ajm8127

Meanwhile at home in York, PA, I'm hard pressed trying to pull anything over 1.5 mbps at home so I'm hoping at least 7 those 125 B41 Sites are in York.

Before the nTelos acquisition, I believe Harrisburg and York were the biggest markets in terms of POPs in the Shentel network. Unfortunately, Sprint did a really poor job in areas like York, Lebanon and Carlisle and when Shentel took over the network they had an uphill battle.

Even with Morgantown and Roanoke, I doubt Shentel will let CPA slide because of the growth potential there. Expect not only 2 carriers of B41 on most of the existing sites in York city, expect new sites as well with the three existing 5 MHz LTE carriers plus at least 2 B41 carriers.

I don't think Shentel is trying to be anything less than the best carrier in the areas they serve.

 See Page 4. 

Thanks for that. I was unable to listen to the call this morning.

That 125 number for the legacy network is likely a result of current market penetration and data demand. As those metrics increase I would be unsurprised to see that number of sites increase as well. Central PA is a very under penetrated market for Shentel, compared to their penetration in the Shenandoah Valley (something like 4x less penetrated in CPA). Also I expect them to equip almost all new sites built for capacity with B41.

Another thing to remember is there are a lot of cows and corn in areas Shentel covers, so picking and choosing which sites get B41 instead of carte blanche deploying TDD makes a lot of sense.

I am just excited to see 50 sites. It will make a huge difference in network performance. You can do a lot with three well balanced 5MHz carriers, but it is still only 15 MHz. I almost can't fathom what 40 or 60 additional MHz will be like on top of what Shentel already has.

It is an exciting time to live in Shentel land.

The way I read all the releases yesterday is that Sprint gets all nTelos spectrum in the deal, not Shentel. So Shentel would not be able to sell AWS, if that's accurate. But Sprint might sell or trade AWS. Or they may use it. As you state, I'm sure there is demand out there for it. It's quite possible that Shentel's own B41 deployment could get slowed down with the nTelos distraction. And I guess it would be naive of me to say it won't. But I do believe Shentel will make the best decisions possible given their limited resources. I fully expect them to keep trucking on in their existing footprint as best as they can. They will manage to work in their existing areas and new areas to the extent possible. They may have to bring in some more people to manage the plan.

I do not believe Shentel has the necessary licenses to actually own spectrum. What Shentel gets is 225 million over five to six years, which could be viewed as compensation for the spectrum.

I could not image this acquisition will slow down Shentel's B41 deployment. If anything it will have the opposite effect. nTelos owned the BRS 2.5 spectrum from around Winchester south to Harrisonburg among other areas, and now that Shentel will be handing it over to Sprint, Shentel should be able to deploy multiple 20 MHz B41 carriers in those areas, plus all others where Sprint controls the BRS spectrum.

There is a ton of growth potential in Central PA for Shentel and they know this. They also know they are behind the eight ball with LTE spectrum having only three 5 MHz carriers in all markets, granted their hands are a bit tied by Sprint. B41 deployments will proceed full steam ahead - they have to. Otherwise the LTE network will practically collapse in on itself. Goals are set at around 10% of the network by the end of 2015.

Also, Shentel's HQ is in Edinburg, not Harrisonburg. Not that I am complaining, this site is fantastic.