RedSpark

Some interesting info. Main takeaways: "The expectation is to have about 60% of the Sprint customer traffic migrated onto the T-Mobile network by the end of this year and 100% migrated by mid-2022." "Some 8,000 cell sites slated for decommissioning for the latter half of this year are already starting the process – well on the way to a full 35,000, he said. T-Mobile plans to decommission 35,000 macro sites by the end of 2022 and about 7,000 to 8,000 by the end of this year. All of the synergies will be achieved by 2024, leaving it with 80,000 to 85,000 macro sites and about 50,000 small cells." Pretty amazing how well this is going. It's going to be a monster of a network when they're done. They've been making a big push for swapping to T-Mobile SIMs on the Sprint Website and in the My Sprint App, which has probably helped in moving this along.

That's a good point. Everything costs money and Sprint just didn't have enough to spend on its network to be truly competitive vs the other carriers. Sprint's heavy debt load and the insufficient support it received from SoftBank really prevented Sprint from getting ahead of the curve enough to get breathing room.... and for these improvements to be substantial enough, consistent enough and timely enough across its network to have a meaningful impact on customer gains or retention, which is ultimately the measure of market competitiveness. Just to add an additional thought.... There's nothing wrong with spending money if you're making money. Verizon, AT&T, T-Mobile all had comparatively healthy balance sheets vs Sprint and they could afford to spend big on spectrum and network capex and make the money back. Sprint couldn't, and we know the truth now after being told different narratives over the years. For Sprint, the oil was running out of the engine as fast as it was being poured in. The engine was on the verge of seizing up and they couldn't afford to get a drain plug to stop it.

Sprint's lack of sufficient lowband spectrum prevented it from being nationally competitive even if it put Band 41 on every tower it had. Sprint didn't have enough macro sites, and when you combine that with the lack of sufficient lowband spectrum, it resulted in the overall inconsistent experience that users experienced at the fringe of Band 41 coverage. The only way the Sprint network was going to improve beyond putting Band 41 on every site was to have T-Mobile's larger capex spend actually leverage Band 41 on more macro sites (or build more sites) and combine it with its 600 MHz holdings.... or have SoftBank dump a bunch of capital into the network if the merger didn't happen and build more macro sites to make up for the lack of lowband spectrum.... As to your point about C-Band. Assuming the merger didn't happen, SoftBank would have had to pitch in capital for Sprint to get some.... or Sprint would have sat it out and justified doing so, just like it did for the 600 MHz auction. In the absence of the Merger and in the absence of capital, Sprint would be even further behind than it was before the Merger. The other carriers haven't stayed still, but Sprint didn't have headroom to improve.

RootMetrics just came out with their June US 5G Scorecard: https://rootmetrics.com/en-US/content/rootmetrics-june-us-5g-scorecard Good stuff from T-Mobile post-merger: Some good analysis: https://www.androidcentral.com/att-has-best-5g-speeds-rootmetrics-june-5g-scorecard? Looking at that chart/analysis, it’s abundantly clear that Sprint would have never stood a competitive chance against the other carriers without the merger or a huge capital investment by SoftBank.

Good point. You could try submitting a report to @NevilleRay or @TMobileHelp about the congestion on the nearby macro sites?

It's still got to be better than Sprint's 800 MHz was, right? 🙂 At some point that DAS will have to be accounted for by the T-Mobile Network Folks. It's probably on some list somewhere with a plan to either upgrade it or shut it down.

This is something I've definitely noticed since the merger and switching to TNX on our devices. T-Mobile's 600 MHz is great for this.

You're welcome! Curious what you hear back from the DAS people or T-Mobile about this. T-Mobile's 600 MHz via TNX has really improved my indoor coverage/speeds vs. Sprint's 800 MHz coverage.

You could try emailing Mike Sievert and asking about that DAS and if they have any plans for it or other legacy Sprint DAS builds. He's shared his email publicly on Twitter: DerekKY1980 heard back on his email to Sievert about network upgrades pretty quickly. Curious what you hear back on it. Please share if you do!

If I recall correctly, those Sprint small cells were limited to 2XCA on Band 41? What you say makes sense. T-Mobile would be wise to keep those locations for eventual rollout of mmWave.

It seems there's really no convenient way to report network issues in T-Mobile's App? That's what I liked about the My Sprint App. It was quick and easy to file a network issue report. Seems like the best options now are to Tweet @NevilleRay or @TMobileHelp about network issues?

Interesting problem.

Great report. Does network issue reporting in My Sprint still work if you're on TNX or is there another way to report these slow speeds, etc.?

Good to know! Thanks. I guess I'll hold onto the T-Mobile SIM card until then.

Interesting. We have a Pixel 5 on our account that Sprint told me was eligible for TNX, so they sent us a T-Mobile SIM Card. It's currently on an eSIM. I put in the SIM Card, selected the T-Mobile SIM Card on the device set up screen and tried to activate it. It threw an activation error. When I contacted Sprint again to ask about what happened, I was told that Pixel devices aren't eligible for TNX and that they get TNA. So I removed it and reactivated the eSIM. I guess that's right? No one has ever confirmed this either way.

What 5G mode do you have your iPhones in? “5G On” or “5G Auto”? “Allow More Data on 5G” or “Standard”? We use “5G Auto” and “Allow More Data on 5G” for our iPhone 12 Pro’s on TNX and none of them have the issue you’re describing.

The materials for DT's Capital Markets Day 2021 are up: https://www.telekom.com/en/investor-relations/publications/capital-markets-days/capital-markets-day-2021 Group Strategy - Tim Höttges, CEO: https://www.telekom.com/resource/blob/627572/e2db68744b3b0a46462f7d3af7193132/dl-dt-cmd21-1-group-strategy-data.pdf TMUS - Mike Sievert: https://www.telekom.com/resource/blob/627584/3c50d3c0620f3bbcf8e8ae1d35712864/dl-dt-cmd21-4-t-mobile-us-data.pdf Some very interesting content about T-Mobile's post-merger strategy and its future plans in these presentations.

Now this could get interesting: DT's stake in T-Mobile US: 43% SoftBank's stake in T-Mobile US: 24% Public shareholder stake in T-Mobile US: 33% According to the article, DT has voting control over SoftBank’s shares in T-Mobile US, and this was agreed to as part of the deal for T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint. Striking an agreement with Masa is the first step in the process apparently. We could know more at DT's event on Thursday.

We're on "Unlimited Freedom with Taxes/Fees Included" w/TNX on our lines, and it's actually less than we were paying before, so I don't mind that. What I don't like is the loss of certain on-device functionality that we had with Sprint. Switching to TNX meant we couldn't update Wi-Fi Calling Addresses directly on Android handsets (On device address updating was still possible for iPhones) as we could before with Sprint SIM's. We now had to go through the ancient section of the Sprint website to do that (which T-Mobile probably has no intention of updating until they turn it off.) So every time you have to do this, which admittedly isn't often, you have to log on to Sprint's website and do it. I guess it'll stay the same or get worse until T-Mobile throws the switch on billing migration (which these Tax/Fee included plans make easier for T-Mobile to do as they are in-line with what they currently offer) and Sprint is no longer a supported brand identity.

At a certain point, the customer service experience on legacy Sprint may drop to the point that customers leave for another carrier. When T-Mobile says "T-Mobile Network Experience", it can't leave customers with a throwback Sprint customer experience, whether it's customer service that doesn't know how to do things or a website that clearly isn't being updated and in a "just keep the lights on" state for certain account functions, as was my experience. Frankly, the legacy Sprint customer experience is going to continue to worsen until T-Mobile creates and announces an initiative to move everyone over and sunset the Sprint brand. This will take money. Right now T-Mobile is probably spending the bare minimum to keep the Sprint website afloat until it does that. Just my thoughts of course.

I agree. I'm sure that T-Mobile will eventually communicate how Sprint customers will eventually be migrated over without having to do that. Ultimately the Sprint brand will be shut down so that will have to happen. This affects millions of customers so they'll need to come up with a simple, inexpensive and non-disruptive solution.

That's interesting. At some point in the merger process when the the Sprint brand is "no more", they'll have to migrate all the Sprint customers to become T-Mobile customers and account for the current billing status of each account/line so that it's a seamless transition. We switched our lines to TNX, so I guess that's a predicate step for it. Hopefully they can do this while the "plane is in the air" and not require what that manager told you.

I used to get a few SMS spam messages on Sprint. Since I've made the switch to TNX, I haven't gotten any at all.

I was using Sprint's Spam Blocker App and I was still getting quite a few Spam Calls. After switching to TNX and using T-Mobile's Scam Shield App, I'm getting almost zero. T-Mobile has a much better Spam Call Blocker system and I'm glad I made the switch.

I've noticed substantially fewer scam/spam calls since switching to TNX and using T-Mobile's Scam Shield App.