bigsnake49

It will be great and all but they have not shown much interest because they know they need to invest in Sprint's network and they know that if they acquire Sprint they need to compete against the other 3 carriers 2 of which are very well funded and the 3rd is a master at marketing. From a technical point of view it will be great for Sprint to get in bed with the cable cos because their backhaul problems will be solved and their strand mount and pole mount small cell problems will be solved. Cable cos have been losing customers to cord cutting and they could recover some of those customers. But the cable cos are notoriously conservative so I don't expect them to do anything anytime soon. If Sprint can convince them to network share ala Altice, that will be wonderful.

Or they can merge the two networks and spectrum, form a network operating company and Sprint and T-Mobile becoming marketing companies. I think that will fly a lot easier than a full merger/acquisition.

They did not have to turn 900Mhz to the feds. They had 2.5Mhz of spectrum there. But the FCC froze the spectrum allocations so they could not buy any more of it.

I wonder what the $2B non-cash charge is?

And just on que, another lost of $539M in free adjusted cash flow.

I understand all of that. You brought up the $7.2B net. It is not a cash flow thing it is a non-cash item they had to recognize in their accounting. Since Sprint has not really made a profit in a little while, the tax credit will not result in any additional cash in Sprint's pockets until they do so. The number I look at is adjusted free cash flow which was -$908M, which is to be expected since they were spending money on the network. I expect a similar cashflow this quarter. (Millions, except per share data) Fiscal 3Q18 Fiscal 3Q17 Change Net (loss) income ($141) $7,162 ($7,303) Basic (loss) income per share ($0.03) $1.79 ($1.82) Operating income $479 $727 ($248) Adjusted EBITDA* $3,101 $2,719 $382 Net cash provided by operating activities $2,225 $2,683 ($458) Adjusted free cash flow* ($908) $397 ($1,305)

From the 3rd Quarter 2018 report: "Net loss of $141 million in the quarter compared to net income of $7.2 billion in the year-ago period, as the fiscal year 2017 third quarter results included a $7.1 billion non-cash benefit from tax reform."

Great but they will lack the Capex to innovate. Metro was able to do it because they targeted a lower income demographic and covered those cities using DAS. Sprint can't. Can they survive? Yes. Thrive no. How much money is Sprint making on my $15/month unlimited BYOD plan? How much out of that can they devote to Capex?

No new devices with CDMA, they will not activate them and no PRL updates will be available.

They're actually not concerned about spectrum. Or anti-trust. They are mostly concerned about political considerations as in loss of jobs. Either way they are doing CYA no matter what the decision. They are looking for plausible reason no matter what the decision.

I still don't understand all this delay. There are very defined roles for government agencies to approve or reject the deal. The DOJ with the anti-trust angle and the FCC with the concentration of spectrum. All the consumer angles as in possibility of higher prices or the potential loss of jobs are not part of the consideration process. Now there are potential DOJ angles as far as previous roaming contracts that need to be enforced, assignments of Sprint spectrum to roaming partners in exchange for free or low cost roaming etc, etc. The FTC might take into consideration the issue that the the deal might "substantially lessen competition".

Dish does not have any money.They spent it all on spectrum.

First DOJ can only reject it based on ant-trust grounds or national security. The effect on prices or jobs is not under the purview of the DOJ. FCC can extract concessions as far as too much spectrum but when you take into account all the spectrum holdings of the other 2 the merger passes the spectrum screen. There will be some concessions as far as roaming deals are concerned that Sprint signed. Also the deals that Sprint signed with rural providers to lease spectrum to them in return for cheap roaming would have to be honored. If the merger is not approved it will be for political reasons and then then Sprint/T-Mobile will sue. DOJ is still licking their wounds from the AT&T court battles so I am not sure they would be eager to take on another one. I think all of this noise is posturing to gain concessions not to reject it outright. Also discount Dish. They're butt hurt because T-Mobile no longer needs their spectrum. A weakened Sprint would be much more amenable to help Dish deploy their spectrum than a strong combined company.

I am willing to bet that Sprint will declare chapter 11 soon after the merger fails.

I wonder what grounds the DOJ has for rejecting the merger. It cannot be on anti-trust grounds. I also wonder if Sprint and T-Mobile will take the DOJ to court if it is rejected. Last time the DOJ went to court on a merger they lost (AT&T, DirectTV)

I am a victim of that strategy. Sprint elected to ditch their traditional macro near my condo and instead moved their voice to a monopoly and moved LTE band 41 to couple of mini macros. LTE coverage suffered. They did send me a Magic Box but that is probably not cheap. Sprint cannot stand on its own anymore. They need a partner that will infuse some cash into the operation. Maybe a three way partnership between the cable cos, Dish and Sprint.

When is Sprint's quarterly earnings presentation?

Or $15mo like I have

Beginning/middle of March 2019. After that, my results have really been pretty nice.

Yeah mine is also doing pretty well also: 59.8/7.25 44.5/6.60 64.7/.26

If you're using mmwave as anything other than in a hotspot manner as in stadiums, malls, etc. You will need millions of small cells. That's why all the players in the US want to secure sub 6GHz spectrum.

They can always employ it in CBRS which has both a shared and an exclusive mode. Also LAA and soon C-Band. Also don't forget that Dish is always lurking.

Dish is too cheap to actually contribute money to the merger. Now, Sprint Dish and the cable companies might make some sense. Comcast has some 600Mhz spectrum which combined with Dish's 600Mhz will enhance Sprint's low band holdings. Deploying Dish's + Comcast's spectrum will take some money which Sprint does not have. But Dish does have some useful spectrum for sure.

No, I want the network run by an independent company in which both T-mobile and Sprint have shares. The members of that company should come mostly from T-Mobile.

If the merger does not go through, I hope they revisit the idea of combining network assets and spectrum and have have a separate company run it which then sells capacity to both T-Mobile and Sprint. T-Mobile then become just marketing companies (MVNOs). I do think that they will fight this in court. AT&T fought it and won.