lordsutch

Like others have said, I think Hesse made about the most he could out of a bad hand and deserves to go off into retirement with his head held high. I'm sure the plan was to stick around until the merger was consummated; without a merger, though, you don't need him as the steady hand at the wheel to offset Legere's, uh, eccentricity among the more sober minded. As for the network, I think going forward the priorities have to be (not that any of these are particularly innovative ideas): 2.5-2.6 rollout and PCS rebanding where NV is at approaching or at capacity, if necessary incentivizing long-term subscribers to upgrade to new equipment; in particular, try to get devices that can't do ESMR 1x off the network so some data and voice channels on PCS can be rebanded to LTE. Get 800 LTE tuned and up to full power to get reality up to what the LTE coverage maps show. Get interim backhaul (microwave or non-scalable) in place where they haven't been able to secure the ideal backhaul, and finish the GMO upgrades to get 1x800 and LTE 800 into the rural areas where it can cut down on roaming expenditures and gain cash flow from CCA partner roaming that's going to Verizon today. Stop LTE upgrades being on the legacy backhaul providers' timetable. Build out or enlist CCA partners where Sprint is going to lose preferred roaming coverage in 2015, using ex-Nextel towers if still under lease anyway. "There's a map for that" marketing isn't going away. Build out PCS G block in the western markets where they're in a use-it or lose-it situation. Of course a lot of this is already underway, but Claure needs to light a fire under Saw to get these items done so they can rebrand after (not before) the network is up to snuff.

My sense of things is that while all of those things are true for now, it's because T-Mobile is at an unusually good position in its network upgrade cycle: the network is reasonably up-to-date and with the MetroPCS merger relatively underutilized, so they can bring in new customers for now and they'll have a relatively good experience in most urban (e.g. WCDMA or LTE) markets. The problem is that they're selling service below their long-term cost of CAPEX to maintain or improve the current network; building out A-block 700 and whatever they get from the upcoming auctions won't be cheap, and I think they're going to be caught with a lot of customers not under contract who can easily switch to AT&T (and in the future as VoLTE rolls out Sprint and Verizon), all three of whom could more sustainably match or beat T-Mobile pricing while keeping their networks operating smoothly (VZW and AT&T because customer adds are a drop in their bucket, Sprint because of the ability to evolve NV). It seems very likely T-Mobile is going to hit a wall soon maxxing out the backhaul and facilities they built for WCDMA late last decade along with MetroPCS' bolt-on LTE. Sprint's new network is being built for 2020; T-Mobile's is largely being patched up to get through 2015-16 (with a good chunk still built for the pre-iPhone era, lest we forget). Not to mention: who knows how much T-Mobile has held back on network investment during its dalliances with AT&T and Sprint? If Legere thought he was going to slap RRUs and 700+AWS antennas up on each Sprint NV tower to evolve T-Mobile LTE through 2020 (since the existing NV equipment could be firmware-upgraded to add T-Mobile's band 2 LTE and WCDMA in PCS) and turn off their current equipment in overlapping areas, T-Mobile is going to be in a world of pain.

One thing that wouldn't surprise me though is if CSpire divested their Memphis MSA PCS and customers to Sprint and sold its AWS outside their footprint to T-Mobile; they're gonna be fifth in the game to launch LTE in Memphis (maybe even sixth; dunno if MetroPCS or Cricket launched LTE in Memphis before they were merged), and I don't see how they stay competitive in that market when they can be far more profitable focusing on areas where AT&T and VZW are weaker and Sprint & T-Mobile are largely nonexistent. Besides which, if they wanted to be bought out in whole I'm sure they would have sold to Verizon years ago; for the longest time VZW didn't have any native coverage south of Batesville or so... it was all extended network on Cellular South.