bigsnake49

OK, time to get serious. What does Sprint do with all the spectrum? Yes, they will use it in a hotspot fashion in NYC, SF, a few downtowns and malls and stadiums. Fine, BFD! What about the rest of us, what benfit do we get out of all of this? How does Sprint monetize it? Do they engage with the cable cos in deploying combined WiFi/2.5GHz strand mounted DAS? I want to hear the plans damn it! For me, the big benefit of Softbank's acquisition is the increased money to solidify the network using NV and the 800SMR spectrum. Why did they expend so much energy and money going after Clearwire? What's the end game?

You will never win an argument with a woman, particularly one so full of herself.

They just need to have solid coverage where they offer service. Blanket the highways with 800Mhz 1x and LTE. Fill in their suburban, ex-urban coverage with 800MHz. Get in-buiding coverage by deploying 800MHz network. It's easy to market the network when you have a really solid network. Then start selling the "unlimited" network.

I don't think there will be a problem with the FCC. I still think that Sprint can and should sell capacity on their 2.5GHz network to Dish. I don't know that Sprint's cable partners will go for that, though. I'm sure that there are backroom deals that will keep that from happening.

That will also go away soon.

What the heck are we going to talk about now .

Here's my wishlist for Sprint going forward: 1. Close the two deals (Softbank, Clearwire) 2a. Finish Network Vision 2b. Merge with T-Mobile and various other sundry regionals (USCC, C-Spire, Leap) 3. Exchange their 900MHz spectrum for Solinc's 800MHz in Solinc's area and either donate it to utilities in the rest of the country or give it back to the FCC 4. Bid on 600MHz spectrum and get a sizeable chunk (20x20) 5. Use the 800Mhz for voice only 7. Profit ???

Why would Dish bid for the spectrum, besides driving the price for Sprint? How about Sprint driving the price up for Dish? PCS H is power limited, which means that coverage will be limited as well. Why would Sprint want it? If they need coverage limited spectrum, they have Clearwire's.

It's not really contiguous as in belonging to the same band. They are are adjacent on the PCS H uplink.

Some speculators. Some of it is available.

I think you have lost that battle. Too many plates from Ontario and Quebec in Florida to count.

The 900Mhz SMR is 5x5 and Sprint has on average about 3x3.

I'm led to believe by my sources that Sprint has been thinking about a merger with T-Mobile for a while now. If Ergen goes after T-Mobile it will be a heavily leveraged transaction, just like their bid for Sprint. Does DT take the money and run not caring what happens to their progeny? Or do they take some cash plus stock in a Sprint/T-mobile combination, then sell that stock later on? Does Dish really want to get leveraged up the wazoo just to become a wireless provider, the 4th weakest of the four? So yes, the company will have a lot of spectrum, but not enough for fixed wireless. If he does get T-Mobile, the resulting company will have a lot of debt and not a lot of money to invest in increasing coverage or finish building LTE. Or does Dish sell its spectrum to let's say AT&T? I don't know that AT&T is really wild about that spectrum.

Yeah, PCS H should be worth about half a billion, no more. Now I know that we have talked about this before, but what is Sprint going to do with the 900MHz spectrum that they own? Give it back to the FCC and get some kind of credit? Swap it for Solinc's ESMR spectrum?

The H block will be power limited. One way to deploy 2.5GHz more widely is to have DAS antennas either strand or pole mounted with the actual logic residing back at the basestation sharing space with PCS and SMR cards.

I don't think Charlie is giving up anything. If he can absorb T-Mobile, bid for AWS-3 and then combine his winnings with the AWS-4 downlink, now that will definitely interest him.

For all I know it is still going on. It would not make any sense to drop it unless the Sprint/Clearwire deal closes

I wonder if they will try to do that. It would definitely increase their spectrum. But I don't think that Dish wants to be a strictly mobile player. Even with this compicated spectrum repurposing they will only have 40Mhz of downlink and 10Mhz of uplink. Now, if they acquire T-Mobile they will definitely have quite a bit of spectrum, albeit scattered along 4 bands (I'm not even counting Echostar's 700Mhz spectrum). I wonder if they can then swap some PCS spectrum for AWS-1 spectrum.

Yes.

Thanks, that's really helpful.

Did they? Can you point me to the quarterly or yearly reports that mention that.

Not completely. "While it is possible that Ergen could use the $1.5B that DISH has raised to mount a counterbid to either Sprint’s takeover of Clearwire, or T-Mobile’s takeover of MetroPCS, others think he is contemplating use of the money for a potential H-block bid, in order to persuade Sprint to enter into a more attractive hosting agreement. However, there is a far more intriguing possibility, which could explain why Sound Point started buying up more LightSquared debt at precisely the time when Clearwire decided to go with Sprint instead of DISH’s offer. That is an attempt to buy up all of LightSquared’s first lien debt, followed by a battle to oust Falcone when LightSquared current exclusivity (to propose a plan for emergence from bankruptcy) expires at the end of January. Then DISH could propose in mid January that the AWS-4 uplink spectrum is instead converted to downlink spectrum (in line with a suggestion made by the FCC back in March), and LightSquared’s uplink spectrum would be used to provide an alternative uplink. That would be logical, because it will be years before LightSquared is able to use its L-band downlinks, and the 1675-80MHz band is unlikely to be given away to LightSquared for nothing (as opposed to being auctioned). It would also make the full 20MHz of AWS-4 uplink spectrum usable for downlinks, and make an H-block counterbid by DISH far more plausible, because the H-block downlink (1995-2000MHz) could be combined with the AWS-4 spectrum between 2000-2020MHz, putting Sprint under further pressure. The FCC might also like to see the risk of litigation with LightSquared being taken off the table, as well as the prospect of higher bids for the H-block, even if the end result was a further delay in deployment of the AWS-4 spectrum." http://tmfassociates.com/blog/2012/12/27/plan-c-for-charlie/

Softbank will invest further money in Sprint. While there is going to be significant opex savings from the shutdown of the IDEN network, the true savings won't accumulate until the site leases expire.

They will probably go after T-Mobile. T-Mobile has a decent amount of spectrum for the number of customers they have. They (Dish) also own a lot of Lightsquared debt and could end up with the LSQ spectrum which they can then pair up with their own spectrum as has been explained by Tim Farrar and AJ in the past.

The most Dish can get is 25% and they can't give them any special priviledges.