red_dog007

Fiercewireless article states that where VZW may not have 850 license, VZW will use PCS or AWS for DSS.

It is enough coverage to hit 200M pops so there is that. Seems more important and gets VZW up there into AT&T/TMobile in terms of covered people. Plus these sites likely have been getting strong builds to where VZ needs it to keep their LTE strong.

https://www.verizon.com/coverage-map/ Any ideas what they are doing? 10x10 DSS on 850MHz?

It can't be too much of a disaster. The only requirement for TMobile is to send you an LTE modem rather than a cell phone. All the carriers are doing this. I just wish they were more transparent in the WISP coverage. Right now it is yes/no based on your address. It would be nice to also have the ability to request a site review (say a couple houses over gets it but you don't). I also hope that carriers put effort behind it. I hope it encourages them to do fuller builds and fuller upgrades.

Yeah, maybe after the iPhone 12 is released we can see more spectrum transition to 5G, or see widespread DSS.

Yeah, I've been waiting for this to happen. Surprised it has taken so long. But then I also wonder what the site requirements are to be part of this and what areas this is actually available in.

IMO I say look at AT&T or VZW MVNOs if you can't do TMobile. Sprint is going to be moved as rapidly as possible to really only be a network that supports calls and text. All TMobile needs to keep the Sprint network up and phones running is 800MHz. If that is all you need and get by with < 3GB of data, then sticking with a Sprint MVNO should be cool. In these cases though I'd be concerned with how rapidly TMobile forces MVNO hands to shift networks when it is their turn and how agressive TMobile is in forcing their hands.

I'm not surprised with this. Or VZW outcome. Really only need those 40MHz in urban markets. Im a bit surprised with Dish though. They bought a license in almost every single county averaging 17.5MHz ownership. They went freaking nationwide. Why the heck wouldn't they use these millions of say deploying their network. They are still more interested in making a slick portfolio but not deploying it. I wouldn't be surprised if in the next 5 years Verizon buys Dish or even sooner.

Well they bought it under Shenandoah Cable Television, LLC so TMobile won't be getting it. Shentel last year bought a 2.5GHz license for fixed wireless. Likely what they are gonna do with CBRS.

I think I discovered why my signal (TMobile) was barely one bar for a little while. Picked up B41 on TMobile. It is just a single 20MHz carrier at 2600MHz. Premerger Sprint wasn't using this block. It was something like 2628 to 2668.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/dish-marks-progress-5g-network-build States that Dish is looking to launch one market by end of year. Wonder which city this will be.

Well, if they can entice people to get new phones over the next 3 years with a fantastic 5G network, I think this could go a long way to get users off phones that can't essentially forever roam on TMobile's network as well as grabbing customers from VZW/ATT. As TMobile reduces the amount of spectrum on B25/41 users could get frustrated at slower speeds and seek a phone upgrade.

Yeah with the optional expansion market it just makes me think that Shentel was/is looking into acquiring AW. https://shentel.gcs-web.com/static-files/f7ef759a-3ae4-4089-912e-aef6788ee58d But I think AW would be screwed, especially now, if Shentel natively expanded into that area. It makes me wonder if this optional area could still be on the table post-merger. I know TMobile started their expansion there but it has been exceptionally slow, omega cheap, and barely even any lowband when they own 700A there. It doesn't make any sense what so ever. It's almost like those who designed these sites and allocated the $$ don't know what KY terrain looks like.

https://www.shentel.com/news/2020/july/20q2 earnings release Some notes on this possible acquisition. So the 90-days after the Sprint/TMobile merger is up. TMobile and Shentel did not negotiate a new agreement where Shentel would continue as a TMobile affiliate. T-Mobile has a period of 60 days to purchase the assets of the Shentel's wireless operations at 90% EBV. This period ends August 31th. If T-Mobile does not purchase Shentel's wireless assets, Shentel has 60 days to purchase T-Mobile's legacy network and subscribers in Shentel's service area. If after these 60 days Shentel does not purchase out T-Mobile then T-Mobile must sell or decommission it's network and customers in Shentel's service area. Now, questions I have: 1.) Would there be reason for T-Mobile to not have purchased Shentel's wireless business out August 1st or the 3rd? Would they wanna wait until the 30th? Since there is no news on T-Mobile making their move is it a higher chance that Shentel's wireless survives this merger? 2.) If Shentel makes it past the 30th, do they have the capital to purchase TMobile's assets and customers? 3.) If Shentel buys T-Mobile out or T-Mobile exists the service area, in both these cases does Shentel get the rights to all of T-Mobile's spectrum portfolio? Only the Sprint spectrum? What about the 800MHz they utilize does that still go to Dish? 4.) What if Shentel expands? I know they made an agreement with Sprint a while back that gave them the option to expand deep into Eastern KY (possibly via an Appalachian Wireless acquisition maybe?). If Shentel expands into new service areas will that force T-Mobile out?

That's cool. Ting has 154k subscribers with 272k devices. A $37 APRU and 3.25% churn. I might look at Ting when it's time to renew my MVNO plan. I wonder if Dish is gonna plan on boosting their subs via additional acquisitions or if they acquired Ting subs so they could get access to Tucows software. I wouldn't equate cheap = bad either. Not that you specifically are but usually cheap implies junk or not the best.

TMobile appears to be shutting down 3G in a few months. I wonder if this was more an emergency decision. Possibly seeing speeds tank as they bring in more Sprint customers. It's the fastest way to get more spectrum for LTE. In my market, HSPA is on PCS. TMobile only had 13.75MHz on PCS. Right now they have 5MHz on LTE. Post merger they now own D and the B block in full. So they could easily do 15x15MHz now with HSPA gone and fully owning B block. Could go 20x20 possibly as well. In my brothers market, new coverage, they only deployed AWS or PCS which they only had 20MHz total and used 10MHz of it for HSPA for whatever reason. Now they have 60MHz in just PCS. To bad they did only deploy sites with just AWS.

Dish has ~8 million customers. I don't expect Dish to have the growth that TMobile has had. Lets say Dish is lucky to add an average of 1M customers a year for 5 years. That puts them only at 13M customers. Even if they were TMobile like in the ability to add at least 1M new customers a quarter, in 5 years that is 20M + 8M, so 28M. Whatever network they build I think it'll focus very much just in the big cities where they have the most customers right now and plan to push sales the most. It doesn't make sense for them to build a nationwide network and use all their bands. It doesn't even really make sense to build a low-band network to hit their 70% pop coverage. I could see Dish coming to an agreement with TMobile to broadcast their spectrum. Like why would they need to cover 70% pop if they have few customers. Also I could see if Dish continues forward in good faith and the deadlines are near that the FCC could be willing to come to some form of agreement with Dish to not penalize them if they are unable to get TMobile to host use their spectrum.

So they have pdfs of their coverage, but the map still isn't updated. They added a few more cities. They are now at 179 million people. Expanded DSS. https://www.att.com/5g/coverage-map/ https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/at-t-expands-5g-to-28-new-markets-continues-dss-deployment

Wonder how they will move on their network. If they deployed it like TMobile is deloying 600MHz, I'd put a line on them.

I don't even think this was a big deal. There was no required purchase needed until July 1st. Analysts "predicted" it would be earlier, they were wrong so "OMG. DISH IS DOING WHAT DISH DOES". If the prediction was closing on July 1st, like the agreement states, we'd have less click bate. For Dish, I think they have valid concerns with a Boost handoff. Wasn't until mid June that DOJ confirmed TMobile was compliant. If I was Dish, I wouldn't hold TMobile at their own word that they were complaint so the DOJ stepping in a good thing. Plus in the mean time Dish could argue the value of the Boost business has decreased but I wouldn't expect much room there for them to haggle that. If I knew Dish was rapidly building out their network I'd put on a line on them just out of curiosity.

Roaming agreements. Possibly target hotspots. I also think that if they can put 3.5GHz in their modem's, they could improve coverage/handoff significantly over 2.4/5GHz WiFi. Further increase the amount of data offloaded onto their network. But in CBRS, they don't NEED a license. They have 80MHz of unlicensed spectrum to work with. So I'd think picking up licenses is more so that they can swap for better MVNO deals.

AT&T seriously not update their coverage map yet to reflect this new 5G coverage? Im still waiting...

It'll be interesting to see the net jobs of TMobile over the coming years. In 3/4 years time will it be a net increase or decrease. One thing I've been curious about is these job promises. I highly doubt it requires a net increase. So if you promise 10,000 jobs, layoff 15,000 and over the next few years you hire 10,000 people back, you fulfilled your promise even at a net decrease of 5k people. It's a similar situation at whatever states were promised. You just move people around or layoff and rehire to hit your 1000 new employee goals for that state.

I'd imagine that we have so many registered bidders because they were already using this spectrum space. Filling to bid just to see if they can get licensed space on the cheap. Some businesses might feel like they can benefit by moving to licensed space too. Just a taught here: Comcast (and other cable mvnos) have millions of wi-fi APs that are used to subsized cellular use. What if they got a license say 20MHz wide of CBRS in their coverage territories. Then add CBRS to their wireless cable modems. These could be at higher power output which would improve coverage over 2.4GHz and improve utilization being on LTE/5G technology over WiFi. I don't really see cable co adding these to poles and such, but feel like the above is more likely.

Why is pcmag showing a map of possible 5G on 700 when AT&T? As at least we know, AT&T is deploying 5G on 850 where they too lack nationwide license coverage.