RedSpark

Interesting write-up.

Industry-Leading and Record-High Postpaid Account and Postpaid Customer Net Additions in 2021⁽¹⁾

• Postpaid net account additions of 315 thousand in Q4 2021 — 1.2 million in full-year 2021, more than doubled year-over-year
• Postpaid net customer additions of 1.8 million in Q4 2021 — 5.5 million in full-year 2021, exceeded guidance
• Postpaid phone net customer additions of 844 thousand in Q4 2021 — 2.9 million in full-year 2021, increased 32% year-over-year
• High Speed Internet net customer additions of 224 thousand in Q4 2021, highest in industry— 546 thousand in full-year 2021

Award-Winning 5G Network Pulls Further Ahead of Competition as Merger Synergies Ramp

• Ultra Capacity 5G covered 210 million people and Extended Range 5G covered 94% of people at year-end
• Merger synergies of $3.8 billion in full-year 2021 increased nearly 3x year-over-year, exceeded guidance

Incredible... and merger synergies are expected to increase to between $5.0B and $5.3B in 2022. Some serious economies of scale here.

Great reading: https://investor.t-mobile.com/financial-performance/quarterly-results/default.aspx

Very cool!

Marcelo is out as COO at SoftBank. He sought a $2B payout (but didn’t get it). Wow.

Marcelo actually oversaw the huge severance payment to WeWork's Adam Neumann. Figures he’d try to negotiate a big one for himself as well.

I’m so glad that era of dysfunctional leadership and uncertainty is over. I couldn’t be happier to see T-Mobile succeed and compete well with strong leadership that’s fully invested in the company. I have no complaints about speeds and coverage around DC/MD/VA.

On 1/18/2022 at 2:20 PM, jreuschl said:

Wonder if John Legere was still around he'd be giving Dumb and Dumber crap about C-Band and airplane issues.

Neville lays out the issue... in a much more friendly way. T-Mobile plans to light up its C-Band in Late 2023.

Interesting acquisition...

I always like reading the documentation that's provided for advertisers (the sales prop/metrics stuff on the website). It reveals how customers are monetized.

https://www.t-mobile.com/marketing-solutions

https://www.t-mobile.com/marketing-solutions/media

6 hours ago, schmidtj said:

Forever the optimist. 🙃

For sure! 😀 I do know one thing though... They'll still be saying this:

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

FierceWireless's article provided a lot of details around this. 

It turns out T-Mobile signed on for 35,000 small cells which is Crown Castle's largest order yet. Before that, their largest order was 15,000 from Verizon last year.

They mentioned are expecting to see about 5,000 small cells shutdown in 2023 as a result of the Sprint merger but ultimately Crown Castle will be left with a net of 30,000 small cells. So like a lot of folks have been saying over on Reddit and what you're saying, it seems like T-Mobile is decommissioning small cells that are in areas where macros now adequately cover very well and adding 35k new small cells in areas that'll benefit more. 

It's a massive order. Just incredible.

1 hour ago, dkyeager said:

My guess is this way T-Mobile can get rid of Sprint small cells placed in Sprint's weak coverage areas where T-Mobile now has good signal.

I agree with your guess. Makes sense.

America’s Largest, Fastest and Most Reliable 5G Network Further Extends its Lead

• Ultra Capacity 5G covers over 210 million people nationwide and can deliver game-changing speeds of 400 Mbps or more (Note: T-Mobile ended the year with over 210 million people covered with its Ultra Capacity 5G, reaching over 80% of all T-Mobile customers, and plans to reach 300 million people (more than 90% of Americans) by the end of 2023.) 
• Extended Range 5G covers over 310 million people, reaching 94% of Americans (NOTE: expected to cover 99% of Americans by 2023.)
• A dozen independent third-party network benchmarking reports in 2021 show T-Mobile is number one in nationwide 5G speed and availability

and

• Postpaid phone net customer additions were 844 thousand in Q4 2021 and 2.9 million for the full year 2021. Postpaid phone churn was 1.10% in Q4 2021 as the company ramped up its Sprint customer integration and 0.98% for the full year 2021.

Look at them go. Wow.

12 years is quite the long term deal.

We’ll be on the iPhone 25 Pro by then!

On 12/22/2021 at 2:41 PM, schmidtj said:

If you're address is served you can get T-Mobile Home Internet for $50/Mo (w/Autopay) and that's truly unlimited but technically is suppose to only be used at your address. I think that's a 911 thing. 

Perhaps the thinking is that they'll be better able to do better congestion management on these Unlimited users at fixed locations (and they'll be fewer of them as well vs the number of heavy/upgraded Hotspot users that there would otherwise be)? They must have run some models on that.

Some interesting updates in this piece about the Former Sprint Campus, etc.....

36 minutes ago, schmidtj said:

Aren’t hotspots on max limited to 40GB per month? 

Yes. However, you can do an add-on upgrade to have 50 GB (+$10/Month) or 100 GB (+$35/Month) on a per-line basis. Curious what the uptake is on that.

Interesting data point:

Quote

Today, 13% fewer MAX users are connecting to WiFi, 80% more are hosting a WiFi hotspot and their hotspot usage is up 20% on average during the weekends. These hotspots are cooking, with MAX users consuming 3X more hotspot data per month compared to other T-Mobile customers.

9 hours ago, JWMaloney said:

Interesting. Since moving to TNX SIM, I've been receiving a lot of SMS spam, for the first time ever.

That's interesting. I've received virtually no SMS spam since moving to TNX w/ScamShield. Curious why that would be for you.

Ever since moving to TNX and enabling ScamShield, I've gotten virtually no scam calls. It's pretty incredible.

ICYMI, Neville Ray recently did an AMA on the T-Mobile subreddit: 

He mentioned some interesting updates about their network progress.

I also found this article informative: https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/t-mobile-ratchets-5g-site-upgrades

Speaking of mergers: 

Perhaps speed tests in the Ookla App will map on the RootMetrics App? That would be great and it would help contribute to additional accurate data points on network performance.

Pretty big deal!

On 12/3/2021 at 9:27 AM, dkyeager said:

https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/t-mobile-poised-launch-25-ghz-5g-carrier-aggregation

I expect to see this soon, certainly once the Magic boxes are and small cells are retired.

"Both the iPhone 13 from Apple and most recent Android Samsung devices are capable of 2.5 GHz 5G carrier aggregation and the feature will be enabled via a software update, according to a T-Mobile spokesperson."

Yay!

You really have to hand it to T-Mobile. They're really executing on leveraging the Sprint assets they got from the merger. Pretty incredible. All of our devices are TNX with T-Mobile SIMs so we're just waiting on the backend billing migration at this point.

1 hour ago, dewbertdc said:

Oh good - maybe this will mean my T-Mobile iPhone 13 Pro will prefer the Sprint signal on the DAS in my office building now.  I'll have to check that out next time I'm in.

Hope it works for you!

On 11/16/2021 at 1:39 PM, jroepcke51 said:

I live the Northern VA outside of DC and we need VoNR desperately. Losing access to 800x has been awful. I can't keep a phone call outside of my house. Always drops. I don't really have access to LTE but have 1 bar of 5G that goes in and out.

How do you report this issue to T-Mobile? Has the My Sprint App network issue reporting tool been deprecated at this point?

Quote

The secret to T-Mobile’s Ultra Capacity 5G – the 5G that delivers super-fast speeds to a lot of people – is mid-band 2.5 GHz spectrum. When other U.S. operators went all in on millimeter wave (mmWave), T-Mobile executed a multi-band spectrum strategy using low-band Extended Range to blanket the country and Ultra Capacity to bring fast 5G speeds to the maximum number of people – now covering 200 million (100x more people than Verizon’s Ultra Wideband) with plans to reach 300 million people (more than 90% of Americans) in the next two years.

They're moving quickly! I'm noticing the "5G UC" icon in more locations around the DC Area.

Network Integration Progress Fuels Higher Merger Synergies

• Approximately 90% of Sprint customer traffic is now carried on the T-Mobile network
• Approximately 53% of Sprint customers have been fully transitioned to the T-Mobile network
• Raising 2021 merger synergies guidance for the third consecutive quarter