bigsnake49

The merger is a foregone conclusion. The only thing that remains is the concessions. Here is my list: 1. Legere and Ray assume the same positions in the new company (NewCo) 2. NewCo does a spectrum swap with Dish. Dish gets EBS, Newco gets Dish's spectrum. 3. NewCo hosts Dish's spectrum fro fixed broadband and both Dish and Newco can sell to their customers.

T-Mobile US (NYSE:TMUS) CEO John Legere again intimated that the carrier would benefit through larger scale, likely via a merger with Sprint (NYSE: S), and served warning to the company's larger competitors about a potential deal. .................................................................................................................................................................... "If you took T-Mobile and gave it a huge amount of spectrum and the economic wherewithal and the scale to take on what we're doing, if I was AT&T or Verizon," I would be worried, Legere said, though he used a more profane version of that sentiment. Read more: T-Mobile's Legere puts AT&T, Verizon on notice about potential tie-up with Sprint - FierceWireless http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/t-mobiles-legere-puts-att-verizon-notice-about-potential-tie-sprint/2014-06-02#ixzz33VZ1w2KE

Or cooler heads might prevail and they might make a rational decision based on which platform is more user friendly/extensible, how responsive the vendor is to fixing bugs, maintenance fees/year, how much it will cost them to break the contract and other such reasons.

That also says that T-Mobile is entering into a long term agreement with Ericsson. Nothing to do with Sprint.

But the DOJ might want to put that (fixed broadband) as a condition of the merger.

Each satellite will be smaller and much cheaper to construct and deploy.

Google will be investing in a satellite broadband venture consisting of 360 LEO satellites. http://tmfassociates.com/blog/2014/05/29/googles-space-odyssey/ Harbinger is about to sue the federal government re: Lightsquared spectrum: http://tmfassociates.com/blog/2014/05/29/mutually-assured-destruction/

The DOJ can only object to the merger on antitrust grounds. There are no anti-trust grounds to this merger. The reduced competition for spectrum is a major consideration in the AWS-3 auction. If TMO/Sprint merge, they will not bid in the AWS auction. If they don't bid, then I foresee AT&T and Verizon splitting the FDD spectrum in the auction just bidding the reserve price, with Dish picking up the TDD uplink for a song. So that possibly would force the FCC to set the reserve price high. They will most definitely bid in the 600Mhz auction.

The problem was not IDEN, the problem was public safety. They were dragging their feet like they usually do.

I see a strong possibility of a spectrum swap between Sprint and Dish, with Sprint getting a 25x5Mhz chunk and Dish getting about a 100Mhz of EBS spectrum that will then be used to provide fixed broadband. Dish will turn around and let the combined company host their spectrum. Both Sprint and Dish will bundle fixed broadband into their offerings, with Dish also doing OTT and VOD over theirs. While a Sprint/Tmobile merger won't give them additional foot print, that has never been one of their criteria. If it was they would have merged with Alltell + USCC+regionals, instead of Nextel. This is about scale for capex, it is about customers.

(Reuters) - Germany’s Deutsche Telekom AG is willing to keep a minority stake in a deal to sell T-Mobile US Inc to Japan’s Softbank Corp, but other details such as price and financing remain to be worked out, according to sources familiar with the situation. Softbank owns a majority of Sprint Corp S.N, the third largest U.S. wireless carrier. Deutsche Telekom owns 67 percent of T-Mobile, which has a market value of $27.6 billion and is the fourth-largest U.S. wireless carrier. Earlier on Thursday, Kyodo news agency reported that Deutsche Telekom had agreed to a Softbank plan to buy T-Mobile. http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/29/us-softbank-tmobile-idUSKBN0E917A20140529

Let's give them the deadbeats.

I think it will happen any moment now. BTW, the FCC and DOJ objections are not about the merger's impact on consumers. It is all about the impact of the merger on the net proceeds from the AWS-3 and 600MHz auctions. But in order for them to sell it to the public, there will have to be some concessions, spectrum swaps, etc.

More demos at the code conference: This time they had 20 iPads simultaneously streaming different HD videos. Perlman said that for a two-antenna device, the maximum throughput in 5 MHz of downlink spectrum is 8 bits per second per hertz. "We're going to be peaking at approximately 20 bits per second per hertz," he said. Read more: Artemis claims pCell can 'blow the doors off' LTE spectral efficiency - FierceWireless http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/artemis-claims-pcell-can-blow-doors-lte-spectral-efficiency/2014-05-29#ixzz3381BGUpi

The whole thing, nearly killed Sprint. Yeah, if they wanted low spectrum everywhere they Nextel would have been preferable. Alltel+Nextel + USCC + other smaller regionals would have been even better. I still don't know why FCC did not reband some of the B/ILT spectrum to 900MHz to give Sprint a solid 10+10MHZ to Sprint or resolved the IBEZ problem sooner. Between the FCC and Sprint, I don't know which one is more incompetent. Sprint could have bid for the upper 700MHz Block D. Low enough reserve price and probably would have had an inside track to deploy the PS LTE network.

They were promised 3 year rebanding. 10 years later and IBEZ is still not settled. They absorbed Nextel's debt which was substantial + had to buy the affiliates which deprived them of financing to maintain the networks. Nextel's network was oversubscribed in a pump and dump manner in a network that was about to undergo rebanding. The alternative was to gain rural coverage by acquiring Alltel which had very little debt + some regionals and possibly USCC. They would have gained legitimacy as a nationwide carrier, reduced their roaming bill and most probably not have to absorb the affiliates. Their new customers would not have jumped off as quickly as the Nextelians, if at all. They could have beefed up their PCS spectrum in areas they are weak by participating in the Nextwave spectrum selloff and the 700Mhz auction and the AWS auction.

Wimax was not a mistake. Nextel merger was.

That's not a joint (venture), that's a spliff

Maybe they can use that argument to sell the merger. As in we will organically cover 97% (for example) of the population if you let us merge. Yes the added expense of covering rural expanses can only be justified if it is spread out over both companies.

Plus 800SMR CDMA+LTE.

Yeah, having Dish as a 4th competitor and fixed broadband provider, particularly in rural America will go a long way in greasing the skids for a Sprint/T-Mo merger. A Dish/T-Mo combo could be a dangerous thing because Dish's steady revenue will pay for expansion of T-Mo's network. It will also allow the combo to offer a lot of OTT video that Sprint might not have licenses for.

Yes and no. A few of the free standing (not collocated) Clearwire sites will be be left to provide coverage/capacity. The rest will be collocated with Sprint NV sites. It won't be another separate network. On top of that the electricity bills on the Nextel network were murderous.

Yes they can!and if they don't use EBS for anything else, they should!

Because I have been places like South Carolina and New Hampshire where AT&T does not have 850Mhz and their 1900Mhz network sucks. I have been left with no GPS guidance because of lack of 3G. That's why I bought Navigon. it's precisely why I always carry two phones: one AT&T and one Sprint that I can force to roam on Verizon.

AT&T's UMTS voice network is inferior, coverage wise, to Verizon's CDMA. Now, their LTE networks might end up being equal as both of them have nationwide spectrum. And I thought that the Alltel roaming deal expires in 2016.