jwang

Looks like we got some new Sprint stores popping up around here thanks to Radioshack going bye bye!

 

By Sac State

- 5650 FOLSOM BLVD SACRAMENTO CA 95819

 

By Greenhaven / Pocket Area & interstate 5... very close to me! woo! No need to drive to... stockton blvd... (ugh!)

- LAKE CREST VILLAGE SC 1012 FLORIN RD SACRAMENTO, CA 95831

 

Inside West Sac Ikea

- 767 IKEA CT STE 100 W SACRAMENTO CA 95605

Are these stores converted from radioshack stores?

At&t screwed up cricket by getting rid of all the things that helped us low income people. They no longer have bridge pay and now charge late fees if you can't pay your bill. Not to mention text messaging gets shut off if you can't pay your bill. You used to get texting for an extra month if you couldn't pay. Also at&t doesn't work well in my area. I was having as much trouble making and receiving calls on the at&t network as I am now on t mobile. I went 3 years on the old CDMA cricket service with zero dropped calls and only had to deal with not connecting calls 1% of the time (and old cricket would actually tell you the circuits are busy, at&t gives you dead air). At&t was terrible and I refuse to go back. I'm trying to find a carrier as reliable and cheap as old cricket but doesn't involve the duopoly

All ATT want to do is to keep Cricket spectrum and its CDMA network away from Sprint. ATT doesn't really care about Cricket customers.

You are absolutely right.  It's one of those things that seems good in concept form, but if it did happen and blow up in Sprint's face, we would all be saying, "That was stupid!  Of course they were going to complain about Sprint service after trying it!  What were they thinking???"

 

Sprint just needs to pull a rabbit out of the hat and get B25/B26/B41 completed at every site in 2015.  Including GMO sites.  It is possible.  It will be expensive.  But it will be worth it.

Getting 3 bands on every site is not enough, we need have the monster like China Mobile to team up with Sprint to add 200,000 sites into the coverage map for 1st round and another 200,000 sites to put coverage in every office building in top 10 metro and all elevators in top 5 metro and all subways and all shopping malls.

That's the answer of China Mobile gave to all doubts about the 2500mhz LTE in their monster roll out from last year. They are adding 2nd 200,000 sites in China now. You won't have any problem about penetration and less coverage on 2500mhz because you will have micro sites to cover major office buildings in all top metros including elevators over there.

But FCC just doesn't want to have the consumers here have a strong NO.3 to compete with twin bells.

Lancaster is in the Central PA market and has been deployed pretty well with Sprint LTE bands.  We have schedules available for the Central PA market in the Premier Sponsor thread.

Harrisburg and York are in Shentel hands. And we know they did a great job to roll out LTE.

Lancaster is in the hands of Alcatel but it has priority focus on Philly or Allentown. Sometimes I hope Lancaster will be assigned to Shentel to deploy LTE.

It will end up with bigger advantage in Verizon and ATT.

I can't imagine what the 600mhz auction will be. Maybe it will top 100 Billion.

No subsidy will negatively impact high end sales, at least a bit.. No reason for me not to buy a new flagship phone for $200 under the current model, but if that goes away, devices like the Nexus 5 or used phones will start to look way more attractive than making monthly payments on a $700 phone. 

FCC is the one to blame for all the mass in US market.

In many country, the spectrum was assigned in a much better way. So telecoms sell service and third parties sell phones. And phones can switch network by just switching sim card. In US, phones are locked to certain network when they were manufactured.

Even ATT/TMOBILE phones can switch to each other's networks, but Verizon/Sprint won't.

All in all, FCC did a great job in last decade.

Last week, one of Sprint's Presidents sold a bunch of his stock:  http://www.wkrb13.com/markets/424743/sprint-insider-sells-331091-in-stock-s/

 

He is either an idiot for selling at $4.78 near the 52-week low, or he realistically sees further trouble ahead.

Insider transaction didn't necessarily mean what may happen to the company. PCS has its president/CEO/high Execs sold tons of shares before those shares got transformed to TMUS shares. We all knew if they keep them their share value will be more than doubled in 2013. But they did it for some other reason or someone told them to do so.

And I don't think softbank will buy out S shareholders to take S private. If anyone remembered how much trouble Tmobile had to buy PCS, taking it to private will bring all those sharks like Paulson/Cooperman to fight Softbank for higher bid. Why spend the big money they can invest on network to feed those mutual fund?

So you spend $480 and at the end of 2 years you don't own the phone? That's seems like a poor financial decision. You can go on eBay today and buy a new in box clean esn s5 for $420 or less and own it. In 2 years if you want a new phone you can sell the s5 and probably get $200 for it.

Not a plan for everyone. There are people who have no interest and time to deal with ebay to save $200 over 2 years.

Sounds like Midtown Manhattan in NYC. If Sprint managed to do that throughout the entire city, they'd have no competition. The problem is, that's expensive.

In US, just NYC/CHICAGO need this kind of density. So it won't be too crazy for them.

In Japan, they may have 10 cities need this kind of deployment.

But their current priority should be deployment of 8T8R in big metros and B26 across the nation.

Many of them are provisioned the same backhual speed as the 5 mhz carriers so they mostly top out at 40mbps as 5mhz FDD tops out at ~37 mbps.

 

The backhaul providers will be busy delivering more bandwith for the new carriers soon enough. It'll be much easier this time as they're mostly fiber based or other types of easily scalable backhaul. There's already a number of sites starting to hit 60-80 mbps after it was turned on and initially provisioned 40 mbps. 

My question is does Sprint pay backhaul vendors by fiber bandwidth? Otherwise why don't lay down the top bandwidth from beginning.

Based on Q2 earnings report I actually see sprint adding customers this quarter but not a crazy amount of customers. I'm thinking 150-200k including tablets.

 

Hopefully we learn more about carrier aggregation, Volte and the rural alliance program (deployment)

The network upgrade should be the other focus next to the price competition.

Sprint needs an aggressive/nasty network chief to accelerate the NV roll-out speed. The culture in their KC headquarter should be transformed to be aggressive and mean. The new management team has to remind the workers there repeatedly they need work harder otherwise the company will be out of business. The environment was just too comfortable when Hesse was there.

At the end Marcelo let us see some hope there.

T-Mobile earnings are out.  http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/media-kits/t-mobile-us-reports-third-quarter-2014-results.htm

 

The jist: 250pops LTE covered, 2.3mil net adds, 52.9mil total.

 

I wanna see Sprint post modest numbers for net adds and Legere get stuck with his foot in his mouth about T-Mobile surpassing Sprint by the end of the year.

Sprint may report loss of customers again but it could be modest. And it could be the last quarter before it turns to net addition of customers from 4th quarter this year.

Commercial won the attention but the price point will win the business. If Sprint can keep the edge of price over Tmobile, it will turn positive on customer base in the 4th quarter for sure.

Tmobile result came in with nice figures.

But it could be the peak of their momentum then there is downturn waiting for it.

Marcelo turned Sprint aggressive to compete on price to crackdown Tmobile on price point from late Sep. We shall see everything to be clear in 4th quarter. They really should abandon the Tmobile merger plan and spend the merger budget on network from 1st half of this year. But all in all, Marcelo is the right pick and Sprint is on the right track now.

There is really only one reason to go for the lease, and that comes down to living above your financial means, you simply can't afford the extra ~$50 down and $7 a month for easy pay (or putting it on a credit card).

 

That, and you don't care about paying for 3/4 or more of something and not keeping it.

I think all of us are different from each other more or less.

Selling the old one to pay for the new one ($649 of the basic 16GB iPhone 6), compared to pay $480 (for basic model of 16GB iPhone 6) in two years for lease and get another one with same deal. To some people there is not a big difference.

The iPhone for life plan won't be liked by everyone as no plan will be. But surely it will bring a lot of customer as it is easy to understand and simple.

And it is an option for the people in US. In China and Japan they don't have this kind of deal. I would bet that at least 5% of the 600 million users of China Mobile would appreciate this kind of deal for iPhone. It is equal to 30 million users.

btw I will stick with the galaxy note series as this is the best for me.

It's the first time I was really impressed with Sprint, if it's going to be like this once everything is complete I can't imagine Verizon and AT&T being number 1 for long. Sprint does have the most spectrum.

If they can add another 3000 sites for top 30 markets from 2015, that will close the gap of coverage a lot. Definitely they can beat Tmo for sure with additional sites counted in.

they are cutting prepaid to $35 a month for 1GB data today.

Tmo is not going to get their price edge this time.

I agree with you about $45 for 3GB unsubsidized or $60 for 2GB subsidized (Verizon).

Verizon rolled out 2GB $60 subsidized plan in order to tackle Sprint/Tmo.

Sprint $60 unlimited unsubsidized is not enough to counter attack. Marcelo is waiting Legere announces something new at their Sep.10th uncarrier event then Sprint can hit Tmo and big two in once. I believe Sprint won't skip the chance of capped data options for individual plans.

That's why I put it in quotes. You cant tell me that Big Red and the Death Star have not colluded. They just don't put it down on paper.

I agree. Just like no pharma company wants to make a medicine to cure cancer completely because all of them and hospitals/doctors/insurance companies will make much less money if a cancer patient took pills and going back to health. A lot of money can be made if the patient spent last 2 years going through many operations and medicines before death coming. There is really no incentives to make a medicine to cure cancer completely for general public there.

I think Legere made a tactical mistake in going after Sprint. 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.

Actually while competing with each other both Tmo and Sprint are competing with Verizon / ATT aggressively.

Sprint new plans are for every one. Especially the $60 unlimited plan for those Verizon / ATT customers who don't travel much but need more than 6GB a month is very attractive, if Sprint has a good coverage and speed where those customers live and work.

I would seriously give a thought to switch my other line from Verizon to Sprint, if Sprint gives out a capped 3GB individual plan for $45. I really don't need unlimited data and use around 2GB every month. I pay $70 some a month for 6GB to Verizon under contract. I have no problem to pay my phone upfront or monthly.

The Magentans are not yet acknowledging that DT is looking to sell. Even when they acknowledge that they are selling, they doubt the rationale, as in why would they want to sell now that T-Mobile is doing so well. I keep telling them that they are buyin customers and it is expensive and there are auctions soming up and upgrades of the rest of the network, but they don't want to hear it.

Sprint has very clear strategy from the day they dropped the merger plan.

They are pressing down the margin and turn-around the growth of T-mobile. It brings concerns of potential buyers of T-mobile. It means any potential buyer of T-mobile has to change their business case and re-do the financial analysis.

In mean time, Sprint is preparing more exotic phone line-up by bringing sharp and sony into its offering this fall.

Sprint is working to make both device and network more attractive to users.

T-mobile is sending invitation of their uncarrier event scheduled on Sep.10th. I guess T-mobile tries so hard in past weeks to respond in order to make Sprint stop escalating the price war. The event on Sep.10th must give even better offer.

However, they underestimate determination of Softbank to make no one dare to buy T-mobile. That's why Marcelo has not given out any capped data plan for individuals after the $60 unlimited was announced. Softbank/Sprint are waiting for T-mobile to react. Then give them another hammer.

Without the need to buy T-mobile, Softbank has a lot of money to help Sprint grow its subscriber. We may see 4th quarter as first quarter to have net growth in post-paid smartphone users.

are they working on 2nd carrier of B25 in the city?

Sprint should consider to throw out individual plans of $40 / $45 / $50 for 3.5GB / 4.5GB / 5.5GB.

Except it will take care of the rest of Tmobile data tiers after Sprint almost destroy Tmo's unlimited plan, those who consider the Verizon $60 2GB plan or big two's 3GB/5GB plans will find out Sprint give more data and in mean while can save them $10 or more a month.

Sometimes 3GB or 5GB data is just a number, many ATT/VERIZON customers like me not even use more than 2GB a month. But people will consider to switch if they found hey I can get at least 50% more data and smaller bill. So release the kraken so it will start pull customers from all major competitors to switch to Sprint. I believe Sprint is waiting for big two to react before they throw out more individual plans. But if big two choose to wait and see, Marcelo may choose bring out new plans right before iPhone 6 announcement.

And at the end, they also need run that promotion to pay ETF of those new customers to help them switch to Sprint. That will for sure pull customers in but it will hurt their wallet also.

Really, 1x? Sprint has pretty much 0 1x outdoors unless you are on the edge of signal. But then again, you are on an iPhone. Today, I went to the movies with a friend and his iPhone 5S (on Sprint) got stuck on Extended 3G whereas my M8 switched back to native 3G and then Band 41.

Hope Iphone6 get tri-band radios this time. (even I never want to own an Iphone but hope they can bring iphone users to tri-band asap).

and I'd assume much more density which would need more towers, no?

The density of sites in China is much higher, considering the population density is very high too.

I'm tellin' you guys, these Straight-Up plans are the way to go.. $20/30/40/50 /mo/line, depending on how much, if any, mobile data is needed. No more price discrimination between individual and family/group plans- KISS.

 

Looks like Sprint is going to first try asking another ~$10 over that though, while still charging extra for any tethering. I guess we'll soon find out if the public deems that "disruptive" enough.

When you have a good network, or even improving one, the $45 for 3GB data is good enough as a start. And $55 for 5GB.

Those who looking for cheaper plan can go to prepaid. Sprint may react soon to tackle Tmobile $45 for 2GB plan.