bigsnake49

NII.

I foresee a period of "skinny cows" for both T-Mobile and Sprint. Sprint will have to lower their prices to compete with T-Mobile. Both will have to spend money they don't have to expand their coverage, particularly in uneconomic areas. Sprint will come up with a 10x10 chunk of spectrum in the 600Mhz auction and will not participate in the AWS-3 auction. Dish will team up with Iliad and buy T-Mobile. T-Mobile or whatever the new company is called will also not participate. Dish will snatch the 1695Mhz-1710MHz uplink for the reserve price. The AWS-3 auction will barely meet its $10B reserve price with AT&T and Verizon basically splitting it. I foresee Softbank expanding into Mexico and South America.

Now if Comcast and TWC gets rejected….and same with DirectTV and AT&T.

Sprint spun them off because they thought the teaming up with cable would be more advantageous. They thought they could sell bundles of wireless service cable and home internet. Can anybody say Pivot? I thought you could! They though they could provide the backbone as well as the switching for all the cable cos home phone offerings. Almost none of them use Sprint anymore. Can anybody remember SpectrumCo? Yep, I do! How about Clearwire? Yep, Comcast, TWC and Brighthouse were investors in that one. So Sprint and the cable cos have had one failed joint venture after another.

Show me a link or two from the FCC or DOJ that say that.

They are still doing it in Tampa if I am not mistaken. Maybe for new developments...

I am a little weary of what Charlie Ergen is going to do. If he jumps in bed with T-Mobile, it will provide them with a lot of spectrum so that T-Mobile won't have to bid in the AWS-3 auction. Then the two, TMobile and Dish can bid independently in the 600Mhz but then combine their winnings. I have long advocated that Sprint get in bed with Dish somehow…if only to keep Dish's spectrum from their competitors.

Is that why AT&T is still deploying UVerse? and Verizon still deploying FIOS?

I don't think that's true. What might be true is that Sprint wanted the backhaul when they wanted it (right after they had deployed the new base stations) so they would not pay for backhaul when not using it (basically JIT backhaul) and the cable cos had different ideas. Oh, yeah, the cable cos were also partners in the Clearwire venture and Sprint basically stiffed them. And now Sprint is flirting around with Dish to offer fixed wireless broadband. Yep the cable cos should be jumping to do business with Sprint.

No such condition from the FCC in the Nextel merger.

No, Sprint made the mistake of shedding their landline division and getting in bed with the cable cos to begin with. Then not going through and abandoning SpectrumCo so that they were forced to sel it to Verizon.

irev, Nextel did exactly the same thing. It's very easy to lose money while gowing your customer base. Can you do gow your customer base while you still make money? And it's one thing to have 2 year contracts and tie the new customers you just bought for two years it's another thing for them to be able to just move to AT&T whenver they want...

Holly chit! I go away for like 5 hours and the world is collapsing....

Stupid autocorrect

I still have a question that maybe Neil can answer. How many of T-Mobile's sites would actually improve Sprint's coverage.

Yep, Iliad you better come up with a better offer or don't even bother.

I was talking about T-Mobile's sites, not Sprint's.

Didn't we go through this a few months back and Neil Gompa set us straight?

I have actually never understood Sprint's reluctance to expand coverage by acquiring rural providers.

Does he not have a roaming deal with T-Mobile yet?

Their network certainly is worth acquiring, since Sprint has kind of neglected Mississippi.

Well, Sprint only has about 38,000 sites. T-Mobile has 55,000. I have no idea if the additional ones are capacity sites or coverage sites. I am pretty sure that there are some T-Mobiles sites in places that Sprint relies on roaming partners.

Well the C Spire CEO came out in support of the Sprint/T-Mobile merger. He makes the same basic arguments in support of the merger as Masa. http://www.rollcall.com/news/congress_should_agree_on_allowing_a_third_national_wireless_carrier-235111-1.html?pg=2&dczone=opinion Is he angling to get acquired by the merged company?

DT is unimpressed with the Iliad bid and while the regulatory environment would be much more benign, it is concerned not only with the $10B in synergies/cost savings which it considers extremely difficult to achieve but also with the long term viability of the resulting company. DT is afraid that Iliad will not be able to come up with the money for spectrum in the upcoming auctions. DT will retain a 29% interest in the resulting company if Iliad prevails and 15% if Sprint prevails. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/04/us-tmobile-iliad-bid-idUSKBN0G41SA20140804

No the plans are new but there a couple of things wrong with them. They are offered for a limited time and the plan itself lasts fora limited time. It just smells like a pump and dump scheme to me. They are timing it so that whoever acquires them has to pay extra for all these new customers but then get's stuck with all these customers at a very cheap plan who then can all leave the moment the plan reverts to less data. Can we say churn city boys and girls? I thought we could! Not to mention the fact that it's not a shared plan so that my daughter's high consumption can be smoothed out by the rest of the family's low consumption.