bigsnake49

They kept all the Metro DAS because why not? They don't hurt anything. They just recently removed the Metro DAS from my local tower. It was kept there for almost 4 years after the merger. I wonder if they add a full site there again. It is a good location that will give them the same coverage as AT&T and Verizon.

They will start with everybody being able to roam on the other's network. It will be most advantageous to Sprint customers with newer phones that include band 66. T-mobile customers will be able to access Sprint's 19000 Mhz (no block G, unless they have the right phone). They will have to flood the market with phones that contain all the frequencies and incentivize people to buy them. They have identified 10,000 Sprint sites that they will keep, the rest go away. It will be a logistical challenge to transfer the network equipment from one network to the other without local disruptions in service. But I have faith in T-Mobile's network team.

Well, they already have identified which Sprint locations they will keep, only 10, 000. The rest are redundant. They will add another 10,000 new ones.

Huh? They don't have a problem right now, why would they have a problem going forward?

I am very happy with this merger. Get'ir done! I want to see roaming on each other's networks immediately. Don't wait for the close of the deal. I guess selling Boost was a good way to make sure that all or most of the Boost stores stay open which was a significant worry.

They would be owned by somebody else but would still be Sprint/T-Mobile MVNOs

I don't think so.

That there's urban, suburban, exurban and rural and then there's vast stretches of nothingness. Each of them require different approaches.

Not when they are quoting Bloomberg. Now we know there will be some concessions and people are just throwing crap against the wall and hoping it will stick. I am sure everybody is keeping the talks very close to the vest. Instead of selling, a brand New T-Mobile should be forced to keep all three brands to ensure competition is alive and well. 40% of prepaid is 40% of prepaid. Prepaid is not as valued as postpaid.

Yeah this is rank speculation., particularly by Bloomberg who has totally lost credibility lately.

I suggest they look at what is the most profitable/biggest prepaid brand and then sell the other 2. I am guessing Metro is the healthiest.

NYC and Chicago by the lake have nothing to do with Houston with its huge suburbs that stretch almost to San Antonio. And Katy has nothing to do with the coverage on Farm-To-Market rural roads in Texas.

You're not hearing me. Their network sucks and it will take macro sites to make it better. The kind that T-mobile has in abundance in the LA basin. The macro site that was servicing my location was taken down for some reason or another. It was replaced by couple of small cells which do an adequate job outside on the street but cannot penetrate inside to save a life. In removing the tribune macro site they removed both band 26 and band 25 antennas. The band 41 signal cannot reach indoors at my place. It needed both band 25 and 26. So this band 41 utopia of your does not work from and I believe it won't work for a lot of other suburbanites. Let me repeat again. Band 41 small cells are not a replacement for triband macro sites, they are supplemental as in when there is a coverage gap that cannot be bridged by a macro site because there is no tall building or a standalone antenna. The other circumstance is when a macro site is overloaded. You need both kind of sites to have an adequate network.

Sprint is so far behind in Los Angeles, it's not even funny. I doubt they have more than 10% market share and than probably all prepaid. And yes, everybody. is using tall buildings' rooftops nowadays.

Both of you need to stop going to the two extremes. Take out NY, downtown Chicago and maybe downtown SF, let's say 30 Million people, take out another 30Million for rural areas (maybe a little generous) and what do you have left? 270 million people that live in suburbs. Those are the people that you have to worry about covering. Verizon and AT&T have about 85,000 sites to cover everybody, T-Mobile 65,000 and Sprint 45,000. That number for Sprint has not changed since probably 2010 to 2012. Yes small cells might help but you will not be able to make up for 20,000 or 40,000 macro sites with small cells.

Well that why us merger proponents are supporting the merger, scale! Capex is split among twice the number of customers and becomes a smaller percentage of your expenses. Plus operationally the T-Mobile team is light years ahead of Sprint's, although the new CEO seems to know what he's doing. Short of a merger, I'd want them to merge network operations and have T-Mobile and Sprint being marketing operations.You get the network scale without a full merger.

@lilotimzAre they colocating WiFi and band 41 or CBRS also?

Comcast has some 600Mhz spectrum that only covers their cable footprint.

I knew about Cox but not Comcast. Is Comcast doing anything with their 600MHz spectrum?

You know that there is a whole world out there outside NYC and Chicago. There is Dallas and Atlanta and Phoenix and Houston and KC which have a small downtown area and the rest is suburbs and exurbs and that's where their coverage lacks and that's where T-Mobile has been densifying. Are you trying to say they should abandon those areas? Altice and Cox are the exceptions. Wake me up when Comcast and Charter sign up to do so and when the actual small cells get built.

They need to add 20,00 new sites to match just T-Mobile and most of T-Mobile's is urban. Good luck with that!

They will share with Sprint. Remember that Altice Europe owns two wireless operators in Europe, SFR in France and PT Portugal in Portugal. So they are not strangers to wireless.

Yeah Sprint provides the spectrum and RAN but that's about it.

Yep but it's not a traditional MVNO ala Comcast: "Altice has said in the past that its full infrastructure-based MVNO will rely only on wireless partner Sprint’s radio access network (RAN) only, while Altice will handle all over aspects of the mobile service, including the SIM, roaming and network partners, data and internet access, voice messaging, rate charging, customer care and billing." https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/altice-track-to-launch-mobile-services-summer-not-worried-about-5g-fwa-threat “We will be operating our own core network with its own [Home Location Register], which is the brain of the mobile network,” said Altice USA CEO Dexter Goei, speaking during the operator’s third-quarter earnings conference call. https://www.multichannel.com/news/altice-touts-full-mvno-approach-again

Yes they did at least the backhaul and small cell part but Cox has no desire to do an MVNO.