RedSpark

Apparently Marcelo threw a big party at his house over the weekend for executives (and their families) who relocated to Kansas City to work for Sprint. http://www.kansascity.com/news/business/article91533162.html Some interesting interviews. Nice house too!

We might see big gains on Monday. Hoping for good news from Marcelo and the rest of the executive team during the Earnings call.

I'm not suggesting Sprint engage in haphazard spending. However, the bar for what passes as acceptable immediate/short-term ROI would be lowered if Sprint had more funds to work with. Williamsport, PA would get LTE, etc. You'd have full macro builds instead of GMO's. More markets would get LTE Plus. The holdover dual mode Clearwire equipment would get swapped out for new 8T8R equipment in more places and more quickly.

Having additional money would enable Sprint to broaden its focus... assuming permitting and equipment availability weren't limiting factors.

Good points. How much money would it have cost Sprint to upgrade those 45 8T8R sites? If Sprint was to start over with the permitting process on those, how long of a time frame are we looking at?

Wouldn't throwing money at protection sites in Montana get them upgraded sooner? Wouldn't throwing money at 3G areas like Central/West PA (especially Williamsport, PA, etc.) (or no coverage areas) enable them to get LTE sooner, and not force Sprint to compromise on its deployment by using GMO's? Both of these situations seem to be due to a shortage of money/funding, and not equipment or permitting delays. Of course, if I'm wrong on this, please set me straight!

Marcelo seemed hyped about it: https://twitter.com/marceloclaure/status/755117746258604032 I'd give him the benefit of the doubt that something good is in the works.

Sorry if I'm being clueless here, but what's the "good laugh" part?

Define Irony:

Sprint has its Fiscal 2016 First Quarter Earnings Conference Call on July 25th. I'm sure this SoftBank transaction will come up in the Q&A.

I wonder if SoftBank engineers will get a peak at ARM's upcoming design architecture... Talk about a competitive advantage.

The original merger prospectus has a provision which outlines what SoftBank would have to pay for the remaining Sprint shares if its ownership stake in Sprint exceeds 85%:

That's a good point. Indeed I am. So what's Sprint supposed to do? Go barebones for the foreseeable future until it either merges with T-Mobile, gets bought out by someone else, or declares bankruptcy? Where's Sprint left standing once the network densification project is completed?

It's all a matter of how much upside you see when you look at Sprint. Either it will win back millions of customers from the other carriers or it won't. Eliminating Sprint's debt entirely would put Sprint on an extremely competitive footing vs its competition for all kinds of initiatives: Spectrum, Network Expansion, etc. Heck, eliminating half of it would make a huge difference in terms of Sprint's free cash flow. Perhaps Son sees more upside with ARM than having Sprint become the #1 wireless carrier.

True. However, Sprint would be very profitable if it didn't have to make these massive interest payments on its debt (in addition to the cost cutting/waste reduction which has already been done).

That's quite a bit of coin! Meanwhile, Sprint has had to resort to multiple leasing vehicles to generate free cash and offload debt from the balance sheet. For this amount of money: Son could have just about paid off Sprint's debt (~$33 Billion), leaving it free and clear; or Son could have bought out the remaining shares of Sprint stock and take the company private; or Or Son could have gotten Sprint a substantial chunk of nationwide 600 MHz spectrum in the current auction. etc.... Am I missing something here?

When Paul is in the new "man on the street" commercial, he says Sprint's reliability is now within 1% of Verizon, based on recent data from Nielsen. How big/comparable is this difference relative to your statements about dB?

Check out the WMATA Reports here: http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/general_manager/gm_plan.cfm Customer Accountability Report (http://www.wmata.com/about_metro/general_manager/performance/CARe.pdf?) dated June 30th, item #4: So we'll see.

Would a Goodyear Blimp be a better solution for a flying COW?

I guess not! I was assuming it was fed by some kind of wireless backhaul (probably not wired) that would require it to be in a certain orientation.

They'll need one heck of a stability system on the drone right if it's sending out signal, right? Will you lose coverage with a wind gust that moves it?

Perhaps the same roaming terms apply?

They aren't enforced with strict bitrate limits on the existing unlimited plans. For this new plan, there are explicitly stated bitrate limits for audio and video content. Sprint does video optimization on existing unlimited plans. See the Terms & Conditions: https://sprint.com/legal/open_internet_information.html Does Sprint employ any type of data compression or optimization on the Sprint network today? Yes, Sprint deploys network optimization capabilities for video and web traffic on the Sprint Wireless Network. Intent is to improve overall user experience and increase network efficiency. Optimization helps improve page load times and reduces video stalling. The optimization technology provides for the elimination of wasted data transmissions that result from lack of coordination between applications, network, and device, for example stopping transmission of video after a customer has stopped viewing it. It also matches media transmission quality to the capability of the device viewing the media. What specific types of optimization does Sprint employ? Video optimization is deployed for RTSP and HTTP video traffic and all HTTP web traffic. Video optimization is always deployed and active on the Sprint network for all identifiable video traffic. Although the purpose of the optimization techniques is to improve overall video viewing experience, it is possible that some users may experience minor discernable reductions in image quality when viewing video traffic on certain devices. These reductions should generally be offset by improvement s in load times and reductions in video stalling and other experience improvements. Sprint’s video optimization uses four basic technologies: Video Delivery Synchronization: Delivers video "just in time" to the mobile device. Intent is to eliminate network waste associated with transmitting video that isn't watched. Quality Aware Transcoding: Matches video quality with network conditions in real time. Optimizes video for the bandwidth available to the user. Intent is to minimize or eliminate annoying video stalling. Similar in concept to the optimization techniques already employed by sites using adaptive streaming. Video Transcoding: Transcodes video with intent to optimize the video experience for the user while efficiently using network bandwidth. Provides for the elimination of video waste using techniques like replacing less efficient video codecs with more efficient ones. Optimizes video for the mobile device the customer is using. Intelligent Caching: Caches optimized video in the network with the intent of eliminating delay associated with internet video sites. Some streaming video applications employ adaptive bitrate protocol to stream video. These applications automatically and continuously monitor the available bandwidth and adjust the streaming video bitrate to current user conditions. Depending on available bandwidth, users may notice differences in video streaming quality as the application adjusts the video streaming bitrate to account for changing channel conditions. What specific types of web optimization does Sprint employ? Web optimization is deployed for all HTTP web traffic and is always deployed and active on the Sprint network for all identifiable web traffic. Although the purpose of the optimization techniques is to improve overall web viewing experience, it is possible that some users may experience minor discernable reductions in image quality when viewing web traffic on certain devices. These reductions should generally be offset by improvement s in load times and other experience improvements. Web optimization uses three basic technologies: Caching: Caches web pages to help avoid delays associated with retrieval of the same internet content multiple times. Text/Binary Compression: Lossless compression of data and binary files using standard compression techniques supported by HTTP-compliant browsers. Image Compression: JPEG and GIF compression designed to reduce the size of images while maintaining no user perceptible loss of quality

The audio/video optimization.

Some friends of mine in Boston told me about it and sent me the link.