RedSpark

Exclusive: U.S. clears SoftBank's $2.25 billion investment in GM-backed Cruise $2.25 Billion would go a long way for Sprint.... I hope the DOJ sees this. This merger isn’t necessary.

Happy 4th everyone! 🇺🇸💥🍺 Hoping Sprint’s network does well on the National Mall for the 4th of July crowds in DC. I didn’t see any announcements about COWs. Perhaps Massive MIMO is covering the Mall better now?

Nice! Happy 4th! 🇺🇸💥🍺

Good progress! Happy 4th! 🇺🇸💥🍺

Bravo! 👍 I’ve been saying for a long time that Sprint needs to improve coverage where people spend time in transit: airports, bus stations, train stations. You can cover the most people that way, especially when they have idle time or need to use their device for travel purposes. You’re right on the mark here.

See this: https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1560158/000119312513192860/d425100d424b3.htm Mandatory Offer to Purchase. The New Sprint certificate of incorporation as in effect at the effective time of the SoftBank Merger will provide that, in the event that the combined voting interest of SoftBank and its controlled affiliates in New Sprint exceeds 85% of the outstanding voting securities of New Sprint, then SoftBank or a controlled affiliate will make an offer to acquire all the remaining shares of New Sprint common stock at a price not less than the volume-weighted average closing price of New Sprint common stock for the 20 consecutive trading days immediately preceding such offer. (Page 18)

Interesting. Yeah, I guess they'll miss that deadline then.

I don't recall it saying "end of June" for the additional launch markets. Did you see this mentioned somewhere? https://newsroom.sprint.com/sprint-lights-up-true-mobile-5g-in-atlanta-dallas-fort-worth-houston-and-kansas-city.htm (Posted: 5/30/2019)

Looks like AirStrands are helping in Central New Jersey... If this is an improvement I wonder what the speeds were before this deployment.

The trade off for HPUE however is this: With HPUE, our outdoor 2.5 GHz coverage strength becomes nearly identical to our 1.9 GHz coverage. And indoors, where 60 to 70 percent of all wireless traffic is generated, HPUE enables our 2.5 GHz spectrum to achieve 90 percent of the indoor penetration that is currently achieved by our 1.9 GHz spectrum. The result? An even better experience for our customers with increased coverage, more capacity, and faster speeds. Sprint wanted to push as much of its traffic to Band 41, which had more carrying capacity than Band 25. Unfortunately the capex limitations for the past few years didn’t allow HPUE to reach its full potential. Here’s how HPUE performed in “real world” testing: In December, P3 engineers drove 36 miles around the Chicago metro area gathering about 4,000 test samples along a fixed route. They tested two Samsung Note 8 devices running in parallel, one with HPUE active, and one without, to provide a side-by-side comparison. P3 found that HPUE increased Sprint’s 2.5 GHz coverage by 24%. And as a result of spending more time on our faster 2.5 GHz spectrum band, average download speed jumped 49%. Sprint is a Band 41 heavy network. The goal was to make it more available and have devices on it more of the time. Unfortunately, not enough of Sprint’s towers were upgraded to support 2.5 GHz for it to have the impact it needed to have. The most recent Investor Update (Fiscal 4Q18) states that Sprint has 2.5 GHz on approximately 80% of its macro sites (Page 10), and that’s after a recent capex push.

This is the marketing message Sprint is going with for 5G: We’re the reliable 5G network. Thoughts?

Some good speeds in Hell’s Kitchen: You’d figure at some point Sprint would start winning Rootmetrics awards in cities with this level of performance. Guess the low upload speeds vs the other carriers counts for a lot.

Wow, that’s a really limited deployment. Quite the difference between Millimeter Wave and 2.5 GHz coverage. I’m surprised T-Mobile isn’t waiting for a handset with a modem that can support its 5G on 600 MHz.

Perhaps some interesting info will come out of this? Edit to add: clicking on the #SprintAnalystDay hashtag brings up some interesting tweets about the event.

Very nice!

Dish Is Near a $6 Billion Deal for T-Mobile, Sprint Assets https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-06-18/dish-is-said-to-near-6-billion-deal-for-t-mobile-sprint-assets Hmmmmmm.....

But how could Ericsson perform so poorly? Was Sprint’s outsourcing to them just a really bad idea from the beginning and beyond their scope of expertise?

Sprint and Ericsson renewed certain portions of their managed services contract in 2016: https://www.ericsson.com/en/press-releases/2016/7/sprint-and-ericsson-renew-portions-of-managed-services-partnership John Saw posted about it: https://newsroom.sprint.com/the-operational-side-of-our-network-transformation.htm Sprint took in some Ericsson employees as part of the renewal (Some of whom were former Sprint employees): https://www.kansascity.com/news/business/technology/article92233777.html https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-to-take-some-ericsson-employees-as-companies-renew-parts-network-outsourcing-pact Some history from the FierceWireless article on the original deal announced in July 2009: The network-outsourcing pact was initially announced in July 2009, with Sprint transferring 6,000 employees to the Swedish gear vendor and Ericsson taking over day-to-day operations of the CDMA, iDEN and wireline networks. The outsourcing arrangement, which was big enough to merit its own name – the companies dubbed it "Network Advantage" – was hailed as a "game changer" at the time by one analyst.” Some more interesting background: https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20090713006068/en/Sprint-Managed-Services-Deal-Ericsson-Network-Operations https://www.lightreading.com/ethernet-ip/ericsson-sprint-in-$5b-managed-services-deal/d/d-id/669095 Apparently, Ericsson didn’t manage things well. I’m sure others here have much more detailed knowledge on what went wrong.

Given how competent Ericsson seems at developing new network equipment, I still can’t believe how bad they were at managing it as part of the Managed Services Contract it had with Sprint a while back. I guess all is forgiven now?

Hopefully there’s more to come around town soon! It’s amazing how much smaller the equipment footprint is.

I was very pleased with my speeds at Nationals Park, although I mainly focused on the game. Nationals beat the D-Backs 15-5 and it was a heck of a show. https://www.mlb.com/news/matt-adams-homers-twice-nats-split-series-with-d-backs Matt Adams homered twice and collected seven RBIs, including a grand slam launched 438 feet into center field in the eighth, to help power the Nationals to a 15-5 victory in Sunday’s series finale against the D-backs. Overall, a total of four homers for the Nats! Anyway, back to Sprint’s performance. After the game, I walked back home to Northwest DC and mapped/speed tested in the Rootmetrics App on the way. Covered up from to the Stadium going North on South Capitol Street to over by the Capitol and then along the southern half of the Mall going west to head home. Overall, I saw some substantial speed improvements over what had been previously collected for some areas. You can see some of the areas I mapped in the Rootmetrics App and on the website. I was picking up speeds in excess of 100 Mbps in many places. I didn’t see any speeds below 50 Mbps in my tests. In some areas on my walk, it was clear when I entered within range of an upgraded cell site, as speeds would suddenly zoom up to 150 Mbps. I didn’t have to report any slow speeds in the My Sprint App either, which was nice. I’ll try to cover the Northern section of the National Mall on my next walk down that way, but if anyone who has the Rootmetrics App is out and about wants to cover Penn Quarter/Judiciary Square/NoMA and East of the Capitol, have at it! 😀

At the Nationals Game today! My iPhone XS automatically connected to a private WiFi network “provided by Sprint” at Nationals Park. Check out the data speeds here during the game. Nice job Sprint! Here’s the speeds over the WiFi:

That pricing seems to be with a new line of service. Footnote 1: Samsung S10 5G $40.28/month after $13.89/month credit, applied within two bills. With approved credit, 18-monthly lease payments, new line of service. If you cancel early, remaining balance due. Silver color. 256GB Memory SRP: $1299.99. Requires capable plan. 5G coverage will be limited in select cities. Speed claim requires optimal 5G connection. See Sprint.com/sprint5G for actual coverage and availability.

U.S. judge sets pre-trial hearing next week for Sprint/T-Mobile deal Happening on June 21st....

According to the article, it’s likely that the TRO will be approved.... but from what I can tell, it hasn’t been yet.