Analyst: Dish could gain in T-Mobile Sprint Merger

[navychop]

Almighty1: The (only) beauty of GSM is that it was a world standard and if you travelled to Europe you really needed that. OBE today, of course.

I love your following explanation. I think it best be described as three snakes each eating the other's tail in a big circle. One won.

 

[Cheddar_Head]

AT&T Wireless if I remembered correctly got spinned off as a separate company and then Cingular bought AT&T Wireless so AT&T Wireless no longer existed and then the next thing was when SBC (Southwestern Bell Communications) bought AT&T Wireless, they basically got rid of the Cingular name and renamed everything to AT&T. Has T-Mobile improved their network coverage though?

Not completely correct, SBC renamed itself as Cingular (nationwide company needs nationwide name), a few years later Cingular bought ATT Wireless and then renamed themselves as AT&T.

Why the name change to AT&T? 2 Reasons:
1) AT&T is an old school name dating back to the dark ages of technology AKA pre-1950.
2) Cingular had the worst reputation for customer service of any company in existence (Yes, even worse than cable companies.) and AT&T Wireless actually had a decent reputation. Change your name and hope people forget all about Cingular, unfortunately they were right as many people forget that Cingular bought AT&T, not the other way around.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Over last two years T-Mobile has doubled their LTE coverage.

They've just now started putting up "towers" for 600 MHz support. THAT should make a BIG difference. It seems they plan a huge investment over the next year to get (most?) of it done by the end of 2018. I think the final completion is 2020.

By the time Apple puts out a band 71 supporting phone, there will be a lot of places with 600 MHz in place.

I wonder where all that investment money is coming from.

Where did you read that Tmo is putting up towers? So far, their LTE penetration has only increased due to Band 12, which is a gimmick IMO. They didn’t add any infrastructure for that

 

[ncted]

GTE's CDMA is newer since GTE didn't have CDMA until 1996 or 1997 while AT&T had TDMA way before that. GTE/Verizon Wireless had always been better but was always the more expensive carrier. AT&T when they started with GSM wasn't all that great as it seems like the TDMA had excellent coverage while GSM was a joke. Cingular in California was always GSM as it's basically a PCS network. But wasn't the reason the GSM had problems was because it was originally running at 1.9Ghz instead of 850Mhz? AT&T Wireless if I remembered correctly got spinned off as a separate company and then Cingular bought AT&T Wireless so AT&T Wireless no longer existed and then the next thing was when SBC (Southwestern Bell Communications) bought AT&T Wireless, they basically got rid of the Cingular name and renamed everything to AT&T. Has T-Mobile improved their network coverage though?

GSM was largely deployed on 1.9GHz (PCS) in the US initially, which didn't present a problem if properly planned, like we had in the Carolinas on BellSouth Mobility PCS, and unlike PacBell's implementation on the west coast. I know different terrain and all that, but still.

 

[ncted]

Not completely correct, SBC renamed itself as Cingular (nationwide company needs nationwide name), a few years later Cingular bought ATT Wireless and then renamed themselves as AT&T.

Why the name change to AT&T? 2 Reasons:
1) AT&T is an old school name dating back to the dark ages of technology AKA pre-1950.
2) Cingular had the worst reputation for customer service of any company in existence (Yes, even worse than cable companies.) and AT&T Wireless actually had a decent reputation. Change your name and hope people forget all about Cingular, unfortunately they were right as many people forget that Cingular bought AT&T, not the other way around.

Ironically, AT&T had worse customer service ratings at the time of the merger than Cingular did, but AT&T was the bigger brand, so it made sense to keep the AT&T name. Siebel and GSM migration did in AT&T Wireless. They were losing customers so fast, they had to sell themselves.

 

[Cheddar_Head]

Ironically, AT&T had worse customer service ratings at the time of the merger than Cingular did, but AT&T was the bigger brand, so it made sense to keep the AT&T name. Siebel and GSM migration did in AT&T Wireless. They were losing customers so fast, they had to sell themselves.

AT&T had worse ratings but strangely AT&T Wireless had decent customer ratings at the time especially with business class customers (I was one). AT&T Wireless was definitely losing customers before they sold out but had not yet really started any kind of GSM migration (not sure if you implied that).
I was and AT&T Wireless customer at the time and Cingular tried to get us to change to their networks, offered new (crappy) phones but wanted to charge $36 per line to migrate. Hell no I wasn't paying them to migrate so they could shut down TDMA faster. Eventually they got desperate enough to waive all fees and provide better no-cost phones, took two years but I wasn't paying them to change networks.

 

[navychop]

Hence the quotes: "towers"

But it is my understanding that the 600 MHz rollout requires real hardware.

 

[navychop]

I think the tables have turned and it is now Sprint with hat in hand.

 

[comfortably_numb]

I think the tables have turned and it is now Sprint with hat in hand.

Can we all agree Sprint desperately needs this (or any) merger? I don’t see how their business model can continue any other way!

 

[Tampa8]

Can we all agree Sprint desperately needs this (or any) merger? I don’t see how their business model can continue any other way!

That's the bottom line. They have tried everything and it's not working. Well everything except making their signal receivable. Turns out people want a signal.

 

[ncted]

AT&T had worse ratings but strangely AT&T Wireless had decent customer ratings at the time especially with business class customers (I was one). AT&T Wireless was definitely losing customers before they sold out but had not yet really started any kind of GSM migration (not sure if you implied that).
I was and AT&T Wireless customer at the time and Cingular tried to get us to change to their networks, offered new (crappy) phones but wanted to charge $36 per line to migrate. Hell no I wasn't paying them to migrate so they could shut down TDMA faster. Eventually they got desperate enough to waive all fees and provide better no-cost phones, took two years but I wasn't paying them to change networks.

AT&T did in fact roll out GSM prior to the acquisition by Cingular over the majority of their TDMA network. It was quite the talk on the internet at the time. e.g.:

ATT GSM Overlay - What is taking so long?

It was the first misstep that lead to acquisition. The second was rolling out a new CRM system from Siebel which failed horribly.

 

[ChadT41]

Wasn't someone just recently talking about how Sprint was so great, and how great they are doing since they FINALLY turned a quarter profit?

Sprint is a dying company. Its only value, for now, is in its name.

 

[Bogy]

Sprint! If they were the only company available, I'd probably do without a cell phone. 16 years ago we moved from St. Louis, where we were happy with our Cingular service. But, Omaha, where we were moving to, was not covered by Cingular, so we attempted to become Sprint customers. Sprint wanted a deposit of $1000 per line. No way was I putting down a deposit of $2000, equal to approximately 20 months bills at that time. Went to AT&T and walked out with 2 phones, car adapters, etc., all with nothing down. Not sure what Sprint didn't like about us, or if this was common, but I've never considered them again.

 

[Almighty1]

Over last two years T-Mobile has doubled their LTE coverage.

They've just now started putting up "towers" for 600 MHz support. THAT should make a BIG difference. It seems they plan a huge investment over the next year to get (most?) of it done by the end of 2018. I think the final completion is 2020.

By the time Apple puts out a band 71 supporting phone, there will be a lot of places with 600 MHz in place.

I wonder where all that investment money is coming from.

I think in reality, coverage can only be added in areas that allows expansion while in big cities that won't allow expansion like here in San Francisco with a small land area, they can't really improve it much because you have all these NIMBY's.
T-Mobile is based in Germany so they have lots of $$$, otherwise they wouldn't have been able to just come and buy Voicestream.

 

[Almighty1]

Almighty1: The (only) beauty of GSM is that it was a world standard and if you travelled to Europe you really needed that. OBE today, of course.

I love your following explanation. I think it best be described as three snakes each eating the other's tail in a big circle. One won.

Should be both Asia and Europe excluding Japan since Japan used something else. The thing was back then, SIM cards were GSM and people just loved switching phones by moving the SIM.

 

[Almighty1]

Not completely correct, SBC renamed itself as Cingular (nationwide company needs nationwide name), a few years later Cingular bought ATT Wireless and then renamed themselves as AT&T.

Why the name change to AT&T? 2 Reasons:
1) AT&T is an old school name dating back to the dark ages of technology AKA pre-1950.
2) Cingular had the worst reputation for customer service of any company in existence (Yes, even worse than cable companies.) and AT&T Wireless actually had a decent reputation. Change your name and hope people forget all about Cingular, unfortunately they were right as many people forget that Cingular bought AT&T, not the other way around.

I didn't mention the obvious because SBC (Southwestern Bell Communications) basically renamed all the other companies RBOC's to SBC so the mobile networks all operated under a new name. It's similar to how Verizon Wireless was formed since they didn't need Pacific Bell Mobile Services, SBC Wireless, BellSouth Mobility, New England whatever the name for NEARNet was, Ameritech so just had one name. Cingular bought AT&T Wireless but SBC bought AT&T so then they got rid of Cingular as AT&T was the new name used for everything. Cingular had data, AT&T was not able to do data at all on their network. This was the reason people could use their phones to send faxes or dial up networking on Cingular for a extra charge but not AT&T. GTE Wireless at that point was able to do data without a extra charge. This all disappeared when the Smartphones came out. AT&T was the one who had the 30 day money back guarantee, it was 14 for both Cingular and Verizon and I think Sprint too. T-Mobile and Verizon Wireless both had quality customer service.

 

[Almighty1]

GSM was largely deployed on 1.9GHz (PCS) in the US initially, which didn't present a problem if properly planned, like we had in the Carolinas on BellSouth Mobility PCS, and unlike PacBell's implementation on the west coast. I know different terrain and all that, but still.

I remember Sprint PCS started out as GSM in Washington, D.C. while the rest of it was CDMA.

 

[Almighty1]

AT&T did in fact roll out GSM prior to the acquisition by Cingular over the majority of their TDMA network. It was quite the talk on the internet at the time. e.g.:

ATT GSM Overlay - What is taking so long?

It was the first misstep that lead to acquisition. The second was rolling out a new CRM system from Siebel which failed horribly.

Ofcourse they did and remember AT&T was also the one with the I think $100/month for unlimited talk on their GSM network. And by the time there was the Cingular acquisition, they already had a investment from NTT and were going to do WCDMA for 3G while Cingular was using something else for 3G like HSPDA or EDGE. Been too long since this was discussed on HoFo a lot back in the day.

 

[comfortably_numb]

Wasn't someone just recently talking about how Sprint was so great, and how great they are doing since they FINALLY turned a quarter profit?

Sprint is a dying company. Its only value, for now, is in its name.

Yeah. There was a guy in another thread from Georgia who thought Sprint was the bees knees. No matter what we said, fact or otherwise, he feels Sprint “works for him!” Too bad it doesn’t work for me (or anybody else I know), and I live in the back yard of Sprint’s corporate HQ

 

[navychop]

IIRC, Cingular used to be called 360. Can't remember the name prior to that.