bigsnake49

1 hour ago, Trip said:

What police chief?  I'm talking about the Mexican government.

- Trip

And I am talking in general. Sprint's problems in rebanding were not just because of the Mexican government. The Mexican government had not held back rebounding by 10 years. IBEZ is the last step. Is the Riverside County sheriff's office still holding out?

1 hour ago, greenbastard said:

You'd be surprised at the number of govt officials selling themselves to O&G companies all over South and West Texas.

The fact is, many foreign companies (including Wal-Mart) have been accused or found guilty of doing business the way Mexicans DO business. If you want stuff to get done, you have to buy the right "services". If you don't, then delays happen.

@greenbastard in Sprint's case it did not have to be an outright cash bribe to the police chief. But a charity fund set up by Sprint can donate funds to the police department to replace the police chief's aging police car. All in the name of increasing police response to emergencies. Now Sprint probably did not have enough money to set up such a charity fund.

2 hours ago, Trip said:

So, your answer is to commit a federal crime by bribing foreign officials?  You do know that felons are prohibited from holding FCC licenses, right?

- Trip

I prefer to call it marketing expenses.  Or you can do it like Sprint and take 14 years and still not finish it. Sometimes it does not really take "marketing". It takes providing them with brand new radios instead of reprogrammed ones. Yeah they cost a little bit more but it gets done done faster and everybody feels better about their brand new radios.

14 hours ago, tyroned3222 said:

Again, the facts are there that Sprint has under spent on the network in the last 3 years.. but now that they are spending we are seeing markets catch up to par not within one year,two years we are seeing it happen within 3 to 6 months and they are upgrading the sites quick to tri band.. San Diego is another example Sprint is right on par with all the carriers and once they get the higher Uplink going they will also be in the low to mid 90s.. so I think at this point of network shouldn't be a concern anymore as Sprint has shown that they will Implement small cells and add Towers where needed.. the question now is can they gained enough subscribers per quarter to recoup the network Investments that they are making over the next three years in case the merger doesn't get approvedAlso, 4 x 4 Mimo from what I have seen Sprint is incorporating it on all of these upgrades so at the end it's just a flip of a switch on the software side to turn that on so I don't think that'll be a big issue

 

Sent from my SM-G965U using Tapatalk

 

 

 

 

 

I hope you come and check my market. I have been waiting for those network enhancements for way too long. Then for some reason or another they changed the location of the closest site to me from a full build site to MM2. So for me after all the network mismanagement, the merger cannot come soon enough. I am happy that they are doing it but I am gung ho for this merger.

4 hours ago, Trip said:

Clearly spoken as someone who has never dealt with the Mexicans.  Or, at least, didn't deal with them in the previous decade.  During the digital TV transition, there were stations in early 2008, leading up to the 2009 transition date, who had not yet had their applications approved by Mexico.  Applications which were filed in 1998.

- Trip

Oh I know how to deal with the Mexicans and the Indians and the police chiefs in Florida with the wink, wink brand new Ford Explorers.

29 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

I see a small army of consultants for T-Mobile to pull this together.   It could be the bureaucracy fighting back and wanting to kill the merger. Definitely a totally regulated industry.  You would always have to be careful with what you put in writing. 

Many of the Sprint questions are about why the past mergers did not succeed.  I had an interesting discussion with a high ranking industry veteran about the Nextel merger and he put the blame on 9/11 and homeland security forcing greater use of Sprint's 800 MHz for first responder use.

Wow, I had not heard that before but I dismiss it out of hand. The failure of previous mergers was that it was the wrong merger. But I will not open that discussion again. I can guarantee you that if Nextel merged with Verizon the merger including the rebanding would have been concluded in 3-4 years as planned.

9 hours ago, S4GRU said:

And the same was said years ago.  Yet.  Here.  We.  Are.

Still going.  Craig Moffet has been disappointed for years.

Not that it matters.  The merger is very likely to happen.

Look, they admitted in their filing with the FCC (and were asked for further data) that they spent more money on promotions than network investments ( I took advantage of one of them). T-Mobile's uncarrier moves hurt mostly Sprint and deprived them of needed revenue for network expansion. I am not even talking about 5G. They still don't have triband on all their sites, they still have holes in their coverage (no I am not talking about rural coverage). They need to deploy 4x4, QAM 256 on all their sites. Will they be able to keep the network investment up to be a viable network operator in the future? I have my doubts. Can they surprise me? Sure.

You are right though, this merger will happen Then I will complain about how much T-Mobile exaggerates their rural coverage.?

13 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Wow...

I would especially like to see the answers to questions 8, 16, 17, 24, 26, 28 and 38 on the Sprint document.

FCC don’t play...

Me too! I guess they are engineers and they need solid answers to solid questions.

Holy Crapola, this is sh@tload of info that the FCC is asking from T-Mobile:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-353599A1.pdf

and Sprint:

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-353601A1.pdf

I am guessing this is going to take a little while to provide and then review.

Now I don't know what the new network engineering model they submitted, Build 9 or the new financial modeling of Applications. I wonder if it is classified as Confidential or Highly Confidential so that we can't see it.

6 hours ago, RedSpark said:

I wonder what changes they made...

 From the pdf, there were three additional pieces of information 

19 hours ago, marioc21 said:

Hmm.... not certain what this means.  

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/09/11/fcc-says-it-is-pausing-180-day-shot-clock-on-its-review-of-a-merger-between-t-mobile-and-sprint.html

 

Well it turns out that the FCC stopped the clock on the merger because T-Mobile/Sprint submitted new documents on the network integration side to the FCC.

"The newly-provided network engineering model is significantly larger and more complex than the engineering submissions already in the record. It appears to incorporate new logic, methodologies, facts, and assumptions, on a subject central to the Applications-the transaction's claimed network benefits. Accordingly, the Commission and third parties will require additional time to review it.”

https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DOC-354053A1.pdf

1 hour ago, kg4icg said:

I'm getting this at work a lot on the G7

 

Maybe I am stupid but what are we supposed to be looking for?

What is the threshold for switching over to T-Mobile?

1 hour ago, BlueAngel said:

No signs of it here.

No signs of it here either.

5 hours ago, Thomas L. said:

So it seems to be that T-Mobile roaming has been primarily rolled out in areas where VoLTE is launching. Has anyone seen it in none VoLTE areas? I had an interesting experience in the LA Metro market - my phone locked onto T-Mobile roaming ("Clearwire Band 4") and would not let go even when I cycled airplane mode in an area with Sprint. I thought that was interesting - the roaming agreement must be extremely favorable to Sprint/have basically no cost to them.

I wish we had T-Mobile roaming enabled. T-mobile is usually 3-6dBs better than Sprint inside my condo. Out and about Sprint is really decent but then so is everybody else. When it comes to 1x, since it is on 1x800, Sprint has great coverage. It seems that they have not added band 26 on all of the sites in my market.

1 minute ago, RAvirani said:

New personal best download speed: 277 mbps!

https://imgur.com/a/cTi4pno

Holy crap!!!

Verizon has a lot of 1x M2M customers. Until those are gone there will be some 1x. Probably not enough for Sprint to roam on.

8 hours ago, danlodish345 said:

My personal best with Sprint.

Sent from my SM-N960U1 using Tapatalk
 

That's crazy good. All I ever get is 25Mbps.

13 hours ago, Trip said:

Isn't the point of the upcoming millimeter wave auction to provide large, ultra-wide bandwidth spectrum that will likely only be of much value in urban areas, thus providing the capacity necessary?  And isn't most of the Band 41 spectrum unlicensed in rural areas because EBS spectrum never got assigned?

- Trip

Then they would offer it in places they have 2.5 spectrum. Then there is the CBRS and LAA schemes. Then the upcoming 3.7-4.2 band (C-Band).

43 minutes ago, Trip said:

I don't know how to read this.  Why only 50%?  Are they going to offer service in Manhattan where they're dense but not in the rural areas, where the service is actually needed, because they're not dense?  Or does it mean something else entirely?

- Trip

Because I think they will have plenty of band 41 spectrum available in rural and semi rural areas but not enough left over in more urban settings.

It seems that the Sprint and T-Mobile executives are saying the right things to make this merger happen:

1. The combined company will not eliminate any of its prepaid brands

2. They will be MVNO friendly going forward

3. They will offer a fixed wireless product at very competitive prices in 50% of the zip codes in its service area.

I think the only other major point they need to hit is to provide reasonable roaming rates to smaller wireless operators like CSpire.

"In response to questions from commissioners at the FCC, T-Mobile executives promised that, if the company successfully merges with Sprint, the combined company will not eliminate any of its prepaid brands.

T-Mobile currently operates the MetroPCS prepaid brand while Sprint operates the Boost and Virgin prepaid brands.

https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/boost-metropcs-and-virgin-to-survive-merger-sprint-t-mobile-execs-promise

13 hours ago, dkyeager said:

I think the real answer is to improve those markets with more sites, but this can not be done in isolation.  To do that they need more cash from the successful markets.  I would not be surprised to see a premium for 5g service for that reason.  Pricing is whatever the market will bear.

Currently Sprint likely incurs more expensive roaming in these weak areas.  Furthermore they likely analyze sites on current profitability.  I think their current way of handling pricing in weak service areas is to give credits to whiners.

The question then becomes is the issue weak signal or overloaded sites?  I tend to think many of Sprint issues are related to limited backhaul because it has such a big impact on their operating costs.  If any area has fewer customers, then it will tend to have greater variation in network performance just based on queue theory.   The good news is if these sites do not have triband, then they will likely get more backhaul when that occurs and then they can increase the band 25 coverage because of band 41.  Note that not all areas have band 41 (or band 26 LTE).   Sprint may also be seeing if the merger goes through in these areas.  No sense in improving a weak area if T-Mobile already has great coverage. 

My general advice is not to worship any carrier.  While reading more scientifically based market reports such as Root Metrics is good, it still is best to actually measure carriers in the areas you need it with the type of phone you will likely use.  Ideally you have the best signal phone the carrier offers for these tests.  Currently that would be the Samsung Galaxy S9/S9+/Note 9 for Sprint and T-Mobile.  Likely for AT&T as well.  Uncertain for Verizon.  Apple users tend to have to suffer worse signal performance (including lack of latest bands/carrier aggregation) to get the other features they love.

Of course Sprint knows what to do but it does not hurt to remind them. You need more sites closer. Densify is the name of the game. So is triband on all your sites. Also please allocate more backhaul. No reason for me to get 21Mbps on a 3xCA band 41 site with a -94dbM signal.

Spectrum Mobile is finally offering iPhones. No BYOD yet.

1 hour ago, belusnecropolis said:

Looking for the connection to Charlie and this article, perhaps a . . . Russian connection?

Sorry, somebody corrected the link!