RedSpark

Any guesses?

Good news for people who want this.

Wow.

True. My service now is better than it’s ever been and if they can stick it to Verizon and AT&T in the process, so much the better.

Stuff like this is why I'm happy to be with Magenta now:

Wow. For comparison.... Here's what Verizon is doing: https://www.verizon.com/about/news/verizon-elevates-super-bowl-lv Here's what AT&T is doing-in-part (more information is referenced in an earlier link): https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/at-t-s-mmwave-5g-takes-off-at-tampa-airport

It'll be interesting to see how this turns out. I've noticed a substantial service improvement on my device.

T-Mobile just upgraded your rate plan: https://delivery.sprint.com/m/u/nxt/migration/faq.html Monthly taxes and fees are now included. Customers will be notified via text/email in the coming weeks. Per the FAQ, you can opt out of this plan upgrade if you want to.

Yup. Marcelo completely misjudged what would appeal to mainstream customers, but what's most shocking is that he continued down that road despite customer metrics and NPS reports showing him that Sprint was rotting at the core due to insufficient network capex. Either he didn't understand what was happening or he didn't care, knowing that a merger was in the cards eventually. Yeah, the Sprint network did improve substantially at the end. I agree that there was only so much they could do with the lack of interest and resources from SoftBank. I give the engineering team a lot of credit. They did what they could with what was leftover from the marketing budget.

No doubt about that. T-Mobile also has a tremendous social media presence which magnifies and spreads any news or partnerships. Sprint was never very good at social media. All you had to do was look at the follower count and the level of engagement on Twitter/Facebook for both companies. Sprint trailed T-Mobile substantially on these metrics. T-Mobile was/is also better at getting press coverage because its PR/Comms team was/is simply better. So the Drone Racing League can essentially be as big as any other announcement T-Mobile would make. Each social media follower can see, engage and share this news. On top of that, the Tech Press can write about it and further share to their own followers, etc. T-Mobile understood/understands the terrain. It’s finally sunk in how normal this is post-merger. Sprint was really a parallel universe of mismanagement and poor messaging.

That's a good point. Had Sprint's network been performing well, and had Sprint made substantial investments in NASCAR cities and venues during this timeframe, I would say that the NASCAR sponsorship would have been an extravagant expenditure. However, Sprint's network was already faltering, and this was only exacerbated further when it got the iPhone in Fall 2011. When I think of each million dollars sunk into a marketing or sponsorship effort that didn't result in any appreciable customer gains (and probably had no effect on retention either given the customer losses over that period), I can't help but think of how many cell sites Sprint could have been built or upgraded for each million. Truth is, you don't need that many sites to have a substantial improvement on a customer experience in an area: Airports, Train Stations, Bus Stations Business Centers and Work Sites Entertainment Venues Highways and Roads Home (but can usually be addressed with WiFi Calling) Those are the primary areas where customers spend most of their time and where network improvements would have the most significant impact on the customer experience. An improvement at any one of these areas would have begun to move the needle on the customer experience. That's an interesting point about Alltel. T-Mobile's approach to partnerships is very different (and better). They got the network experience right first, and they're leveraging it for marketing. Sprint never got its network in order first and the marketing was just money thrown into bin without any appreciable ROI or customer gains. Truth is, I think Sprint would have had the same (or nearly the same) customer metrics without the marketing. The only promotions that Sprint ever got any traction on was the "free service for a year" promotion and the "50% off your bill" promotion. Neither of these contributed positively to the bottom line from what I recall. It's clear why Sprint became the minority company in the merger rather than the majority company.

Sprint also had huge sponsorship deals with NASCAR and the NBA. Of course, if you look at the customer metrics at the time, that's when the network began to get creaky and Sprint began to lose a substantial number of customers over time. Sprint would have been better off spending the money on the network instead and none on sponsorships. I'd love to see a customer survey of how many people stayed with Sprint because of its sponsorship agreements vs how many left because of a poor network experience. In fact, I'd love to see it broken down to a per-person cost. The bean-counters came in and shut-down the NASCAR sponsorship and NBA sponsorship. You are absolutely correct. Marcelo inexplicably, but simply, doubled down on this failed strategy by going all-in on soccer as a vanity project because of his outside financial interest. Nothing about it was about substantially improving the network so that the customer metrics would actually improve. Seriously, these sponsorships had to be one of the worst Return on Investment initiatives that Sprint had ever done. In comparison, if you look at what T-Mobile is doing here with Drone Racing League, this is a growing sport and it's in a key demographic in which the exposure of T-Mobile's branding of 5G would actually resonate. The partnership doesn't feel forced. It feels like a natural fit for the T-Mobile brand. T-Mobile's also a real leader in 5G, with a network to back it up. The quarterly customer metrics at T-Mobile are insane. Customer growth is through the roof, and partnerships like this help solidify it. They don't come at the expense of network spend, as was the case with Sprint.

Now this is cool. Sprint was so ineffective at marketing and partnerships by comparison that I cringed at times. T-Mobile is just really good at this kind of thing, and it feels good to be on this side of the fence post-merger. I always wondered if Sprint's marketing issues came from a limited budget, from poor vendor selection or from incompetent management. Perhaps a mix of all three.... but this is how you do it right.

According to Neville, T-Mobile is touching about 2,000 sites per month: By the end of 2021, it should be able to cover 200 million people with midband 5G.

Looking at that map, Verizon has a long way to go on mmWave coverage here.... which means that T-Mobile has probably barely scratched the surface with it.

That's so true. It'll be interesting to see how long T-Mobile keeps Sprint's legacy systems and procedures around. How much will things change by the time the next iPhone launches in Fall 2021?

It's amazing how quickly T-Mobile is integrating Sprint's network assets after the merger and putting itself on real competitive footing with Verizon/AT&T. With the launch of the 5G iPhone, uptake of new 5G devices on T-Mobile's network must be substantial. T-Mobile's midband capacity from Sprint is making a real difference in usability and speed.

Based on this article, it seems like mmWave has actually been deployed in DC as one of the "five cities" listed: https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/verizon-s-5g-mmwave-crushing-it-but-for-how-long

Yup. U Street definitely fills up in the evening! Haven't been over there since COVID began, but people are always fiddling on their phones. 😀

Neat. I'll look forward to checking that out once the 14.3 update is released. (I never run Beta software.) My peak DL speeds on T-Mobile's 5G seem to be about the same as when I was on Sprint's LTE. However, my 5G speeds are much more consistent and reliable than when I was on Sprint. My UL speeds are up to 10x faster than Sprint's, which is a huge improvement in usability for the device. Everything App related in that respect is much faster. I'm seeing ~75 Mbps upload speeds. Yeah, there's a lot of runway left for N41. However, it seems it would make sense to put the mmWave gear on the sites when they're being upgraded so the techs don't have to make another climb/trip. There are a number of dense areas in the DMV which could benefit from mmWave: The area around The White House, Nationals Park, The Wharf, National Harbor, etc.

That's good to know. Thanks. I'm still getting used to this new Field Test Screen interface.... Under "Serving Cell Info" I'm seeing 66 under "freq_band_ind".

Amazing progress by T-Mobile: So glad to see T-Mobile charging ahead against Red and Blue.....

Is there any way to tell in my iPhone 12 Pro's Field Test Mode if I'm on mmWave? Wow. Field Test Mode looks really different than before.... Is that due to me being "on" T-Mobile with my device or being on iOS 14.2?

That's a good question. I'd like to know this as well. Doesn't seem like there's mmWave on my local site at least. I'm seeing speeds just under 300 Mbps down and ~76 Mbps up. I'd expect to see higher DL speeds if mmWave was deployed on it.

Interesting. I imagine that as part of its network integration that T-Mobile will eventually get around to either shutting off Sprint on that DAS (and relying on native T-Mobile coverage) or putting in for the addition of T-Mobile to it. It's something they're going to keep track of... After all, I'd imagine Sprint (and now T-Mobile) is paying a recurring fee to be on that DAS? Someone has to notice that line item expense, right?