Comments on: Opinion – How Realistic is a Sprint with T-Mobile Merger?

By: justmac32

justmac32 — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 02:22:02 +0000

How about slowly migrating the sprint base to GSM as they mature past contract dates, while pushing the CDMA network towards MVNO’s. The Clearwire WiMax could be converted to LTE which T-Mobile would use as their main data technology. Also, all the MVNO’s could have a open network to operate (CDMA) on. Then T-Mobile can capitalize on both the Prime customers on GSM from Sprint and the revenue from the customer traffic the MVNO’s pay for on CDMA.

Would the Feds go for this?

By: Perry

Perry — Fri, 25 Sep 2009 20:20:02 +0000

I think nosmohtac has it right: LTE is the answer that would make this merger possible. Although Sprint has committed to WiMax with Clearwire, they could still fairly easily change to LTE, or commit to both; WiMax in urban areas and LTE elsewhere. I’m not an expert on the technologies, so I don’t know if running both necessarily makes sense.

The point is that they could continue running CDMA and GSM and whatever it is the Nextel phones are running (I don’t remember what it’s called) for the time being, while working to converge the networks on the 4G standard. Personally, as a Sprint customer, I’m a little leery of their plans to go with WiMax considering that Verizon and AT&T and most of the rest of the world are going with LTE. WiMax sounds like it could be technological evolutionary dead-end.

By: nosmohtac

nosmohtac — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 23:56:35 +0000

I think this would be an awesome merger. It just makes sense. I don’t know how they would tackle the technology difference, but it doesn’t seem unsurmountable.

There have already been tests with LTE (seen as GSM tech.)handing off to CDMA for voice, which is what VZW is supposedly going with. Add to that the Clearwire recently stated that if WiMax doesn’t pick up enough support around the world that they can switch (to LTE I assume) with only a software upgrade.

There are already phones on VZW, Alltel(yes they’re still around in some markets), and Sprint that have GSM radios, meant for world business travelers. Wouldn’t it be possible to have OEM’s manufacture phones that have CDMA and GSM Radios that support T-mo’s frequencies? I’m not sure, but I would love to see this happen. T-mobile and Sprint don’t have the widest coverage, but they have the most competitively priced post-paid plans out there.

By: stevenshytle

stevenshytle — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 20:41:48 +0000

While Sprint is a cellphone company I believe they sold off all their cellular towers. Switching tower technologies is a lease arrangement now. Also the new Sprint HTC Touch Pro 2 while it is a CDMA phone I think it has a worldband GSM slot also. Seems like a transition could happen with proper planning.

By: Michael Anderson

Michael Anderson — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 19:28:03 +0000

Whew … as someone who had Nextel during the merger, you had me going for a minute there …!

By: Wayne Schulz

Wayne Schulz — Wed, 23 Sep 2009 17:31:22 +0000

Well Sprint figured out how integrate Nextel pretty well. What makes you think they couldn’t do the same with T-Mo.

That was a joke – just in case.

Yeah, this would be a disaster — if there’s one lesson to be learned from prior cellular conversions is that incompatible core technology will be almost an insurmountable hurdle.

Also, I think Virgin’s already owned by Sprint and was always renting space on their network so I am not sure the prepaid would flood them — but trying to integrate T-Mo might capsize them…