bigsnake49

I am also interested in what T-Mobile or Dish will do with the b26 spectrum. While Dish has an option to buy it after 3 years and a penalty if they don't, I am not sure why they would want to. I would like for T-Mobile to sell it to the Cellular Carriers (band 5) and have them redo band 5 to they can each have 15x15 allocations.

It will be very interesting to watch a greenfield 5G network being built from the ground up. From what I understand it will be based on open RAN and C-RAn it that the equivalent of enodeB and RRUS can reside in the cloud virtualized as software and ran on general purpose computers. Of course, there are tradeoffs in that you need low latency/high bandwidth connectivity between your antennas and the rest of the network. So a successful network strategy will probably have to mix and match depending on whether you're talking about urban, suburban and rural. In urban setting you could virtualize both the enodeB and the RRU, for the suburban setting virtualize the enodeB but keep the RRU as hardware and in rural setting keep both as hardware.

Have we seen a pattern in T-Mobile's deployment strategy. Is there a rhyme or reason? What I mean is do they start with 3 or 4 cities and integrate the two networks completely, like add B41/NR41 equipment to all sites,  merge band 2/25, fully equip Sprint sites they are keeping? Within that framework are they moving b26 onto T-Mobile sites?

9 hours ago, BlueAngel said:

I agree 100%, Qualcomm is king with modems. I have seen this first hand, one of the main reasons I am returning my iPhone.

How do you know that you have an Intel modem in your phone? You could have the Qualcomm modem on your iPhone and just a a bad antenna design. Or a case that is very RF absorbent. Don't look at bars because one company might size the bars differently than the other. Only the pure numbers can tell the story side by side, hopefully on the same band, dbm vs dbm. Now the S20 is a 5G phone and the 11 is not so why not be future proof?

5 minutes ago, Tengen31 said:

If sprint would have bought Alltel like they should have would they have gotten all the B5 800 MHz that att and vzw have making those two weaker? 

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While they were at it they could have rolled up Leap Wireless which would have strengthened their network and spectrum position in couple of major Texas cities like Houston and Austin. 

4 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

That's true. The Board specifically sabotaged Hesse's plan to acquire MetroPCS. That spectrum would have come in handy. Of course, they oversaw a bunch of other strategic failures over the years. So it goes....

Yeah like not merging with Alltel, instead of Nextel. Now they did acquire Clearwire which had all this EBS spectrum. So I have to give them credit for that.

1 minute ago, RedSpark said:

I completely agree with you. Masa's strategic blunder here was simply a repeat of the kind of managerial errors Forsee made. I've never seen such a succession of executive failure and incompetence at a single company over so many years as I've seen at Sprint. It's appalling, but it explains everything. I hope it's studied.

It was not just managerial errors. It was their board's total incompetence. 

5 hours ago, dkyeager said:

Here in Ohio the band 71 density is really low, even in rural areas. Band 71 4g LTE can not be directly connected from 3g. You must go through another LTE band first, which really limits its functionality. This could just be growing pains. Reminds me of early difficulties of getting on b26. 

I also think it is hard for us Sprint folks to shift gears from being backhaul constrained to being RF constrained, since T-Mobile only builds out the frequencies at each site as needed.  n41 and n71 could continue to remain scarce commodities until markets are converted thus increasing customers per site (economies of scale). Sprint users buying new 5g phones could be a key factor.

I think that T-Mobile is rushing the 5G transition so they can have something to crow about. However there will be only couple of phones that support it. The enthusiasts will buy them but the rest will stick with their LTE phones. Shore up your bread and butter which is LTE on bands 2/25, 4 and 41 or you will have a 5G network with nobody on it while the 4G network will be overcrowded. Integrate the 4G networks first. Correct Sprint's "monopole" fiasco.

Bye Softbank! You certainly f'ed Sprint. Almost made me wish that Dish had acquired Sprint instead.

Dish certainly has to pay T-Mobile for being an MVNO.

I know that Verizon has either DAS or small cells in all those box stores. The roof/ceiling metal structure does act like a Faraday cage. I remember some time ago that Sprint had started an initiative with Walmart to put a small cell on the roof. I don't know how many were actually installed or whether the project ran out of money like so many projects at Sprint.

26 minutes ago, dkyeager said:

Which is why this merger is not just about spectrum. Customers must be retained for such economies of scale, which yields better rural and inside building coverage.

True, T-Mobile will add an additional 20,000 sites (10,000 non-redundant Sprint sites+10,000 brand new sites). I hope that T-Mobile also puts in DAS or small cells in Walmarts and Costcos and the like.

9 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

Yup, the money never came. Even so, I don't think Sprint had enough lowband spectrum to effectively complete as a national carrier with strong indoor or rural coverage. Its 800 MHz just wasn't enough and Sprint didn't have enough sites or site density either.

You're absolutely right. I don't think Sprint half-assed it though. I feel tike it quarter-assed it.

The site density is the determining factor. Look at Verizon. They may be spectrum constrained but they have the site density to compensate. 

6 hours ago, S4GRU said:

All it took was money.  Network Vision was planned properly initially, but not properly implemented due to finances.  I remember hearing early into the Network Vision deployment the CFO says publicly something to the effect of, 'The beauty of the Network Vision deployment plan is that we can ramp up or slow down as necessary depending on finances or need.'  It was scary to hear then, and even scarier to think of in retrospect.  They were confessing that they were always concerned about how to financially pull it off that the had contingency plans of how to "half-ass" it if necessary.  And they did half-ass it, and it likely was necessary.  But they did.

And then once you get used to losing, you forget how to win.  We finally got to the point that no amount of money would fix the problem anyway.  Network wise, Tmo merging with Sprint will likely be a very superior position than both going alone.  The big tell in time, is what it will do to competition and pricing for the long term.  That's the part we don't know. 

Will it be worth it 5 years from now?  Who knows?  But at least we will enjoy the network improvements in the interim.  But even that is not totally all everyone dreamed it would be in the short term.  I guess nothing is perfect, but we always imagine it will be.

Robert

I can almost guarantee you that the prices will eventually rise and T-Mobile will take away my $15 Kickstarter plan. I will be OK with it. Buying and integrating Sprint takes money. Somebody will have to pay for it.

11,000 Lifeline Californians stand in the way of Dish's entry into wireless. According to the CPUC those 11,000 Lifeline customers need to be retained by T-Mobile but according to the federal consent degree all Boost customers need to divested to Dish. T-Mobile has applied to the FCC to exempt those 11,000 Lifeline customers from the consent decree. T-Mobile and Dish are ready to close the transaction as soon as FCC gives their approval. 

https://www.lightreading.com/4g-3g-wifi/11000-californians-stand-in-the-way-of-dishs-entry-into-wireless/d/d-id/759360?

I finally had enough of the inconsistency of T-Mobile/Sprint integration and plugged my MB back in. Until they take that band 41 channel away from me for NR I will be using my MB. Hopefully by the time they do they will have integrated the networks enough in this area to give me a consistent experience.

2 hours ago, Tengen31 said:

Forum on Reddit. Is needs to happen I was just there yesterday and the spectrum holdings are not contiguous for everyone

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Definitely. In my area Sprint has G and two non-contiguous segments of the C-block separated by Verizon. T-Mobile has the A block. If they just can get Verizon on C1 then they can have two separate 15x15 contiguous PCS segments.

11 hours ago, Tengen31 said:

Sounds like some more PCS spectrum swaps are happening. Which is good cause currently in Rochester MN it is all over the place with no contiguous.

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Where do you hear this happening?

3 hours ago, JossMan said:

TMobile's LTE network is in no shape to take on an influx of Sprint customers right now.  The couple times I have forced my Galaxy S10 onto T-Mobile's network while the signal was strong there was a lot of congestion.  B2 was terrible and saw speeds less than 2Mbps and B12 was sorta better usually hummed around 10 to 15Mbps.  I quickly jumped back over to Sprint's network and tend to stay on it as long as possible until I am forced over and if things are not better by then I will bolt to AT&T.  

In my area band 4 when my phone catches it yields 35MBps. Then a moment later it falls to band 26 with 2Mbps. I'm disappointed in band 2/25. It is still Sprint's band 25 with no help from T-Mobile's band 2. I thought they were going to merge band 2/25 rather quickly. Maybe I am impatient?

While I appreciate T-Mobile's urgency with respect to 5G. I hope they understand that the rest of us are still on LTE and they need to take care of us or we can always bolt. Just a reminder...maybe allow us Sprint LTE customers to quickly register on the T-mobile network using e-SIMs.

54 minutes ago, runagun said:

They had two years to twiddle their thumbs. 

It's called planning 😂.

It seems there is some tower work going on in consolidating the towers:

They are not messing around! I was thinking they would wait a bit for tower work but boy they did hit the ground running.

21 hours ago, RAvirani said:

It does support lowband, but it's really not that great. Less than 13 dBi gain on 600 and barely 13 dBi on 700. 

That's what happens when you make them small. Coverage suffers but then if you put them on a network spaced for PCS you can afford that.

28 minutes ago, cyclone said:

The company was founded and is still very much based in Richardson, TX. Just because the CEO's name is Pardeep Kohli doesn't make them an Indian Company 😒

As for their reputation, they are noted as helping T-Mobile become the first network to offer VoLTE

https://www.convergedigest.com/2014/07/t-mobiles-volte-is-powered-by-mavenirs.html

They are also working with Rakuten with their greenfield network.

16 minutes ago, dro1984 said:

They named an Indian company to do the work.    No wonder Charlie E was in India for weeks!     Wouldn't Ericsson or a well known company be a better choice?    Not thrilled personally with this news.     Hopefully they hire US workers to do the work at competitive wages.     (doughtful)       Everyone in the media was wondering why he said he can build a 5G network for 10 billion.     Maybe this is how.     Very shady.

Ergen defends lower projected costs of Dish 5G network architecture

They will virtualize everything from core to RAN. The only thing on sights will be RRHs/Antennas. Everything else will be in Cloud based and Edge data centers. I will actually be surprised if it costs them $10. I am thinking 7-8B$. They don't need to provide coverage that rivals Verizon. If they chose to cover 70-80% of Americans, they will do fine. That's where the meat is. It is not in covering rural highways. If they can avoid pursuing the cheap mfers that will burn through 20GBs/month with stupid offers they will do fine. Go after Cricket's and Tracfone customer and you will do fine.