bigsnake49

Yes immediately after they close.

You get T-mobile roaming only for some markets. Not in my market.

Whatever, get this thing moving and closing on April 1st. That's all I care about.

They could have had the same concessions six months ago. The bastards...

They want to close on April 1 because it is the beginning of the 2nd quarter and accounting is much easier if you do it at the end of the quarter/beginning of the next boundary.

While the result of the CPUC meeting is a foregone conclusion, the timing is not optimal. They will just be behind the other states.

Yeah but does that mean that the CPUC approves?

Sheer speculation on their part. I have not seen the suggestion that they won't close on April 1 elsewhere. They might delay the integration in California but they won't stop it for the rest of the country.

Thanks Robert. I expect that the cable cos will be all over this spectrum auction while I think that the Big Two will be more active in the C-Band auction because more spectrum (up to 280MHz will be available). I don't know what T-Mobile is going to do. Probably sit out the CBRS auction and bid on the C-Band. For the cable cos if they get some CBRS spectrum it will be a good way to reduce their MVNO payments to Verizon. If they want to be serious about wireless they have to also bid in the C-Band auction. Both of the bands are great fits for strand and pole mount small cells. I wonder if they are forward looking enough to offer spectrum hosting for all other winners. No sense in somebody else expending so much money to develop the infrastructure that the cable cos already have in place.

Sprint has about 45,000 macro sites, T-Mobile 65,000 and Verizon and AT&T 85,000 each approximately.

7 10MHz TDD licenses are available per county license area for PAL (Priority Access License) holders. You may win up to 4 of the licenses per county. There is also incumbent license holders such as DOD coastal radars and fixed satellite providers which have the highest priority. PAL licensees must yield to the incumbents and GAA (General Authorized Access must yield to the incumbents and PAL licensees.

It's nothing new, after all GoogleFi has been offering a similar service for a while now (I actually had it for a little while). But GoogleFi has not been advertised or promoted much and you always worry that it will be become abandonware. Tracfone is the nation's largest MVNO at approximately 21M. They have MVNO agreements with all four carriers (3 after April 1). Google had to build their own core so Tracfone is probably doing something similar. They also had to build a line of phones with special firmware (Nexus and Pixel). I know that Apple also took some patents out detailing their approach. I think it is exciting that somebody like Tracfone is following in Google's footsteps. https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/tracfone-prepares-a-nationwide-smartsim-program

It would behoove T-Mobile to acquire Shentel at some point in the future, maybe in 2-3 years when the capex will slow down a bit.

We don't unless somebody leaks something to the press.

The combined carrier expects to save $26 billion in network costs and another $17 billion in other operating costs while increasing network coverage, particularly in underserved markets; and speeding up its expansion of 5G. Those network savings include $4.2 billion in opex savings from retiring Sprint’s network. New T-Mobile will add Sprint’s mid-band spectrum plus 11,000 cell sites to its network, and those will “provide it with enough additional capacity to meet the markets’ projected growth in data consumption and thus avoid the erosion in quality of service that would result from saturating its existing capacity.” https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200219/carriers/insights-from-the-sprint-t-mobile-us-merger-ruling-part-3 Dish “may utilize any and all cell sites that New T-Mobile would otherwise decommission, gaining access to tens of thousands of cell towers ready for almost immediate use,” and it will also have access to retail stores that New T-Mobile would otherwise close, so it can expand its distribution. Marrero also said that in addition to at least 20,000 towers that New T-Mobile will make available to Dish, Dish “has also identified and signed master service agreements for 32,300 towers that do not need structural reinforcement and thus could become operational in relatively short order.” https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200225/carriers/insights-from-the-sprint-t-mobile-us-merger-ruling-part-5

Yep it's a go no matter what.There is another case pending against the merger. From the article above: "The merger also faces a legal challenge from the Communications Workers of America, which argues that the Federal Communications Commission exceeded its statutory authority in approving the deal. That case is pending before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. Oral arguments have yet to be scheduled. Communications Workers of America v. USA, D.C. Cir., No. 19-01254, filed 12/5/19."

The California regulator, which hasn’t set a date for a vote, has until July 12 to make its decision. The CPUC could vote on the deal at its March 12 meeting, Blair Levin, policy advisor at New Street Research, said in a Tuesday note. https://news.bloomberglaw.com/tech-and-telecom-law/sprint-t-mobile-still-need-ok-from-california-utility-regulator If the Californians are as smart as they think they are they would extract some concessions such as rural coverage and maybe contributions to some economically disadvantaged fund.

Sprint subreddit

CPUC T-Mobile/Sprint meeting scheduled for April 16th:

I would like to see what the overlap is between USCC and T-Mobile.I think that C-Spire might be hurting more.

I wonder if Dish will be deploying their equipment on decommissioned Sprint sites immediately or wait. From what I understand their capex for this year was going to be around $500M which will probably not be conducive to immediate deployment on decommissioned Sprint sites.

Just remember that T-Mobile and Sprit are colocated on a lot of sites or the sites are very close. They will only use 11,000 of Sprint sites to host T-Mobile equipment for either capacity or coverage.

Sounds about right. We know they have been stocking up on M-MIMO antennas and they will try to minimize the number of visits/climbs on the same site. So something tells me they will be probably be staging all the equipment somewhere in a warerhouse in a particular market and then hoisting them on each site. Roaming on each other's networks is a great first step towards integration.

https://www.rcrwireless.com/20200224/analyst-angle/the-sunday-brief-device-transition-sprint-new-t-mobile

My iPhone 10XR is and so are the all the models of iPhone 11. We will see if the iPhone 12 is a 5G phone or not.