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Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA
·Comcast XFINITY

Zenit_IIfx

Premium Member

What will happen (if this is approved)

T-Mobiles leadership will replace Sprints, Legere keeps his job
Sprint brand name is retired
Deutsche Telekom keeps minority share

Network will be rapidly transitioned to LTE just like MetroPCMs. The greatest pain will be forcing new phones on people who were on Sprint. I cant imagine they would be very happy...then again they get access to a superior network afterward.

Why keep the GSM technology?
-Its an open technology, makes it easy to poach customers from AT&T
-International Roaming for free is a big selling point for a carrier, I am sure they can negotiate this with DT post-sale.
-CDMA is stupid. A technology barely used around the world. VZ and Sprint used it to eliminate openness and lock down users in a prison. Phones need more radios to go overseas.

In the end though, it will all be LTE.

Mayoshi better not replace GSM with CDMA.

I will admit, I am terrified about what is going to happen. We love our low cell bill.
xenophon
join:2007-09-17

xenophon

Member

Sprint name could change but Tmobile brand is owned buy DT in other countries. TMO name would go away in US for sure.
ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL

ISurfTooMuch to Zenit_IIfx

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to Zenit_IIfx
I think that you're spot on about the transition to LTE. As for CDMA/GSM goes, there isn't much reason to do anything. Let everything move to LTE and gradually retire those two technologies. Once VoLTE happens on a widespread basis, there's no need to keep CDMA or GSM in the handsets except for roaming, and you can bet that GSM/HSPA will win out in that battle. AT&T is going to retire GSM at the beginning of 2017, only three years away. No reason T-Mobile can't do the same, and CDMA could also go away in a similar fashion.

Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA

Zenit_IIfx to xenophon

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to xenophon
If DT keeps minority share, the name could stay. For example, the DT venture in Hungary had financial issues, so they reduced the share of ownership greatly. They got to keep the T-Mobile name even though the company was now "Magayar Hungary Telecom"
nonymous (banned)
join:2003-09-08
Glendale, AZ

nonymous (banned) to ISurfTooMuch

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to ISurfTooMuch
said by ISurfTooMuch:

there's no need to keep CDMA or GSM in the handsets except for roaming, and you can bet that GSM/HSPA will win out in that battle.

Why? CDMA for roaming works quite well for distance. Think Verizon wireless. As said before GSM is liked because of SIM cards nothing to do with the base technology beyond that.
ISurfTooMuch
join:2007-04-23
Tuscaloosa, AL

ISurfTooMuch

Member

Yes, but CDMA isn't used for roaming in most of the world; GSM is. So that only leaves roaming on U.S. carriers, and if CDMA is on the way out, then it makes more sense to prefer GSM/HSPA for roaming. And, even with U.S. roaming, assuming the new company chose to allow it, they could just as easily roam on AT&T as Verizon.

Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA

Zenit_IIfx to nonymous

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to nonymous
CDMA will do you nothing when you step outside of the USA/North America
nonymous (banned)
join:2003-09-08
Glendale, AZ

nonymous (banned) to ISurfTooMuch

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to ISurfTooMuch
said by ISurfTooMuch:

Yes, but CDMA isn't used for roaming in most of the world; GSM is. So that only leaves roaming on U.S. carriers, and if CDMA is on the way out, then it makes more sense to prefer GSM/HSPA for roaming. And, even with U.S. roaming, assuming the new company chose to allow it, they could just as easily roam on AT&T as Verizon.

Most people never leave the local area they live in let alone travel overseas.
Overseas travel is a small part of most cell usage in the US.
Plus if a world traveler you probably already have a couple or more sims from other areas outside the US and a couple or more phones to use them in.
xenophon
join:2007-09-17

xenophon to ISurfTooMuch

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to ISurfTooMuch
CDMA is still big in S America and parts of Asia, just not Europe. I've roamed many times on CDMA in other countries. Some new Sprint phones also have GSM so can still roam to those areas.
Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

Crookshanks to Zenit_IIfx

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to Zenit_IIfx
said by Zenit_IIfx:

CDMA is stupid. A technology barely used around the world. VZ and Sprint used it to eliminate openness and lock down users in a prison. Phones need more radios to go overseas.

This is an incredibly stupid statement. CDMA offered superior spectral efficiency compared to GSM. The choice between the two when carriers were looking at digital voice networks in the late 1990s was quite a bit more complicated than "CDMA is stupid." IS-95 could squeeze more users onto the same slice of spectrum, did so with superior audio quality compared to GSM half-rate, and at the time appeared to have a better upgrade path. GSM's TDMA air interface was obsolete when it was adopted, and it ought to tell you something that the 3G evolution of GSM (UTMS) used a CDMA inspired air interface.

Verizon and Sprint had many reasons for going with CDMA, putting their users in prison was not one of them. There's nothing that says CDMA networks have to be locked down, nor is there anything that says GSM networks have to be open. AT&T makes it exceedingly difficult for people to swap SIMs between devices from what I'm told. I can take my grandfathered unlimited SIM card, pop it into a data card, and download a few hundred gigabytes with my laptop with no issues whatsoever. Can AT&T customers do that?

morbo
Complete Your Transaction
join:2002-01-22
00000

morbo to nonymous

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to nonymous
said by nonymous:

Plus if a world traveler you probably already have a couple or more sims from other areas outside the US and a couple or more phones to use them in.

Not true. The ease of use factor is important here.

CDMA roaming world wide is a joke.
nonymous (banned)
join:2003-09-08
Glendale, AZ

1 edit

nonymous (banned)

Member

Yes Tmobile has their international roaming. No matter who buys Tmobile out how long will that last once DT is no longer the parent company?
World travelers make up a very small percentage of any US cell operators business.
You and your friends may be world travelers. Yet most normal broke people are not.

Then how many people change their cell phone on a daily basis just because? My wife is not into tech. She does have a nice cell phone though. Not because we are that broke but because she is used to it and has it set the way she likes it would not swap it out weekly. Or have a few for different days of the week.
About the only time I did have a second cell was a ruggedized one for work and a play one for home.

skurfa
@ufinet.com.pa

skurfa to morbo

Anon

to morbo
True, I am a world traveler and a Sprint customer, I am using my Sprint HTC One on the Mas Movi (Cable and Wireless Panama) network with a local SIM right now. Obviously the phone has all the radios needed to to work on this GSM network. Using a local SIM is a way better option for anyone spending any amount of time overseas, even T-Mos free roaming is pretty limited in how much you can use, especially data. They also limit you to edge data speeds, used edge lately? They will allow you higher speeds but you will pay 15.00 per 100 mb, Very steep

Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA
·Comcast XFINITY

Zenit_IIfx

Premium Member

Actually, I have used EDGE lately, since I am a T-Mobile customer :P
My house is stuck between two towers - a 4G LTE/3G tower, and an EDGE tower. The EDGE tower has stronger signal as its a little closer, and my phone likes to ping pong between them. Its also right on the border of modern service from t-mobile (going east) and EDGEland going west.

Its fine for e-mail, navigation, weather checking, iMessage or Steam messaging.
elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY

elefante72 to morbo

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to morbo
Maybe but my iphone 5 on verizon roams on GSM just fine and I slap a Reliance or Vodaphone SIM in and away to the races.

It's not a binary thing.

In any case you would be crazy to roam internationally on Verizon or Sprint. Verizon charges $20/MB to roam in Asia. That is YES $2,000 a GB.

The issue will be in the future NOT GSM/CDMA but chipsets that support all of the LTE bands and TD-LTE.

So Nextel was a disaster, merging TMO and Sprint wouldn't be as painful BUT not seamless either.

Already Sprint is behaving like the bigboys, so it's just a matter of time.

The BIG thing to watch is what is happening in the MVNO space. Verizon is practically absent, but AT&T and TMO are dueling in that space and there is REAL value there today. Sprint MVNO mostly suck (some can use LTE now) because they are using 3G and as we all know Sprint 3G is from the dial-up era.
nonymous (banned)
join:2003-09-08
Glendale, AZ

nonymous (banned)

Member

said by elefante72:

The BIG thing to watch is what is happening in the MVNO space.

Carlos Slim. Huge latin/ hispanic market. Plus bet he prefers mvno as less oversight than buying a telco.

amarryat
Verizon FiOS
join:2005-05-02
Marshfield, MA

amarryat to Crookshanks

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to Crookshanks
said by Crookshanks:

This is an incredibly stupid statement.

I remember reading something years ago about how CDMA allowed the phone to communicate with multiple towers simultaneously. The effect of this for the user is that the call wouldn't degrade and then snap back in once it switched towers. Having been a Verizon customer and now being a T-Mobile customer, that seems to be true.
xenophon
join:2007-09-17

xenophon

Member

I prefer the voice quality of CDMA when in a very low signal area. Can always tell when someone is on GSM given lower voice quality at times.
Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

Crookshanks to amarryat

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to amarryat
It's called soft handoff, and it's a feature of any CDMA based network, including UTMS (the 3G version of GSM).

Classical GSM uses TDMA (time division multiple access) as an air interface, with each base station using different frequencies so they don't interfere with one another, which means your phone can only be in contact with one base station at any time. A handoff requires it to break contact with the network for a brief moment, which may or may not be noticeable to the end user. The bigger issue is that if someone goes wrong with the handoff the call will be dropped.

To be fair, dropped calls can and still do happen with soft handoff, they're just less likely.
elefante72
join:2010-12-03
East Amherst, NY

elefante72 to nonymous

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He is buying up lots. Net10, Walmart, page plus, simple, tracfone, etc... But there is lots of others out there working it too. Just moved rents to H20wireless which uses AT&T $30 for unlimted and 500MB. Quite a good deal and no taxes.

Nowaybubba
@wideopenwest.com

Nowaybubba to Zenit_IIfx

Anon

to Zenit_IIfx
said by Zenit_IIfx:

...then again they get access to a superior network afterward.

Really? It's just going to somehow transform overnight from being a network of crap to the best thing then sliced bread? Hey man, I want what your smoking..

amarryat
Verizon FiOS
join:2005-05-02
Marshfield, MA

amarryat to Crookshanks

Member

to Crookshanks
Does that mean it's my imagination with T-Mobile? I remember while driving when I was on Verizon, if I'd look at the signal, it would gradually rise and drop and rise.... With T-Mobile, I'll watch it drop, then suddenly I'll have 5 bars, that will gradually decline, then snap to 5 bars again.

Edit - my description above is based on T-Mobile 3G (phone says 4G, not 4G LTE). But I think the same happens when I'm in an LTE area as well - there seem to be lots of changes back and forth near where I live.
xenophon
join:2007-09-17

xenophon to Nowaybubba

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to Nowaybubba
800Mhz fills n the gaps. When it turns on, it is kind of dramatic change. Was the case for Chicago when Sprint turned on 800 voice.
Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

Crookshanks to amarryat

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to amarryat
It's hard to draw any meaningful conclusions from bars, because there's no standard for what they mean (Motorola's definition of 5 bars is different than Samsung's) or even which value (received signal strength or signal to noise ratio) they reference. RSSI is actually quite meaningless, SNR is what matters, but most phones don't track the SNR. Those that do frequently bury it under a hidden field test screen.

I haven't used T-Mobile for a long time, but in markets where they have UTMS you should have the same handoff experience as with Verizon. They do still have a fair amount of legacy 2G/GSM areas, which require hard handoffs. Personally I didn't notice the handoffs when I had a T-Mobile phone, the ones that completed successfully anyway. Obviously I noticed the ones that resulted in a dropped call.

The technical nitty gritty is beyond what I can put in this post, but the cliff notes version for each:

FDMA/TDMA standards (AMPS, D-AMPS, GSM): Phone communicates with one base station at a time, while simultaneously monitoring the signal quality from other base stations within range. When it sees good candidates for a handoff it makes a request with the network, which picks the destination BS and tells the phone which channel to change to. The phone disconnects from the current BS, changes channels and establishes connectivity with the new BS (or fails to do, in which case the call is dropped)

CDMA standards (IS-95/IS-2000, UTMS): Phone communicates with one or more base stations at a time, while simultaneously monitoring the signal strength from other base stations within range. The simultaneous communication is possible because all CDMA base stations in a given area transmit on the same frequency, and it's simply a matter of mathematics to listen to the relevant signals. Base stations are seamlessly added to and removed from the call as you travel throughout the coverage area.

Hard handoffs do still occur in CDMA networks. One reason would be crossing a market boundary where the carrier holds different licenses. Another would be capacity limitations on the channel your call is currently being carried on. In either instance the network is going to command your phone to change channels, which requires a brief interruption in communication to the network, increasing the likelihood of a dropped call.

amarryat
Verizon FiOS
join:2005-05-02
Marshfield, MA

amarryat

Member

Thanks for the excellent explanation. So it sounds like as long as my phone doesn't say 2G (or G), then it's making soft handoffs.

A couple of months ago, I had called customer service at T-Mobile, and after a while felt like the rep didn't know what she was talking about. For one thing, she was telling me that the towers serve about 10 miles. I was asking about refarmed towers and she told me that they can't have towers closer than that because where the signals intersect, there will be a dead zone.

Based on what you just said above, the dead zone part was erroneous too - I already knew the tower info was bogus - they really only seem to have a range of about 1 mile before and after if you're on the highway.
Crookshanks
join:2008-02-04
Binghamton, NY

1 edit

Crookshanks

Member

Being on 3G/UTMS is no promise of a soft handoff. Like I said, hard handoffs can still be compelled for capacity reasons, among others. The soft handoff is preferred, but not always possible.

Tower reach is determined by many factors. Macro base stations (the biggest) can have ranges of dozens of miles, given favorable terrain and low population density. Femtocells (like Verizon's Network Extender) have a range measured in feet. On a highway base stations may be a mile or less apart (a hilly or dense urban area) or many tens of miles (a flat rural area).

Coverage between base stations overlaps in complicated ways. You can have a series of large macro cells whose coverage overlaps with smaller micro and picocells. Slow moving or stationary mobiles wind up on the micro/pico network, which serves to increase capacity, while fast moving mobiles (i.e., a phone in an automobile) get pushed to the macro network so they don't have to deal with as many handoffs.

This whole conversation assumes an ACTIVELY communicating mobile. Idle mobiles work differently. When idle your phone is listening for pages from the network, which are simply system messages that tell it to connect to the network because of an incoming call, SMS, data, or simply to make sure it's still around.

Cellular networks are divided up into different areas, called zones in IS-95/IS-2000 networks. Pages to your mobile are sent out on every base station in your zone, the network doesn't know exactly where your phone is until it answers the page. When the phone moves between different zones it alerts the network so the network knows where to send pages. The size of these zones vary, depending on population density and other factors.

Another concept is called slotted mode, which means the phone only turns on its receiver to listen for a page every so often. The rest of the time the receiver is turned off, to save battery life. This is why your phone might take a few seconds to start ringing when you get a call or text.

Edit: This is an old site, but it has a lot of useful information. The author is describing IS-95/IS-2000 networks (Verizon's 2G CDMA), but a lot of the concepts therein apply to new standards, up to and including LTE.

kamm
join:2001-02-14
Brooklyn, NY

kamm to Zenit_IIfx

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to Zenit_IIfx
said by Zenit_IIfx:

DT venture in Hungary had financial issues, so they reduced the share of ownership greatly.

You are confused. DT never lowered it's full controlling ownership (~59%) ever since it bought out all other owners of the the former state-owned telecommunication monopoly in 2000 (rest is on stock market and Hungarian State retained a golden share, a usual solution when privatizing strategic services.)

Not only that but actually both Matav & T-Mobile Hungary and later merged under the name Magyar Telekom ("Magyar" means Hungarian) was and still is steadily profitable ever since and also became the investment arm for DT on the nearby Balkan telecom markets (Macedonia, Montenegro, Romania etc.)

They got to keep the T-Mobile name even though the company was now "Magayar Hungary Telecom"

As I said, it's "Magyar Telekom" and the name change had nothing to do with any financial issue - it was simple part of the biggest DT-wide re-branding operation, quickly followed by the merger of the two DT subsidiaries in Hungary, T-Mobile Hungary (wireless provider,previously called Westel) and then-rebranded Magyar Telekom Group, under the new (shorter) name Magyar Telekom (now ~15 years later I'm not totally sure about the last structural part, I think T-Mobile was part of Matav by default...)

(Discl.: I'm a native Hungarian speaker & ex-journo)

Zenit_IIfx
The system is the solution
Premium Member
join:2012-05-07
Purcellville, VA
·Comcast XFINITY

Zenit_IIfx to Crookshanks

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to Crookshanks
I suppose I did phrase that a bit too strongly, and incorrectly, considering that CDMA is the name of a channel access method, and not itself a full cell standard like "CDMA2000".
Makes me wonder why we still call AT&T and T-Mo "GSM" carriers when they are using CDMA in their 3G services.

To correct myself, the implementation of CDMA that VZ and Sprint are using tends to have a more restrictive, oppressive control over its users than LTE/W-CDMA/GSM devices do due to the lack of the SIM card. A few people I spoke with on VZ or Sprint lamented the fact that their devices were pretty much stuck on either network (Pre-LTE days + non-world phone). VZ at least unlocks devices at the end of contract at request, sprint apparently refuses?

So sprints policies are much like a jail cell, in a way.

LTE has brought the SIM to all the carriers in the USA, so this point is dying out. Now its just a matter of unlocking + band compatibility.

I agree, voice quality on CDMA type tech is much better than GSM TDMA. When I am on EDGE most calls sound like they are on a Bell System underwater cable from the 50s. When on 3g, the calls are much clearer.

Elector
join:2000-05-25
Albany, NY

Elector to Zenit_IIfx

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to Zenit_IIfx
The leadership would not be T-Mobile. The company will be lock, stock and barrel Sprint (Softbank) the T-Mobile name and Legere will be history.

Sprint will use the spectrum and any other assets it needs from the lesser company (T-Mobile) and may keep both CDMA & GSM for a time, but since Sprint has the larger coverage it may go all CDMA.

Personally I don't like T-Mobile and for the four months I had them service outside my city was terrible, over charging, poor customer service, constantly sending text alerts when your invoice is due. The data in my city (home) was pretty good. And the WiFi calling worked very well. But in the balance the problems outweighed the good points.

Personally T-Mobile should be out of business. Terrible company.

KrK
Heavy Artillery For The Little Guy
Premium Member
join:2000-01-17
Tulsa, OK

KrK to nonymous

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to nonymous
He make a killing off of the US customers via USF fees for all the "Lifeline" phones his companies aggressively sell and market to the recipient class.