Re: T-Mobile Sprint Merger: Say goodbye to scam calls

On 8/4/2020 8:49 PM, JF Mezei wrote:
> On 2020-08-04 14:09, nospam wrote:
> 
>> it's an independent survey of actual coverage.
> 
> On the year I used T-Mo for my trip to Delaware, one spot in Port henry
> NY was marked as covered by T-Mo. And indeed, there was signal, except
> it was AT&T signal. When I tried to make a phone call, it was rejected.

You could call 911.

> So a lot of the advertised coverage is "shared" with on of the big guys
> but only usable with postpaid plans.

True about shared coverage but only partially true about postpaid. For 
Sprint, there have been optional roaming add-ons, as well as included 
very limited roaming for some of their prepaid offerings (at least for 
voice and SMS). For T-Mobile there is usually the same roaming on 
prepaid as there is on postpaid, but usually that roaming is on smaller 
carriers, not on AT&T. AT&T's prepaid offerings also have some limited 
roaming, but not as much as their postpaid service.

> The merger promotional materials to get approval to buy Sprint mentioned
> increased coverage by combing both networks. In many cases, this ould
> mean the map doesn't change, but by being able to use the Sprint tower,
> the T-Mbile customer gets stronger signal.  Remember that maps are
> overly optimistic marketing docuemnts. Internally they have real maps.

There are not many areas where T-Mobile would benefit by adding Sprint 
native coverage, but a lot of areas where Sprint would benefit by adding 
T-Mobile native coverage because in many cases it replaces Verizon 
roaming coverage. The issue is that there are also a lot of areas where 
Sprint now roams on Verizon but where there is no T-Mobile coverage. LTE 
is the great equalizer since most recent vintage phones have all the 
bands for all the U.S. carriers. If and when Sprint loses that Verizon 
roaming there will be some very unhappy Sprint users.

> I had not considered Sprint roaming on Verizon. Curous how T-Mo will
> handle that one.   Obviouslt T-Mo customers won't roam on it. And new
> Sprint Customers won't roam on it (likely won't have CDMA enabled on new
> phones starting today).

For now, Sprint customers still get some LTE roaming on Verizon. And 
while you can no longer activate a CDMA-only phone on Sprint or Verizon, 
an LTE phone with CDMA coverage will still work in the rare cases that 
you can get a CDMA signal but no LTE signal. In the past, when it was 
"CDMA versus GSM" there was an advantage to CDMA because of the greater 
range (which is why so many rural carriers moved from TDMA to CDMA 
rather than from TDMA to GSM).

> But existing customers may be grandfathered and may continue to roam
> till CDMA is shut down in 2021, after which, all customers being on
> LTE/VoLTE would liekly roam on AT&T instead of Verizon.

Not clear. Currently Sprint postpaid customers still get LTE roaming on 
Verizon, according to the Sprint/T-Mobile coverage map. For the time 
being, T-Mobile is maintaining separate coverage maps for its Sprint 
service <https://www.t-mobile.com/coverage/coverage-map> and T-Mobile 
service, and they are very different. Look at the western U.S. on each 
map and you can see how superior Sprint's coverage is, except when you 
zoom in you see that much of it is not actually on Sprint's network.

> Remains to be see if Verizon might *want* the roaming revenue or be
> gland to get rid of it since T0-Mo would have an "inferio" network to
> its own.

The position of AT&T and Verizon has been that since they are required 
to sell roaming to the other carriers they should be able to charge a 
premium for it because otherwise it enables their competitors to provide 
similar coverage without the same capital expenditures.

One thing that T-Mobile was upset about was that the big guys were 
selling data to MVNOs at lower cost than they were selling it to 
T-Mobile. The top-tier carriers see MVNOs more as sources for up-side 
revenue from users that would not sign up for postpaid service, but they 
see T-Mobile as a direct competitor. Redpocket, Tracfone brands, etc. 
are probably not going to take away many AT&T or Verizon postpaid 
customers, but if T-Mobile could equal AT&T or Verizon coverage then 
there'd be no good reason to pay extra for AT&T or Verizon.