RedSpark

Looks like AirStrands are helping in Central New Jersey...

If this is an improvement I wonder what the speeds were before this deployment.

33 minutes ago, Terrell352 said:

HPUE also makes upload CA not as effective since the phone only uses one or the other.

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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.

1 hour ago, Paynefanbro said:

T-Mobile is launching 5G in 6 cities on June 28th alongside the Galaxy S10 5G. The cities are NYC, LA, Las Vegas, Dallas, Cleveland, and Atlanta. If you’re in one of these cities, you’ll be able to purchase the phone, though T-Mobile makes it clear that its 5G coverage is currently extremely limited and will only reliably work outdoors. They even kinda have coverage maps.

NYC has the largest deployment out of all of them and it's because their macro site density is insane here. The rest of the cities don't look too good.

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.....

19 minutes ago, RAvirani said:

The problem was the lack of penalties for missing deadlines and the lack of incentives for getting things done. 

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?

1 hour ago, dro1984 said:

I'm not sure Ericsson was to blame....  after all, we are talking about Sprint.   Money / Management issues ... If you're not releasing funding when you're suppose to and you are constantly changing directions, how good can they be?   

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.

6 hours ago, Terrell352 said:

This is major news!!! https://www.fiercewireless.com/tech/ericsson-rolls-out-standalone-5g-nr-software

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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?

4 hours ago, Trip said:

I really like this picture from a Washington Post article about OPM.

- Trip

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

17 hours ago, Brad The Beast said:

I see massive MIMO!

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:

7 hours ago, Rawvega said:

Galaxy S10 5G set to drop for Sprint on June 21st for $40.28 per month on Flex lease with pre-order.

Galaxy S10 5G

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....

1 hour ago, tyroned3222 said:

Ready for more popcorn !!! Lol looks like states got a TRO approved and the merger will be at minimum delayed another 6 months.. sounds like it will be treated as a high profile case.

 

https://nypost.com/2019/06/12/t-mobile-sprint-merger-appears-to-be-in-major-trouble/amp/?__twitter_impression=true

 

 

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

4 minutes ago, tyroned3222 said:

Well, it looks like soon they won’t be able to hide it.. 17 more states looking to jump on board of this lawsuit.. that’s a total of 27 territory against the deal.. if a judge grants the junction could delay deal indefinitely.. tmo and sprint would seriously meet to consider if they want to move forward on this


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17 more? Where did you read that?

1 hour ago, tyroned3222 said:

I agree!!! SoftBank has been looking for a buyer/merger since 2017 and no one wanted to buy them expect tmo last min...


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One of Sprint’s arguments for a merger is that it lacks sufficient scale to complete without it. Of course, this means that you have to deliberately set aside (in my opinion) the fact that SoftBank, a global mega-corporation owns nearly 85% of it.

Sprint is SoftBank USA, but it seems determined to hide that fact.

4 minutes ago, tyroned3222 said:

I agree!!! SoftBank has been looking for a buyer/merger since 2017 and no one wanted to buy them expect tmo last min...


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And now at less favorable terms than before I believe.

One thing that seems lost (either deliberately or ignorantly) so far on these government regulators and in the mainstream channels in support of this merger is that SoftBank is a multi-billion global corporation of which Sprint is merely a piece. I have to believe this is intentional in some respect as to the market narrative.

SoftBank’s unwillingness (or inability as has been claimed in the past based on Japanese bank covenants) to invest enough in Sprint to make it an effective competitor should not be made up for by permitting the market to consolidate from four major players to three, to the detriment of customers in my opinion.

My response to SoftBank would be: you had enough money for ARM (http://fortune.com/2016/07/18/softbank-arm-iot/), Uber (https://www.vox.com/recode/2019/5/10/18563267/softbank-vision-fund-explainer-uber-wework-slack-ipo), Boston Dynamics (https://finance.yahoo.com/amphtml/news/softbank-pumps-37m-robot-dog-company-boston-dynamics-103522300.html) among other things. A merger doesn’t need to happen, nor should it.

SoftBank wants to have its cake and eat it too. If it was up to me, I’d tell them to go pound sand, open their wallet and invest to enable Sprint to compete.... or to divest itself of Sprint and then sell it to someone who wants to.

2 minutes ago, OhioCalling said:

I stand corrected then, Guess part of it must be not available to the public. My bad.

I’m curious what they wouldn’t want public about it. Any idea?

4 minutes ago, OhioCalling said:

Under Seal just means where it was filed. Not the same as "Sealed" which means it can't be seen.

I read it this way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Under_seal

”Filed under seal”

Filing under seal is a procedure allowing sensitive or confidential information to be filed with a court without becoming a matter of public record.^[1] The court generally must give permission for the material to remain under seal.^[2]

13 minutes ago, SuzieTuesday said:

I believe the reason merger talks are so nonsensical is that the whole thing is very political.

"They're obviously trying to place pressure on Delrahim to do the right thing," said Sohn, now a distinguished fellow at the Georgetown Law Institute for Technology Law & Policy. "They’ve seen all the same evidence that he’s seen. They know that his decision is political, and not based on the substance at this point. They’re basically calling him into question."

This Politico article IMHO reveals at least some of the politics of the merger.

https://www.politico.com/story/2019/06/11/lawsuit-block-t-mobile-sprint-merger-1359851

“The suit was filed under seal in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.”

Why was it filed under seal?

3 hours ago, dkyeager said:

I see the wireless market currently as two mega carriers and two also rans.  Merger should help rural and small city coverage. Coverage should also be more even simply due to queue theory.  Not certain if it will help or hurt me personally.  Will have to wait to see which Sprint sites are retained and other numerous details.

I also don't discount the merger risks: the merger can be approved yet be a business failure.  The waters have been roiled enough that other players may emerge from different sectors béfore both carriers become one.

I agree that coverage will improve as a result of the merger, and the combination of 600 MHz and 2.5 GHz will create a heck of a network. My issue with this is that the two “also rans” do actually provide competition, and that competitive effect will be reduced if a merger was allowed. The combined entity won’t have anything to offset it. To be honest,  I don’t believe there will be additional players to take their place. I believe this merger will be an irreversible mistake.