The 3/6/19 FCC Filing by T-Mobile attempts to recharacterize how the merger “benefits” the consumer by expanding fixed or nomadic wireless broadband service. The filing suggests that T-Mobile will utilize the combined assets of the two companies to provide an alternative to home wired broadband in LTE in the near term and 5G in the future. This is a laudable goal; however, T-Mobile’s filing lacks a significant number of concrete details.
There are no shortage of claims about how wide and how fast the service will be, but barely any concrete details about how they technically intend to pull it off other than a single expert’s statement that the they reviewed the proposed concept and feels that T-Mobile and Sprint’s network is up to the task without detriment to the underlying wireless subscribers. However, there are no numbers or documentation supporting these conclusions in the filing.
The FCC has stopped the review period pending comments for 30 days. With T-Mobile providing nominal actual evidence of their claims, how can the average (or even intelligent) commenter question or comment the purported network’s benefits? It seems like this filing is an attempt to appeal to government officials who favor reducing the Digital Divide but may not know enough to question whether T-Mobile/Sprint’s merger will or will not significantly reduce the divide.
There is no doubt that adding Sprint’s 2.5Ghz spectrum to T-Mobile’s 600, PCS, AWS spectrum will enable additional capacity while expanding coverage. However, 2.5 GHz requires three to three-and-a-half cell sites to cover the same area as 600MHz. Conceptually, the 600MHz will be used for wide area coverage and 2.5 GHz for capacity. The issue is that T-Mobile’s rural cell sites weren’t designed for 2.5GHz, and Sprint virtually stopped building new rural sites years ago. While 600MHz will be suitable for LTE-A and other technologies, it also handles less capacity than 2.5GHz. Thus, our questions:
The filing seems to raise more questions than it answers. While having additional broadband providers available to consumers is an admirable goal, especially in underserved areas, the filing seems short on details and technical specifications that would allow independent commenters to be able to evaluate the merits of T-Mobile’s claims.
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