dkyeager

All I can do is go by what I observe. In my travels throughout the Midwest, there are very few markets anymore where Sprint service is truly bad. Yes, there are definitely holes and sites that could be further upgraded. No doubt Sprint is getting much better. In my market, where we have a small group of folks tracking wireless in the field, Sprint is now being quite surgical. You can almost guess where improvements will go based on observed performance issues. They are customer bandwidth focused rather than worshiping any one band. Much of their recent work is not construction related, but rather making much better use of their existing spectrum.

My rough notes for conference call, almost no exact quotes. Claimed they are advertising for higher profit customers (not prepaid) playing up network (this went on for a long time) by far the most improved carrier 125 market speeds have tripled in last two years 78% of time on LTE crowd sourced data will determine small cell positions no expected disruption to customers surgical approach to improvements diagram shows five small cells per macro site done with network.. almost customer demands exceeding expectations future growth driven by execution and accountability not from cutting price CFO operating revenue has stabilized for last three quarters at 8.1 billion 65% of phones are now financed. Implies 35% on legacy plans exceeding reduction targets for 2015 G&A has been reduced by $700m 2016 reductions: 10% cost of products, 20-30% from G&A most will come from SG&A across sales, marketing, Care and G&A this means lower roaming, shutdown of wimax more self service tools for customers reduction in back office basically nothing will be reduced in sales actual cash up $200m 600million in 2.5 unused so far plus 500 million in April 3-4 billion of funding will come from leasing financing sales 3-5 billion from network financing facility in 2016 this is well defined liquidity. see no issues in paying mature debts to end of 2016 capex remains same 5 billion q&A network facility part of q Sales are driving productivity network entity. will retain ownership of spectrum. small amount of spectrum will be put into it as collateral will not affect our secured capacity in our revolver network strategy Q how to deploy densification. are your going to shrink size of network, wimax , capacity CEO looking for lowest cost structure power poles, roof tops monopoles network will get better progressively backhaul cost reduction, hybrid approach. will also use microwave and 2.5 don't want to trench fiber this network tech person talking looking for similar or better performance and lower cost moving most every backhaul to ethernet more network qs CEO we like to keep things simple for customers. we are going to be a price leader. we can do this because our network is getting better. sprint now at 20% of gross adds up from 10% last year john is network person does not want to give playbook away we are well aware our obligations to tower companies, will continue to use them for many years and they are a strategic partner. Q; free cash flow positive date no date, but we are monitoring the timing of expense reductions and capital deployment. we are on an upward trajectory. CEO growth is also burning cash prepaid migration to postpaid migration continuing? unclear answer. less than 10% of handset additions. decided not to measure some pricing strategy? what are you hearing from existing customers on the deals. CEO best way to measure is churn. existing customers finding they have the best price large base of unlimited customers unlimited is far lower than competitors Dr Saw q how many tower leases will you not renew? how much 2.5 spectrum will be used for backhaul? All spectrum will be able to be used even if secured. 5-7 year leases. too early to speculate. 60-120mhz in most markets. still doing field tests EvanA: Basically recode article and resulting madness is bunk there is a quite period before results thus it was a pig pile. EvanA: Yeah I know Hence why earnings was moved up no shortage of Samsung or Apple products or next launches Will Sprint be able to sustain progress? CEO: can not anticipate future New customer have better ARPU than legacy? Most new customer get additional data over prior plan average billing per customer is up 3% per year quite happy with new and existing customers CFO very good performance on bad debt - we are not bottom fishing. network financing? it will be on the balance sheet, not operating expense. if it is a lease it will be a capital lease. it will cover the cost of the new equipment and existing equipment and RAN purpose is to fund the deployment of the new network that John and Gunther require. guidance q and free cash it seems that you should be generating significant free cash flow to pay off debt? CFO: yes. timing must be taken into account Must raise the capital for network lease co to expand the network to ensure the free cash flow timing note; this is very rough. done http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-26/sprint-has-fifth-straight-user-gain-smaller-loss-than-estimated Stock up 21%

my initial highlights: the drop in T-Mobile LTE speeds shown by Nielson is amazing: top to bottom ranking in one month. Sprint CFO Tarek Robbiati. “Most importantly, we expect these cost reductions to be achieved without compromising network quality or impacting the customer experience.” Operating loss of $197 million included $209 million of severance and exit costs and compared to an operating loss of $2.5 billion in the year-ago quarter, an improvement of approximately $2.3 billion. Adjusting for the $209 million of severance and exit costs in the current quarter and a non-cash impairment charge of approximately $2.1 billion in the prior year quarter, operating loss would have improved by approximately $400 million year-over-year. Net loss of $836 million, or $0.21 per share, compared to a net loss of $2.4 billion, or $0.60 per share, in the year-ago period, an improvement of approximately $1.5 billion. Adjusting for the aforementioned severance and exit costs and impairment charge, net loss would have improved by approximately $300 million year-over-year, or $0.08 per share. The company also reported the following Sprint platform results, which reflect its focus on higher value postpaid connections Total net additions were 491,000 compared to 967,000 in the prior year quarter – a decline of 476,000 year-over-year. Postpaid net additions of 501,000 compared to 30,000 in the prior year quarter – an improvement of 471,000 year-over-year. Postpaid phone net additions were 366,000 compared to net losses of 205,000 in the prior year quarter – an improvement of 571,000 year-over-year. Prepaid net losses of 491,000 compared to net additions of 410,000 in the prior year quarter – a decline of 901,000 year-over-year. Based on the success of the base loyalty program that the company implemented last quarter for Boost and Virgin, it has decided to implement the program more broadly for its prepaid base. As a result, the company will report these customers as part of its prepaid base and has adjusted the 175,000 previously recorded last quarter as postpaid back into prepaid for better comparability across periods. Wholesale and affiliate net additions of 481,000 compared to 527,000 in the prior year quarter – a decline of 46,000 year-over-year. Together with SoftBank and its partners, the company is establishing a network-related financing entity that could provide $3 billion to $5 billion of incremental funding in fiscal 2016. This entity is expected to raise proceeds from Sprint’s existing radio access equipment, as well as a combination of new assets associated with the network densification and a small portion of its spectrum portfolio. Sprint expects the first transaction to close by the middle of calendar 2016. Together with existing facilities, these sources of liquidity are expected to fund the transformation and repayment of all maturities that come due over the next year. Additionally, independent mobile analytics firm RootMetrics® awarded Sprint a company record 212 first-place (outright or shared) RootScore® Awards for overall, reliability, speed, data, call, or text network performance in the 125 metro markets measured in the second half of 2015, beating T-Mobile for the first time ever and receiving 57 percent more awards than the prior year periodi. The company also saw median downlink speeds in these metro markets more than triple on average from the first half of 2014 testing period and measured the fastest median download speeds of any carrier in 16 cities, including Austin, Dallas, Denver, Houston, Indianapolis, Kansas City, and Phoenix. The company remains committed to its plan of significantly densifying the network through the deployment of small cells to further improve network performance and customer experience. Financial Outlook As a result of accelerated cost reductions, the company is raising its guidance for fiscal year 2015 Adjusted EBITDA* from its previous expectation of $6.8 billion to $7.1 billion to a range of $7.7 billion to $8 billion. The company is also raising its guidance for fiscal year 2015 operating income from its previous expectation of an operating loss of $50 million to $250 million to operating income of $100 million to $300 million. The company continues to expect fiscal year 2015 cash capital expenditures to be approximately $5 billion, excluding the impact of leased devices sold through indirect channels. The company’s preliminary estimate for fiscal year 2016 Adjusted EBITDA* is approximately $9.5 billion to $10 billion. looking at actual numbers: churn went up slightly from 1.54% to 1.62% postpaid for 1.57% for the year compared to 2.18% prior year. *quarters prepaid went up from 5.06% to 5.82% for 5.31% for the year compared to 4.05% for prior year. interest expense has gone up slightly They claim to have spent 994 million in network capex this last quarter., 3958 for the year up slightly compared to prior year no impairments 74 million of that capex was self-generated last quarter - typical looks like 2.3 billion due by end of year (or refinance) Note from Evan A: The T-Mobile problem is because of bingeon. Neilsen measures throughput for multimedia and bingeon reduces video streams to 1.5Mbps on footnotes, the juicy stuff.. Severance and exit costs consist of lease exit costs primarily associated with tower and cell sites, access exit costs related to payments that will continue to be made under our backhaul access contracts for which we will no longer be receiving any economic benefit, and severance costs associated with reduction in our work force. That was 209 million this quarter, likely typical for the year, but almost all in last quarter Nothing for litigation. I would expect questions on this given mobile citizen. Spin on churn: Churn of 1.62 percent was the lowest ever for a fiscal third quarter, and compared to 2.30 percent for the year-ago period and 1.54 percent in the prior quarter. The 68 basis point year-over-year improvement, the best year-over-year improvement in 12 years, was primarily driven by improved quality of recently acquired customers and improved network experience, while the sequential increase was driven by seasonality. The last three quarters are the lowest in company history. Tablet net additions were 82,000 in the quarter compared to 189,000 for the year-ago period and 228,000 for the prior quarter. Both the year-over-year and sequential decline were mostly due to lower gross additions as the company continues to focus on growing phone connections. The company ended the quarter with 3.2 million tablet connections. Net losses of 491,000 during the quarter compared to net additions of 410,000 in the year-ago quarter and net losses of 188,000 in the prior quarter. The year-overyear and sequential declines were mostly driven by increased competitive pressure and less promotional activity. face plant. advertising pays? Upgrade rate was 9.3 percent during the quarter compared to 11.5 percent for the year-ago quarter and 7.8 percent for the prior quarter. The year-over-year decrease was mostly due to a lower percentage of the base being eligible for upgrades compared to the prior year, while the sequential increase was due to seasonality. (expected IMO. When people see true cost of phones, they hold them longer. Tri-band phones represented 64 percent of the 25.3 million ending postpaid phone connection base compared to 27 percent at the end of the year-ago quarter and 54 percent at the end of the prior quarter. During the quarter, 93 percent of postpaid phones sold were tri-band, an increase from 78 percent in the yearago period and 89 percent in the prior quarter. Two-channel (2x20 MHz) carrier aggregation capable phones, which allow for higher data speeds, were 76 percent of postpaid phones sold during the quarter, increasing the number of these phones within the phone base to 21 percent. The company has deployed its LTE Plus Network in more than 150 major markets across the country and has plans for expansion in the coming months. They finally have increase this number. 16 markets that measured the fastest median download speeds in 2H 2015: Austin, TX; Chattanooga, TN; Corpus Christi, TX; Dallas, TX; Denton, TX; Denver, CO; Houston, TX; Indianapolis, IN; Kansas City, MO; McAllen, TX; Ogden, UT; Phoenix, AZ; Spokane, WA; Toledo, OH; Wichita, KS; and Youngstown, OH . Wall street will likely focus on the guidance, debt and free cash flow. Free cash flow* was negative $797 million for the quarter compared to negative $1.8 billion in the yearago quarter and negative $100 million in the prior quarter. The current quarter free cash flow* includes $800 million related to cash received from the receivables facility, while the prior quarter includes $400 million related to cash received from the receivables facility. found more 2.5ghz money in april: . In addition, the company had approximately $600 million of availability under vendor financing agreements that can be used toward the purchase of 2.5 GHz network equipment, with approximately $500 million of additional availability coming in April.

http://s2.q4cdn.com/578722565/files/doc_financials/quarterly/2015/Q3/Fiscal-3Q15-Sprint-Quarterly-Investor-Update-FINAL.pdf Multimedia: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160126005751/en/

http://investors.sprint.com/news--investor-events/newsroom/press-release-details/2016/Sprint-Reports-Highest-Postpaid-Phone-Net-Additions-in-Three-Years-Lowest-Ever-Third-Quarter-Postpaid-Churn-and-Increases-Adjusted-EBITDA-Guidance-with-Third-Fiscal-Quarter-2015-Results/default.aspx It will take me a bit to read through this.

I think Sprint has many more options with this than are detailed here. In many markets Sprint will have more than 3 B41 carriers. Another possibility is to use some of these additional carriers to supply signal to these small cells in some quasi-dedicated fashion. Perhaps using another PLMN and/or another mode (data centric etc). Then it just becomes an issue of backhaul at the donor site and any added delay.

Sponsors and above: new info on Shentel nTelos buyout and spectrum: http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/7395-west-virginia-sprint-sponsor-map-spreadsheet/&do=findComment&comment=465862 Please make any comments or post any questions in the West Virginia Market Sponsor Thread.

Multiple GMO sites go LTE!!! Several ground mount option sites going LTE were posted in the last two days for Northwest Columbus. There may be more. If you notice more LTE in your area filling in some of the gaps, let us know!!! These sites cover a sizable area well suited for non-rural environments.

We are getting off topic. This is designed to be an early warning thread. Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

Thanks, fixed.

I noticed this in the Pittsburgh market for a new LTE and B41 site. Other markets such as Columbus were unchanged. If your market coverage map has changed I urge you to look carefully for new sites! Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk

I have created a more narrowly focused thread: 2 year subsidy phone upgrades early warning info.

At some point Sprint may stop 2 year subsidy phone upgrades for existing customers. Sprint gave no official warning or acknowledgement for the end of this program for new phone customers. Now it is reactive, which means you must ask for 2 year subsidy phone upgrades if you received them on your last phone purchased through Sprint or Best Buy. Many Sprint employees are not knowledgeable of all Sprint offers so you may have to try more than one employee or store. Since past behavior is the best predictor of future performance, the most likely scenario is a change in the playbook two or three days ahead of the change. There have also been rumors that this might be done on a market by market basis or region by region. This is a very narrow focused thread. Only people on plans with two year phone subsidies should comment here, or those with specific inside knowledge of plan details in advance of changes. We are looking for comments from those who are successful, run in to issues upgrading their phone using a two year subsidy, or those with access to playbook updates in advance. The next playbook update may come before 2/10/2016. Other threads are available for those who wish to debate wider aspects of 2 year subsidy plans. There is not guarantee that we will be able to deliver an early warning but the more people watching the better.

My info was multiple sourced so I feel confident at this time that it is true in my market. Now, there are plenty of ways for Sprint to make life difficult in this area, but Sprint has determined it is not in their interest to kill it now for existing customers.

Reactive means you must ask for it.

This also ties in with taking 30 days to set them up. That way there may always be a heavy user at a site during peak periods in areas where there are large concentrations of mobile citizen users. Perhaps many of their users also don't reach the 30GB level.

Might be time to reset the count down clock!! http://mobilecitizen.org/lte/ Mobile Citizen's news: #StopSprint Update Some Promising News: We are slowly, but surely beginning to transition some of our customers to LTE beginning Monday, January 4th! Right now this offer is only available for customers we bill directly for service. Check out our FAQs regarding the transition for more information. http://mobilecitizen.org/faq LTE Transition I heard you may have a new LTE offer from Sprint, what are the details? We are able to start transitioning a portion of our current subscription(s) to Mobile Citizen’s 30GB+ LTE Transition Plan beginning Monday, January 4th! Sprint is providing Mobile Citizen’s users with a 30 GB+ 4G LTE data-only plan (with no throttling, suspension or overage charges after 30 GB). The plan does not include off-network roaming and it is subject to any standard network management that Sprint may apply to commercial broadband data-only account users. Right now this offer is only available for customers we bill directly for service. If you receive Mobile Citizen’s service through one of our resale partners (e.g. EveryoneOn, PCs for People, etc), we are working with them on a transition plan. We plan to have an update for you early in the new year. How long will I have WiMAX service? On Nov. 5 2015 a Massachusetts state court granted a preliminary injunction and stopped the Sprint Corporation from its plan to shut off broadband access on the WiMAX network. The emergency relief orders Sprint to maintain the WiMax network in certain areas for 90 days. Some sections of the WiMAX network went down on Nov. 6, 2015. If you use your CLEAR WiMAX mobile broadband device in a geographic area where the WiMAX network remains, you should have access until approximately Feb. 3, 2016. When will I have Sprint’s 4G LTE service? Mobile Citizen is committed to transitioning customers to LTE. We will contact current customers as we are able to transition them from WiMAX to the LTE network. I have a WiMAX device. Will I have to replace it with an LTE device? When Sprint decommissions the WiMAX network and transitions to LTE, the WiMAX equipment you currently have will not be compatible with the new LTE network. Unfortunately, that means you will have to replace your equipment with an LTE device purchased through Mobile Citizen.

I agree. I figure it will change as they touch each site. Exciting times ahead for this area (premier users.) The last will be first, at least in some areas.

What are the odds that Shentel will redo this?

The only approval now lacking is the FCC. The last filing in their case was December 14.

Sero discussions should all be moved to another thread.

More dark clouds: http://www.engadget.com/2015/12/30/att-ditch-contracts-jan-8/ , but so long as Sprint keeps two year subsidies I am golden

I think it falls under PDV Spectrum Holding Company, LLC. Some of which was leased from Sprint for many prior years. Start here http://wireless2.fcc.gov/UlsApp/UlsSearch/searchAdvanced.jsp and type in pdv under name. Have fun!

Shentel is a Sprint Affiliate who works with Sprint. Their wireless is branded as Sprint. nTelos was more of a MVNO utilizing Sprint elsewhere and allowing Sprint to sometimes roam on their network. nTelos also saw Sprint as a competitor. We are in a likely transition period, so anything between those options is now possible.

I can now see subsidized phones and prices through Sprint zone. Sent from my LGLS991 using Tapatalk