RedSpark

3 hours ago, dewbertdc said:

You can still use this on T-Mobile, but you may have to go in and make sure “DIGITS” is enabled on your line on the website. It took me quite awhile to figure that out!

You probably also have to make sure that "Upgrade to Wi-Fi Calling" is enabled/checked on your laptop/desktop device as well.

1 hour ago, BlueAngel said:

Is the iPhone 12 using an R15 T-Mobile sim?

It's an iPhone 12 Pro straight out of the box directly from Sprint on an annual upgrade.

I didn't check which SIM it has. How can you tell which one it has?

Set up a family member's new iPhone 12 Pro for them yesterday. Still waiting on mine and one other one to ship....

I left it set it to "5G Auto" and enabled "Allow More Data on 5G".

Plugged it into their CarPlay for their vehicle and took a trip from Bethesda into DC. It seemed to hold onto strong 5G coverage very well. I didn't run any speed tests on it, but voice quality was very good.

One thing I did notice is that it still says "Sprint Wi-Fi" for Wi-Fi Calling. I figured it would say T-Mobile for these new devices, but perhaps that hasn't been migrated over yet?

You really have to hand it to the T-Mobile network and engineering team since the merger. They're extremely proficient at network upgrades.

26 minutes ago, clbowens said:

From that quick video, they may be doing that.  They already don't have then on the TMobile plans.

In rewatching it, I have a feeling the Uncarrier event could be for T-Mobile's TV service (T-Vision) with no extra taxes/fees and no charge for a "box". There's a TV in the background, and Mike says "It's on."

Would be nice if it was available to Sprint customers if this is the case.

It would be nice if T-Mobile did some "Uncarrier" changes for Sprint.... such as removing taxes and fees from our plans.

11 minutes ago, Cardsfan96 said:

So when I go through my app on our sprint account on my line with a paid off IPhone XS it says I can get the 12 pro for $6.66 a month for 30 month with my trade in for the XS ($500) and a $10 service credit. My question is, if it says my monthly cost for 30 months is $6.66 will my total cost for the phone be about $199? Or do I only get service credits for a certain number of the 30 months? People are saying only $200 in service credits but the way I’d read it is I’d get a $10 service credit every month for more like $300 in service credits. Can someone explain this to me if I’m wrong.

My understanding is that the bill credits apply over the full 30 months, and if you cancel early you are responsible for the full device price. Not sure if that also means upgrade early.

29 minutes ago, clbowens said:

This is interesting:  https://www.fiercewireless.com/operators/at-t-aims-to-change-game-wireless-upgrades

 

I wonder if T-Mobile will do the same.

When I was doing the annual upgrade for my iPhone lines, I saw these options:

30 month financing with the ability to upgrade once 50% of the device is paid off. (You can accelerate payments).

18 Month Flex-Lease with annual upgrade at 12 Payments.

Full Purchase Price

--------

Sprint appeared to be offering an additional $200 off for 5-Year+ customers in the form of bill credits over 30 months as well as trade-in offers on financing.

1 hour ago, jporter12 said:

I'm curiously to see if they come with a Sprint SIM, or if they'll have the T-Mobile R15 SIM in them, giving them the full T-Mobile Network Experience.  My wife is pondering upgrading her iPhone to the 12 from her Xs, and the T-Mobile network would be better for her, especially at work.  

I'll bet it's released with a Sprint SIM Card provisioned to "T-Mobile Network Access/ROAMAHOME".

So for 5G coverage it would likely be in the following order:

T-Mobile 5G, which falls back to....

T-Mobile LTE (and T-Mobile VoLTE accordingly), which falls back to....

Sprint LTE (including Wi-Fi calling on Sprint), which falls back to....

Sprint CDMA, which falls back to....

Sprint Roaming Partner.

14 minutes ago, javon23 said:

I assume the end is near for my plan 

We're on Unlimited Freedom and I was able to upgrade several of our lines to the new iPhone 12 Pro. I guess we'll see how much longer that plan lasts as well.

It says in the fine print on the Sprint website that the iPhone 12/Pro/Mini access T-Mobile's 5G network.

https://www.cnet.com/news/5g-faq-apple-iphone-12-superspeedy-cellular-connectivity/

The device has a "Smart Data Mode" according to Apple's Website: https://www.apple.com/iphone-12-pro/

5G on iPhone isn’t just faster, it’s smarter, too. When your iPhone doesn’t need 5G speeds, like when it’s making updates in the background, it automatically uses LTE to save battery life. But as soon as speed does matter — if you’re downloading a season of your favorite show — iPhone 12 Pro jumps to 5G. Of course, you can also choose to use 5G whenever it’s available.

So will the device hop back and forth between T-Mobile's 5G network and Sprint's LTE network with the "Smart Data" setting enabled? (It sounds like it will be on by default.)

If you choose to set it to use 5G "whenever possible" and you're in a deployed 5G area, it sounds like you'll be parked on the T-Mobile 5G network. Would there be any reason to fall-back to Sprint's LTE network in that case?

Otherwise, how quickly will T-Mobile pull Sprint iPhones over to the T-Mobile LTE network?

Enrollment for the free Hulu Promotion also ended on October 9th. If you enrolled before then, you can keep it:

"The Times They Are a-Changin"....

So the Magic Box is now no longer a thing:

When you think about how much money was spent on Magic Boxes that are now all going in the dumpster (vs. the Capex that would have been necessary for Sprint to not require them at all) and then you combine that with how much money Masa poured into everything but Sprint (ARM, Uber, WeWork, etc.) which yielded substantially negative returns on his investment, it shows the extent of the managerial incompetence that put Sprint in this position where a merger was necessary to save the company... from him.

T-Mobile isn't even bothering to take the units back to ensure they are recycled properly. Many of these units will wind up being improperly disposed of, not to mention that there will be no cost recovery for any components of the recycled units by T-Mobile. What an absolute disgrace on all fronts. I expected better from T-Mobile.... Maybe I shouldn't.

EDIT: Looks like the Airave is a goner as well....

44 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

Which reminds me, the new iPhones are out or will be shortly. So all of you guys that have 5g even if it is just one tower can rush and buy them 🤣. Me, I will wait until they have basically blanketed the area with 5G before I upgrade. Meanwhile I will wait for the integration of the 4G networks or they move me to T-Mobile whichever comes first.

Yup. They've been announced. All models (12/12 mini/12 Pro) support sub-6 GHz and mmWave. Apple's website shows Sprint and T-Mobile as separate carriers under the purchase fields. Perhaps next year this will no longer be the case as merger and network integration continues. I guess we'll see how these devices launch out of the box on Sprint.

Of note, Verizon was given a lot of virtual stage time to talk up its 5G Ultra Wideband and speeds. Perhaps they were willing to pay the big bucks to announce a "Nationwide" launch:

T-Mobile had a response ready:

Also, the new iPhones have a "Smart Data" setting which enables it to stay on LTE and turn on 5G only when additional speed is necessary, like for a large download, etc. You can also set it so that it's always on 5G whenever available, albeit at greater battery drain I'm sure.

I'm trying to imagine Sprint going it alone here on 5G without T-Mobile. There's simply no way it could effectively compete with this, short of Masa coming in with a huge cash infusion to shore up things.... and he wasn't about to do that.

Neville responded to the report:

Define "consumer device". Does that include home modems/routers?

It would be one thing if it was a single source, but multiple sources? Who could have had an agenda here and what was the motivation to plant this? Perhaps Verizon/AT&T?

1 hour ago, greenbastard said:

I think they're talking about the Revvl line of phones (which is currently made by TCL iirc). Not that big of a deal tbh.

I’m reading “all of their consumer 5G hardware” to refer to network hardware, not devices. Of course you may be right.

2 hours ago, belusnecropolis said:

Who knew the merger would be a jobs program for the PRC home modem industry?

Multinational corporation's love milking this country at bottom dollar 🤑

Look at Section 349 here : https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/FCC-19-103A1.pdf

That's what the FCC had to say about "National Security" concerns.

EDIT: Looks like this is getting noticed

How could this even be a possibility?:

I can't imagine there wasn't a merger condition prohibiting this very thing from happening. Perhaps it wasn't enough of a deterrent if this is even being floated or discussed out there.

https://www.fcc.gov/document/fcc-approves-t-mobilesprint-transaction-conditions

3 hours ago, jreuschl said:

Supposedly the T-Mobile Network Experience is available nationwide now at stores.  Anyone jumping primary networks?

I'm curious what this means for the iPhone 12 announcement coming up next week:

1 hour ago, dewbertdc said:

It makes sense that they'd want to use the iPhone 12 launch to move folks over "organically," especially since it will have 5G and the Sprint LTE Network Experience will continue to deteriorate as they refarm and reallocate spectrum.

This lines up well enough in advance of the launch.

The delayed launch of the iPhone 12 is actually helping in this respect. Gives a little more time for T-Mobile to get the network prepped.

6 minutes ago, dewbertdc said:

It seems like they've got a multi-pronged strategy, at least from what we can observe, with many of these things happening in parallel:

1. (Pre-Merger) Roaming agreement for Sprint subscribers to use the T-Mobile network when Sprint isn't available
2. Implement the ROAMAHOME SOC for certain Sprint subscribers to use the T-Mobile network as primary
3. Network integration: decommission Sprint 5G, begin to refarm 2.5GHz spectrum for T-Mobile 5G and LTE, similarly begin to reallocate PCS spectrum from Sprint to T-Mobile in markets where spectrum is contiguous.  Additionally, it appears they're working on a "hybrid" of the two networks, currently with the 311-490 PLMN, that will handoff between the two legacy networks, but that does not appear to be the default network for subscribers yet.  Eventually the tower work will be done to harmonize spectrum and radio assets, that's going to take some time.
4. Begin SIM-swapping eligible and willing Sprint customers to T-Mobile, currently happening in Seattle and Kansas City: https://www.sprint.com/en/support/solutions/device/t-mobile-network-experience.html

There are a lot of moving parts to this, and they have to execute them carefully.  From the looks of things, they're moving too aggressively on #2, and not quickly enough on #3.  I imagine #4 is going to continue to roll out and will become the default for new lines and handset upgrades (especially to 5G) on Sprint accounts.  

All good observations. I'm curious how the launch of the iPhone 5G will be handled, because that's going to represent a substantial surge of new 5G devices on T-Mobile and Sprint's network within a short period of time. How will the device be treated by the T-Mobile and Sprint networks?

20 minutes ago, Trip said:

1,000 sites per month sounds impressive (up from 800/month we heard previously), but if they're talking about having an 85,000 site network, it would take them 7 years to touch all of them.  They actually need to speed up more, IMO.  Especially given how weak the network continues to be outside of populated areas.

If they kicked me off of Sprint's network today and said I couldn't have it back, I'd switch carriers as soon as possible.  (Not possible right away, mind you.)

- Trip

I agree with you. I hope they do speed up.

I look at these improvements as an S-Shaped curve. If they focus on the sites with the most customer touchpoints/interactions, the most people will benefit in the shortest period of time, even if they don't get to all 85,000 sites in the medium term.

1 hour ago, Trip said:

I only say I think there's a threshold because on 9/2 when they made their first news release, they already had at least three sites with the gear installed and running at least Band 41 LTE in Alexandria, but they waited until yesterday's release to announce it. 

- Trip

That certainly sounds like the case. According to their release:

Quote

T-Mobile is lighting up 1,000 mid-band 5G sites a month, so customers will find this faster 5G experience in thousands of cities and towns by end of year.   

I'm pretty impressed. It seems faster than Sprint has ever done any site upgrades and it's during a pandemic/shutdown to boot. If T-Mobile focuses on the site locations with the greatest need, a substantial number people will benefit as a result of each upgrade rather quickly I'm thinking.

Well that was quick:

https://www.t-mobile.com/news/network/supercharged-midband-5g

Quote

What’s the news: T-Mobile lit up a supercharged 5G experience in another 121 cities and towns with mid-band 5G, delivering up to gigabit-per-second peak speeds and average download speeds around 300 megabits-per-second for capable 5G devices. And, this faster 5G experience will be in thousands of cities and towns by end of year. To celebrate, T-Mobile is giving away $100,000 on Twitter over the next several months, with #5Gsfor5G. 

Quote

With today’s announcement, this supercharged 5G experience is live in a total of 210 cities and towns across the country with thousands more on the way by end of year.

Go Magenta!

Was exploring the support section of Sprint's Website (https://www.sprint.com/en/support/device.html) to see if there's anything new.....

.... and here's something new I noticed: T-Mobile Network Experience

https://www.sprint.com/en/support/solutions/device/t-mobile-network-experience.html

Quote

 

Eligible Sprint customers can now take advantage of the full T-Mobile network with a simple SIM swap. Your Sprint account remains the same, with the same price plan and billing experience, but now you’ll have access to the T-Mobile network.

With the T-Mobile Network Experience:

• Your device will show the T-Mobile network and you’ll get the full T-Mobile Network experience.
• You’ll get access to T-Mobile’s free Scam Shield app, with exciting services like free Scam ID, Scam Block, and free Caller ID!
• You even keep your current plan and billing through Sprint!

 

Any takers?