maxsilver

$361mil is great for one quarter, but they aren't consistently posting that much profit. Last quarter they posted a $64mil. It remains to be seen if they can post successive quarters with profits matching Q2 performance.

 

The Q1 number is artificially low because of the Data Stash revenue deferral (approx $112mil) -- it cost them nothing on a per subscriber basis, but it makes Q1 look much worse than it factually was, and makes Q2/Q3/Q4 look slightly better than they actually are/will-be (since Q2/Q3/Q4 are recording some amount of revenue/profit from sales that already happened in Q1).

http://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news/2015-q1-earnings.htm

http://blogs.barrons.com/techtraderdaily/2015/04/28/t-mobile-rising-street-cheers-net-adds-improved-profit-profile/

It's not a huge change or anything. But the profit between Q1 2015 and Q2/Q3/Q4 2015 is slightly less volitile than it might appear to be, if people are just glancing at the final number for each quarter.

And that should remain that way through 2015, unless they run some new promotion that requires a new revenue deferral.

Where I live even the rural towers have band 12 now. I was surprised. It's night and day in the coverage department. Holding LTE even longer than Sprints band 26.

To provide an anecdote to the contrary, I recently bought an LG Leon LTE (MetroPCS) just to see how service is on T-Mobile, and have found it lacking.  In this area, coverage is good, it holds LTE a really long time, etc.  Once I left Culpeper to visit my parents last weekend, though, my Sprint phone kept on chugging (either via roaming on US Cellular or, for one short stretch, Verizon, or via nTelos pseudo-native) while the T-Mobile phone spent more time saying "No connection" than anything else.  Service popped up when I crossed the interstate and one other larger town, and that was it. 

It's really a market-by-market thing.

For instance, lots of rural Minnesota is still EDGE only. But in Michigan, they are basically finished -- 99% of sites are converted,  there's just 5 or so EDGE-only sites left across the entire state.

They're running a lot of upgrades at once, and not all areas get even resources simultaneously. (That sounds eerily familiar...  )

Slightly off topic but has anyone else been going longer between phone upgrades or is it just me and my friends/are we just getting old?

 

I used to get a new smartphone every year or so but now I am still on my Nexus 5 and my wife is on her iphone 5 and we are pretty happy. I guess for me there are diminishing returns for the expense of a new phone. My only real want is a better camera but my N5 has what I consider decent battery life.

Yes, my experience is similar. Phones are a lot better than they used to be. I'm feeling less and less need to upgrade each year.

If there was any easy way to swap out new modems / radios, I wouldn't really feel the need to buy new phones at all. Since there isn't, getting new LTE Bands / CA / other network improvements is really the only reason I buy new devices anymore.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/lowensteins-view-telecom-industry-structure-upside-down/2015-06-29

 

Interesting counter point to my view that we need four major national carriers. 

I think he is spot on

I think there's a big logical fallacy in there.

Most of the things he's asking for are great (Resolution of Dish, More Home Fiber Service, Hybrid Fixed Mobile services). But then he's promoting another cellular merger -- he's promoting the one action that's guaranteed to get less of all of those other requests. 

At least with 4 players, there's still some level of competition in wireless today. When Wireless calms down, that competition could spill over into wireline. (We've seen that start to happen before with Clearwire's home internet service, and Dish's fixed wireless attempts).  

With only 3 in wireless, there will be no competition in wireless *and* still no competition in wireline *and* no incentive for that to ever change.

It absolutely is a part of T-Mobile's plan to Recarrier if T-Mobile, the disruptive and bold Uncarrier, suddenly marches in lockstep with the rival they want to knock off the block the most. That doesn't ring up alarm bells to you?

Not really. Just because Verizon does something, doesn't make it inherently bad or evil.

Verizon and T-Mobile are in the same exact business, offering identical services on identical devices. So of course many of their actions will look identical, especially on the network side. For example :

• both run LTE over AWS. 
• both run LTE over 700 (in some areas).
• both use VoLTE.
• both support Carrier Aggregation. 
• both adding new cell sites to their networks.
• (new) both are investigating LTE-U

In all of these ways (and more), T-Mobile is "marching in lockstep with the rival they want to knock off the block the most". Yet despite matching Verizon in all of these areas, none of this has prevented T-Mobile from implementing a bunch of consumer-friendly policies. 

While I don't like LTE-U from the spectrum-usage standpoint, and agree with you completely that LTE-U shouldn't occur, I don't see how T-Mobile adding LTE-U makes them any more "Recarrier". 

Masa would have been the primary owner of T-Mobile under a merger, they would either do business as T-Mobile or SoftBank. Even if the combined company was headquartered in Overland Park, which probably wouldn't have happened, Legere and his team would have walked through there with a flamethrower. You and I both know this. I'm not saying Marcelo hasn't, he has, but I can't imagine it would be on the same scale as what would happen with Legere, Sievert, and Ray there. I can't imagine they'd want to move to Overland Park in any case, even if Masa himself said go there.

This is all true, but I don't see how that addresses anything I said.

Triopoly is bad, we agree on that. And both Sprint and T-Mobile are attempting to form the same exact Triopoly, we seem(?) to agree on that.

I don't think the rest of it even matters. Does it even matter if they are headquartered in Overland Park or Bellevue, or "who torches what". The combination would have major nationwide impacts far more significant than which suburb happened to keep some jobs.

Here's an FCC filing from Public Knowledge, LTE-U and LTE-LAA gut WiFi and make it unusable in a lot of test cases.

 

http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=60001105564

 

Everyone should read this filing by Public Knowledge. Lots of innovation comes from the unlicensed bands and WiFi, like the Republic Wireless and Cablevision mobile plans that extensively use WiFi. The only way LTE-LAA should be kosher is to see the 3GPP and IEEE sit down and come up with a neutral approach that doesn't gut free and open WiFi.

Agree completely.  5ghz is unlicensed for a reason, and there's precious little unlicensed spectrum available.

I believe cellular companies should be blocked from using unlicensed spectrum in this way -- they have plenty of privately owned spectrum between themselves, and multiple large swaths of new AWS/600 spectrum coming soon. Not to mention the large blocks of spectrum they already own that's unused or underutilized.

This is all part of T-Mobile's plan to Recarrier, I'm afraid. And if Sprint continues to shoot itself in the foot, T-Mobile will fall more in line with the Duopoly.

I get that it's a unwritten rule here to hate on T-Mobile, but I don't see how this statement has anything to do with LTE-U.

Verizon is also testing unlicensed LTE.  Are they part of T-Mobile's "Recarrier" plan too?

And when Sprint and AT&T jump onto LTE-U, is that part of T-Mobile's "Recarrier" plot too? If Verizon and T-Mobile are allowed to deploy unlicensed LTE and have any significant success with it, Sprint and AT&T *will* copy them on it eventually.

Remember what John Legere really wants is the Triopoly. He was going to be the CEO of T-Mobile after they ate Sprint, but Chairman Wheeler fortunately thought better of it.

Triopoly is a bad situation -- I agree with you on that completely. And I'm glad it was shot down.

But remember, it was Masa Son who begged the government to let him buy T-Mobile, he too really wanted that "Tripoly" situation. And in case we've forgotten the obvious, that man still owns and operates Sprint today.  Masa Son has literally gone on record asking the government for a Triopoly - http://www.forbes.com/sites/joanlappin/2014/03/13/softbanks-son-talks-his-sprintt-mobile-deal-directly-to-america/

There's no factual way to paint T-Mobile as "pro Triopoly", that doesn't equally place blame against Sprint/SoftBank. 

The whole $15 jump to 27, issue bugs me. As tmo did say it was an introductory promotion.

Leasing in general just looks like a bad deal to me, regardless of who's offering it or who happens to be cheaper. The math on the plans doesn't seem very good, especially if there's any chance a person will damage their phone.

Other people seem to like it, and that's great for them. I don't see much harm in offering it. But I don't think I'd ever recommend leasing to someone -- it looks like you need a very specific use case to get a good deal out of it.

And for the folks who felt like The Verge was ignoring Sprint:

http://www.theverge.com/2015/7/2/8882415/sprint-ceo-calls-t-mobiles-uncarrier-movement-bullshit

I'd call 877-882-7401 and open a ticket with them on this. They should know about the software issue and if you keep complaining get you a new phone.

Thanks, but I'm probably too late for that. After 10 days of constant back and forth with Sprint no resolution / no working data, I just ported out temporarily so I could get working data again.

I'll call them though, and see what they say.

So I'm wondering if anyone else is getting this issue... I've checked with three different users in SE Michigan and all are getting the issue. The thing is the issue is only occuring on LG G3 phones. Other phones are fine.

 

Around the time of this past weekend something was done to the Sprint network... Anyone that has an LG G3 running ZV4/ZV6/or ZV8 firmware is unable to connect to the LTE network in a huge area... The LTE won't pass any data then it goes to 3G. These are band 41 enabled towers.

 

I've tried calling Sprint advanced tech support and they were no help. I'm not sure what I can do... I don't want to switch carriers but I'm running out of options since Sprint engineering will not look at the issue.

Sprint has admitted the G3 software issue that stops it from connecting to LTE on certain towers. Maybe when a tower is prepped for CA? Anyways Sprint is currently working with LG on a software update to fix the problem. If you want constent LTE I suggest a different phone until the software is fixed. Sprint upgraded me to a Galaxy S6.

YES!

I'm on the other side of the state, but I've had this same issue on my G3. Phone will see LTE, connect to it for 10-30 seconds with no data transferring, then get pushed back down to EVDO/1X. It will stay there, forever. Does this same thing on literally every single tower in every single town for at least 30+ miles.

I thought for the longest time it was some account/provisioning issue. I had them destroy and re-make my line's account twice, reran hands-free activation at least two dozen times, factory reset my phone three times, etc. No luck.

I've been back and forth with Sprint for weeks on this. They've been swearing up and down that my device was defective.

I'm glad to hear I'm not the only person dealing with this right now, and that Sprint might try to fix this.

It's getting to the point where the old terms are much better, giving me a sense of loyalty credit.

 

The other issue with the new plans is that video throttling.  Sure, video streaming bogs the network down quite a bit, but with B41 coming live in more places and none of the competition throttling video this hard, I find it hard to justify.  Still, I'm unaffected since I'm on a great legacy plan. 

I wouldn't be so quick to assume that the legacy plans are unaffected.

And even if legacy plans aren't effected today, I wouldn't be quick to assume that will continue indefinitely.

Previous "network load reduction" changes have sometimes hit legacy plans (such as the double compressing of images).

From my very basic understanding this is all Sprint's annoying way of authenticating devices.  If you are coming from a GSM carrier you shouldn't have these issues.  Blech.

I've hit this before. Sprint is paranoid about device IDs.

I moved a Sprint device from Ting back to Sprint Postpaid six months ago. It was a completely ridiculous ordeal, requiring about ten phone calls and a fax, over two weeks, before it was finally resolved.

Apparently, at that time there was no procedure for it at all -- officially, it "couldn't be done". Unofficially, you simply call in over and over again, hope you get escalated high enough that someone has database access, hope they take pity on you and decide to manually edit the raw list to move your device over, and then wait however long it takes them to get around to doing that.

Taking a device *to* an MVNO is simple, and almost entirely automated. Leaving that MVNO to take a device back to Sprint is incredibly difficult.

For the last few weeks, every time I go past a Sprint store I see droves of people piling in the doors, which is a good sign. Unfortunately I have to wonder how they'll feel once they discover the fact that they can't hang onto LTE indoors and in between suburban cell sites.

A customer at work today was talking about her new Note 4 and I asked her how she likes Sprint and the first thing out of her mouth was "4G drops everywhere", and then I took a glance at her phone and saw it had 2 bars of 3G just like my iP6 always got in that same spot, where it should be getting 2 bars of B26 LTE (if the downtilt and power was adjusted correctly).

Yep, this is probably the biggest issue. The densification just has to happen as soon as possible. Sprint seems to finally have people in place who have learned this.

But it also makes everything pretty quiet (or would be anyway, once you remove the forum drama and off-topic stuff).

There's really not much to talk about until that plan gets finalized and released. How they handle that (the specific sites they pick, the number, the locations, the timing) will be the biggest factor for Sprint's future, more than anything else.

http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/25/8846485/fcc-600mhz-reserve-recommending-against-tmobile-petition

 

The Verge kind of misses the point here, it isn't just about T-Mobile. 

They usually do when it comes to wireless infrastructure and carriers. Of course, I don't think anyone else as mainstream as they are does any better.

 

And it might just be because T-Mobile is the only small carrier they know about/care about.

I think it's simpler than that.

The Verge is talking about T-Mobile, because T-Mobile is asking people to talk about them  -- they're making ridiculous cartoon/advert/things, sending out Press Releases, along with YouTube "vlogs" and a host of other social media noise about the auction. http://www.theverge.com/2015/6/23/8834307/heres-why-t-mobile-wants-you-to-get-mad-at-the-fcc

Since Sprint isn't generating tons of noise about it, they aren't getting nearly as much focus on this issue.

Squeaky wheel gets the press.

But does that apply to VoLTE too? Any T-Mobile VoLTE users want to chime in?

AT&T's deployment is pretty bad (being market dependent). And T-Mobile is struggling with a call block issue.

But other than that, VoLTE is awesome on both carriers. It "just works", and really well. Voice quality is great. Data is still present, speeds are fast. VoLTE calls also help the phone hold LTE longer in weak areas, which is a nice upside, but still falls back to HSPA+ if absolutely necessary.

In many cities/suburbs, VoLTE actually drops less calls than CDMA 1x voice does (both in my experience, and according to RootMetrics recent market testing). So, that's a nice bonus too.

VoLTE is simply really nice technology.

Back on track/topic though, with T-Mobile now actively repurposing Metro spectrum for LTE, where do they stand on coverage expansion? I know our friends over on Fierce love to discuss how they are going to grow organically, but I'm curious if there have been any confirmations of the fact.

I haven't seen any new organic coverage to date. Not a single site. However...

- They have added B12 to many sites here, and it's surprisingly fast.

- They have been very aggressive in converting EDGE to LTE (less than 4 sites remain here).

- Their GMO rural LTE is surprisingly fast, and coverage is much better than I expected. You can't tell it's GMO from the service quality in any way.

- They have integrated most of the MetroPCS sites into the network, and added lots of new backhaul to all of them (this includes new coverage for T-Mobile users in some areas, and extra site density in some cities, especially in Grand Rapids).

In my humble opinion, T-Mobile is fixing their freeway / suburban problems in Michigan faster than Sprint is fixing their urban problems in Michigan. So, normally I wouldn't fault them for the coverage -- I can see tons of work happening, it's all really great work, and it's happening really quickly.

---

But T-Mobile did promise to cover all these new areas by end of year 2015, and despite all this work, I still think there is a 95% chance they won't actually finish by that deadline. (As almost everyone predicted when they announced it).

There's still roughly 16,000 square miles of new coverage they promised, just in Michigan alone. None of that is live yet.  Not to mention all the other states worth of new coverage they promised

my fiance doesn't get T-Mobile service in easttown either, but you say there's a T-Mobile tower there? are they actually using it?

Yes, T-Mobile has very strong service in the center of Easttown (I'm fairly certain their site is on the Kingsley -- the old tall white stone building, next to Sheldon Cleaners and Kava House).

I've always gotten full AWS LTE on multiple devices throughout all of the business district there (including inside Harmony Brewing, inside Bombay Cuisine, Argos Bookshop, etc). Service in Easttown has been that strong for years due to the site location, even pre-LTE the HSPA+21 was pretty strong and fast.

Now, that particular Easttown T-Mobile site is turned down very low (presumably for density / faster speed purposes?). So even though service in Easttown proper is really strong and fast, it tends to drop out pretty quick as you leave the area.  If you walk down Wealthy street, indoors at Electric Cheetah / Brick Road Pizza / Sparrows Coffee TMO tends to be very weak or no service situations, despite being only one mile away from the Easttown cell site.

HA, Easttown is listed as 'fair' for Spark. I can't even get LTE in Easttown.

Yep.

It's frustrating, since Sprint owns leases on two different cell sites directly in Easttown, that they haven't used.

- One is a Clear WiMax tower, on the southeast side of Aquinas College / Wilcox Park. (Aquinas Dept of Safety Bldg)

- One is an ex-Nextel site, on the rooftop of the Kingsley Building, literally in the center of Easttown. T-Mobile is co-located on that, with Zayo Fiber backhaul.

Instead of using those sites, Sprint's currently shooting service in all the way from either East Grand Rapids or Michigan St and Plymouth. Which is just way too far away for a dense neighborhood like that, regardless of the spectrum used. (AT&T does this too, with similarly bad results)

Isn't most of the T-Mobile user base upgraded? 

Yes.

HSPA+ is still 100% live. Just AWS-specific HSPA+ is gone. So only AWS-exclusive-HSPA+ devices are even effected.

Which, from what I'm told, is less than one percent of their postpaid subscribers. And T-Mobile has already offered those people free phone upgrades.

Seriously, the "satisfactory coverage in some homes" is a crapshoot. "Connectivity in most homes" is OK. "Connectivity in most big buildings and homes" is usually really good.

Yeah, their old map was much better.

From 4 being "darkest", and 1 being "lightest",

- 4&3 meant "works everywhere, basically flawlessly".

- 2 meant "works ok, but only outdoors. (Indoors was EDGE only, or no service)".

- And 1 meant "no service of any kind, no roaming"

Now that it's flattened, it's way harder to read. But they seem to use the same scale, it's just hidden in those text descriptions :

4 = "Connectivity in most big buildings" = works literally everywhere, basically flawlessly.

3 = "Connectivity in most homes" = works well almost everywhere. A few tricky buildings/spots may issues

2 = "Satisfactory in some homes" =  EDGE only or no service indoors. Outside is usable, but very weak

1 = "Limited indoor connectivity" = complete lies. No native service of any kind, and all roaming blocked

There's one nice aspect of this that I like. The spark map is now somewhat useful in that most of the areas of the city that have no working data are presently labeled "Spark: Fair".

So, if you interpret the Spark areas of the map by reading :

- "Spark: Good = Some sort of working data. Might be anything between EVDO/B25/B26/B41" and

- "Spark: Fair = Effectively no usable data coverage. Mostly 1x, some unusable B26/EVDO",

then the coverage map as it is today is now (very roughly) accurate.

I don't think you understand what I'm saying. Customer additions are worth spending profits on, customer retention over tethering isn't. People aren't going to leave Sprint because they don't get a tethering allotment. People WILL join Sprint if the price is right.

I understand what your saying. I just don't agree with it.

Customer additions are often worth their cost, we agree on this.  But customer retention is often also worth it's cost. Especially if it's just tethering, since the actual cost to Sprint for this service is tiny.

Legere is double dipping into profits by throwing promotions at people to get them to switch, then throwing MORE profits at them to stay. Meanwhile, Claure only gets them to switch, then keeps them here with a 'soft contract' like a lease or payments. Legere's retention policy has basically been 'throw more money at them', while Claure's has been 'lets keep long term profitability in mind for when we want to stop the promotions'.

I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding here around costs.

Legere's throwing pennies at customers to get them to stay. If customers stay just a single month longer because of this move, he's made back 50x or more of his cost for that promo.

It only looks like double dipping. And that's good for his "UnCarrier" marketing. But it's really not, the cost is so low it probably won't effect the quarterly statement in any meaningful way.

Offering tethering is not an industry trend, it's a desperate move by John 'The Candy Man' Legere.

 

Fair tethering prices, sure, but free tethering is forgoing profits they would otherwise earn on something that isn't typically a deal breaker for customers. It would be throwing money away.

That's a ridiculous argument.

This isn't free unlimited tethering. They're just adding on a couple of gigabytes to people who are already paid customers. And some of those customers are already paying slightly more per month than their Sprint counterparts.

Once you already have a paid subscriber, it costs almost nothing to give that subscriber an extra few gigabytes of data -- the network costs are mostly fixed and already sunk.

And there's lots of promos that are offered that "typically aren't deal breakers for customers". Like international roaming.

I hope Sprint doesn't offer free tethering.

 

Sprint, Verizon, AT&T, they are all businesses. They don't make money by not charging people.

 

Legere gives and gives and what happens when you feed the animals? They keep coming back begging for more. Claure is a brilliant CEO, he wouldn't be foolish enough to give Sprint profits away to win some ego-stroking contest Legere is having with himself.

You know what, your right.

Good thing Sprint's pricing isn't lower than many of T-Mobile's plans (especially the "Unlimited" plan with all those high data users).  And it's a good thing Sprint's never run any sort of "cut your bill in half" or "double your data" promotions, or stopped charging for international data.

Because, as you say, those would be "desperate moves" because they are "forgoing profits they would otherwise earn". Claure is way too brilliant to offer anything like that.

/s

I hope Sprint doesn't offer free tethering, B25 and B26 are already insanely congested, and profits are good.

If you feel Sprint's network is so congested that they can't comfortably offer 1GB of extra data to their paid monthly subscribers, perhaps the promotion isn't the real problem....

What's bad. Well only for tmobileus subscribers really. The current company name business model it has in place, Gone! The name and colors it currently uses, Gone! Current staff including ceo will remain in place for now to keep current subscribers leached on but once the transaction is complete then that's when the next phase of Dish management takes over and cleans house to include top level positions at tmobileus. From ceo on down the ranks. Expect huge changes in the aftermath.

That seems like a lot of wild assumptions.

Even if this happens, they probably won't do anything too crazy. They still have to be competitive in pricing/plans/policy with Sprint and Cricket, so it's very unlikely that they'd drastically raise prices or anything.

Make no mistake this is an all around victory for Charles Ergen of Dish and the finale nail on the coffin for tmobileus. Finally!!

 That's ridiculous.

Dish could bring a lot of bad to T-Mobile, but T-Mobile isn't dying now. T-Mobile is recording strong growth, healthy revenue, and lowered turnover, and increasing profits.

Just in case anyone was wondering....Seen this come across the wire today....

 

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2931539/it-industry/dish-network-t-mobile-us-reportedly-in-merger-talks.html

 

Not Sprint Related, but effects Sprint....How much spectrum would they get if they combined?

It's being discussed in the T-Mobile thread http://s4gru.com/index.php?/topic/6950-t-mobile-lte-network-discussion-v2/page-13