bigsnake49

So, we will have two divisions of the same company compete for the same customer? Yeah, right : !

Will they spin off U-Verse? DirectTV and UVerse compete directly.

I only have a single business line on Sprint anymore. I have 4 personal lines on AT&T. The only reason i have a Sprint line is that I get voice roaming on Verizon and that has come in handy sometimes. If and when Sprint gets their network together and also can accommodate voice and data at the same time, then I will consider moving those lines back.

No I am sure that a lot of them left because the network is not up to par.

Wow really? A white paper with wildly optimistic assumptions. Who would have thunk? Let talk, in 2011, the total revenue was $1B for all providers. So even if we assume that it is split equally among providers Sprint's take was $250M. Not exactly a big revenue driver.

How much are you going to pay to have your car connected? And why does your car need to be connected when you have your smartphone?

We will see how sticky they are once Sprint has their network in order and actually want to do a serious promotion. If they don't want to do that, maybe they don't want those bandwidth hogs back?

The subscriber gains are/will be temporary. Once Sprint has its network in order then it will have a response which help it gain back subscribers. It is pretty much a zero sum game, except for tablets and M2M. I don't count M2M because of the negligible revenue.

They have nationwide AWS. I am sure they can move UMTS to PCS.

I have long supported the idea that Sprint use EBS for fixed broadband with or without Dish. It might be easier if they used Dish's dishes to install antennas and thus guaranteeing better signal.

Sprint/T-Mobile could probably skip the AWS-3 auction but they are not skipping the 600MHz auction no way, no how!

I was a long time supporter of the network sharing idea, mainly to share the LTE buildout costs, but I think that Masa wants to buy rather than share. I think that DT still wants to sell. Legere was/is in favor of consolidation.

That's why you give them discounts to upgrade to the newest devices or you release new firmware. As far as m2m you leave a skeleton CDMA network up until 2018 or 2020. T-mobile has been doing really well converting Metro customers to GSM/UMTS/LTE.

Thanks for the info.

I would love for Sprint/Dish to use this technology to offer fixed broadband/OTT video/audio over the EBS spectrum. Unobtrusive antennas mounted on poles or strand mounted.

That's not bad....

I think that there a lot more brewing behind the scenes than we know of. Part of it is some kind of collaboration with Dish. It's not that Dan is not a visionary. It is that Legere is perceived as a more aggressive competitor and a more aggressive doer. In order to sell this merger to the feds Son will have to show that he will compete with the other two. Let me repeat myself. In order to sell this merger, Sprint/Softbank should be willing to divest spectrum to Dish (a spectrum swap of EBS for 2000-2020MHz+PCS-H will also be palatable), hosting of Dish's spectrum, promise of aggressive deployment of rural deployment of SMR/700MHz, promise of deployment of fixed broadband on EBS by Dish/Sprint and a perceived competitive CEO will go a long way to sell this merger.

Well if AT&T is going after DirectTV, then Verizon can certainly go after Dish!

They should never have agreed to halt their deployment for AT&T and they should not agree for Sprint. Actually I want them to behave the same way as before the merger is announced, including shots at Sprint. That will lessen the need for a breakup fee! Sprint needs T-Mobile's LTE network to be complete, not to be halted.

There are not that many dense metro areas in the US. Besides NYC, San Fran and the downtowns of the major cities, most of the US lives in suburban settings.

That's what I am afraid of. It also seems that they need verily low latency links particularly because of all the channel state info they have to pass back.

I have to defend Hesse somewhat. He was dealt a hand by his predecessor that I would not wish on my worst enemy. He had no money to do anything, he did not have a sugar daddy until recently, he had to basically survive until a sugar daddy came along. He might have been a little too collegial with his underlings instead of pressing them to meet goals or else. He came from AT&T with the old telecom culture, not the start up culture that was needed for Sprint. We need Legere as the CEO of the combined entity to sell the merger to the feds. Along with spectrum divestments and making Dish a viable competitor.

Some interesting speculation/forward looking statements from the CEO of American Tower: Could Artemis gear be the additional 30-40,000 locations? If Sprint were to merge with T-Mobile how many additional sites will be needed?

Only because no operator signed up for it. In this case, Sprint/T-Mobile will be big enough to do it. But like I said, VoLTE is close at hand, so I am not sure they will gain much by it.

Qualcomm begs otherwise . I used the wrong term, it's called scalable UMTS: http://www.qualcomm.com/research/projects/hspa/s-umts