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US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

arstechnica.com

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Re: US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

#21

Post by sdinsn »

Aloha wrote: post #14
gonehome wrote: post #5

To me this makes a lot more sense than the T-Mobile At&t merger that failed to go through. Sprint is a pretty dead brand and provider. They were actually giving away a year of free service without any obligation (you only had to pay $2 tax/fee) and people still would not switch to it. T-Mobile has pushed the other carriers to bring back unlimited plans and they've separated the phone cost from the plan itself (allowi…

Sprint has a pretty solid network in most markets, but they also have a metric crapton of debt. What it comes down to, is there isnt enough spectrum to have three fully competitive carriers. The merger of T-Mo and Sprint will give them a huge leverage point on spectrum. T-Mo bring 600, AWS bands, as well as 1900 PCS blocks, Sprint brings 2.6, 900 and 1900 PCS blocks.

Sprint does have a lot of debt ($33 billion), but AT&T does also: ~$180 billion.

Re: US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

#22

Post by koolba »

Assuming T-Mobile continues their multi-year policy of never raising prices on existing customers I'm all for this. One stronger competitor to AT&T and Verizon is much better than one almost competitor and an almost-dead-but-still-owns-bandwidth one.

Re: US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

#23

Post by teilo »

I'm already on T-Mobile. I'm for this mostly because the Sprint network plugs some significant holes for me in places I travel, like northwest Iowa. When they put their cross-roaming agreement into effect earlier this year, I suddenly had coverage all along that corridor. Otherwise, I'm stuck with the extremely small data roaming allowance they provide.

Re: US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

#24

Post by Aloha »

sdinsn wrote: post #21
Aloha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sprint has a pretty solid network in most markets, but they also have a metric crapton of debt. What it comes down to, is there isnt enough spectrum to have three fully competitive carriers. The merger of T-Mo and Sprint will give them a huge leverage point on spectrum. T-Mo bring 600, AWS bands, as well as 1900 PCS blocks, Sprint brings 2.6, 900 and 1900 PCS blocks.

Sprint does have a lot of debt ($33 billion), but AT&T does also: ~$180 billion.

Last I looked Sprint was much more leveraged than AT&T was however.

Re: US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

#26

Post by opencl »

sdinsn wrote: post #21
Aloha wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sprint has a pretty solid network in most markets, but they also have a metric crapton of debt. What it comes down to, is there isnt enough spectrum to have three fully competitive carriers. The merger of T-Mo and Sprint will give them a huge leverage point on spectrum. T-Mo bring 600, AWS bands, as well as 1900 PCS blocks, Sprint brings 2.6, 900 and 1900 PCS blocks.

Sprint does have a lot of debt ($33 billion), but AT&T does also: ~$180 billion.

They both have debt roughly equal to their yearly revenue, but AT&T has dramatically better margins. Sprint has repeatedly gone years without a single profitable quarter.

Re: US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

#27

Post by compuguy »

Aloha wrote: post #14
gonehome wrote: post #5

To me this makes a lot more sense than the T-Mobile At&t merger that failed to go through. Sprint is a pretty dead brand and provider. They were actually giving away a year of free service without any obligation (you only had to pay $2 tax/fee) and people still would not switch to it. T-Mobile has pushed the other carriers to bring back unlimited plans and they've separated the phone cost from the plan itself (allowi…

Sprint has a pretty solid network in most markets, but they also have a metric crapton of debt. What it comes down to, is there isnt enough spectrum to have three fully competitive carriers. The merger of T-Mo and Sprint will give them a huge leverage point on spectrum. T-Mo bring 600, AWS bands, as well as 1900 PCS blocks, Sprint brings 2.6, 900 and 1900 PCS blocks.

I agree, but only in areas that Sprint has band 41 deployed. In areas that Sprint only has band 25 and band 26, its data speeds are at the bottom of the pack...

Re: US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

#28

Post by eeeeeeeeeeeee »

jandrese wrote: post #25

How are the towers going to be handled post merger? T-Mobile's GSM based service vs. Sprint's CDMA service means someone is going to have to win if they're serious about consolidating spectrum and towers.

Maybe they won’t bother until a 5G deployment in the future? The merger will probably take at least a year, probably longer, to fully integrate anyway.

Re: US government approves T-Mobile/Sprint merger

#29

Post by TomMckenny »

gonehome wrote: post #5

To me this makes a lot more sense than the T-Mobile At&t merger that failed to go through. Sprint is a pretty dead brand and provider. They were actually giving away a year of free service without any obligation (you only had to pay $2 tax/fee) and people still would not switch to it. T-Mobile has pushed the other carriers to bring back unlimited plans and they've separated the phone cost from the plan itself (allowi…

>To me this makes a lot more sense than the T-Mobile At&t merger that failed to go through.

I'm sure that's true. But public interest is not why the T-Mobile At&T merger was derailed.

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