utiz4321

Depends on which customer you are talking about. For the MVNO would be the customer of the federal network authority. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Except it wouldn't work that way. Let's assume wireless work the way you advocated right from the beginning. The federal government built out a national analog network that was really first rate back in let's say the early 1980's. Further, let's assume your MVNO model and the government let companies use the "national infrastructure" for a trivial fee, like the national highway system. Where would we be 30 years later, well let's look at similar pieces of infrastructure, I don't think you would argue that the national highway system is in great shape. At least you would be arguing against the wind, it has been starved of funds, hasn't really seen any major expansions since the project was finalized. Further, highways have much lower rates of depreciation that a wireless network. The lack of funds would be felt far fast and far more intensely in a wireless network (sprint is a great example of that.). Further, why would we ever have moved to digital, or 3G or 4g or lte? How would we have ever picked the most efficient technologies assuming we did? In your world progress on the pipe side of things would have been much slower and hence progress on the content side. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Trip... I would much rather walk into ups or fedex over walking into a post office and do anything. The last time I went to the post office I got yelled at for trying to pick up a missed package the same day they attempted delivery. The pensions you mention are not just a problem for the post office but most things run by the federal government. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes. This is the case do to returns to scale and because it is not mandated. Vzw and att can't simple rely on there rural base to cover the cost of running their network. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

You might get your wish. We might end up with two national carriers, but I don't think that is ideal. But it seems to be all the market can bear in a net neutral world. What would be the incentive for a nationalized network to upgrade itself? The rapid advance in network tech. Has been driven by competition of networks, if you turned it into a monopoly (on the network side) then innovation would stop, cost to the MVNOs would be monopolistic and investment would be minimized. Just look at the history of government run monopolies, it is awful, in this country and in every other. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

No. I just look at the track record of say public wifi or the post office or the upkeep of the interstate highway system and can't see any reason why I would want telephony renationalized. Oh, then they is the history of a nationalized telephony itself. The large capex cost involved in maintaining and upgrading networks is a big reason for the markets structure and who should pay for it is an open question, content drives a lot of those costs. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Aj Thank whatever divine spirit animates the world the network wasn't nationalized at any point in our history. There would have been very little innovation from that point on, we would certainly not be anywhere close to an near ubiquitous deployment of lte. As far as big this getting profits from big that, I don't really care and don't see why any consumer should. The market will work this out and consumers will choose based on where they feel they get value. Profits, will take care of themselves that is what I am advocating. If you would like greater choose among providers advocate positions that reduce returns to scale like lessening the regulatory burden on network deployment. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

The don't provide bandwidth though. Look, when you can't stream pandora because the network is over loaded who do you get pissed with? The carrier is the one that allows Pandora to reach its customer where their customers want to use them. It sounds to me like Pandora is a customer of the carriers too. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That is a hard claim to support. If you have a good app or service people will use there data to get to it. If you have a copy cat service that offers only a marginal improvement on existing services then people might weight that marginal improvement against the marginal value of using a service that doesn't use their data. On the other side of the coin the carriers have much higher capex built into providing a good network experience and innovating with the network when compared to that capital costs developers tend to face. That innovation needs to be paid for and it is a good thing that carriers make profits from improving there network, as it encourages them to keep doing it. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

That is far from true. Innovation will continue and what you seem to forget is all of the capex intensive innovation on the side of the carriers. How many major network upgrades have there been in the last 7 years? The four major carriers alone are looking at spending 25 billion on capex this year. They have to be able to monetize that or all the advances we have seen in pushing the networks to improve will end. Remember two of the four carriers haven't been able to monetize the capital spends yet. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

It could. What I see is more of the same where somethings count towards your data and others don't. I don't think they'll charges the end users unless the fcc rules out charging the providers and doesn't rule out charging end users for some reason. But the industry wants to charge content providers for data not to count against the customer. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Your analogy is not a good one. The highway department is a government enforced monopoly, consumer have no choice but to use highways run by the highway department. Consumer do have choices when it comes to wireless and ip providers. That allows them to shape the market the way they prefer. All that is happen with the net neutrality debate is content providers are trying to use the government to make sure the profit distribution remains where it is currently even though the market might want it structured differently. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you ask advocates of net neutrality it isn't, why? Near as I can tell because it benefits them, i.e. Content providers. I for the life of me don't understand why consumers care, But it a strict sense yes it is. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I don't think it does. The billions sprint is spending on NGN is largely self financed. To the extent they are receiving any additional capital from SoftBank it comes in the form of the leasing facilities they are setting up, which in the in is nothing more than a low interest loan. If sprint had made the decision to participate in the 600 auction it would have been a clear and unambiguous sign that SoftBank believed in a sprint turn around with or with out T-Mobile as it would have required an additional capital investment in sprint by SoftBank (probably would have had to tap the Japanese bond market). So this is not a good sign and points to doubts on softbanks part. At the same time SoftBank increasing their position in sprint points the other way. I think the most likely play SoftBank is aiming for is trying to make sprint more attractive to a potential buyer by improving its competitiveness (this plays niecely with marcelo's recent comments about sprint and a cable company tie up) while waiting on events in the US regulatory environment to change in favor of the T-Mobile merger. In the in I think SoftBank will either stay with sprint or not depending on weather or not they believe they can merge with T-Mobile, but that is just a guess.

The problem is the market is saying it wants less than four. Regulator can say they want 100 national carriers it doesn't mean they are going to get it. If sprint or T-Mobile go bankrupt because the market (i.e. Consumers) only make three players profitable then we will have three carriers anyway.

Only if the price they get would be higher than the price they paid for the shares. There have been reports that SoftBank already shopped sprint around and couldn't find a buyer for the price they where asking. In light of that buying more shares doesn't make much sense in the plan is to sell the company.

That is a hell of a bet. If the dems capture the White House again and sprint or T-Mobile become free cash flow positive they'll like run into the same regulatory problems as they did before.

I just don't see how sprint can deploy VoLTE on its current spectrum with out a super dense network every where. This is even more incomprehensible to me if I a right in my understanding there is no way to hand off between VoLTE and cdma still.

I am anti net neutrality. I don't see why the government should shift profits from pipe to content when the market is distributing it otherwise (i.e. Consumers). Content is what draws people to the web but pipe brings them there. What has been the capex for wireless companys over the last eight years? How many different network versions have we gone through? With out the innovation on the side of the pipes the last few years we would never have moved off Evdo.

I wonder if anyone had any insights on what he meant by doing backhaul differently and how he plans to speed up that process?

Assurion handles the insurance for all of the major carriers, so they are kind of the only game in town if you want a carrier based insurance solution. But hey at least you don't have to pay off you phone and buy a new one.

Well I am disappointed. It seems to me Sprint could be falling into it's old pattern of delay which is never good.

It is true that companies fail in there financial plans all the time and Sprint may fail but that is not the same as them not having a funding plan in place. Further, I think misleading or lying to investors on a quarterly earnings call would land excs. In hot water.

They have publically stated NGN is funded. As a publically traded company I don't think they can say that and it not be true without running into legal problems.

Do we have any info on a timeline of any kind for NGN outside of sprint's 3-4 years? To be specific, do we have any idea when we could start seeing the deployment of a large amount of small cells or when we could see the first macro sites coming online?