jbom

TMUS yesterday upgraded their Q4 2014 projections to fully 1.2 million postpaid net adds, from 939,000. 700Mhz is officially live in 4 cities. it's live here in Fort Lauderdale too but not everywhere.

Moody's meanwhile threw a dagger at Sprint with tonight's announcement, the agency now rates Sprint bonds as junk level with possibility of default.

From the Q3 statement:

250 mil LTE pops covered

260 million by 2014 year end estimated

300 million goal by 2015 year end

Wideband LTE is in 19 markets, aiming for at least 26 by end of 2014.

40 markets have LTE on PCS 1900, and growing

 http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/issues-insights-blog/company-news/t-mobile-lte-now-reaches-250-million-americans-months-ahead-of-schedule.htm

$25 will be a way station on the way lower. Part of it will be the stock market adjustment. It will go lower because Sprint will finally get their shit together. Barring any further market exuberance I am predicting it will settle around $17 before bouncing back to $20. Then we will have a republican administration and Sprint will try to absorb them again, but not before the 600MHz auction.

Price targets for TMUS are up to $40, with a $37 consensus and 11 analysts rating the stock a strong buy. EPS consensus is 0.05.

It's normal for the stock to go down, especially as shorts kicked in the last few days and weeks. The NASDQ itself is down almost 9% from a month ago , TMUS is down 15% up today 1.50%, as is the NASDAQ. 

Moved from a Motorola to a Zoom 5341J and am pretty happy, aside from the fact I have to constantly type my password to log in. Other than that no issued

It's OK guys. People on the TMUS side are getting tired of the act. Maybe not the results, which Jim Allchin or Neville Ray would have also been able to replicate if they were CEO. Definitely the act. I know Legere already pissed off a bunch of female employees with his mysogynistic comments at the Uncarrier event in Seattle. I hope DT's board is paying attention.

you know all this how? The PC squad harped and hollered, got what they wanted, then moved on to the next thing

Installed it yesterday. Turned off the start menu and went back to start screen   ... Used to hate the start screen now I'd rather have it, think I'm too lazy to re-map my brain again.

So far so good, caught a couple of bugs but it's running solid

Did I miss Windows 9?

there are apps that perform a Windows 9* search, so they skipped to 10 for compatibility reasons, allegedly

Lol. Good thinking Johnny

 

@JohnLegere: You know our 4x100 w/ 10GB LTE offer? Yeah, it’s no longer expired. #rundontwalk

 

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

the 4/100GB offer was extended around September 25th, around the time at&t announced the double data promo they changed the expiration to 10/28. 

that could very well be possible (and likely), that apple does not allow carriers to discount devices.

 

But that would seem counter to pretty much every retail item where the retailer controls the product pricing vs the 'suggested retail price'.

 

sounds like of like the price fixing apple did on the ebooks market.

it's actually legal. Most TV manufacturers have a set price and authorized dealers are not allowed to sell or advertise below it.

Funny how they have been wanting to sell and now its their only growing asset??? I can understand the Softbank deal as it was sweeter but I have the feeling DT might not accept.

 TMUS has been a positive asset for DT for a while now, it didn't just happen overnight

At the same time, Deutsche Telekom board members are split over whether the German carrier should sell its only growing asset, said two of the people.

 

[...] 

 

Deutsche Telekom may wait until after the Nov. 13 frequency auction before committing to a strategic decision on T-Mobile, the people said.

From: http://www.businessweek.com/news/2014-09-19/xavier-niel-s-iliad-said-to-face-hurdles-in-t-mobile-bid

The sale does not have to be to Iliad -- though I drew that obvious connection earlier in this thread.  It is just that the Wi-Fi router program would create some unexpected synchronicity with Free Mobile.

 

Regardless, all of this "un-carrier" handing out of candy is a short term ploy to increase subscriber numbers.  I do not know how anyone can rationally see it any other way.  It is not sustainable long term.  T-Mobile is spending more and more per sub to acquire and retain.  In that way, Magenta is like the Denver Broncos, which are doubling down on Peyton Manning's rapidly closing window, spending accordingly like there is no tomorrow.  In another season or two, Manning will be gone, left behind will be a salary cap graveyard, and the Broncos will be awful.  That, too, is T-Mobile.  Live for today, then stick the new management with the bill down the road.

 

AJ

Where did you read T-Mobile is spending more per sub to acquire and retain? Not every customer who switches to T-Mobile comes with a $350 ETF. Quite the contrary.

They are all trying to add customers, growth is never going to be what it was. Even Verizon is running promos, they gave away free tablets on 2 year contract and only had 340k in net post paid phone adds. 

Besides, giving data away is trivial compared to slashing the cost of the plans. In the 2Q 2014 report T-Mobile's cost of services was $1.4B for the three months ending June 30. Selling, general and administrative is $2.151B vs $1.847B Q2 2013. And the more customers they add the more spread out their costs become per user. 

For what it's worth, they're selling it to anyone outright for $99, at least on the website. So the question you have to ask yourself is whether saving $100+ on a top-end router is worth letting T-Mobile folk leach some of your bandwidth for voice calls on occasion.

 the router is not an open spot where any T-Mobile customer can place calls.

Sprint is most definitely not as good as Verizon (who have their own issues). If they were, they wouldn't have lost customers in the last 27 out of 28 quarters. That's going back to 2007-2008, 6 years of almost consecutive losses! I have friends in Dallas who moved to Sprint in early-ish 2012 from T-Mobile, and are now leaving again because of coverage issues. 

For me in South Florida coverage has never been better, the difference from early 2012 is huge. The towers near me however are not wide band yet, just AWS 10x10 and there's no 4x2 yet so upgrades are most definitely not yet complete. And since only rich neighborhoods get upgraded according to you, then work must still be going on because T-Mobile's the towers is right next to the multi-million dollar mansions

At the Goldman conference today Neville said they've acquired 9 million more pops of 700Mhz. He also said that he heard the 600Mhz auction may get pushed to 2016. 

I'm still having the most difficult time believe the edge to LTE conversion time schedule Legere has quoted in the past. Is it feasible that they can have their sites converted that fast....including having backhaul installed.

Because they're not ripping the equipment out, only what needs replacement. LTE will run using the antennas already on the tower

So in other words, anywhere outside of dense areas where LTE is prevalent, your call will drop.

 

Ok thanks!

Volte on tmobile hands off to HSPA+ and its seamless. In 9 months the network will be majority lte anyway

That can't be true....

CTO Neville Ray's words at 01:01:00 from the Q&A: " [...] You can seamlessly hand off to that WiFi environment. It's very new ... You heard form the Apple guys what they're doing. They're the first to move with us on that capability"

WiFi called tonight with my partner while he was leaving work. The voice quality was just incredible, he sounded better than a Skype to Skype call. It was as if he was in the room with me. 

True which could be the while reasoning of "uncarrier" attract a buyer, then jack up rates, cause not everyone can leave and be stuck with several hundred dollars of phone cost left.

Lol where do you pull these opinions out of? Jack up rates... god 

I am sure Son studied T-Mobile's books very carefully and is now able to make better decisions how to fight them.

SSon can use that inside knowledge to Sprint's advantage

I doubt Son has seen financials beyond what's in 10-Q. The books only get opened upon a formal offer, and even then with an iron non-disclosure agreement probably. He'd be stupid to open himself to such a liability 

Yea I know was just saying. Never said sprint isn't losing money. However I believe that Sprint has big potential for long term as for T-Mobile has no cash infusion and is in a tough spot since DT wants to leave the US market.

Not like DT is showering TMUS with cash even now. They are used to taking all the profit back to Bonn, not giving it back

TMo's Q2 profit was entirely due to a one-time sale of spectrum. They showed an operating loss for the quarter.

Yeah because... 700Mhz spectrum doesn't come cheap, neither does LTE. Or EDGE upgrades after years of neglect. Some equipment is said to be 10 years old, old T-Mobile management ran everything on the cheap while all the billions went to Germany

[...] In fact Sprint and T-Mo should have had a "no compete" agreement and gone after Verizon and AT&T either together or separate. Unfortunately, Legere favors style over substance.

uh that would be collusion, and it's highly illegal.

I would have liked to see Sprint and T-Mobile merge networks. That might still be in the cards now that the IRS says it treats network assets as real estate. Both can spin their networks into a new entitiy, get tax benefits from it and reduce CAPEX. Especially for Sprint which would need to have a denser network than even TMUS with that 2.5Ghz

Of course we have an utterly stupid and inept FCC which allows AT&T and Verizon to dominate low-band spectrum so that also doesn't help. 

Everyone is buying customers at this point, growth has stalled. Verizon propped its numbers up for the second quarter by giving away free tablets on 2 year contract then went tadaa look at our numbers, yet their phone adds were barely 350k.

All carriers can do now is poach users from each other. That or everyone starts having more seks so in 18 years there would be a fresh influx of new customers

I think if you polled 10 tmo fan boys, 11 would say tmo is doing amazing and shouldn't sell.

Well I'm magenta, but you have to be under a rock to not see it. The previous T-Mobile US management had shit for brains, so they painted themselves into a corner and gave up when AT&T came calling with a fat $39b check. When that failed they had to do something. Good thing Hoettges had the presence of mind to take advantage of AT&T's arrogance and get them to agree to the breakup deal.

I think under different circumstances Deutsche Telekom would not be in a hurry to ditch T-Mobile, it is one of their best performing units, if not the best, however ... the German government is pushing for spectrum auctions this year and ignored pleas for a delay until 2018 from the telecoms - it's auctioning off new spectrum and I believe also renewals that were originally supposed to expire in 2016. So Deutsche Telekom has to participate whether it wants to or not. In previous years they would just repatriate T-Mobile US profit to Germany but now with Legere cleaning up years of shoddy management they can't do it.

And it's not like DT are great at managing the operations. For the success BMW, VW and others are having Deutsche Telekom has dropped the ball repeatedly, their UK operations didn't turn out so well good thing Orange played ball.

Also, O2 and E-Plus just merged to create the largest wireless carrier in Germany with 44 million users so DT missed on that opportunity as well, they are now second and will have to contend with a new 4th entrant soon.

I hope that shuts off some people that DT was not looking to sell. Really?

some people who? DT is looking to sell. They're not doing well in Europe. One of their competitors in Germany just merged so DT needs all the money it can scrounge up for network upgrades and mergers while they still can

close. There's a drive to shrink the amount of wireless carriers of which there are many in Europe, to something like what the US has - 4 national carriers, operating across the European continent in every country. It's already happening somewhat with DT and others buying up companies in Czech republic and elsewhere

I agree. I think that is the only way that Sprint or T-Mobile will be able to survive long term. They need comparable coverage to AT&T and Verizon or else it's only a matter of time before the big two decide to cut prices and put T-Mobile and Sprint out of business.

Price cutting might not be sustainable for VZ and at&t either, given their obligations and other expenses they have to adhere to. A mere $5 price break for Verizon customers every month, would take out about $6 billion a year in revenue.

To get on the level of T-Mobile, Verizon would have to give up many more billions of revenue. And their balance sheet isn't exactly peachy with $240b in debt and all.

Son/Softbank will be able to swim through a Scrooge McDuck-sized vault of money shortly after Labor Day with the Alibaba IPO.

 

http://recode.net/2014/08/27/alibaba-revenue-jumps-on-strong-china-demand/

You make it sound like he's going to sell his stock to prop Sprint up. He was allegedly borrowing money for the T-Mobile from banks through Sprint itself so doubtful it would just rain paper all of a sudden.

Then there's that whole thing about income and dividend taxes, personal exposure and that pesky corporate veil protection to worry about.

not sure but where some of my family live they have the exact same cabling right across the road and it's fiber. Don't take it to mean you're getting fiber to the home, though you never know