dkyeager

Thanks.  I wanted to post a link to amcferrin90's work but have not found it yet. Amcferrin90 sent it to me: https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B8viExQFcZdaNjBjUEY1WE05UUE&usp=sharing

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Not to be pedantic, but what do you define as a ton? I'm legitimately curious about how much effort they're putting in to this.

We have not mapped them, but we have seen at least twenty without really looking, with more and more showing up all the time. They are mounted on utility poles in neighborhoods and industrial parks. Installed by a one person crew with a utility bucket truck.  https://www.dropbox.com/sh/t0qot9w0jt2ix40/AADlqMcroKEsSQq9JTrcba_Ga?dl=0.  Amcferrin90 recalled they were using 736 to 756Mhz [746.5Mhz - 755.5Mhz, band 13 as per attachments below from amcferrin90].  I have seen them within a mile of a Verizon site.  They may be to be aiming for metro-wide coverage.  They generally don't need meters and run off of the city light circuits with a permit due to their low power requirements.  We also seem to have some variation with this type of equipment.

We believe Verizon is installing a ton of small cells throughout the Columbus Ohio metro. Amcferrin90 put a spectrum analyzer up to one and saw their frequency, but no Verizon users that I have asked have been able to get on them yet

Stock seems to have stabilized at $4.55 today.

This has been skimpily reported. Here is my take with almost quotes:

2014 Leveraged Finance Conference Tuesday, December 2, Boca Raton, FL

Joe Euteneuer, Chief Financial Officer

Yoshimitsu Goto, Managing Executive Officer, SoftBank Corp

Joe Euteneuer, Chief Financial Officer:

What we have on the network is:

• 260 million pops covered by 1.9 LTE
• We will have 800 voice done by year end [1x800]
• We are 90 million covered pops on 2.5 and will be 100 million pops by year end
• We have started LTE 800 deployment and should be done by the end of next year

All phones sold are now triband, only the iPhone 6 does not have Wi-Fi calling capabilities (will have it downloaded to it in the next 60 to 90 days).

Yoshimitsu Goto, Managing Executive Officer, SoftBank Corp:

Spoke Japanese

Softbank would like to supply Sprint with as much support as possible in terms of network quality, equipment and phone selection. Softbank CTO and technology team engineers have been moved to Kansas so we may work together.

Joe Euteneuer, Chief Financial Officer:

Sprints issue in the last 9 months were external. Last several years were helped by triband phone sales, smartphone $10 fee, 60% conversion of iden users rather than 30% expected. Saw effects in 2013 of having the entire network under construction. Great start, but posting of account info doomed Framily. T-mobile early termination offer really drew customers who were dissatisfied because of construction issues. Marcello decided we really needed to turn our subscriber numbers around. First month gross adds went from 10% to 16%. Prime customers increased dramatically, went net port positive for the first time in a year. Growing long term value meant pulling the Band-Aids off. Volume now is so great we are out hiring 500 more sales reps.

How to evaluate Sprint going forward:

• Post-paid handset adds
• Have to make sure we are bring churn down
• Need to take 1.5 billion of expenses out going into 2015. We need to do that and more.
• Continued investment in the network to make sure we stay competitive from a network standpoint

Net net AT&T and Verizon users will be getting about a 20% discount with new plan and may get even a better deal from existing plans. Went after them because that is where they are getting good results and that is where the prime customers are plus 75% of the market.

Cap ex is less but targets remain the same and have been met for 2014. Helped by Softbank CTO and 100 engineers, learning more cost efficient methods of deployment from Japan, getting better rates, and cost avoidance because we were back on time.

Yoshimitsu Goto, Managing Executive Officer, SoftBank Corp:

From a financial capability wise Sprint is not as good as AT&T and Verizon, but from a financial capability side we should provide the maximum capability out of it [Cap-Ex funds]. We have helping to solve the technical issues in congested areas because of the wisdom we may have.

Joe Euteneuer, Chief Financial Officer:

[besides usual triband stuff,] we want to integrate new WiFi calling capabilities for better coverage.

Chicago O’Hare airport is a good example of Sprint deployment.

Leasing is all about taking the residual value off of Sprint’s books and simplicity for consumer. We have the opportunity to have them trade up early to new phone.

Using vendor financing for NV and 2.5 equipment plus selling receivables.

Yoshimitsu Goto, Managing Executive Officer, SoftBank Corp:

Financial capability is very high at Sprint plus they have access to the bond markets. Expect that they will be able to remain self-financed, but would fund if needed to improve capabilities.

Joe Euteneuer, Chief Financial Officer:

With Softbank, we exchange best practices and learn how to leverage our scale. We have learned so much from them on the network side, especially 2.5. They have top gun teams touring the country. We are a lot more cohesive. Trust factor and integration is at its best ever.

Yoshimitsu Goto, Managing Executive Officer, SoftBank Corp:

We have a real-time picture of the financing at Sprint. We are known as a long-term investor.

End

I wonder where they will place their moved LTE towers.  Perhaps the non-wholesale areas of their map where they are competing with Shentel (Winchester and Hagerstown) or Sprint (Parkersburg, Gallipolis).  I would think they would want to get out of these areas too, but perhaps too much roaming costs would result for them. [edit: To maximize roaming revenue, I would expect new fully Sprint compatible towers to go into areas marked wholesale on their map - http://ir.ntelos.com/Cache/1001192642.PDF?Y=&O=PDF&D=&FID=1001192642&T=&IID=4110676 - page 5]

In the future, if they are not bought out, they could also move into remote areas of southwest Ohio where Sprint is not, such as McArthur, McConnelsville/Malta, Waterford/Beverly, New Lexington, Cadiz, Woodsfield.

That's the old one. The absolute newest one is borked to pieces. No setting allows you to specifically select a forum or subforum... just check the recent app reviews.

 

 

 

They may have pulled your version. Uninstall reinstall. Went back into play twice and your version is not there.

Here is what I took away from the Q&A in the conference call:

- They were getting beat in the east by Boost and Metro

- Required too much capital for more sites and spectrum in east plus too much eastern competion

- The issue list for the west is much more doable and they have less competition

- Intend to have 50% of western towers with LTE by end of 2015

- They have 115 towers total which they hope to sell and lease back [i assume only in the west]  Less than 1/2 are wooden poles.

- They said the spectrum they sold was for 3G thus had less value, same with market

- They said they have 27Mhz of their own spectrum in the west plus from Sprint: 20Mhz of PCS, 2.5 (unknown) plus 12Mhz of 800.  They intent to use the 800 for longer range and building penetration.

They also used the term "Another Strategic Partner" around the time they were discussing spectrum sales.

A year ago the stock price was $21.40, now approx $4.40

This website, http://markets.financialcontent.com/prnews/quote?Symbol=NTLS, gives a misleading picture.  Bloomberg is more accurate, http://www.bloomberg.com/quote/NTLS:US, which puts the loss at about 40%.

Stock down more than 60%

The T-Mobile sale could be for trading spectrum with Sprint. I do not know Sprint's unused spectrum holdings.

Looking at the financials, this seems to be rushed or premeditated.  There is no reserve for restructuring costs.  CAP-ex is assumed to continue at the same levels.  They lost more than 10% of their eastern customers during the last year while gaining more than 10% in their western markets.

I think it is the investors who are freaking out -- stock down more than 50%

It Sprint does buy them, I would want them to do it right, ie not western PA -- which is really only 3G.

Unless someone needed some infrastructure to build out in that area. Plus Sprint could always use the PCS and BRS spectrum than nTelos currently has.

 It would be smarter for Sprint to control that spectrum.  Mountainous terrain is tough for cellular service to operate in. Leave those headaches to nTelos or Shentel.

http://ir.ntelos.com/Cache/1001192642.PDF?Y=&O=PDF&D=&FID=1001192642&T=&IID=4110676

this is the presentation for conference call.  Includes maps. movement of LTE equipment etc

selling 1900 PCS to t-mobile is a fire sale price of 56 million.  Stock has fallen 40%. 

http://markets.financialcontent.com/prnews/quote?Symbol=NTLS

Tapatalk has been occasionally reporting to me that I am not a member of S4GRU over the last few days.  Wonder if this is all related?

I could see these used in some GMO conversions as well, especially lattice/truss sites. Wood utility poles seem to be able to handle the full weight of a regular 800 1900 2500 LTE setup for at least two sectors based on observations (at least so far).

Your informal comparison is running into problems again because you are conflating two different things:  EIRP and RSRP.  The former is transmitted power, the latter received power.  For regulation purposes, the FCC is concerned with only transmission, not reception.  So, all FCC OET published test results are for transmission.  We do not routinely get test results for reception -- other than anecdotal reports, such as twospirits' observations.

 

But the gist of it is this:  transmission performance does not necessarily correlate with reception performance -- and vice versa.  Compared to a superior transmitter, a poor/average transmitter may exhibit little, if any difference in reception.  And the two different devices may perform much the same in strong signal areas.  For reference, twospirits had very strong band 25 signal across his tests.  However, in weak signal areas, that poor/average transmitter more quickly will run out of power on the uplink.  In such cases, downlink reception is irrelevant, and the link will fail, dropping to EV-DO, CDMA1X, roaming service, or no service in more locations.

 

AJ

Thank you for your well written, concise, and informative clarification. You are correct that I was assuming a high correlation between transmission and reception performance, given today's use of standardized modems.  The possibility of the transmission and reception being out of "sync" with each other raises interesting possibilities for bad design/marketing deception.  Having purchased boosters in the past, I was aware of the importance of uplink power.  A very good description of weak uplink issues. Thanks again.

Isn't the Edge using a different tower because the GCI value is different?

Here are the two photos used:

http://santafemods.com/Forum/s4gru/Screenshots/Nexus6/Mega-Note4-Edge-Nexus6-4.png

http://santafemods.com/Forum/s4gru/Screenshots/Nexus6/Mega-Note4-Edge-Nexus6-5.png

Further into the photos the same site sector changes to 1A indicating B26.  Thus these are all B25 from the same site.

Your calculations are way off.  Decibels are logarithmic -- you cannot calculate percentages as if the figures were linear.  For example, any 3 dB decrease is a 50 percent decrease.

 

AJ

This makes the real world results shown by twospirits above even more interesting.  Based on lab tests (generalized), the Note Edge's B25 LTE performance should have been notably lower, but is on par:

Band 25 EIRP Maximum Lab Tests versus twospirits Real World

Phone        B25 EIRP Max    B25 RSRP #1   B25 RSRP #2

Note 4          22.45           -82           -84                

Note Edge       18.50           -80           -82

Nexus 6         22.92           -82           -83

 

Okay, I did a few more pics using signal check pro.

 

First I lined them up from left to right (smaller images shown, click to see full scale if necessary)

Mega, Note 4, Note Edge, and Nexus 6

I then ran Signal Check Pro for all of them.

As you can see, like I mentioned previously, getting them to all to be on the same band is close to impossible.

I'm surprised that the Mega got a signal since I swapped the Note 4 Hope that helps....

 

...TS

Too bad the Note edge would not cooperate on getting on Band 41, since that is the area it is supposed to excel at. However it did not fall down at all like the B25 FCC ratings would have suggested.

Thanks for your hard work.

There is no doubt the Edge is designed for B41.  But how is the real world performance on B25 LTE?  If you look at my chart from FCC data, the max EIRP data for B25 is 23% less for B25 than a LG G2. The other bands are also down somewhat.