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posted by n1 on Sunday June 18 2017, @09:38PM   Printer-friendly
from the beyond-the-urban-core dept.

Submitted via IRC for TheMightyBuzzard

Yesterday, the FCC officially granted the 600 MHz spectrum licenses that T-Mobile successfully secured in the recent broadcast incentive auction. The Un-carrier now officially possesses a staggering average of 31 MHz of 600 MHz spectrum licenses across the nation, more than quadrupling its low-band holdings (click for spectrum auction reactions from Verizon and AT&T).

With the spectrum transfer complete, the real fun begins. Despite the cries from skeptics, T-Mobile has already kicked off deployment activities and will see the first sites ready for testing this summer! This timeline - well ahead of expectations – sets the stage for commercial operations later this year.

The source is a bit of a soyvertisement but still interesting if read in that light.

Source: https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-and-blogs/t-mobiles-new-600-mhz-network-rollout-begins-this-summer.htm


Original Submission

Related Stories

T-Mobile and Sprint Merger Called Off After Months of Talks 10 comments

T-Mobile and Sprint, the third and fourth largest U.S. wireless carriers respectively, have called off merger talks, although they have left the door open in a joint statement:

Sprint Corp and T-Mobile US Inc said on Saturday they have called off merger talks to create a stronger U.S. wireless company to rival market leaders, leaving No. 4 provider Sprint to engineer a turnaround on its own.

The announcement marks the latest failed attempt to combine the third- and fourth-largest U.S. wireless carriers, as Sprint parent SoftBank Group Corp and T-Mobile parent Deutsche Telekom AG, show unwillingness to part with too much of their prized U.S. telecom assets. A combined company would have had more than 130 million U.S. subscribers, behind Verizon Communications Inc and AT&T Inc.

The failed merger could also help keep wireless prices low as all four providers have been heavily discounting their cellphone plans in a battle for consumers. "Consumers are better off without the merger because Sprint and T-Mobile will continue to compete fiercely for budget-conscious customers," said Erik Gordon, a Ross School of Business professor at the University of Michigan.

The companies' unusual step of making a joint announcement on the canceled negotiations could indicate they still recognize the merits of a merger, keeping the door open for potential future talks.

Also at Bloomberg, NYT, and Ars Technica.

Previously: Sprint: Purchase of T-Mobile Promotes Competition
Inside the Plan to Pull Sprint Out of its Death Spiral

Related: Sprint the Only US Telecomm to Challenge NSA
T-Mobile and Verizon Mobile Plans Change; Probably Not Better for Consumers
Are True Burner Phones Now Impossible in the USA?
T-Mobile's New 600 MHz Network Rollout Begins This Summer
Verizon Wireless Divides Unlimited Plan Into Three Worse Options


Original Submission

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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @09:51PM (1 child)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @09:51PM (#527610)

    I'm ready!

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:23PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:23PM (#527622)

      I watch all my porn on T-Mobile because I have a fetish for 480p.

  • (Score: 2) by opinionated_science on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:10PM (2 children)

    by opinionated_science (4031) on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:10PM (#527617)

    I wonder if this will help google fi, which piggybacks off T-mobile?

    Dunno if the frequency was included already in devices...

    • (Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday June 18 2017, @11:16PM (1 child)

      by frojack (1554) on Sunday June 18 2017, @11:16PM (#527630) Journal

      None of the current Project Fi phones support that spectrum.
      So unless Google has a new Project Fi phone up their sleeves, the only way this helps Project Fi is by reducing congestion on the existing bands.

      The building penetration capabilities of this spectrum may make it ideal for data plans as well as phones, but rural seems to be the market they are aiming for,
      Samsung is going to release a 600 MHz phone by the end of the year, but right now there aren't many phones with that on the market.

      --
      No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
  • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:22PM (3 children)

    by Lagg (105) on Sunday June 18 2017, @10:22PM (#527621) Homepage Journal

    Anyone else have their legacy PAYG plan? If they're investing in infrastructure logically they're also going to open up their plan options so that I can finally have data on my modern smartphone without annoying monthly payments right? That I can pay for in units in ratios that make sense?

    Ah ahuu

    AHHHUACHOURBLRUGHLBURGH

    Oh my god sorry I was trying to keep the coffee in with a straight face while I typed that and I spit it out so hard my fingers spasmed. Retaining for posterity and science.

    --
    http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @12:05AM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 19 2017, @12:05AM (#527644)

      If you want payments that make sense, the best option I know is Ting, an MVNO reselling both Sprint and T-Mobile service. Payments are monthly (I don't think you can avoid that at this point), but at least you pay for (roughly) what you used that month.

      OTOH, it's still $6/line/month even at zero usage, which is expensive if you really are a light user. And data/voice/sms are each summed every month (over all lines on the account), which is good, but then tiered for billing. By tiered, I mean that, given the nominal data tiers of 100MB, 500MB, 1GB, etc., you actually pay:

       use  | pay
        0MB |  $0
        1MB |  $3
      . . . |  $3
      100MB |  $3
      101MB | $10
      . . . | $10
      500MB | $10
      501MB | $16
      . . . | ...

      And similarly for minutes of voice and SMSes.

      I don't get why they can't/won't just bill per-minute, per-sms, and per-MB, with the marginal rates verying by bracket, but it's a lot better than the usual "Pick the highest you'll ever need, then pay us for that every month." or "Unlimited*" plans.

      • (Score: 2) by Lagg on Monday June 19 2017, @12:54AM

        by Lagg (105) on Monday June 19 2017, @12:54AM (#527667) Homepage Journal

        Yeah so it'd end up costing me more than the minutes I can put in all at once that last a year just to maintain it looks like.

        Also I assume they don't do that because then they can't charge crazy amounts and also justify more price increases when people use the data forced on them. I mean people I know seem to use it just to use it since it's there. I'd use it like an antenna.

        Normal users need get together and fund our own service. We can totally break in. The future is now in small business telecom!

        --
        http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
      • (Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Monday June 19 2017, @01:01AM

        by hemocyanin (186) on Monday June 19 2017, @01:01AM (#527668) Journal

        ... OTOH, it's still $6/line/month even at zero usage, which is expensive if you really are a light user. ...

        Kids these days. Anyone else remember when you had to pay $___/mo (can't recall how much) for basic local service, and then over 20c per minute in the 80s and 90s for long distance. https://books.google.com/books?id=Pc-L2vz0K14C&pg=PA108&hl=en#v=onepage&q&f=false [google.com]

        So a 30 minute long distance call would cost $6.66 in 1990, which equates to $12.41 in 2016 dollars (calculated here: https://westegg.com/inflation/infl.cgi [westegg.com] ). In the county I live in, it was long distance to call from one part to the other, 25 miles away. At least by the time I was paying for my own phone service, you could actually own a telephone rather than lease it from the phone company.

        I remember those pre-dialing numbers you could call and get rates for seven or eight cents per minute and thinking it was the greatest deal ever. So anyway, $6/mo for service and you whine about it? Get off my fucking lawn!

  • (Score: 2) by richtopia on Monday June 19 2017, @06:25PM

    by richtopia (3160) on Monday June 19 2017, @06:25PM (#528071) Homepage Journal

    I glanced through T-mobile's press release and it looks like this is a 5G network. Does anyone know of the technology or if this new spectrum will be used for anything more reminiscent of older generations?

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