centermedic

 

 

Here's what is comes down to. Why is Verizon reluctant to give into the price wars? Why do they spout off about keeping a "premium brand" at every investor call? Because they have to. They collapse if they are making Sprint's margins.

I agree that Verizon has to maintain its margins but I would also argue that they simply want to keep them. They believe they have a premium brand and price accordingly. Other premium brands in other sectors rarely if ever engage in price wars with non-premium competitors. 

 

 

If there is a free market (where "free" means people have free choice between multiple equivalent competitors) then you could claim that consumers "reward" companies through their choice. But that's not the situation we are in today, a number of people pay for Verizon or AT&T not as a "reward", but because in their situation, they have little or no other choice except to take a drop in service quality/coverage/device selection, or abstain from wireless altogether. 

 

I suspect that you did not read that through because you just defined capitalism. The consumer has a choice. It just that some choices are more attractive then others. Even in the case of providing service where others do not and being the consumers lone choice for cellular, that company is still being rewarded by the consumer.

Have you looked at what happens when a country goes from 4 to 3? Prices rise. Lookup 3 Austria orange. Prices rose.

What guarantee do we have that the combined sprint tmobile will continue to be a maverick? Nothing.

We'll see in a few months in Germany what's gonna happen to prices now that Telefonica Deutschland has purchased eplus

The argument is whether the market can support four national providers. The market pretty much demanded the mergers that happened between 2000 and 2010. If those mergers did not happen then companies would have gone bankrupt and the remaining companies may not have had the capital to invest into their network. As painful as it may be for me to say, three healthy companies  benefits the customer in the long run. Four or even two fiscally sick companies will not benefit the customer in the long run.

Swallowing tmobile is the lazy way out of having to densify its own network.

That would make Verizon and AT&T lazy also.

Article is clear that $30k is prepayment for the $100k which will be eventually paid

Yes. You are not getting what I am saying. I included the 30k prepayment in the total 100k. But remember. It is a PREPAYMENT. Meaning that it does not affect your total liability. So in the grand scheme of things Sprint will be putting up 70k of the projected total cost of 100k.

It's $30k in prepayment for $100k s

Yes but as I said, I do not think the total cost will be 100k but that is the assumption so...

40k in equipment

30k in prepayments

and 30k in what we will call misc

Each of these is its own expense/liability line.

So the 30k in prepayment is totally independent from the 40k in equipment.

So the equipment is $40k but what's the extra $100k of construction costs?

Then there's additional labor?!?

40k in equipment and 30k in prepayment for 70k. The additional 30 k is probably for labor. There is also the possibility that the 30k prepayment is there to protect the vendor against cost overruns. I would go so far as to say that I don't think the average cost per site would be 100k.

I have a triband phone and a non triband tablet and my tablet keeps LTE more than my phone. My phone will drop the signal quicker than my tablet even when it's on B26 vs B25 on my tablet. Also my tablet will stay on 1x800 a lot more than my phone in weak areas, my phone is almost useless in the area I live BUT I would be able to make great calls IF my phone would stay on 1x800 instead of 1900. I have to wait to make calls or I miss them because of this when I have an 800 signal available that I could make clear calls and have much improved service but I hardly ever get it. Sprint needs to fix this.

You have a non triband tablet that can use 800?

Ok they'll sue but unless there's a clause enabling them to break the contract… tough luck.

 

 

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Sometimes it is easier and cheaper to settle.

1) Does the 60K include small cells?

2) Keep in mind Sprint doesn't exist in select markets (IE Virginias). This means that comparing the total number of sites doesn't prove greater density at all. It simply suggests that it's possible.

And this is why inference from data that is assumed to be correct can surprisingly be faulty. I would like to see the actual tower density of the other three national providers not just raw numbers.

At the least Sprint is meeting network targets, and word is spreading slowly that networks are improving. That helps, but I would also like to see Sprint start stripping the duopoly more, specifically AT&T.

I am a big advocate of this. I have held the belief that Big Blue is far more vulnerable then Big Red.

Sprint has to consider the "value" of keeping nearly all of the massive BRS/EBS 2600 MHz bandwidth to itself and away from competitors versus selling, profiting, and letting those same competitors help Sprint grow the band 41 domestic ecosystem.

 

AJ

As usual you have nailed it AJ. Any decision to sell or not sell any spectrum should be borne out strategic planning.

If that is true, it would be important to know by who and for what reason.

http://www.mobiletoday.co.uk/news/industry/28787/ee-and-vodafone-clash-over-rootmetrics-network-test.aspx

Take it for what its worth but there does seem to be a flaw in not standardizing the devices used for data acquisition. I know, it is probably not enough to materially change the data set. However, there is the appearance of favoritism. You should not peddle your results to the public AND sell them to corporations. Its a conflict of interest in my opinion. As much as I loath Consumer Reports, that is one of the few things they have gotten right.

It is easy. Look at rootmetric. you don't need first hand experience.

I think it is generally pretty fair to rank sprint down at the bottom of lte coverage and speeds in a great many markets. The key to sprint having a competitive network has always been the deployment of lte across all three bands (adding more cells would help too) and they are not even close to completing this. Until then sprint's network will continue to under perform the competition.

Not sure how you can make that observation unless you have first hand knowledge and experience in the 50 biggest markets. So much of what most folks know about other markets is based on anecdotal word of mouth information or clearly faulty data. Network performance tends to be variable to the point that it may perform poorly one minute and then gangbusters the next. A non biased well vetted data set over a sufficient amount of time and geographical area is the best bet to obtain an average level of performance for any given area and provider.

Well, 30k is their best quarter in years. You can't turn the ship around overnight. This is great news!

 

Get off the magenta bandwagon...

And in bigger news....If my math is correct then T-Mo failed to take over the third spot.

 

Edit: I would like to add a few more thoughts on what keeps me on the iOS side. First, iCloud. The fact that every aspect of my phone (messages, settings, wallpaper, alarms, wifi networks, apps, every single photo/video, and all of my music, etc.) are backed up, and retrievable under one single username/password. I can go buy a new phone today, and with one login, I have an exact clone of my last device. Google can't provide this. Maybe they can, and I just don't know about it, but it's a great security blanket. There's nothing worse than getting a new phone, and trying to remember how you had things setup before, and trying to replicate that. 

Most if not all of these things are backed up with google. The only things I am not sure about are wallpapers, alarms and wifi passwords.

Maybe it's just me then. I've never had more than 10 tabs open at once and when I do it's in the moment. Once I'm done I close all tabs anyway. However I have gone on my grandmother's phone and seen her have upwards of 20 tabs simply because she never closes them.

Sounds like me. Sometimes I keep tabs open because they are frequently used password protected websites tat will keep me logged in as long as the tab stays open.

I would think SoftBank would want to see return at some point, right?  I know they have a really long term vision, but Masa Son is constrained to the same capital markets requirements here as everyone else.  

Ali Baba!

I bet you if push came to shove Sprint could financially do it. 

I agree as long as the price tag is not ridiculous.

The CCA/RRPP should help with that, but implementation is going to take time. As much as it would be nice to buy USC, Sprint is so leveraged today they will need a few quarters of strong cashflow before being able to finance something like that. nTelos on the other hand...

As much as Sprint may not be able to afford to buy US Cellular, they absolutely cannot allow somebody else to buy it. US Cellular represents the last chance that Sprint has to significantly grow through acquisition and absorb a tech compatible user base.

I am glad you agree with me!! I think the only main reason AT&T and big reg Vzw has not budged is because there CEOs have been there for well over 5 years and I dont for see them changing anytime soon. AT&T I think is a little better then Vzw as in there seem to be noticing that being stubborn is not going to help them in the long run. One set of prices 2, 4, 5, 8,or even 10 years ago DO NOT reflect the ever so changing USA constant changes in prices of cost of living, minimum wage, etc. (thats not a good example but its what I could think of right now, lol).

Big Blue and Red are also still living off of the benefits of not building their networks but buying them. Thats not to say that they have not made a lot of smart network moves, because they have. But in the end it was faster, easier and perhaps cheaper to buy the network.

Yes I do agree with you on this, but we got to remember Hesse had a lot of success, it may of looked bad on him because of timing (He came in just after Nextel was bought, he tried Clearwire). I mean dont get me wrong some of his decisions went good (especially Clearwire) BUT in the END that gave us more spectrum just like Nextel did. It may of been a mess but look at where we are NOW, MUCH MUCH MUCH MUCH better position to compete. (Sprint has the most spectrum). 

 

 

I think Claure is already doing a much better job and cleaning things up, I personally think CEOs should only stay for 5 years (at least for the wireless industry). Look at how Legree changed T-mobile, and now look at Sprint. This is just what I think I know people will disagree with me. 

I think five years is reasonable in the wireless market. The tech and the market has changed so rapidly over the last ten years, that it makes it difficult to maintain a high level of success over an extended amount of time. I think Hesse was very good for Sprint, maybe even a savior. But his time had passed him by and it was time for a transformational leader versus a caretaker. I am still not convinced that Claure is that leader but the signs are promising.

Lets hope he does good first before getting ahead of ourselves....

For better or worse, he has his formula for success.

If the last non-Samsung branded phone you used was an EVO 3D (which I'm sure came out 4 years ago) how can you pass judgement on LG, Apple, and HTC. That doesn't seem right to me.

He likes Samsung, as hard as that is for some of us to believe.