bigsnake49

Yeah, eventually the prices will rise. They have already risen from the bottom reached couple of years ago. Those lower prices are what have driven Sprint to the edge of bankruptcy. If you can't have enough of a cash flow, you can't invest in capex, if you don't have enough of a capex, you are going to fall further behind on the network side, if you fall further behind, customers will leave. Sprint can show them what low prices have led to. How many jobs were lost in order for them to be marginally afloat. How much capex was foregone, how bad their back end systems are. How much they have to invest in order for them to be competitive on the network side.Show them that due to their lower customer numbers they don't have the scale. Due to smaller scale, the cost per customer goes up. Prices will eventually rise because the new T-Mobile will have to invest in infrastructure to increase its coverage and capacity. If you want ubiquitous coverage you have to pay for it.

I have been advocating this for at least 5-7 years now if not earlier.

If they don't merge I would say that network sharing is the next best thing. Hell they might just include Dish in it.

Since you made the claim and called me uninformed then back up your claim by proving that they were big cogs in all of those mergers.

The Federal government was the one that did not approve the AT&T/T-Mobile merger, Verizon did merge with Alltel and AT&T merged with Cingular. So what exactly did the SAGs accomplish? A big fat nothing! Stay in your lane SAGs! You have plenty of things to worry about within your state like the opiod crisis. See if you can make a difference there!

I am thinking that they probably are roaming on AT&T now.

What was Sprint roaming on, out on the West coast, Verizon?

But it still has CDMA :). I have no doubt that such phones will start appearing shortly. Sprint has a problem with SIMs. There are too many different types because they don't have a sophisticated back end so they put a lot of info on the cards that should be part of the back end business logic. They have neglected that part of the infrastructure so T-Mobile will try to move Sprint accounts over to the T-Mobile system as soon as they possibly can. They can let the two subscriber groups roam on each other's networks for a little while but moving Sprint subscribers over quickly is critical.

I am sure that the chip makers (Qualcomm) can make a chipset/RF front end that has all the bands that the combined company supports without cdma. The problem would be if there is a loss of voice roaming for Sprint if CDMA voice went away and all voice was over LTE.

Sievert has been groomed for the CEO job for a while now. While Legere was the showman, Sievert was the man that actually made the plan happen. They need a man at the top with attention to detail to execute the merger plan on time.

T-mobile will need execution and not necessarily crazy antics.

He has done all the work at COO and richly deserves to be the CEO.

I think that their network chief and their COO will be the ones actually doing the work just like they have so far. John was just the front man. If you need a CEO, Coombes has done very well at Sprint.

OK, I have no idea what they'r talking about but supposedly Altice's 19,000 small cells in the Long Island area have not improved Sprin't's performance: https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/altice-s-19-000-small-cells-long-island-don-t-help-sprint-s-network-much-say-analysts

I agree with the comments above, not bad at all. They have now deployed 2.5 GHz to 85% of their sites. But I still think that they need to merge with T-Mobile.

Boost is gone because it will be bought by Dish.

The neglect of Sprint by Softbank verges on the criminal. I am not 100% that Dish would have been any better. At least they would brought in some mid band spectrum and probably could devote some of their cash flow to prop up Sprint. Dish's play at the time was to be spectrum speculators.

Yeah, those FTM roads are not very well covered by anybody including AT&T. It's just that AT&T covers them better than the other carriers. I hope that Texas and California and New York do extract concessions from T-Mobile on rural coverage.

Meanwhile Dish issues its 3rd RFP for its 5G network: "Dish Networks is moving forward with requests for proposal (RFPs) for its standalone 5G broadband network, despite the fact that it’s contingent on the merger of T-Mobile and Sprint, and that merger is not a definite thing, yet. If the T-Mobile/Sprint deal goes through, Dish has committed to build a standalone 5G broadband network available to at least 70% of the U.S. population by June 2023. That’s a tight timeline for such a wireless network. Today, Dish announced it will release an RFP for end-to-end deployment services vendors. The satellite TV company said this will be its third RFP in a series for different elements of its planned nationwide 5G network. The Deployment Services RFP will be released the week of October 28. It will include requests for pre-construction services including site acquisition, architecture and engineering and utility coordination. And it will also include construction services such as civil engineering, electrical engineering, network element installation and tower climbing." https://www.fiercewireless.com/5g/dish-issues-third-rfp-for-its-5g-greenfield-network

There's OTA broadcasting, cable, satellite and fiber/DSL TV competing for the same subscriber, not to mention wireless carriers offering rural broadband/TV. Not everything is available everywhere but...

I think that the DOJ will not approve the merger of Dish/Direct TV unless Dish Wireless is spun off. So only the Dish satellite part is merged with Direct TV. It seems to me that the old model of broadcast TV whether over the air, satellite or cable is slowly going away. Satellite companies better reuse the spectrum to provide broadband for video

I believe the whole thing will go away if they promise to match Verizon's coverage in the whole US within 5 years.

Sprint's pilfering of Lifeline funds really did not help they case for this merger. I believe the merger will go through but I hope that Sprint has contingency plans in case that does not happen. It is now clear that the acquisition of Sprint by SoftBank was a disaster. Softbank was never interested in investing in Sprint. They always wanted to merge with T-Mobile. So what are the best options for Sprint? 1. Acquire Dish's wireless division and get acquired in turn by a consortium of Cable cos 2. Cable cos and sprint acquire the rest of EBS in rural areas and use that and CBRS to provide fixed wireless service/TV programming to rural areas 3. Cable cos become facilities based MVNO of Sprint 4. Cable cos provide strand based and pole based 2.5 Ghz +CBRS based small cells I have no idea what Sprint can do to survive on its own.

As soon as the merger closes.

I can see Apple adding 5G/LTE modems to laptops and iPads. I. can also see them offering some kind of cell service on their devices as the revenue from the iPhones keeps going down.