bigsnake49

Too many bands to be supported on the towers. RRHs would be really complicated or they would have to double them. T-Mobile has both AWS-1 and AWS-3. I think they will try to consolidate their spectrum holdings. Look out for a lot of horse trading after the merger closes.

I think that Sprint devices will be able to roam free on T-Mobile's network almost immediately. Same with T-Mobile devices that have Sprint bands.

Again, what's to become of Sprint's 800MHz? Can they exchange Dish's 600Mhz for Sprint's 800MHz somewhere down the road? How flexible are the RRHs, can they be reprogrammed? I am very interested in the technical aspects of the network integration. Something tells me that they will try to consolidate their PCS holdings by swapping with Verizon and AT&T. Can they swap some AWS for PCS 1:1?

It's to get it approved by the DOJ. I hope that the DOJ set as a condition that they need to match the coverage of at least AT&T within 3 years.

Plus assumption of Sprint's debt, so let's say $65B merger.

Even if the merger is agreed upon, they will probably coordinate where Sprint's expansion will take place. They will open both networks for roaming. I am pretty sure that 2.5GHz expansion will take place no matter what. I'm not sure about PCS and 800Mhz. I wonder what happens to the 800Mhz spectrum if the merger goes through? Could certain network elements be sold to Dish?

That article is as muddy as heck. The only thing I got out of that is that DT will have the most voting shares whereas Softbank will have the most shares some of them non-voting.

For all the enthusiasm about 5G, Huawei is trying to temper expectations about the nascent technology: Chairman Eric Xu said that while 5G was faster and more reliable, consumers would find no “material difference between the two technologies”. The technology has been hailed as a necessity for the coming age of autonomous driving, and the billions of connected devices making up the internet of things. But Mr Xu pointed out that “even today we have the technology that can support autonomous driving”. Analysts said Huawei’s reversal echoed a broader sense of gloom among telecoms operators and kit manufacturers. “Pessimism about 5G has been growing behind the scenes in the mobile industry but Huawei is the first large infrastructure company to state it explicitly,” said Ben Stanton, analyst at Canalys. “The reality is that 5G will be incredibly expensive for operators to deploy, requiring tens of thousands of new base stations per country. And the industry is yet to uncover a killer-use case for the 5G network.” Mr Stanton also noted that it was “becoming clear that oft-cited use cases, like IoT and self-driving cars, are actually more dependent on computing power built into the device itself, rather than the network”. https://www.ft.com/content/a4dc54a6-4225-11e8-93cf-67ac3a6482fd I personally think that private networks such as on a company floor maybe the killer application for 5G. Low latency, reliability is what the industrial sector is looking for. As far as IoT, it is amazing how little bandwidth IoT takes. If you're thinking about making money from IoT, think again. As far as I am concerned there is no killer use case for 5G. It will be just more of the same, more bandwidth. We can get Gigabit bandwidth right now.

Yes, T-mobile needs the 2.5GHz spectrum but they are not desperate. There is a lot of spectrum to be cleared in the CBRS and 3.7-4-2GHz bands and even sharing the 5GHz band with WiFi for LAA. The object of the merger is to spread costs over a larger customer base. The timing is critical. They need to do this before Sprint spends $5-6B on the network because the synergies will not be as extensive and Sprint would have added another $5-6B of debt. Sprint would have duplicated a lot of T-Mobile's network. Also after Sprint completes their network deployment, the price for Sprint would be higher.

Wake me up when they actually finish something. When they're not waiting for...Godot...I mean to get merged. Wake me up when they actually deploy triband on all their sites. Wake me up when they implement 4x4 MIMO, 256QAM and 3CA on all their sites. Wake me up when they stop roaming in suburban and exurban areas and get control of their roaming costs. Wake me up when they actually execute. For me, it is the execution part that makes this merger attractive. I just want them to actually execute and they can only do it under competent leadership. I want them out of the hands of Softbank.

Too many message apps. Where does Hangouts fit in all of this?

The only thing that Sprint has accomplished is pile up debt, $39B. Where will it find the money to deploy 5G? How will it pay down its massive debt while also maintaining its LTE network and investing in 5G? Borrowing against spectrum can only go so far. Where will it get new subscribers? The market is saturated so it will have to steal them from other players. How will it compete since its network does not match the others. It can only compete on price. Which means it will not not have as much funding as the others. It's a vicious cycle. Sprint needs a savior and it is not Softbank. They have not invested in the network. It almost makes me wish Dish had acquired them.

I am pretty sure that it has something to do with certain internet companies (Apple, Google, Facebook) being able to use e-SIM to dynamically purchase capacity from different providers on the fly. In this case they become just fat dumb wires instead of brands. They have been spending a lot of money to establish their brands and they'd fight tooth and nail not to be come commodities.

Comcast is looking to offload some of their Verizon data fees by deploying small cells in their territories. Whether they might want to cell capacity to third parties is an open question. Maybe Sprint can entice them to deploy dual band (CBRS, 2.5GHz) small cells.

Between CBRS and 3.7-4.2GHz that's 650MHz that will be coming available. Reducing yet another deployment's cost should be the primary goal here. It's not reduction in competition necessarily just unreasonable offers to switch that are the problem, although I have not seen many of those lately.

Not to mention 4x4, 8x8, massive MIMO, 256QAM, small cells...

Right now, nobody is moving to acquire the spectrum. Dish has not borrowed against it. The perceived value of their spectrum will fall further once these other bands are opened up.

That's one analyst's opinion who is probably invested in the stock. The spectrum is not worth anything until somebody makes an offer on it.

No need to hurry. Get it for a song.

Sprint does not have the money to buy anything. Share in deploying Dish's spectrum and sharing in the bandwidth, yes. If Verizon wanted to buy Dish's spectrum they would have done so already.

Verizon is furiously deploying small cells and beyond the mmWave they own are very interested in the CBRS band and LAA and also the 3.7-4.2 GHz band for small cells.

You paid what $20B for spectrum, would you not want some return on investment? Plus If you go at it alone you still will need about 9-10B for a nationwide network. Spectrum is plentiful with the CBRS band, the 3.7-4.2GHz band, the LAA/WiFi band and the 28GHz band.

Same here. I think that Dish just needs to lower their valuation of their spectrum so that them and sprint can come to a mutually beneficial agreement. What you hear from Dish about IOT is total BS. Nobody will be making any serious money solely out of iOT. Dish's spectrum will be used for video in the mdiband and lowland to fill in the holes in the 2.5GHz network. Dish can sell mobile video for their Sling package on the Sprint network. Both should share in the deployment cost and the additional capacity. I would prefer that Dish's 600Mhz be used mainly for VOLTE.

Yeah meanwhile (4 years), they lost how many subscribers? How much money?

Well they are colocated in a lot of sites. They would have used Sprint's PCS spectrum to beef up midband and totally blanketed the county with 2.5GHz. They made a stupid mistake. Now it might be that the FCC/DOJ might not have let them merge but at least they had to try. Sprint/Softbank also made mistakes in that they did not make the investment necessary to keep up with the rest of the industry, thus falling behind because they were waiting for the merger.