greenbastard

They've actually done more upgrades and tower additions in Texas after the merger was announced.

Don't forget California's Public Utilities Commission.

You're lucky. Houston is getting monstrosities that look like this. They're popping up in the most random locations (in front of people's yards, businesses, schools). They're not even trying to be discreet by using better stealth set-ups. A few people are mad that they're showing up in historic neighborhoods. In some cases, they're putting two of these right next to each other; one facing one side of the street and the other facing the opposite. Heck, I've even seen a T-Mobile small cell get co-located with an At&t small cell! It's nice that T-Mobile is moving very quick in deploying these small cells. But at some point, they're going to piss off the wrong old lady that loves to show up to City council meetings 😂.

Now the announcement is being delayed until Friday by the DoJ according to Charles Gasparino. Something tells me there is either an issue with the states or the DoJ is trying to figure out how to handle the "Charter" leak.

Google Fiber in San Antonio was merely a tease.

He can probably weasel his way into the old One Plus Promo for free too if he asks nicely.

This is a terrible idea for various reasons. For starters B26 is mostly congested, so once you get to -118 to -119 RSRP, you're probably better off falling to PCS EVDO (which is slightly more robust than LTE 800 MHz and less congested). Second, VoLTE can start experiencing hiccups around -117 RSRP (a lot of it depends on the device). Once you get to -120, you're going to be screaming "can you here me now?" just like in the old days. UEs can't function properly with the parameters you've suggested.

Interestingly enough, T-Mobile has started to add B71 to a lot of towers around the Houston Metro area. I'm assuming a lot of their towers will have to be remodeled since the B71/B12 panels are beafy (4x4 MIMO). Most of their towers already have 4x4 PCS/AWS split sectors, so space and weight are probably an issue. Meanwhile, Sprint continues to disappoint me. Their towers are not spaced for the 2.5 GHz band around here. The massive MIMO panels didn't do much to improve their 2.5 GHz coverage. The network is still a Swiss cheese style network where speeds go from 100+ Mbps in one block to <1 Mbps in the next. If they aren't going to densify, then they need to split sectors and add 4x4 MIMO. The original NV radios and antennas are outdated by today's standards.

Is this the same guy with the terrible track record?

Better to have one carrier with lower prices than two. They're not against the merger at all.

I don't know where y'all got this idea that At&t and Verizon are lobbying against the merger. They're not. This merger is good for them.

ENDC. And let's not pretend that 5G was the reason Sprint didn't deploy their entire 2.5-2.6 GHz spectrum. It was a wasted opportunity at showing amazing DL speeds during the 4G era.

I hope not. IMO, the Magicbox has been the product of Sprint further wasting spectrum. They should have deployed all of it by now. T-Mobile should just move forward with their Cellspot option on B4.

I'm going to go ahead and say yes. All the 5G markets currently have VoLTE. So falling back to LTE for phone calls seems like the logical thing to do.

I guess Sprint wants to see the reaction from the media/customers before announcing anything concrete. If there is an extra charge for 5G on old plans, I'd be shocked.

Then I don't get what you're trying to say.

This has been my experience as well. Small Cells are not a good way of filling coverage holes (particularly for B41 and indoor coverage). Small Cells are only useful for balancing congestion. Take T-Mobile as an example. They added Macro sites to fill weak coverage areas where you would lose LTE. Afterwards, they looked at all their congested sectors and added small cells as a form of relief. They mostly focused on areas with high concentrations of people (apartments, shopping centers, schools, etc.) and speeds have improved. They still have a long way to go, but their strategy is, hands down, the best way of tackling both coverage and congestion.

I assumed it was a given that when we talked about "Urban", we also meant suburban America. For the purpose of this discussion, suburbs and downtown areas are all "urbanized" areas while a site on I-10 near Sonora, TX is rural. Sorry for the confusion.

https://s4gru.com/?app=core&module=system&controller=content&do=find&content_class=forums_Topic&content_id=7845&content_commentid=542352 You should be a bit more articulate and consistent in your discourse.

They would still need to densify with new macro towers to fill gaps. Small cells aren't going to cut it I have not seen Sprint add a macro tower since pre-NV days in Texas. Small cells are no good for filling gaps due to their limited range and indoor usability. Small cells are only good for fighting congestion in small shopping centers, schools, or apartments.

Like I said, that's not how the wireless industry works. Most spending already happens in urban areas. To suggest that half of Sprint's CAPEX should go towards rural areas for one year is a terrible strategy.

That's not a solution. In this industry, you can't just spend one year and hope that's good enough for the next few years. That's not how this works. Doing what you're suggesting is the exact reason why Sprint is in the hole they are in to begin with. After NV 1.0, they left a lot of sites untouched in major urban areas and congestion crept up to them. B41 is great, but due to its coverage limitations Sprint needed to densify it's network. They didn't. And it bit them in the butt. You need consistent CAPEX in order to compete and gain customers (and keept those customers).

Tesla isn't Sprint though.

Their coverage is so exaggerated that it's almost criminal. Having said that, T-Mobile has done a lot of rural work since 2012. It's gotten to the point where they have much superior rural network than Sprint does in Texas. Sprint's only saving grace is Verizon CDMA roaming. But once that goes away, Sprint will be stuck with a skinny voice network (unless they find a way to bring VoLTE to older handsets or allow WCDMA roaming).

There's no way to refute this without getting a bit political, so I won't do that. But what I will say is that 5G is very important for our economy. I really hope the merger happens as it seems like SoftBank has hit a dead end. It's gotten to the point where they can't even give the service away for free.