ase500

Um. I didn't compare anything. My point as was others is that complaining about not having 100+ speeds consistently is pointless. Especially as mobile devices do not contain memory that could use such a capability. 5G mobile at this point is essentially a gimmick. Until higher class memory prices come down there is literally no use for speeds above about 50 mbps. That is my point. In no way am I a fan boy. And yes it is downright Insulting for you to attempt to deflect your pointless criticism with such. My points are matters of FACT not of fanaticism. If you care to have a discussion of the technology and how things work great. However if you are just gloomy gus or just feel the need to denigrate others well then feel free to take a long off a short pier.

You sound a bit testy. I think the overall point is that based on current technologies that 100+ mbps is realistically pointless for mobile use. The reality is that the memory technology used in phones is not capable of that level of data transfer at a sustained rate. So it seems petty to criticize the network. Most people are not getting 100+ mbps on their wifi connections at home. Setup a speed test server on your own home network and try sustained speed tests, I guarantee you will not maintain 100 mbps connections for more than a minute or so.

I came to sprint in 2006 on the Samsung mm-920. First smartphone would be the palm centro. I know they weren't called smartphones, let's be honest palm started it all.

And this is why Tmobile is in trouble without Sprint. Tmobile 600mhz 5G will peak at 100mpbs and mm wave development is not practical for rural deployment. So Tmobile would be deploying 5G at roughly the same speeds as LTE and ten times slower than cable. This leaves them needing to compete on ONLY price. In turn they hemorrhage cash.

How is this not civil? I in no way attack or belittled. I reacted and responded....

LTE can not supply broadband for large geographic areas. The air link is SHARED bandwidth. Furthermore Tmobile does need Sprint. 5ghz would require tighter tower spacing and is massively over used. Most WISPs have used WIFI standards and most of them have BANKRUPTED. I have worked for a WISP and it is no way a workable solution. Do you honestly think that MM wave is about mobile applications? Do you really think MASSIVE MIMO is about mobile? 5G is absolutely about last mile broadband. The fact is that both Verizon and At&t are launching their 5g services with HOME internet connections. Qualcomm even touts their 5G technology as the way to connect rural customers, in their white papers. The mobile market is at its saturation point. There is no more growth to be had. All 4 are just stealing customers back and forth. If it wasn't about fixed wireless none of these companies would be investing, it would not make any financial sense. Who isn't happy with 50-100 mbps on their phone? Would people be willing to shoulder the billions of dollars on their phone bills? Where did you think the money for new spectrum and hundreds of thousands of new and upgraded towers was going to come from? The reality is 5G is about growth opportunities for these companies, Tmobile does not have the spectrum to compete and Sprint doesn't have the money. With the two combined, they make the only company that can create a network that can keep the costs down and provide excellent service. The big two are going to hit the same wall that wireline companies have hit in rural deployment. This will leave 5G in metropolitan areas where it is needed the least. Without a merger it is highly likely both will shrink and possibly bankrupt.

You're not understanding the convergence happening in several markets. The merger is about 5g or more generally about data. Cable companies are moving toward being data companies not video content companies. This means that wireless companies will not only be competing for mobile users but also for fixed data connections. For many rural communities fiber optic connections are just to costly and companies simply will not invest in bringing broadband to these communities. 5g is about connecting these communities not about faster data to your phone. Without a merger Tmobile will not have the spectrum and Sprint will not have the cash. Those rural communities will be split up by At&t and Verizon giving people very little choice and we will see prices rise. The reality is without a proper third player prices will rise. If the merger fails, Tmobile will never be able to compete in fixed wireless effectively. Sprint is in a better position if investment is made but that would require either Softbank buying up the remaining stock and spending heavily or a different merger. Charter is the best match but, would be unlikely to invest heavily in the network. They would be more likely to use Sprint for Sprint link and to complement existing services, not expansion.

Ok, I know probably just my OCD here. You guys are tossing around three different terms that mean three very different things. City, Metro, and Market. Market is very subjective, a retailer, an event company, and a telecommunications company all may serve the same area and define the market differently. Metro is a conglomeration of cities or townships with a central city of more than 50,000 people. A city in most states is a municipality with more than 1,000 persons. Now to the point, the top ten cities do not contain 26 percent of the population, the top metros do, however that is completely disjointed from what Sprint or anyone else calls a market. So if Sprint says they are going to deploy something to Kansas City, do they mean just the city, the metro, or their defined market? You don't know, I don't know, and chances are anyone not in the network engineering team doesn't know. So this argument is pointless. The number of people covered or not covered and the impact of that is completely subjective to what they mean and where you live.

Most of this garbled and incoherent. Softbank is not giving up much control. They get 2 seats on the board and voting stock. Had this deal just been about getting cash Softbank would have taken the deal before, when there was no seats and the stock was nonvoting. Mergers never save money in the short term, so it is always about longterm growth and overall profits. Political issues are completely nonsense, modern politics is about the short game. These are going to be freshman congressman.[FYI Congress is both the House and Senate so saying Senate or Congress makes you look ignorant] Congress has already held hearings on this. And we are at regulatory review. All Congress could really do at this point is sue to stop it, which without regulators on there side would be downright stupid.(Not saying it couldn't happen, just that it would be stupid.) Any request for divestment in spectrum is going to come from the FCC not Congress. And has almost certainly been discussed. I doubt any major divestitures will be required as much of the spectrum is the catalyst for the merger in the first place. It is quite apparent that many here simply do not understand the process of mergers or the government involvement in them.

I am not sure why anyone thinks this merger is going to lead to job losses in the short term that would intersect with political issues. In the short term mergers nearly always generate job gains as the companies integrate. This will be especially true in this case as there is physical equipment to be moved. Long term yes jobs will be lost but why would any politician care about the long term. In this case we are talking a network integration time of 3 years and at the same time network upgrades. Feet on the ground will be needed. Many of this pool of labor is the voter trump would be trying to influence. Upper and upper middle class isn't his wheelhouse.

I don't think you really understand what is happening here. Number one the current situation is not particularly competitive for At&t or Verizon. The two have the majority of the customers. This has really lead to two tier market. Tier one being for customers who have more money than sense and the other for more price. Both Sprint and Tmobile have been able to siphon some customers off of the big two however, at the current rate it would take more than five decades for either Sprint or Tmobile to pick up enough to gain any real competitive momentum. I am sure market forces would bankrupt one of them or even both before then. Remember Tmobile would have already been bankrupt if the parent company had not transferred piles of debt to themselves, invested heavily into network upgrades and increased holdings. Up until 2013 they were actively looking to unload their shares. Next for Verizon and at&t 5G has nothing to due with mobile internet and everything to do with fixed wireless. They intend to directly compete with comcast, charter and so on. So does new Tmobile, but they will also have mobile 5G. Verizon and at&t will have to compete on price on the wireless side. Another issue is Verizon has survived on the back of "Alpha" consumers. It will be hard to sell these consumers having second best and you can't win these customers on bundling and deals. Verizon has built everything on the reputation of being the very best. When evidence starts to show otherwise, the heat is on. Do you honestly think that either network alone would be able to knock Verizon off the top spot? At&t has no interest in the top spot and has diversified into a more profitable market. If there isn't a strong third player things could get real ugly. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

So you have a 5gbps connection. May I ask who you get internet though and what router you use. Most SOHO routers will not handle anything above 1gbps on the WAN side and most wireless clients would never see above 1gbps at best. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

Megabyte or megabit? Huge difference. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

I don't even know where to start. Price is immaterial at this point. You can own 99 percent of all the shares in a company and if those shares are nonvoting you have no say in how the company runs. As I have been saying forever the issue was never about price it was about the shares being voting or nonvoting. The Reuters article confirms that was and remains the issue. What has changed is that there are several clocks are now ticking and time is not on Tmobile's side. This is why talks are occurring again. Either Son believes he now has a better advantage or Tmobile realizes that they don't have the spectrum or the physical network to really make a run of 5G. Remember only Sprint is talking about a mobile 5G network. The other 3 are talking about hotspots and Fixed wireless 5G. The public in general doesn't understand this. This also realigns the market. For 5G At&t and Verizon will be competing in the marketplace with wireline operators. Notice that as those two have been selling off wireline assets, they have been selling them to companies like Frontier, who couldn't ever compete with fixed wireless 5G. Tmobile would also be entering this same market and they are missing one huge advantage all three of the others have. Tier one internet backbones. They also don't have the spectrum to build a 5G mobile network. Stop and think about the position that leaves Tmobile in. Reliant on one side on the same companies they are competing against. And unable to provide actual 5G speeds in the mobile market. They would have to be stoned or stupid not to give Son the one thing he asked for. Voting rights. So is price the issue? No. It is an all stock deal and it doesn't matter what exchange price is set if the stock awarded is nonvoting. He would have to have faith in the germans to run the company properly or say goodbye to all of the money spent into Sprint. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

That's a rather simplistic view. It ignores much of the market pressures on each. Fewer doesn't change the external market forces. They still need to maintain their networks, pay down debts, invest in upgrades, and produce profits for investors. These pressures are the ones that drive companies to compete. Failure to compete for customers would also drive outside businesses to attempt to enter the market (think dish network). The reality of the situation is that current market pressures may force one of them out of business anyway. Unless DT is willing to continue to write off T-Mobile's debt my bet would be that ultimately T-Mobile would be the one to go belly up. They have been growing, but they lack the resources to move into 5G territory. I bet without this merger they may end up a target of Dish. Sprint will be in a better position(assuming they invest capex as planned). Money is only one of the resources needed to succeed. Many companies that have been well capitalized and even had plenty of customers only to end up bankrupt due to the lack of a needed resource to maintain. T-mobile's arc and lack of resources suggest moving forward it would be difficult for them to maintain. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

Like I have said before, I personally am not a huge fan of the merger. With that said at this point in time there are roughly 30 billion dollars in synergistic savings. As well as the Scale of of customers. At current predictions a combined company would leapfrog AT&T and be within spitting distance of Verizon. We have to remember that much of that 30 billion comes at the expense of American jobs as well. That is a much bigger issue for me than the competition argument. I don't think for a minute that three is really going to be less competitive. Perhaps it may even increase competition as three good sized companies can beat each other up a bit better than two smaller ones can beat up on two bigger ones. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

Actually, Softbank may very well be in a much better position. T-Mobile started a clock ticking on 5G. If you really read their statement you and read between the lines, their 5G is going to be very much like their "4G" was before the started deployment of LTE. It will at best be psuedo 5G. They will use "hotspots" for millimetre-wave. This means that they know none of the spectrum they currently have will really support both speed and capacity for 5G Mobile. Yes I know Sprint is the only one that has said their 5G will be mobile. There is a reason for this. However, the general public's association of anything G with mobile is a huge issue. People will not take kindly to getting told that they will only get 5G in Fixed wireless or within X feet from a tower. This is why Sprint has a distinct advantage now. Band 41 is becoming more valuable by the moment and the synergies of the merger are decreasing at the same rate. Son wants control or at least the ability to buy control of the combined company. Calling off talks last time may have been strategic to push for a better position. I have a feeling that he was offered non-voting stock, something that would have shut him out of ever controlling the company. That simple change maybe enough. If his shares and the market shares equal more than 50.1 percent and his shares are voting, he could buy control. Sent from my SM-G960U using Tapatalk

Not really. There are some state run networks in the world. However, much of the reliability has to do with the uniform Technology and the smaller foot print, as well as the demographics. You have to think that in much of the world people don't "spread out" the way we do in the U.S. This means They also are not covering the kind of space U.S. Networks are. Then on top of that the structure of the government running the network is going to play a role. A Dictator could probably run a very effective, reliable, and robust network. We live in a Democratic Republic, it is designed to be slow moving, this is at odds with the nature of technology and the very reason why they suck at technology related issues. This kind of slow grinding politics is the reason why we have independent agencies that are given authority. Think of it this way the FCC was formed in 1934 at the request of industry, leaving things open and allowing the government slowly move to any form of regulation was too slow in 1934. Think about it, our government, which was working and passing laws faster in 1934 was too slow for technological changes. Imagine just how slow it would be with our current partisan bickering and the FCC being tossed around as a political foot ball. I highly doubt we would get a reliable network. At the current pace of technology the government wouldn't get done with the east coast before the technology would be obsolete. Not to mention they would have to pull workers out of their rears just to get that much done.

Umm. Anyone who has worked in technology and with the government knows the thing they do WORST is technology. While I am absolutely in favor of community run fiber networks and cooperatives. These are on a micro-level as wireless becomes more important a macro-level government network could be a disaster both technological and from a first amendment perspective. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

Ok, while I am not pro net neutrality in its current form. You really have a massive misunderstanding of what the internet is and how it has been regulated in the past. As well as why some form of net neutrality will be essential in the future. While the DOD did infact create both the original network and standards. Starting in 1988 IANA was formed with Jon Postel at the helm. However, IANA was completely under control of the DOD until ICANN was created in 1998 to help facilitate the transfer of authority away from the Government. This is where Net neutrality becomes more important. Up until 1998 theoretically the Government had the full ability to revoke IP addresses and DNS access. The government handed over full control October 1st 2016. So up until that date the government wielded massive control over the internet via IP addresses and root server access. Furthermore, up until a few years ago ISPs were dumb pipes with no real skin in the content game. Sony entertainment was not a theat Charter's video business. Comcast was not competing for content production rights with netflix or amazon. We now have a situation where the ISP no longer a simple dumb pipe, they now have an interest in what I am using it for. We also have a situation where the peering agreements that created the broader Internet may no longer be the best option for the larger tier one networks. Leading higher capacity networks to charge gate fees. This would essentially end the free and open internet as we know it. Also driving prices in rural areas up. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

All taxes in the end are paid by the consumer. The question is how is the burden shifted. Unfortunately, decreasing corporate tax rates is usually a shift to increased taxes to those who can least afford it on the long term as tax cuts often lead to increased deficits. This increase in deficit often means increased taxes on the middle class and cut services in areas that are critical to the common welfare of the people. Mind you that is the primary role of government. While the tax cuts stimulate the economy in the short-term, long-term they are a disaster. Furthermore, they serve to further complicate the tax system at a time when the CBO and IRS have said the best way to increase wealth and investment is to simplify and flatten the tax structure. The way forward should be to take a note from our friends to the north. No foreign corporations, you do business here, you have a HQ here and you pay taxes on income made here. Next flatten the tax rates, corporate, investment and personal income all taxed at the same rate. This gets rid of tax shelters. GST and SST. And if you really wanted to kick the economy into high gear end the religious exemption. Massive amounts of tax dollars are hidden there. Some studies on taxing churches showed we could bring tax rates as low as 7 percent if we taxed churches. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

No, he said he had sought mergers. That goes to scale. The reports you read were speculative chatter from wall street. AND selling a company doesn't mean selling a company... Think back to Lampert, he sold his controlling share in sears to buy Kmart then used Kmart to buy back Sears and merge them. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

Never did he try to sell the company. He said that he wondered if he had gotten in over his head. He said he misjudged the regulatory environment in the US. Time and time again he has stated that he considers Sprint very important. Many of the things he has said recently would have been to lay the groundwork for a merger. Stop and really give this some thought. He bought ARM, he is building robots, and working on AI. If he really wanted out he could have divested to the open market. Sprint it is much better shape than it was when he bought it. He is buying more of it and spending more. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

I don't think this is confusing. He never really wanted to sell the company. He wanted to give Sprint scale. If you pay attention to many of the deals he has made, he uses any means necessary. I am thinking his goal was to gain control of the merged company after the merger by buying much of the open market stock. However, I am thinking that DT wanted to give him nonvoting stock. This would never give him the opportunity to control the combined company. I don't think it was ever his intention to give up control permanently. He was trying the backdoor. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk

I would say so. I meant that Sprint sevice in the aforementioned States is still better than any provider even Verizon in much of northern Mn. Areas around Red Lake, Northome, Big fork have no service from any provider. The square miles of that are is larger than some of the states mentioned. Sent from my SM-G930P using Tapatalk