bigsnake49

41 minutes ago, derrph said:

 

Geeze...Sprint is always caught in some. Some like this is self inflicted. I just don’t see how he can really clean that up too much. That’s feeding into the hands of the AGs. I wonder now what other blunders Sprint has now. I wouldn’t be shocked if more come out. Sprint ALWAYS show their hand.


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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. 

25 minutes ago, derrph said:

I don’t see why they didn’t do that from the start. This merger has been nothing but a long in the tooth journey.


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

On 12/6/2019 at 12:22 PM, dro1984 said:

So... what do you all think if the merger actually doesn't happen?   Do you think T Mobile and Sprint will enter into a network sharing situation or???   Just say'in.    The investment analysts are saying it has a little over a 50% chance of getting cancelled as the state's attorney's generals have a pretty good case...   Thoughts?

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

25 minutes ago, SuzieTuesday said:

Frankly that question and statement illustrate that you're likely uninformed regarding what state AGs do and have done, not only in the 3 cases referenced but in 100's if not 1000's of others. The info is out there it just requires some time and effort to discover.

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.

On 11/25/2019 at 11:25 PM, SuzieTuesday said:

This is simply not true. State attorneys general can play an important role in antitrust enforcement on matters of particular concern to local businesses or consumers. States AGs actually have quite a rich history in antitrust. State Attorneys General often investigate antitrust violations – ranging from price fixing to anticompetitive mergers – in conjunction with the federal antitrust enforcement agencies (the U.S. Department of Justice and the Federal Trade Commission).  But recently the nation’s AGs have more frequently taken the lead, conducting their own investigations and initiating independent enforcement actions.

They went after the AT&T / T-Mobile merger in 2011, Verizon / Alltel in 2008, AT&T /Cingular in 2004 for example.

More supporting evidence:

Over the past year, State Attorneys General have stepped into what they describe as a void of antitrust enforcement at the federal level.  AGs have commenced investigations and brought antitrust actions across industry segments, including financial services, healthcare, telecommunications, technology and others.  The substance of the actions cover the waterfront of antitrust including price-fixing, merger enforcement and unfair trade practices. 

 

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!

Just now, RAvirani said:

Both Verizon 1x and AT&T UMTS/HSPA/LTE.

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

10 hours ago, RAvirani said:

The coverage map was updated again today. It looks like we've lost a huge amount of roaming on the west coast. WA-542, WA-547, WA-530, WA-20, US-2, WA-207, WA-410 and US-97 (between US-2 and I-90) all appear to have no service now.

Roaming on the east-west highways surrounding I-5 in Oregon is gone, and roaming in west Oregon and northern California have vanished too.  

I'm hoping this is an error...if not I will likely be an AT&T customer very soon. 

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

37 minutes ago, red_dog007 said:

Actually, the Alcatel Go Flip 3 uses the Snapdragon 210 and fully supports TMobile and Sprint.  

• GSM: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
• UMTS: 2/4/5
• LTE: 2/4/5/12/25/26/41 (Support HPUE)/66/71
• CDMA: BC 0/1/10/ 1xRTT Call
• VoLTE: Yes

Once the merger goes through, it'll be interesting to see how soon a non-Sprint phone could be added to a Sprint account. 

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.

3 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

After the merger goes through, how soon can we expect to be able to add a phone to our account that doesn't have CDMA support?

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.

1 hour ago, dro1984 said:

That would be ok.   I like Mike... He's a good guy but doesn't wear magenta as well as crazy John!    

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

17 minutes ago, Paynefanbro said:

It was my understanding that Mike Sievert was being groomed for the CEO position for a while now.

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

12 hours ago, dro1984 said:

T-Mobile Shares Fell on Report That CEO Is in Talks to Join WeWork

I'm hoping John stays ... bringing Sprint and T Mobile together requires his expertise.   

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.

17 hours ago, nexgencpu said:

Lmao of course he is gonna say that, he wants boost badly.

Boost is gone because it will be bought by Dish.

2 hours ago, Tengen31 said:

That's why SoftBank was another one of Sprints bad choices. Dish wanted time at the same time and that would have been a very choice.

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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.

14 hours ago, greenbastard said:

We're a month and a half away from the start of the trial. My guess is a few more states drop out as we get closer to December 9. I really hope Texas pushes for more rural coverage from T-Mobile and that Dish covers urban areas + interstate highways. There are so many back roads that are crucial to O&G where only At&t has coverage. It's time they get some competition.

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.

44 minutes ago, PythonFanPA said:

Maybe, but in fairness, that's at least some measure of an apples/oranges contextual comparison.   A vast majority of the population at large carries around a cellphone these days.  You absolutely can't say the same about satellite radio users/usage, and while the numbers would be considerably larger for sat tv vs radio, there's a ton of the population that still say land locked to cable tv vs. satellite.  I'll admit I'm not remotely sure of the percentage distribution in the US between cable/sat tv, but if forced to, I'd still be willing to bet its considerably over a 50% skew towards cable there.  And even then you still have to compare those numbers combined vs. internet streaming cable cutters.

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...

21 hours ago, dro1984 said:

Seems like it does.   Not good!   Seems like perfect timing to help add another wrench into the Sprint T Mobile gears...  when does the nonsense stop? 

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.

6 hours ago, Thomas L. said:

So does anyone know when we might get access to T-Mobile spectrum more regularly? T-Mobile roaming is disabled in my market.

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.