Conan Kudo

While it is technically possible to put all that stuff into small cells, you don't want to because it makes them too big. No small cell I know of supports more than 2T2R and none are capable of carrier aggregation. Small cell sites support less than a seventh of the users/capacity of a macro site for the same reason. And of course, small cells have less than one-twentieth the range of a macro site.

You sound like an oily used car salesman when you say that... It's rather creepy... (The concept of leasing itself is fine, but sometimes people present it in creepy ways...)

Natural Gas

Firstly, LAA-LTE is not designed to operate on a primary basis. Secondly, it's not designed to operate on macrocell systems. Any approach involving LAA-LTE will be extraordinarily different from how 2.6GHz LTE is deployed for this reason.

That's true, so it's not really a surprise.

Time Out

I am not ignoring that at all. And you know extremely well that I don't. Sprint has not invested substantially on the ESMR and 2.6GHz networks since 2007 up until 2013, and T-Mobile stopped in 2009 for the majority of its AWS network stuff until 2012. Both did quite a bit of work on PCS in the meantime, though. The issue is that Sprint is not following the "if you build it, they will come" strategy right now (or if they are, they have a poor showing of it). And Sprint has a ridiculous amount of spectrum per capita, so throwing that in my face isn't going to work either. Sprint also has the lowest deployed spectrum per capita anyway, so even with the losses, Sprint's capacity levels are totally out of whack with its actual subscribership. Like it or not, anyone who pays for service is not a "malcontent" or a "data abuser", provided they are following the TOS (that is, not running warez servers, torrents, and the like off of it). You absolutely do not want people not using the network, because then there's no point to invest. And it's not fair to denigrate those who may have it as their only Internet connection because it may be all they can afford. That all being said, at the end of the day, a capex cut is a capex cut, because the network is largely fixed once deployed. Capacity isn't very fluid in the network because spectral resources generally remain in play once deployed.

Don't discount the power of growth (or lack thereof) in influencing network decisions. They are tied very closely together, so it's critical to understand the effects of one on the other. This is true with Sprint and T-Mobile, as well as AT&T/Verizon.

Only in Ericsson territory. In Nokia territory, it's a single antenna panel with one RRH and they operate in 4T4R on 700MHz, AWS, and PCS.

Frequency bandwidth isn't the reason against 8T8R for PCS and ESMR. RRH and Antenna sizes/weights would be enormous for 8T8R. As it is, PCS and 4T4R would be twice the size of the current 2T2R systems in most of the country. ESMR 2T2R systems are already pretty huge, because wide frequency (low-band) spectrum requires wider panels. Going up to 4T2R or 4T4R systems would make it too big and heavy for most of Sprint's cell site structures.

Time Lords

And that's why they are targeting the demographic of people coming out on their own from their parents' AT&T/VZW plans. They have a good chance of getting them to become customers for life if they can satisfy them. They are the least-sticky of AT&T/VZW subs because they consume mobile services differently from their parents. AT&T/Verizon plans (and some Sprint ones) aren't really designed to allow the kind of usage of the mobile network that these folks want, and that's what makes T-Mobile (and to a lesser extent, Sprint) attractive.

After going back and reading much of what you've written (yes, I actually did it!), you're right. I was off the wall there. I've been in a bad mood since I've had to verbally defend the strategies of both companies to people a few minutes earlier. And having to read messages from people (who keep messaging me despite the fact I don't want them to) who intentionally mock Masa, Claure, and Legere by doing exactly that all day has driven me crazy. Yeah, Sprint's in a bad place, and they're trying to fix things. Will they be successful? Objectively speaking, the track record across multiple executive teams really isn't good. I don't know. And I agree that Deutsche Telekom basically abandoned T-Mobile USA for many years. But now that Legere is at the helm, it doesn't matter anymore. DT's hands-off (but cash-on) approach helps T-Mobile US substantially by allowing the company to be extremely agile in the decision-making process. <rant> But I keep being told (even by other folks who basically live on this forum, many of whom ignore that Sprint targets this demographic too) that the demographic of people that T-Mobile and Sprint target are worthless, either explicitly or implicitly. It makes me especially mad because it makes it sound like my dollars are worthless. I am part of that demographic. I make money, and I want to get a good deal, especially since money for me is slightly tighter than older folks, and I'm more willing to try new things than they are. I like what T-Mobile is doing. To a lesser extent, I like what Sprint's doing too (they need more tweaks to their approach for me to be happy with them). Also, I don't want to sound arrogant or anything, but we are the future. Capturing the demographic I'm part of is critical for the long-term health of the company in terms maintaining lifetime subscribers. Aging subs will fall off and they simply won't matter over time. AT&T acquired Cricket for the purpose of targeting that market without diluting the "old people brand" of AT&T. Verizon ignores them entirely, which I think will be their undoing. </rant>

Beach Boys

Okay, what is with this? This doesn't make any sense at all. His name is "Legere", and it's pronounced "leh-JER". If this is mockery, this is a pretty piss-poor way to mock someone. It doesn't really help with credibility of your statements, too. And frankly, it sounds like you hate the demographic that T-Mobile is targeting, which is exactly the same demographic that Sprint targets, too. (I say the same thing about people who call Masa "sonny boy" and Marcelo as "marcy", which are equally stupid) Frankly, Sprint wishes it could have managed to create the marketing machine that T-Mobile has. As it is, it tries and fails many times. Yep. That's basically the reason. Interestingly, C Spire's "rolling data" automatically expires after 30 days, and is limited to the size of the data bucket you have. That means, if you have a 4GB data plan, the maximum rolling amount is 4GB (for a total of 8GB). This differs from T-Mobile's "data stash" in that there's no limit on the amount of data that can be held, but each allocation "stashed" expires in 12 months if it hasn't been used up already. That means you can have a multi-month cascaded "stashing" effect.

It's for Telstra. It supports UMTS bands 5, 8, 2, 1 and LTE bands 28, 8, 3, 1, and 7.

Main Avenue

More accurately, it's impossible. Band 12/13/14/17 do not permit carrier sizes larger than 10MHz FDD. In fact, the only low-frequency band class to allow it is Band 28 (APT 700MHz FDD).

Hopefully by now, yes. Instances of it started showing up three months ago. Given that a good number of them can be reconfigured remotely, I would hope so.