Conan Kudo

How much extra in CapEx is the expansion in T-Mobile service going to cost? I presume additional towers are going to have to be built along with more sites on existing towers in rural areas, along with adding more sites in areas that are native where coverage is subpar.

No extra money needed. The amount of money allocated this year is the same amount used to upgrade 50K existing sites last year, which should be enough to upgrade the remaining 10K sites and construct all the remaining sites needed. The major cost is when a new site has to be built from scratch, and even then, the cost of that isn't that much more from putting equipment on an existing location or upgrading an existing site. Main issue is red tape and timing, which is likely being worked on as we speak.

The problem is that there's little financial truth backing that opinion. "People saying that" doesn't make it true.

 

T-Mobile's just had their best year in recent history. They've gone from 7 million net yearly loss, to roughly break even (all while building an expensive LTE network, running large scale advertising campaigns, financing unprecedented levels of devices / ETF payouts, etc -- things they could easily cut back on, if they decided they wanted to show on-paper profit).

 

Don't take my word for it, their finances are public record :

https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=TMUS&annual & https://finance.yahoo.com/q/is?s=TMUS

 

T-Mobile is fine, and unless something crazy happens, they can "sustainably" operate as-is for many years.

 

DT pushes the rumor that T-Mobile is "unsustainable" because they want someone to buy out their ownership at a premium price, and that premium is easiest to get if there is no competition in wireless (which is what a Sprint/T-Mobile merger guarantees).

 

Believing DT at face value about this, is like believing an umbrella salesman's weather forecast.

I'm just glad someone other than myself noticed it. T-Mobile will firmly push into the "profitable" region with the MetroPCS decommissioning completed this year, since redundant core network for CDMA and the MetroPCS radio access network systems would be removed and costs associated with O&M for those systems will be removed from the books going forward.

On top of that, once the buildout to cover 300M POPs and support the AWS/PCS licenses T-Mobile has throughout the country with no underlying network is complete and T-Mobile has sufficiently acquired 600MHz and 700MHz licenses, T-Mobile can start banking cash for 600MHz deployment in 2022 (since 600MHz can't even be used until 39 months after the auction concludes and the licenses are issued).

What's gonna "give"?

Probably either Sprint will implode in bankruptcy or it'll cut costs (through capex reduction, layoffs, or both) to balance the budget.

Sprint's capex isn't 10-18 billion a year, where did you pull that number from?

Ack, no, it's $6 billion... Fixed.

first round

"On a less positive note, Hoettges also stated that T-Mobile’s current approach isn’t sustainable in the long-term. Between $4B and $5B investment is needed each year to keep it up."

 

Noticeably absent from Legere's morning twitter buzz.  Hmm.  

Insofar as T-Mobile's capex levels, I personally expect that T-Mobile's capex levels will ease off in 2016 (if the 600MHz auction doesn't happen) or 2017 if the auction does happen. Once it completes its geographic expansion in 2016, the overwhelming majority of its capex spend is no longer necessary.

As for Sprint, its $10-18 billion $6 billion each year for capex with no return isn't sustainable either. Something has to give there too.

http://www.tmonews.com/2015/01/deutsch-telekom-chief-was-intrigued-by-the-idea-of-combining-with-sprint-to-create-super-maverick/

 

Sounds like DT is still holding out hope of leaving the US market at some point... And Sprint/T-Mobile could resurrect at some point.

He didn't strictly say that DT would leave. He wants a merger. There's no reason it couldn't be the other way around if Sprint continues to flounder around in the market for a year or two.

If the Mosaik LTE coverage claim is true, when will Tmo's own coverage maps acknowledge it? I don't understand how Tmo's own maps could so grossly understate it? 

Unfortunately, the coverage map platform isn't set up yet to handle LTE 1900 coverage data. That's being added through updates to the coverage map platform on January 25.

The new map data Verizon sourced from Mosaik is interesting:

Speaking of Band 41, is there a national map showing how much of the spectrum Sprint owns in each of the MTA/BTAs?

No, because it's almost impossible to appropriately define. While BRS is allocated by BTA, licensing isn't fully rationalized. EBS uses geographic partitions that potentially overlap (radius from location of school the EBS license was allocated to) and there are massive gaps in EBS availability.

It's almost impossible to know how much BRS+EBS spectrum is available for use. The FCC doesn't even know because not every educational institution has registered their EBS licenses (even though they legally have them regardless).

I think it's location specific. In Vancouver, for example, it appears that CDMA roaming is still available from Telus.

Not for very long. Telus aims to turn off the CDMA network by the end of the first half of this year. As it is, there's only a sliver of CDMA2000 1X service live in Telus' footprint now.

But, as far as I knew, Telus also started severing roaming contracts last year with everyone who partnered with them for CDMA roaming anyway. Verizon switched to UMTS roaming from Telus at the beginning of last year, for instance.

Final Stage

Funny thing is there is a phone that is whitelisted on Sprint because Sprint has all of the IMEI's in the database "Nexus 6" and take a look at the upcoming LG Flex 2 radios. You will notice that is covering basically the whole gambit of the US frequencies.

Except, of course, AWS WCDMA (UMTS band 4).

Try streaming 4k video with out the compression that tv uses and you will reach your throttle point in no time. Cell carriers don't have the compression codec that broadcasters have. One 2 hour movie in 4k uncompressed would make blue ray seem small.

Actually, no. It doesn't matter whether it is broadcasters or cell carriers, video is never delivered uncompressed anymore. Upcoming 4K content will be compressed with either VP9 or H.265, both of which can offer 4K video at roughly the same bit rate and size ratios as HD video with VP8 and H.264. Uncompressed digital video would take far more capacity than what a 6MHz channel can offer.

And incidentally, Blu-ray video is encoded the same way. 

shared drive

git blame

Name Game

here is a random question. does "T" in T-Mobile even mean? (seriously)

It originally meant "Telefon" (the German word for telephone), as Deutsche Telekom was the telephone company, but it later became "Telekom" (the German word for telecom) as DT branched out into more things (T-Mobile, T-Home, T-Com, T-Online, T-Ventures, etc.).

Blind man

Maybe I am confusing things I have read around here in the past, but isn't there a way to run a CDMA network on a GSM core? If there is, would that allow the seamless handovers?

You're referring to GSM1x. It could work, but then Sprint would have to turn off all EvDO, since it wouldn't be supported by it. Handover between the GSM1x system to the CDMA core to enable EvDO would create the same problems.

It also would force Sprint to move to SIM based authentication for its CDMA handsets, and older handsets would break, since the GSM1x system uses 3GPP authentication schemes.

Let us define what you mean by "PCM."  I doubt that you really mean PCM at 8 kbps.  What bit depth?  What sampling rate?  POTS quality PCM is 64 kbps -- 8 bit, 8 kHz. 

 

AJ

I meant 8 bit+8 kHz. I simply forgot that it wasn't also 8 Kbps. Still pretty crappy audio, though.

I know the other Tier 1 operators are all using AMR-WB for their VoLTE networks. I was referring only to interoperability with the bulk of Sprint's CCA partners, who have not yet deployed VoLTE. At this point, I believe they'll just move to EVS. It wouldn't be the first time Sprint goes their own way (see: EVRC-WB, domestic carrier device locking), but this time, it'll be the other T1 carriers who would be a step behind in the standards roadmap.

It's not just Tier 1 U.S. operators. It's everyone who is deploying VoLTE. That includes SoftBank, DoCoMo, KDDI, SK Telecom, LG U+, KT, Hutchison Telecom (d/b/a "3"), T-Mobile International, Vodafone, O₂, and others. They are also all preparing for EVS. It'll be easy for them to support the codec, but that won't matter if handsets don't quickly adopt it. It does help that EVS will work on GSM, WCDMA, and LTE, though.

I realize that PCM voice would probably suck, especially compared to what we're now accustomed to with HD Voice. My point is that unless it's actually painful or completely incomprehensible, it's still better than nothing. A 70% success rate is indeed horrible, but it's still greater than 0%. This would only apply in those few areas where B26 can't quite reach, and there's no Wi-Fi to hand off to, but there's still a weak yet usable CDMA signal (robust as 1x is) to grab on to. It would allow someone to at least finish up their call politely, rather than cutting it short unceremoniously. Depending on the final success rate, Sprint probably shouldn't advertise that handover will work, but it can be a small bonus and surprise for customers when it does.

 

Also, lower device cost is not the only benefit of eCSFB, but the various pros and cons of that have already been covered elsewhere.

 

PCM sucks compared to members of the AMR and EVRC codec families used over a decade ago. PCM is only just better than the first-generation codecs used in the earliest digital network systems. It is an awful codec to fall down to.

And actually, 70% is worse than 0%, because it reinforces an expectation that it should work. If it was 0%, then no one expects it to work, and thus, Sprint's churn rates can't get even worse from voice related problems.

Verizon Wireless, AT&T, T-Mobile US, and all other VoLTE network operators (like VTel, et al) are using the AMR-WB codec now, so anyone who wants to connect to those systems will need to have the codec anyway. So the AMR codec family absolutely will be supported.

PCM at 8kbps is pretty horrible. Too many artifacts to make sense of it, most of the time. Regardless of that, the success rate is too low relative to SRVCC between GSM/WCDMA and LTE and call continuity expectations by mobile voice users.

A 70% success rate is terrible, given that the current standard of success is well over 98%. Even a 85-90% success rate is considered unacceptable, and that's what we have now with CSFB from LTE to CDMA. The only reason it's even being done is because Sprint can't afford SV-LTE for Spark devices (because that makes them blatantly extremely custom devices).

I would imagine this is the main reason why it's taking Sprint so long to go public with their plans for VoLTE- They are working around the clock to get eSRVCC (and perhaps the reverse as well) to function reliably enough that they don't throw away all the gains Sprint has made over the last couple years in voice coverage & reliability. Verizon's LTE network is big enough (and their leaders arrogant enough) that they can afford to give up on getting handovers to CDMA to work. Sprint, justifiably, feels that they need to work on the problem more before they should give up entirely.

 

Other reasons for the delay may be that they're waiting for B26 POP coverage to get closer to that of B25 (especially if handover to CDMA remains iffy), and also for the finalization of the EVS codec and other features of 3GPP Release 12, which is expected to be frozen this March. If HD Voice is an inevitable casualty of the handover process, then they may as well move to the newer EVS for VoLTE, rather than sticking with EVRC-NW. On top of that, they have to ensure compatibility with all of their CCA partners. USCC, for their part, has said they'll have some test markets up this year. I expect we'll know much more by this summer.

EVRC-NW is not going to be supported for VoLTE ever. The 3GPP has indicated it has no intent to add support for the EVRC family, and 3GPP2 has fallen apart over the last 18 months (useful activity has dropped to nearly nothing these days). The only codecs supported for VoLTE at this time are EVS (in draft process now), the AMR codec family, the GSM codec family, and PCM. Potentially, Opus will be added in order to support interworking with WebRTC, which declares Opus as a "mandatory-to-implement" codec for the technology. If Sprint was to do VoLTE now, it'd have to use the AMR codec family to provide a high-quality voice service.

No, that is incorrect.

 

APC was limited to the PCS A block license for the Washington-Baltimore MTA that it was awarded prior to auction as part of the FCC's Pioneer's Preference program.  The one license was the full extent of APC.

 

In Seattle-Tacoma, which is a BTA, not an MTA, you may be thinking of Cook Inlet or WWC.  Those are T-Mobile's PCS 1900 MHz spectrum forebears in the market.

 

AJ

Ah, you're right. VoiceStream acquired CIVS I to bring that network into the fold for Seattle-Tacoma.