bigsnake49

6 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

That was early in the process.  They kept far more in the Metro PCS merger than planned.  I think it will depend on markets.  Sprint weak market sites will mostly be shut down IMO.  More successful Sprint markets will retain more sites.  Same with T-Mobile markets that are already over capacity.

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. 

1 minute ago, tyroned3222 said:

That’s in areas where sprint has no or little to no service.. if you turn this on everywhere to offset congestion and such it would be tough to do... i guess the small areas where sprint has coverage where tmo doesn’t it would work


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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.

3 minutes ago, shaferz said:

That is part of what they talk about with 'network synergies'.  I am pretty sure that means co-location where possible, and currently duplicated tower/antenna groups being removed.

 

What I am curious to see is how this is done from a hardware standpoint.  Both carriers already run into congestion issues - but I dont know if that is congestion/constraints in regards to spectrum, RRU's, or other base station equipment.  They obviously cant just 'shut down' a sprint location and expect the TMO equipment to be able to reliably pick up everyone, nor can they do the opposite... and shut down a TMO location and expect the Sprint equipment to be able to reliably pick up everyone.  

 

I'm frankly excited to see this come to fruition.  I'm pessimistic about Legere in general, but for those of us in areas where coverage is good or better than average already... it will be exciting to see things ramp up (or possibly ramp down).  Will be interesting to see how this pans out!

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.

3 minutes ago, tyroned3222 said:

No, I think that would be a RF nightmare with sprint and tmo on the same towers and close by


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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.

12 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

If they do where do they do?

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

20 minutes ago, Johnner1999 said:

Did I read somewhere; that Tmo was willing to sell Metro?!?


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I don't think so.

1 hour ago, greenbastard said:

Then I don't get what you're trying to say.

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

22 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

Fiercewireless boost the credibility a lot.

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.

6 minutes ago, red_dog007 said:

How much would they really lose?  Say you sell Boost Mobile and MetroPCS, they are still going to use your network.  They are still going to be paying New-TMobile. 😕

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.

6 hours ago, greenbastard said:

I assumed it was a given that when we talked about "Urban", we also meant suburban America. For the purpose of this discussion, suburbs and downtown areas are all "urbanized" areas while a site on I-10 near Sonora, TX is rural.

Sorry for the confusion.

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.

1 hour ago, newyork4me said:

Bingo.  You are making my point for me.  They have no market share, but a network that is now better than it would reflect.  Their 5G launch will also put them way ahead of geographic coverage for 5G compared to their competitors too.

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.

17 minutes ago, newyork4me said:

I think it's been reported that Sprint has more than that now, but yes, you often will make up for it with small cells.  Many of T-Mobile's cites are rooftop urban sites for density...that's all addressed by small cells.

Take Los Angeles...Sprint does not need more macros.  They can use small cells to make up for all of their remaining deficiencies...hek, it's rare to get a macro above 45ft in height these days anyway.  Instead, small cells are suitable to covering the canyons (more so than macros) and are better at spot coverage/capacity in certain neighborhoods (based on zoning issues).

4 million people live in Los Angeles City limits.  There's no reason Sprint cannot provide the best network for every single one of those people.  That's where Sprint has the true potential.  Major metros.  (And NY matters...they have 18 million folks in that metro area, and 19,000 small cells with Altice... Chicago has the density and good suburban network inherited from US Cellular).

Targeting just a few key metro areas and having the best network will pull in subscribers.  It's a strategy that has worked over and over.  Not everyone wants the VZW coverage map at VZW prices and VZW congestion.  Unlimited 4K streaming on Sprint 5G on the best urban network...that's a compelling value proposition.

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.

On 5/10/2019 at 11:07 PM, newyork4me said:

If you read what I wrote, it's literally the opposite of what your response tries to make it seem.

I said they need to spend all their CapEx the next year in urban areas only and then at least half of it dedicated to urban areas going forward.  NV 1.0 was exactly the wrong play, because it haphazardly spent resources (many times in rural areas that had no compelling reason).

Please don't create strawman interpretations of what I said.

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. 

2 hours ago, red_dog007 said:

 

The only thing I'd be concerned with, in regards to revenue, is them deploying more and more equipment (like the tens of thousands of small cells).  If they have to support more infrastructure with the same revenues, that will only become more costly.  They have to think of ways and make successful deals that help keep costs low.  I think 2.5GHz will go a long ways in helping keep costs low.  Their position puts them in such a way they can only get so much revenue out of 55million customers.

 

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.

40 minutes ago, lilotimz said:

FWIW, Comcast has  been providing strand mount colocations and backhaul access for small cells in select markets most noticeably in Michigan. Likewise Cox is doing BH access in Nebraska. 

 

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

14 minutes ago, newyork4me said:

Again, I have to point you to Chicago and New York City as good examples of their density efforts.  They have about a thousand mini-macros coming online in Chicago and 20,000 strand-mount small cells deployed in the NYC area on Altice fiber.  It's cost effective and offers unmatched capacity.

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.

1 hour ago, newyork4me said:

It's a shockingly bad strategy that benefits nobody.  They should not.

Sprint has the ability to become the premier urban carrier at prices lower than the rest.  The money is in urban areas.  VZ and AT&T *need* the urban customers to subsidize their rural builds, so VZ & AT&T will compete on price to keep them.  This lowers prices for rural customers of theirs too.

Sprint trying to do coverage expansion without scale is a dumb idea..they have a mediocre network in urban areas and a poor network in rural areas and have no ability draw customers from the other carriers, reflecting rising prices for all.

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!

7 minutes ago, Brad The Beast said:

So will Altice use their own dedicated backhaul or will they share with Sprint?

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.

3 minutes ago, Brad The Beast said:

Oh wow ok. Going above and beyond the typical MVNO.

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

14 minutes ago, Brad The Beast said:

Ok. Altice is doing all that plus firing up their own MVNO?

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

4 minutes ago, Brad The Beast said:

Didn't they do something like that with Cox?

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