bigsnake49

Can somebody take Charlie Ergen out the back and give him a good beating?? https://www.yahoo.com/gma/maria-butina-romance-heart-alleged-russian-influence-operation-120907120--abc-news-topstories.html He's been a thorn on Sprint's side forever! Does he not realize that the elimination of Sprint's network will allow him to buy certain network elements at fire sale prices, plus get great rents from site owners eager to replace Sprint? I can understand the other actors objecting to the merger. I am sure that they will be some concessions such as MVNO protections, maybe leaving CDMA up for a while longer for CDMA roaming for CSpire, but man Dish and Ergen just irritate me.

No, pressure AT&T not the government. And the sale of Sprint's WCS To AT&T was in 2014.

If it was a spectrum squatter owned by AT&T, then as part of the sale of WCS to AT&T, pressure them to throw in the SanFran BRS.

They should have settle this chit out. It has been 13 years since the Nextel merger. 13 freaking years!!!! Not 3 or five or 10!!! The same thing with all the SMR spectrum. I ascribe it to nothing but executive incompetence. Get the chit done!!!!

Then use their BRS licenses. They have 60Mhz of BRS nationwide.

As an answer to @lilotimz whose post was withdrawn, Metro only had about 6000DAS which serve to extend their coverage. If I am in the exurbs and I am fed from a DAS, I don't care whether I am fed from a DAS or a full build site. All I care is that I have signal. Of course I am simplifying here because there are different kinds of DAS systems: off-air (passive, active, digital, hybrid), BTS (enodeB) and small cell based DAS.

T-Mobile has 65,000 macro sites right now. That's 20,000 more than Sprint. The merged company will have 85,000. Yeah, almost twice as many as Sprint has right now. People that are ant-merger, wake me up when Sprint on its own can get to 85,000 macro sites.

Massive MIMO will benefit LTE also. 5G is not just massive MIMO. You have a new codec (NR) and a more advanced network architecture.

Look the formula to fix Sprint's network regardless of the merger is pretty well known: 1. Deploy 800Mhz/2.5GHz on all present sites 2. Turn on 3CA download, 4x4 MIMO, 256 QAM network wide 3. Turn on 2xCA upload network wide 4. Deploy coverage sites (macro, mini macro strand) to address coverage gaps and capacity 5. Massive MIMO in hotspots 6. Deploy VOLTE in cities and towns with very good coverage 7. Deploy 5G in hotspots See how far down 5G is in my list?

Net debt $63-65B.

About $68B-$70B which is a lot lower than the $100B that Verizon has.

And about 55M customers. The whole thing is about scale. Yes spectrum as well but Capex spread over 120M customers is much better than spread over 55M.

Move the equipment over to their racks yes. Stop paying the rent yes. But totally decommission them, no. Remember T-Mobile has 65,000 macro sites. Sprint has 45,000. The merged company will have 85,000. So even if they add another couple thousand of new sites, they still will need new equipment so they can go from 47,000 to 85,000. So if Sprint and T-Mobile are on the same tower they will just move Sprint's equipment to T-mobile's racks. If Sprint is on a tower nearby they will also move them. If Sprint is on a desirable location that T-Mobile needs for coverage or capacity then they will add T-mobile equipment to that tower (they have identified 10,000 of those sites). The resulting company will have a hell of a network. They will move everybody to low/mid frequencies on LTE while they clear band 41 for 5G bu they will start adding 5G to unused spectrum on band 41 fairly quickly after the merger closes, and they get 5G capable devices.

It was probably part of the merger discussions. As in you better get your network in decent shape or the merger is off. Decent shape as in put band 41/26 on all your sites.

There won't be any divestments. Now there might be some horse trading between AWS and PCS. There might be a case where a 5x5 block might be non contiguous so it would make sense to sell it to the carriers near it.

There was a big round of spectrum swaps a year or two ago with Sprint participating.

They can definitely exchange their 10x10 with Verizon's 10x10 thereby creating a 15x15 block. Are you sure it has not been done? How old is this bandplan?

Have they not yet swapped spectrum in those markets with other carriers?

Hell, Sprint can get 20x20 alone once EVDO clears.

So, if this merger goes through and it seems that it will, the New T-Mobile will have a very nice swath of 30x30MHz of 1900MHz. However it seems to me that they will have to go through a lot of swaps again to consolidate it into continuous spectrum. Are there any other spectrum swaps that they might do to simplify things? Like lets' say AWS for PCS?

I guess they really want to reclaim the channels used for EVDO.

I just want them to put B26 on every site, particularly in the suburbs/exurbs. Sprint does not have the site density to do it on band 25.

Sprint spent $1.1B on Capex this quarter. Are they doing strand mounts only with Altice? can they get in bed with the other cable cos to deploy strand mounts?

A big long article on how the merger came about: https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/complete-story-how-t-mobile-finally-reached-a-merger-agreement-sprint

During the Charter earnings call, they talked about doing an MVNO with Sprint but not not T-Mobile before launching one based on Verizon. https://www.fiercewireless.com/wireless/charter-opens-up-mobile-spending-and-discussions-sprint They also talked about extending their list of devices (iPhone perhaps?) and BYOD.