Conan Kudo

PC Magazine

Okay, first of all. I will concede on the USCC. I misread the authorizations on that. But USCC entered at around the time the last of the number pools were available (2000-2003). Obviously now there's a new set of numbers, so T-Mobile should take the opportunity to correct this. Regardless of Cook Inlet's decisions in the past, T-Mobile has an opportunity to fix it now. It should. Secondly, though, the Cook Inlet/VoiceStream JV was never qualified as a Native American bidding group. The only thing it was qualified as was a "small business". It got a 25% bidding credit. US Cellular does the same thing in every auction. It's a terrible, untruthful, horrible usage of a FCC auction rules, but US Cellular still does it using various sham companies (it's doing it now in the AWS-3 auction as "Advantage Spectrum, L.P." and "Wolverine Wireless, L.P."), and T-Mobile does not. Cook Inlet/VoiceStream has never accepted money from Native American funds either. I don't know about the others, though. Thirdly, Viaero Wireless has been in Nebraska since the 1990s. They expanded into "402" area in 1997 after acquiring PCS licenses for the area. They called themselves "Nebraska Wireless" back then.

Bell System

Warning bell (Also, 500th post! )

Blast! A lot of Sprint cell sites around here are controlled by WesTower. MasTec is going to ruin them even more...

Originally, T-Mobile did not administer the network that existed in the Great Plains. The Iowan network, as everyone knows, is controlled by Iowa Wireless Services. But what isn't as well known is that the spectrum (and the associated network) for the rest of the area was controlled by Cook Inlet. For those who don't know, Cook Inlet Region, Inc is an Alaskan company that develops businesses to support the local Alaskan communities. One of the more unusual ventures of Cook Inlet was partnering with Western Wireless/VoiceStream to create a joint venture to acquire PCS licenses to construct a GSM network across the western half of the United States (and some parts of the Northeast), excluding Iowa. Cook Inlet constructed the facilities, dealt with permitting, acquired phone numbers, and such. VoiceStream would act as the "face" and sell the service, while paying Cook Inlet to have exclusive access to resell service on the network. Cook Inlet's economic share in the venture gradually declined since the VoiceStream/Omnipoint/Powertel merger and Deutsche Telekom acquisition. However, Cook Inlet continued to hold a stake (and control) until last year. Last year (after the T-Mobile/MetroPCS deal closed), all the Cook Inlet/VS subsidiaries that represented T-Mobile's PCS licenses and carrier authorizations were folded into T-Mobile License LLC after T-Mobile bought out Cook Inlet from the venture. This was also disclosed in 2013 Annual Report to Stockholders issued on February 2014. Prior to this event, T-Mobile could not legally acquire phone numbers (it technically didn't own the facilities it used and was constrained by the terms of Cook Inlet). Cook Inlet didn't want to go through the effort and pay for the numbers for Omaha (which it never really cared for, not like Las Vegas), so T-Mobile never had numbers. And T-Mobile was capital-constrained in 2010-2012, so it wasn't really going to dedicate limited cash to give to Cook Inlet to acquire blocks of numbers then. And USCC also controlled 850MHz spectrum throughout Nebraska for years before entering Omaha after the turn of the century. Area codes 402 and now 531 cover more than Omaha, you know. Even though the Omahan network was new, USCC had a presence in Nebraska for years. So of course it had numbers. Blaming 3GPP technology is stupid and irrelevant. AT&T and Viaero Wireless both have Nebraskan numbers due to their legacies in Nebraska. And the sheer number of phone numbers used in Nebraska triggered number pooling to be implemented earlier than most states, and number allocation rates still remained high. For Omahans' sake, I do hope T-Mobile does want to really serve the market. While one of the issues has only been recently addressed (T-Mobile being formally authorized as a carrier in Nebraska), the other issues do need to be dealt with (network quality and phone number allocations) in order to do well there. Now that T-Mobile has cash and is growing, I hope it will do something soon.

Considering that the pool of blocks of numbers for area code 402 ran out in 2001 (when T-Mobile was still VoiceStream and was closing the deal to be acquired by Deutsche Telekom), it's an extremely valid explanation. Heck, you've admitted as much, knowing full well that there were far more cellular networks in Omaha than the rest of the country. There were more pagers, more phones, more data cards, more everything. The 531 area code overlay was created in 2011, but numbers were not even being issued until last year! As far as I know, the blocks allocated for 531 have only been to wireline and VoIP providers so far. And to address mobile number portability, you aren't allowed to port numbers that you don't have a local exchange for. That is, because T-Mobile lacks any local exchange reserves in Nebraska, it cannot accept Nebraskan numbers for number portability. Number portability is a "local" process, despite the fact that you're allowed to port mobile numbers from anywhere a carrier has an exchange these days. If there's no exchange, you don't get to port in. It's that simple. What I don't get is how you don't know this, A.J.? This is Phone System 101!

Blast it all. It's rather annoying that T-Mobile still doesn't have Nebraskan numbers, so they won't fix this market because they can't sell anything there...

Space Jam

Aside from one market where they have Cellular 850 A block spectrum (12.5MHz FDD), this is correct. Sprint technically has more low-band spectrum in aggregate than T-Mobile does. T-Mobile's footprint in low-band spectrum is increasing all the time, but it isn't quite to the level of Sprint's yet.

T-Mobile's network architecture is just as modular (if not more so). T-Mobile's architecture is also simpler than Sprint's, since it isn't trying to do crazy CDMA/LTE bridging that doesn't work out very well most of the time. The consistency of both Sprint and T-Mobile's networks leave something to be desired. But they are both improving on that. That's in line with what I've heard from analysts who examined only the fundamentals of the business. The market is quite prone to volatility, so the value of the stock is not always reflected in the price of the stock. As the market calms down from M&A fever, we'll see more people focus on the business fundamentals and the share price of TMUS will rise. Almost certainly, the share price will spike up on the Q3 earnings report due at the end of the month.

Rough week is more like it. The Google Nexus launch was a mess and being badgered by certain unnamed people led to lack of sleep, too...

¡Fantástico! I thought that might be the case, but I wanted to be sure.

Wait, are you praising me or denigrating me? I can't quite tell...