This is really weird: Sprint is maybe buying part/all of T-Mobile?!

[thewayne]

There are two basic things that differentiate wireless carriers. First, frequency. Cell phones are two-way radios that operate in full-duplex: you can talk and listen at the same time. Half-duplex is like walkie-talkies: you can only hear when you're not transmitting. The second is signal encoding, and at the simplest level, there are two types: GSM and CDMA. There are two major GSM carriers: AT&T and T-Mobile, and two major CDMA carriers: Verizon and Sprint.

So not only are T-Mobiles' encoding incompatible with Sprint's existing infrastructure, the frequencies are also different. So to merge the two carriers' networks, all of the T-Mobile towers would have to be upgraded, and all of the Sprint towers would have to be upgraded. This makes absolutely no sense, especially since both carriers are in the middle of network-wide upgrades. Had a merger been considered before they started the upgrades, it could have been factored in, and since all of the towers were being touched in the first place, it wouldn't have been nearly as painful at that point, but they're both well in to their upgrades, so it's really not sensible.

This makes absolutely no sense to me.

Two years ago, AT&T announced that they wanted to buy T-Mobile. The ostensible reason was that they wanted to expand their network to provide better coverage. The only problem with that claim is that although they both use GSM, they're not on the same frequency, so AT&T would have had to update all of the towers on both networks to make them compatible, and it was easily proven that it was less expensive for AT&T to just upgrade their network in the first place, so this merger was shot down very quickly and never came close to regulatory approval because clearly AT&T wanted to gobble up T-Mobile to eliminate a competitor and become bigger than Verizon, and I'll bet T-Mobile customers breathed a sigh of relief when it was shut-down.

A Sprint/T-Mobile merger I think would have an easier time getting regulatory approval since it would be the third and fourth largest carriers merging (Spribile? T-Mobint?), but it still doesn't make sense to me from an economic standing. I think the shareholders of both companies would be wise to vote against such a merger.

http://www.fiercewireless.com/story/report-sprint-considering-bid-t-mobile/2013-12-13

Comments

[silveradept]

It doesn't make sense at all - why try to merge two incompatible networks at all? Unless they just want size and customers. It would be interesting to see if they merged and could crosswalk their networks so that one phone worked on both...

[thewayne.livejournal.com]

That's the thing. It would take some very big buckets of money to make their networks cross-compatible to support two tech/frequency standards. It makes no sense at all. Sprint isn't particularly hurting, as far as I know, but they'll never make it in to the league of At&T and Verizon. It's always going to be a back and forth between them and T-Mobile for 3rd and 4th place.