Jump to content

bigsnake49

S4GRU Member
  • Posts

    3,790
  • Joined

  • Last visited

  • Days Won

    43

Posts posted by bigsnake49

  1. T-Mobile have initiated the third party appraisal of Shentel assets:

     

    Regional US operator Shentel and T-Mobile US have agreed to initiate a new appraisal process as they seek to establish an agreeable valuation ahead of T-Mobile’s planned takeover of the wireless unit. On 3 November the parties ‘aligned in principle to resolve such disputed items’. For the purpose of the exercise, the appraisers will assume the T-Mobile/Sprint merger did not occur, and that Shentel remains an affiliate of Sprint. The appraisers expect to complete their valuation on or about 20 January 2021 and the transaction is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021, subject to receipt of customary regulatory approvals.

    https://www.commsupdate.com/articles/2020/11/09/shentel-t-mobile-deal-going-ahead-sale-should-conclude-in-2q21/?

    • Like 3
  2. 51 minutes ago, chamb said:

    If you have service that works well, you might want to think twice before you make any move.  Many people that get moved to TM by request or involuntary have issues.  Unless you are sure TM is better in your area, I would hesitate to move to TM.

    TM is much better in this area. They were neck and neck (with TM slightly ahead) 5 years ago until Sprint started replacing macro sites with mini macros. What a disaster!

  3. 1 minute ago, shaferz said:

    I think you are missing the point.  Sprint, in enough places to matter, had (and still has) the superior network - wether it is talking about LTE coverage or speeds.

    The issue is that (legacy) T-mobile simply does not have towers in a lot of areas, and instead rely on their low band to give the guise of coverage.  Its easy to paint an area pink to show 'coverage', yet when you go into that area, you get zero service.  Sprint, on the other hand as an example, in my basement, is getting download speeds of 90+mbps. 

    The attached image is a great example - it is painted pink, yet if you are in a car driving by that address, you quite literally get NO SERVICE.  Nevermind trying to get anything realistic inside of a business or home.  There are towns like this all over the place.  We still have not seen plan from tmobile (that i know of) that indicates which towers/locations will be retained from Sprint but converted to tmobile. 

    Throwing up B41/N41 128x128 M-MIMO antennas on every tmobile site would be of no help at all.  The issue, IMO, is lack of site density outside of urban areas.  

    Screenshot_2020-10-01 10.27.01_I2Dd0n.png

    I think you missed the point above. I said in places that T-Mobile has the superior network, throwing up B41/NR41 and moving Sprint customers to it will improve both Sprint and T-Mobile's customer experience. Later on they can add new sites, fill in with Sprint sites for capacity, etc. For example, in my area, T-Mobile has a much better network than Sprint since Sprint decommissioned full macro sites and replaced with mini macros. My experience will immediately improve if I am moved to T-Mobile's network fortified with B41 M-MIMO. I understand fully that in some places the reverse is true. In those cases they will need full integration before moving Sprint customers over.

    • Like 1
  4. 1 hour ago, jreuschl said:

    I'm sure part of the problem is TM feels they already had a superior network and didn't have to worry that Sprint may have been better in areas.  Sprint was better in more areas than we think.

    Fine, in those cases that you had the superior network, just add a B41/NR41 128x128 M-MIMO antenna on every T-Mobile site and then for a particular market move everybody to the T-Mobile network. When you have accomplished that, then you can reuse the Sprint B41 spectrum for added NR41 bandwidth.

    • Like 2
    • Confused 1
  5. 18 hours ago, Trip said:

    You may have missed the part over the weekend where I was suddenly shunted onto the T-Mobile network without warning.  In the places I go, the T-Mobile network is certainly not better.  I was fortunately able to get that reverted on the three lines of my account where it was relevant, with a lot of fighting Support's attempts to keep me on the T-Mobile network. 

    I'm holding on for now, but I suspect a time will come when they don't give the choice, and if the network still isn't ready by then (I'm skeptical), then I'll be switching to a carrier who is less prone to the "move fast and break things" method of operation.  Verizon is definitely worse than Sprint in the places I want to go, but it's head and shoulders above T-Mobile. 

    Honestly, I was expecting them to merge the networks, so a T-Mobile site and a Sprint site could hand off to each other.  That would be the ideal way to go.  Then, to the extent that T-Mobile decommissions things gradually, it wouldn't shock people so much all at once.  This wholesale pushing people off Sprint mere months after the merger closed and before any Sprint sites have been integrated (as far as I can tell) seems like the worst possible path.

    - Trip

    I am also disappointed in their integration strategy. I was expecting them to integrate the 2 networks market by market starting with the biggest markets first. That would include 4G & 5G. Is there an actual strategy?

  6. 2 hours ago, Trip said:

    1,000 sites per month sounds impressive (up from 800/month we heard previously), but if they're talking about having an 85,000 site network, it would take them 7 years to touch all of them.  They actually need to speed up more, IMO.  Especially given how weak the network continues to be outside of populated areas.

    If they kicked me off of Sprint's network today and said I couldn't have it back, I'd switch carriers as soon as possible.  (Not possible right away, mind you.)

    - Trip

    I hear that switching part from a lot of my Sprint friends. Locally, Sprint's network is nothing to crow about and T-Mobile has a better network so I keep telling them to hold on and test the T-Mobile network before they jump ship but T-Mobile brought this upon themselves.

    • Like 1
  7. 3 hours ago, greenbastard said:

    Not working out very well for Mexico yet.

    Well, I have no idea why or why not it is working for Mexico but if the additional spectrum is shared with FirstNet which then wholesales it, I think it can work pretty well. Firstnet already covers 99% of Americans and 2.61M sure miles and will cover 2.74M square miles or 76.2 % of the land mass.

  8. One can dream, right? Any way the Department of Defense has let out an RFI (Request for Information) for a Dynamic Spectrum Sharing (DSS) of DOD spectrum in the 3100-3550MHz spectrum band. No they don't want to clear it for a future auction, they want to share it and make it available for 5G for commercial purposes. Of course the CTIA, the representative body for the major cellular operators is opposed to the idea since it will devalue whatever spectrum they just paid and will pay for in the C-band auction. Anyway, here is an interesting blurb from the article:

    "According to the Wall Street Journal, supporters of the Pentagon's proposal said it would be similar to FirstNet, a government program that allocated spectrum and billions of dollars for the creation of a nationwide wireless network for public-safety users. AT&T won the contract to construct the FirstNet network in 2017, and today the network covers 99% of the US population and counts 1.3 million connections."

    https://www.lightreading.com/security/us-military-looks-to-use-dss-for-5g-spectrum-sharing/d/d-id/764085?

    Now, I don't know about you but I see a major leap between sharing the spectrum with commercial entities and building a nationwide wholesale network. Could the spectrum be added to FirstNet network and shared with the military? Then the surplus bandwidth not absorbed by public safety entities shared with commercial entities? I bet the cable companies and entities like Google, Facebook and Amazon would jump at the chance to have cheap wholesale access to about 450Mhz of spectrum. I would love to see something like this happen. Stay tuned my friends, this can get interesting!

  9. 11 hours ago, iansltx said:

    T-Mobile-to-Sprint connectivity is live to the point of treating both networks as one from the sound of it (vs. waiting for a service drop to switch to the other). Betting they have the kinks ironed out on that by the time the iPhone 12 gets released, so the network experience on those devices with a T-Mobile primary network will be fine.

    From the sound of it, the TMX program that they are just now implementing is a response to a lot of Sprint customers leaving. I have been a proponent of taking care of the 4G customers first and worry about 5G later. You have to secure your customer base first. I am not sure that iPhone 12 will be the savior people are portraying. It might be an added incentive for people to leave while T-Mobile's network is in flux. 

×
×
  • Create New...