as high-end, mid-range, and budget. Although, there could be provisions to allow a person to get a cheaper device or a more expensive one, depending on how it is setup.

 

Overall though, I still prefer the same approach I've mentioned here many times in the past, which hasn't changed and likely will never change. That is to have a simple one-year lease on all devices priced at $5 per $100 of device cost. A $700 Samsung Galaxy S7 Edge 32gb therefore would be $35 monthly for 12 months ($420 for one year). If at the end of the term the customer wishes to keep the device, they'd have to agree for a one-year extension costing the same rate, which would cover the full cost of the device, plus a little extra profit for the company they'd otherwise make in a resale of the device. Or, the customer could trade in the device for a new device at the same $5 per $100 of device cost of the new device they'd get.

Why would you pay extra profit? The normal resale price includes a chunk of profit for celco. The BOM for a cell phone is usually around 30-35% of the msrp. Add on all the junk like r&d, manufacturing (labour and profit), marketing, transport, and taxes etc sprint et al make around 10% on post paid handsets sold at msrp.

 A pittance compared to the Big 2. Better than Sprint for sure but...when are they going to make some real money? They better do it quickly before 5G comes around, because that will be another very expensive endeavor.

Very true, it is small, but I would rather see them heavily reinvesting in their network and spectrum and grow. They have also been deleveraging, 2.5x now? So according to them they can run to 4x for the 600MHz auction. FCF is an important measure for tmobile (and sprint) based upon their position in the market. Verizon and att are top of the pile so their attractiveness is their ability to payout dividends, tmobile and sprint are trying to grow so you would want to see your equity increase rather than collect dividends. 

 

As for rootmetrics etc, I can understand why Legere says what he does, thats his job, shout about the wins and discredit the loses (he is still an ass though). The reality is we need to look at the different methodologies between the tests and weight them up. the tmobile experience differs massively, in some places it is crazy fast, in some places it is heavily congested and in some places there is no signal. Depending on how you create your tests you could show them as being the best or the worst. You can see trends within the same tests from year to year but comparing tests or picking one for your own use it a fools errand. Test driving a network is probably best, the rest is pretty much just fluff the marketing creeps to use. 

This could just be a bluff (the towers not the microwave part) to negotiate better leases. That would be a smart move.

Sounds like a good move if well executed. If they can deliver some significant savings to help grow the company what's not to love. Not sending cash to the big two would be very sweet! 

Just my tmo 'fanboy' 2 cents.

Legere should be made an example for starting this movement.

Starting what?