RedSpark

Looking back on it... I’m moving closer to that position. He was the CEO. He knew before anyone else that this wasn’t going to happen the way he said. He has reams of market data, reports and competitive intelligence at his disposal. He knew.

I don’t want the merger to happen. Probably when I’m indoors or not in a city.

Was it Masa’s idea to say this?: http://money.cnn.com/2015/09/18/technology/sprint-network/index.html

He cut all the waste and got Sprint lean for a turnaround. Credit to him for that. Everything else he said about beating the competition... yeah, he was wrong. Extremely wrong... and he was in a position to know he was wrong, but he kept saying it. Did he intentionally lie on Sprint’s network improvement trajectory?... I’m leaning towards yes. I didn’t used to think this, but I feel differently now.

Sprint never should have been in a position for the New T-Mobile to take advantage of anything. I don’t want the market to go from 4 major carriers to 3. 600 MHz may have better deployment economics than you think. We were told it was “spectrum of the past” and would take “years to deploy” by the former CFO. Given that the “New T-Mobile” is talking up the combination of 600 MHz and 2.5 GHz as the network of the future, this “spectrum of the past” rationale strikes me as total BS.

Sprint really botched it with the regulators (Mobilitie certainly didn’t help) and in my opinion, it never should have gone down the non-traditional Network build road to begin with. Sprint made a bad situation worse... and here we are.

T-Mobile’s Debt doesn’t matter because they have enough cash flow to make the payments, and they will have enough for the foreseeable future. If I recall correctly, Sprint’s Network is spaced for 1900 MHz. The densification Plan was predicated on a non-traditional build of 2.5 GHz small cells which many in the Wireless industry said was crazy. Sprint assured us there was a secret plan that had a different and lower cost structure. As we now know, that didn’t pan out. Marcelo said as much that they were going back to a traditional build. A substantial amount of time, energy and money was spent on this venture including waiting on permits. Sprint didn’t have to put itself in this position given the regulatory roadblocks. Huge mistake. Sprint also doesn’t have enough 800 MHz to be truly usable for data purposes in the 5G era, especially indoor coverage which gets saturated. It’s not even enough in the 4G era. Adding 800 MHz to all sites seems essential for VoLTE, but I’m not sure how much more it can offer given the limited amount Sprint has. 600 MHz would have helped address this shortcoming, and perhaps could have been deployed more quickly and at a lower cost given its propagation characteristics for range and penetration.

Sprint’s “lack of retail distribution” issue could have been pushed way into the future. Marcelo got distracted by this. The network is what customers use and notice on a daily basis. T-Mobile is printing money. It has achieved critical mass and is beginning to chip away at AT&T/Verizon. But it’s also better at marketing than anyone, although Verizon and AT&T are finally getting a clue. Sprint spent its money on NASCAR and NBA Sponsorships with no defined return on investment and when the network was so lousy you couldn’t get coverage or usable service at the event. But oh look, shiny fast cars and Ms. Sprint Cup. To use your figure of $1 Billion, yes, that’s a substantial amount for the existing footprint. At $100k per macro site (ballpark), that’s 10,000 improved or upgraded sites (upgraded sites may be less). That would get noticed by customers. Focus them on the worst performing areas. As for the 600 MHz, T-Mobile is already putting it to use. Sprint on the other hand has very limited 800 MHz holdings overall and a substantial amount of customers on its network can’t access it due to IBEZ. The writing was on the wall for this merger when Sprint sat it out.

I respectfully disagree. Although Masa wanted this merger to happen (and that’s not a guarantee), Marcelo hamstrung the company even further by not directing funds to where they should have gone... at least in my opinion. The Website affects more people than any physical retail store. The money should have gone to fixing the website. The network is the product. Every penny that wasn’t tied down to something business essential (wages, etc.) should have gone into the network to improve it. Call me crazy, but I’d make the case that Sprint should have mortgaged or sold its physical plant itself to free up funds for Capex. Is Massive MIMO actually happening? We haven’t heard an update on the initial or “follow-up” cities in some time. What we do know is that much of the network still lacks Band 41: http://newsroom.sprint.com/triband-upgrades.htm When our customers are on our 2.5 GHz band, they get our fastest average download speed. This is why we’re blanketing the country with this powerful spectrum. We now have 2.5 GHz deployed on roughly 60% of our macro sites and expect to complete the substantial majority of our tri-band upgrades by the end of fiscal 2018. End of Fiscal 2018 is a long way away: April/May 2019 if my math is right. Hopefully “substantial majority” is close to 100%... The radio shack deal was a distraction. The car phone warehouse deal was a distraction. Tidal was a distraction. All of these things are examples of projects which took money/time from where it should have gone: the website and the network... and this included getting some 600 MHz in the auction.

That I agree with. Perhaps I’m a curmudgeon, but the backflip was too much...

You’re right on that: I’m sure employee morale is bad... possibly as bad as it was during Network Vision when customers were fleeing. It seems like a “goodbye” tour for the Sprint brand, but I don’t see how this improves morale. The “thank you” part I can understand. Not sure what the “education” part is. Overall: This is so depressing to see.

This merger is also happening because of mismanagement by Marcelo, and as a Sprint shareholder, that makes me pretty upset. One thing I’ll never understand is why at his direction Sprint spent so much money on retail stores, whether it was the RadioShack deal or overhauling the retail stores themselves. Marcelo repeatedly said retail store distribution being lacking vs its competitors was an issue of concern.(https://www.wirelessweek.com/news/2017/06/sprint-ramps-distribution-push-adding-jobs-opening-60-new-stores-new-england) I disagree. Aside from the subpar state of the Network, the poorly functioning Sprint website should have been the primary issue of concern. If a retail store is dingy or outdated, that only affects the people who go to that store. However, if the Sprint website doesn’t work well, that can affect tens of millions of people, current and prospective customers alike. Same goes for a tower site, which can affect thousands or tends of thousands of people or more. Poor coverage at an airport can affect millions of customers on an annual basis alone. Marcelo had his priorities completely wrong on this and virtually all the money spent on physical retail should have been thrown into Network Capex... $200 Million for Tidal included.

Still trying to figure out the reasoning and justification for this “roadshow”. I don’t get it. The whole thing is weird.

So the iPhone X only uses the Qualcomm Modem?

That’s become very clear over time. Flashback to November 2017: https://www.reuters.com/article/us-sprint-corp-network/sprint-to-accelerate-network-investment-ceo-says-idUSKBN1D82P2 https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/softbank-s-son-doubling-down-sprint-will-triple-capex-to-6b-medium-term Sigh...

It’s hard to know what’s the truth here. I do think that once Sprint passed on the 600 MHz auction, it was commited to a merger. We were told otherwise of course that Sprint had a non-traditional plan for its 2.5 Spectrum and there was plenty of skepticism from the Wireless establishment that we were told to dismiss because they didn’t appreciate Sprint’s secret sauce and the new way of doing things. The long play was for Sprint to pitch the FCC alongside T-Mobile for a spectrum reserve (shooting for 40 MHz), which it was able to partially achieve (turned out to be 30 MHz). This ensured its potential future merger partner would get it. Of course, I also think it determined Sprint’s fate as a standalone company.

It’s supposed to happen this fall. https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-expects-to-deploy-volte-fall https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-still-track-volte-despite-roaming-agreement-t-mobile Truth is, you wouldn’t want to have VoLTE before the Network is ready for it. Better to have more reliable CDMA. As for why the network wasn’t ready for VoLTE for so long, limited Capex and other related factors probably explain it. Perhaps the 800 MHz rebanding issue as well.

Great points. Once Sprint said it wouldn’t participate, we were told low band wasn’t necessary for Sprint’s new non-traditional network build.... and as we know, that didn’t pan out. So now they’re back to doing a traditional build... only there’s no 600 MHz Spectrum for them to do it with. They’re now counting on getting it from T-Mobile in a merger. Any updates on Massive MIMO deployments? Either not much is actually happening or Sprint is doing a poor job communicating what actually is.

That’s good to know! Perhaps there will be an additional performance boost when the new iPhone finally gets HPUE this year as well as 600 MHz support for Roaming on T-Mobile... and then for when our magenta overlords actually take over. ?

“Nationwide” has been used as an amorphous term by Sprint. Sprint says it has a nationwide network, but that it needs to merge with T-Mobile to have a nationwide network and be a viable competitor to Verizon/AT&T which have nationwide networks... and that its future as a nationwide competitor isn’t viable, leaving it relegated to being a market-trailing 4th Place player. Sprint told us it didn’t need 600 MHz to be “nationwide”... and now it’s telling us it needs it to be “nationwide”. What a shift, but I’m not the one who moved the goalposts. Sprint did. Not sure why you say 600 MHz has little net benefit for consumers. If Sprint had gotten some, it wouldn’t need to merge with T-Mobile. Finally, Sprint needs Coverage in rural areas. It would have been better off acquiring 600 MHz than continuing CCA Roaming Agreements in my opinion. Just my take.

That’s fine. Sprint has 2.5 GHz for those major metro areas until that happens. Sprint can’t even deploy 800 MHz everywhere yet, and given T-Mobile’s Speed, this could have been done by Sprint. A 10-20 MHz Channel would have made all the difference, but oh well. They let T-Mobile get it all.

So the CFO lied?: https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/sprint-cfo-robbiati-600-mhz-spectrum-past “We did not participate in the 600 MHz (auction) not because we didn’t have money at the time, or we were under-resourced for it,” he said. “It is simply spectrum that is spectrum of the past. The world is moving toward high-capacity wireless data networks, and in that world the best and most efficient spectrum that is needed for that… is mid-band spectrum, the spectrum that we have, the 2.5 GHz spectrum.” Robbiati also noted that the TV broadcasters’ airwaves currently up for grabs may not be available for several years. The FCC has issued a 39-month repacking plan for that spectrum, enabling the broadcasters to move to other airwaves while their former spectrum is reshuffled for wireless use. “Why invest in 600 MHz spectrum if that spectrum doesn’t really cater for the future, and also it’s spectrum you cannot deploy for four years?” Robbiati asked rhetorically. “And it doesn’t have an ecosystem in support as widespread as 2.5 spectrum, which is the largest ecosystem in the world.”

My point is that once Sprint didn’t bid in the 600 MHz auction, it was actually an abdication that it wouldn’t compete for true nationwide coverage of LTE/5G. Sprint’s 800MHz holdings are actually quite limited, and not even fully deployed due to rebanding issues/delays. In fact, T-Mobile has been able to deploy their 600 MHz Spectrum pretty quickly, and there’s even a chance that it could finish before Sprint completes its 800 MHz rebanding. Remember, we were told by the former Sprint CFO that “600 MHz would take years to deploy.... so why should we bid on any?” This merger wouldn’t be necessary for “low band” for nationwide 5G reasons if Sprint had acquired some 600 MHz in the auction... but Sprint didn’t participate. When you say that no other carrier offers blanket LTE coverage over midband, you’re right. Sprint expected us to believe otherwise when it said that it didn’t need 600 MHz.... and now we are where we are.

Here’s a good article about the Hearing: https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/editor-s-corner-4-takeaways-from-sprint-t-mobile-senate-merger-hearing I found these parts interesting: Both Legere and Claure have made 5G a key element in their merger proposal. Sprint and T-Mobile will build a massive 5G network if they are allowed to merge, and that action, according to Legere, could push AT&T and Verizon to invest an additional $20 billion of combined spending into their own 5G buildouts in response. However, Sen. Klobuchar pointed out that both Sprint and T-Mobile already announced fairly aggressive 5G buildout plans prior to their April merger announcement. So why do they need to merge? Claure countered that Sprint will need to spend up to $25 billion to build out a standalone 5G network, and even then, the network won’t cover large geographic areas of the United States. “At most this merger is a shortcut,” argued Consumers Union’s Slover, explaining that a Sprint/T-Mobile merger would simply allow the companies to build out a 5G network faster than they could on their own. Good points! This does seem like a shortcut, much like what came out in the filing that undermined the AT&T/T-Mobile merger: http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/Leaked-ATT-Letter-Demolishes-Case-For-TMobile-Merger-115652 “For the first time the letter pegs the cost of bringing AT&T's LTE coverage from 80% to 97% at $3.8 billion -- quite a cost difference from the $39 billion price tag on the T-Mobile deal.” Sprint wouldn’t need T-Mobile’s 600 MHz Spectrum for nationwide 5G if it had bid and gotten some in the auction... but we were told by the former CFO that it wasn’t for lack of money, but because it was the spectrum of the past while 2.5 GHz was where things were headed. So, it’s either true that Sprint not bidding on 600 MHz was due to the lack of money... in which case this assertion by the CFO was a complete lie. Or, it wasn’t due to a lack of money and Sprint really believed that it didn’t need 600 MHz for a truly nationwide 5G network as it was “spectrum of the past”... only to have that blow up in its face down the road. Has to be one of those.

There’s two Model Numbers: https://www.apple.com/iphone-x/specs/ Cellular and Wireless Model A1865* FDD-LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 66) TD-LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41) TD-SCDMA 1900 (F), 2000 (A) CDMA EV-DO Rev. A (800, 1900, 2100 MHz) UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz) GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) Model A1901* Model A1901 does not support CDMA networks, such as those used by Verizon and Sprint. FDD-LTE (Bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 8, 12, 13, 17, 18, 19, 20, 25, 26, 28, 29, 30, 66) TD-LTE (Bands 34, 38, 39, 40, 41) UMTS/HSPA+/DC-HSDPA (850, 900, 1700/2100, 1900, 2100 MHz) GSM/EDGE (850, 900, 1800, 1900 MHz) All models 802.11ac Wi‑Fi with MIMO Bluetooth 5.0 wireless technology NFC with reader mode