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FYI, the coverage for the 2 networks will remain separate for now and will be gradually merged into a single network over the next few years. T-mobile is offeri

FYI, the coverage for the 2 networks will remain separate for now and will be gradually merged into a single network over the next few years. T-mobile is offering a $15/month 2GB prepaid plan as part of the sweetener to get regulators to approve the merger and AT&T has followed suit with a competing plan. Dish Network has been earmarked as the future 4th carrier for the USA and will be getting access to spectrum as part of the merger deal. In my own opinion this merger is a good thing. Sprint holds huge amounts of spectrum but has absolutely failed to create a competitive network with it. It was a misallocation of a precious natural resource.

cheriot 7y ago
> Dish Network has been earmarked as the future 4th carrier If Sprint and T-Mobile are having such a hard time creating competitive networks, what are the chances that Dish will be able to do it from scratch? Everything about this looks terrible for consumers. There's even less competition.
- vondur 7y ago
  T-Mobile is doing great. The merger with Sprint gives them access to more frequencies for better coverage/speed. I can't say for sure how well Dish will do, but if they have good service/support/prices, then hopefully they will do fine. Better to have a stronger T-Mobile to keep ATT and Verizon on their toes.
- DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
  Just because Dish has the airwave rights doesn’t mean it will be used for personal mobile telephony - could Dish be using it for other purposes, such as fixed point-to-point transmission - or a StarLink competitor? (Disclaimer: I have no idea if those frequency bands are suitable for satellite comms or not).
  - jaywalk 7y ago
    >Just because Dish has the airwave rights doesn’t mean it will be used for personal mobile telephony It certainly will be used for that, unless they've been lying to everyone: http://about.dish.com/2019-07-26-DISH-to-Become-National-Facilities-based-Wireless-Carrier http://about.dish.com/2019-07-26-DISH-to-Become-National-Fac...
    - rrix2 7y ago
      Large communication companies could never do anything like that.... Just lie ? To the public?
  - MrRadar 7y ago
    Dish owns a lot of terrestrial-use spectrum, but it's mostly oddball frequencies nobody else in the world is using for cellular service today. IIRC the most "standard" band they own is band 71 (600 MHz, also used by T-Mobile) and a bit of band 66 (standard AWS-3, used by all US carriers), but the rest of their spectrum is band 29 (supplemental downlink only), band 70 (unique to Dish), and (with this merger) band 26 (currently unique to Sprint). They certainly could launch cell service using it but they would pretty much have to custom-order base stations and phones to match the frequency bands they own. This was another problem that Sprint faced (with requiring band 25, 26, and 41 which were all unique to them in the US market).
- dougmwne 7y ago
  Sprint literally had to give their service away it was so bad. They ran that first year free promotion for years. I'm not sure the other networks were exactly quaking in their boots over that "competition." Verizon and AT&T have always been the first class carriers. If T-mobile can fully catch up to them in coverage that increases competition instead of diminishing it. I agree that Dish is unlikely to become a major player. This is a desperation move for them as their satellite business dies.
  - cogman10 7y ago
    In the past few years, T-Mobile has done an excellent job of increasing coverage (at least in my region).
  - Moto7451 7y ago
    I can echo this experience. Dealing with Sprint was impossible. Sometimes trying to pay them more money was impossible. The best thing TMobile could do is migrate the customers to the current TMobile infrastructure and software and shred everything at Sprint. Or maybe better, try to convince AT&T or Verizon to buy/adopt it as a form of sabotage.
- icelancer 7y ago
  >> Everything about this looks terrible for consumers. There's even less competition. Sprint was giving away service, devices, and running promos on top of all of that. Still consumers didn't buy it. What do you want to happen in a situation like this? There was "competition" in the space but consumers had zero interest in engaging with them.
gowld 7y ago
> T-mobile is offering a $15/month 2GB prepaid plan as part of the sweetener to get regulators to approve the merger A short term discount to break into a market niche? That looks like overy antitrust "dumping".
- jaywalk 7y ago
  Hard to consider it "dumping" when you look at competitive offerings. For example, Comcast (Xfinity Mobile) offers a $12/month 1GB prepaid plan, and they don't even own the networks they use. $15/month for 2GB on your own network is entirely reasonable.
  - lotsofpulp 7y ago
    I assume buying mobile service from sellers other than the network owner themselves makes you a second class citizen on the network and subject to throttling or whatever QoS they use to make your traffic lower priority. I even assume that you are getting prioritized depending on how much you pay or how politically important you are for the networks. I.e. a $20 prepaid ATT customer is lower priority than a $80 post paid unlimited customer which is lower priority than a US Senator.
    - jaywalk 7y ago
      Of course, but that's been a fact of life forever.
      - lotsofpulp 7y ago
        Yes, I was agreeing that it isn't dumping since it's a different product since the services are lower priority than more expensive ones. But it's not explicitly stated, which now that I think about it, should be a required disclosure.
    - kube-system 7y ago
      FWIW, a lot of MVNOs on other networks were faster than first-party service on Sprint.
perfectstorm 7y ago
> In my own opinion this merger is a good thing. Sprint holds huge amounts of spectrum but has absolutely failed to create a competitive network with it. It was a misallocation of a precious natural resource. as far as I see the same Sprint CEO is continuing as the CEO of the merged company so I don't think things will improve. If he failed to create a competitive network then how are things to improve all of a sudden?
- haditab 7y ago
  Sprint CEO is not staying on as CEO of the merged company. T-Mobile's COO is.
- dougmwne 7y ago
  That is not the case. The T-mobile COO, Mike Sievert, will be taking over the combined company as part of a succession plan that's reportedly been in the works for awhile.
  - fireattack 7y ago
    Where did Sprint CEO Michel Combes go?
    - Operyl 7y ago
      There’s not been any releases about his new role, as far as I can see.
jasondclinton 7y ago
I think that the first-class Google Fi devices have shown a path where CDMA and UMTS networks like Sprint and T-Mobiles can coexist on the same phone. Basically, the phone uses geolocation and a database of signal strength to determine which network to prefer in a particular location. It hangs up the baseband on one network and switches to the other. (Disclaimer: work for Google but not on the Android or Fi teams. Know nothing that isn't public.)
- MrRadar 7y ago
  T-Mobile will be shutting down the Sprint CDMA, LTE, and 5G NR networks, and the T-Mobile UMTS network will probably also be shut down around the same time leaving just the T-Mobile LTE and 5G NR networks. While the Sprint network is still running existing Sprint customers will have access to both the Sprint network and (on a "roaming" basis) the T-Mobile network but T-Mobile customers will not have access to the Sprint network.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    That's just business as usual for long-time Sprint customers. Many of them have dealt through several network shutdowns already :D Sprint is the world champion of picking the wrong wireless technology. Think I have still have some iDEN and WiMAX devices in a drawer somewhere.
    - amluto 7y ago
      WiMAX might not have been wrong if Sprint hasn’t flubbed the launch. Sprint had working WiMAX in many markets long before anyone had LTE, and there was a decent portfolio of laptops and such that had working client support. But Sprint never marketed it and wouldn’t sell it even if you knew about it unless you had a billing address in one of the few tiny markets that had official support. I would gladly have paid Sprint for their service if they would have been willing to sell it to me. It’s hard to recover one’s investment if you refuse to sell the product you built.
      - 7y ago
ksec 7y ago
>In my own opinion this merger is a good thing. Sprint holds huge amounts of spectrum but has absolutely failed to create a competitive network with it. It was a misallocation of a precious natural resource. Yes. Not from US but as far as I am aware there are pretty much only 2 Network in US, AT&T and Verizon. With T-Mobile and Sprint being a very distant third and fourth. Basically they are so minor that even they have combined they are still a distant third. But it does gives them a fighting chance, assuming they follow on with their T-Mobile orderly execution. Hopefully this would bring US closer to world quality standard in terms of Mobile Network. Because as far as I can tell it has possibly the worst mobile network out of all the developed countries. ( Edit: Sorry I forgot Canada, which I have heard is similar to US.)
- MrRadar 7y ago
  According to this 2018 article from The Verge[1], the new T-Mobile will have 90 million customers putting it just behind AT&T (at 93 million) and slightly farther behind Verizon (116 million). The New T-Mobile's customer base will still be more heavily weighted towards lower-cost prepaid customers rather than higher-cost postpaid consumer and business customers compared to their competitors so they will probably remain behind them in ARPU. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17301392/t-mobile-sprint-merger-preview-phone-carrier https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17301392/t-mobile-sprint-...
- atombender 7y ago
  Depending on where you live, that's not accurate. T-Mobile is perfectly adequate (and sometimes even better) compared to AT&T and Verizon, except in more rural and isolated places.
  - jessaustin 7y ago
    I'm in a fairly rural area, and use a T-mobile MVNO (ting). In this area, there are holes, but they're the same holes that ATTVZN have.
  - cpwright 7y ago
    I don't live in a rural area (~1000 people/sq. mile), 40 miles away from NYC. At least as of a year ago, T-Mobile's coverage map of my area was "occasional service outdoors".

cheriot 7y ago

> Dish Network has been earmarked as the future 4th carrier If Sprint and T-Mobile are having such a hard time creating competitive networks, what are the chances that Dish will be able to do it from scratch? Everything about this looks terrible for consumers. There's even less competition.

vondur 7y ago
T-Mobile is doing great. The merger with Sprint gives them access to more frequencies for better coverage/speed. I can't say for sure how well Dish will do, but if they have good service/support/prices, then hopefully they will do fine. Better to have a stronger T-Mobile to keep ATT and Verizon on their toes.
DaiPlusPlus 7y ago
Just because Dish has the airwave rights doesn’t mean it will be used for personal mobile telephony - could Dish be using it for other purposes, such as fixed point-to-point transmission - or a StarLink competitor? (Disclaimer: I have no idea if those frequency bands are suitable for satellite comms or not).
- jaywalk 7y ago
  >Just because Dish has the airwave rights doesn’t mean it will be used for personal mobile telephony It certainly will be used for that, unless they've been lying to everyone: http://about.dish.com/2019-07-26-DISH-to-Become-National-Facilities-based-Wireless-Carrier http://about.dish.com/2019-07-26-DISH-to-Become-National-Fac...
  - rrix2 7y ago
    Large communication companies could never do anything like that.... Just lie ? To the public?
- MrRadar 7y ago
  Dish owns a lot of terrestrial-use spectrum, but it's mostly oddball frequencies nobody else in the world is using for cellular service today. IIRC the most "standard" band they own is band 71 (600 MHz, also used by T-Mobile) and a bit of band 66 (standard AWS-3, used by all US carriers), but the rest of their spectrum is band 29 (supplemental downlink only), band 70 (unique to Dish), and (with this merger) band 26 (currently unique to Sprint). They certainly could launch cell service using it but they would pretty much have to custom-order base stations and phones to match the frequency bands they own. This was another problem that Sprint faced (with requiring band 25, 26, and 41 which were all unique to them in the US market).
dougmwne 7y ago
Sprint literally had to give their service away it was so bad. They ran that first year free promotion for years. I'm not sure the other networks were exactly quaking in their boots over that "competition." Verizon and AT&T have always been the first class carriers. If T-mobile can fully catch up to them in coverage that increases competition instead of diminishing it. I agree that Dish is unlikely to become a major player. This is a desperation move for them as their satellite business dies.
- cogman10 7y ago
  In the past few years, T-Mobile has done an excellent job of increasing coverage (at least in my region).
- Moto7451 7y ago
  I can echo this experience. Dealing with Sprint was impossible. Sometimes trying to pay them more money was impossible. The best thing TMobile could do is migrate the customers to the current TMobile infrastructure and software and shred everything at Sprint. Or maybe better, try to convince AT&T or Verizon to buy/adopt it as a form of sabotage.
icelancer 7y ago
>> Everything about this looks terrible for consumers. There's even less competition. Sprint was giving away service, devices, and running promos on top of all of that. Still consumers didn't buy it. What do you want to happen in a situation like this? There was "competition" in the space but consumers had zero interest in engaging with them.

gowld 7y ago

> T-mobile is offering a $15/month 2GB prepaid plan as part of the sweetener to get regulators to approve the merger A short term discount to break into a market niche? That looks like overy antitrust "dumping".

jaywalk 7y ago
Hard to consider it "dumping" when you look at competitive offerings. For example, Comcast (Xfinity Mobile) offers a $12/month 1GB prepaid plan, and they don't even own the networks they use. $15/month for 2GB on your own network is entirely reasonable.
- lotsofpulp 7y ago
  I assume buying mobile service from sellers other than the network owner themselves makes you a second class citizen on the network and subject to throttling or whatever QoS they use to make your traffic lower priority. I even assume that you are getting prioritized depending on how much you pay or how politically important you are for the networks. I.e. a $20 prepaid ATT customer is lower priority than a $80 post paid unlimited customer which is lower priority than a US Senator.
  - jaywalk 7y ago
    Of course, but that's been a fact of life forever.
    - lotsofpulp 7y ago
      Yes, I was agreeing that it isn't dumping since it's a different product since the services are lower priority than more expensive ones. But it's not explicitly stated, which now that I think about it, should be a required disclosure.
  - kube-system 7y ago
    FWIW, a lot of MVNOs on other networks were faster than first-party service on Sprint.

perfectstorm 7y ago

> In my own opinion this merger is a good thing. Sprint holds huge amounts of spectrum but has absolutely failed to create a competitive network with it. It was a misallocation of a precious natural resource. as far as I see the same Sprint CEO is continuing as the CEO of the merged company so I don't think things will improve. If he failed to create a competitive network then how are things to improve all of a sudden?

haditab 7y ago
Sprint CEO is not staying on as CEO of the merged company. T-Mobile's COO is.
dougmwne 7y ago
That is not the case. The T-mobile COO, Mike Sievert, will be taking over the combined company as part of a succession plan that's reportedly been in the works for awhile.
- fireattack 7y ago
  Where did Sprint CEO Michel Combes go?
  - Operyl 7y ago
    There’s not been any releases about his new role, as far as I can see.

jasondclinton 7y ago

I think that the first-class Google Fi devices have shown a path where CDMA and UMTS networks like Sprint and T-Mobiles can coexist on the same phone. Basically, the phone uses geolocation and a database of signal strength to determine which network to prefer in a particular location. It hangs up the baseband on one network and switches to the other. (Disclaimer: work for Google but not on the Android or Fi teams. Know nothing that isn't public.)

MrRadar 7y ago
T-Mobile will be shutting down the Sprint CDMA, LTE, and 5G NR networks, and the T-Mobile UMTS network will probably also be shut down around the same time leaving just the T-Mobile LTE and 5G NR networks. While the Sprint network is still running existing Sprint customers will have access to both the Sprint network and (on a "roaming" basis) the T-Mobile network but T-Mobile customers will not have access to the Sprint network.
- kube-system 7y ago
  That's just business as usual for long-time Sprint customers. Many of them have dealt through several network shutdowns already :D Sprint is the world champion of picking the wrong wireless technology. Think I have still have some iDEN and WiMAX devices in a drawer somewhere.
  - amluto 7y ago
    WiMAX might not have been wrong if Sprint hasn’t flubbed the launch. Sprint had working WiMAX in many markets long before anyone had LTE, and there was a decent portfolio of laptops and such that had working client support. But Sprint never marketed it and wouldn’t sell it even if you knew about it unless you had a billing address in one of the few tiny markets that had official support. I would gladly have paid Sprint for their service if they would have been willing to sell it to me. It’s hard to recover one’s investment if you refuse to sell the product you built.
    - 7y ago

ksec 7y ago

>In my own opinion this merger is a good thing. Sprint holds huge amounts of spectrum but has absolutely failed to create a competitive network with it. It was a misallocation of a precious natural resource. Yes. Not from US but as far as I am aware there are pretty much only 2 Network in US, AT&T and Verizon. With T-Mobile and Sprint being a very distant third and fourth. Basically they are so minor that even they have combined they are still a distant third. But it does gives them a fighting chance, assuming they follow on with their T-Mobile orderly execution. Hopefully this would bring US closer to world quality standard in terms of Mobile Network. Because as far as I can tell it has possibly the worst mobile network out of all the developed countries. ( Edit: Sorry I forgot Canada, which I have heard is similar to US.)

MrRadar 7y ago
According to this 2018 article from The Verge[1], the new T-Mobile will have 90 million customers putting it just behind AT&T (at 93 million) and slightly farther behind Verizon (116 million). The New T-Mobile's customer base will still be more heavily weighted towards lower-cost prepaid customers rather than higher-cost postpaid consumer and business customers compared to their competitors so they will probably remain behind them in ARPU. [1] https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17301392/t-mobile-sprint-merger-preview-phone-carrier https://www.theverge.com/2018/4/30/17301392/t-mobile-sprint-...
atombender 7y ago
Depending on where you live, that's not accurate. T-Mobile is perfectly adequate (and sometimes even better) compared to AT&T and Verizon, except in more rural and isolated places.
- jessaustin 7y ago
  I'm in a fairly rural area, and use a T-mobile MVNO (ting). In this area, there are holes, but they're the same holes that ATTVZN have.
- cpwright 7y ago
  I don't live in a rural area (~1000 people/sq. mile), 40 miles away from NYC. At least as of a year ago, T-Mobile's coverage map of my area was "occasional service outdoors".