Now that T-Mobile USA has Sprint, with its rich dowry of 2.5 GHz spectrum, in its clutches, it has wasted no time in deploying 5G in a three-tiered ‘layer cake’ stretched across the 600 MHz coverage band; Sprint’s 2.5 GHz, which has only been partially used for 4G; and millimeter wave spectrum.
The first market to go live with all three variants was New York City, last month, and testing service Ookla said this “delivered an impressive user experience, and it was just an early taste of a 5G layer cake that could continue to improve”. Average download speeds had increased by 25% since January, to reach 98.96Mbps, with a peak of 541Mbps, said the mid-May report, because of the addition of 2.5 GHz. The calculation carves out the portion of the download speed that that comes only from 5G NR, though LTE contributes too. TMO has activated 40 MHz of 2.5 GHz spectrum in New York, using Ericsson equipment, and Ookla said it has achieved 47% better spectral efficiency than Sprint’s now-decommissioned Nokia network in the same spectrum.
TMO also has 100 MHz of 28 GHz spectrum in use in New York, and with that in play, 5G’s peak speed contribution topped 520Mbps, but Ookla commented: “T-Mobile’s midband 2.5 GHz NR layer is able to deliver similar capacity out of just 40 MHz of spectrum.” It attributed the midband efficiency to the use of four data streams and 256QAM, which mmWave chipsets do not yet support.
In certain locations, TMO increased the amount of 2.5 GHz spectrum allocated for 5G from 40 MHz to 60 MHz, after which 5G NR contributed close to 900Mbps downlink.
When combined with LTE, including aggregation of unlicensed spectrum to boost the downlink using License Assisted Access (LAA), peak speeds were more than 1.2Gbps.
The base 5G layer in 600 MHz has also improved its performance since increasing from 5 MHz to 10 MHz in March. With the wider channel, it delivered 5G peak downlink of about 100Mbps, up from 42Mbps.
Of course, the 5G network is currently lightly loaded, but on the other hand, TMO has the potential, in future, to deploy far wider channels in mmWave, moving from 100 MHz to 400 MHz or even 800 MHz; and over time, all the 2.5 GHz spectrum can be refarmed for 5G as the operator moves towards 5G Standalone from late 2020.
“Leveraging the existing macro grid, T-Mobile’s Manhattan mmWave overlay, in terms of cell site density, is one of the most impressive in the world,” wrote the Ookla analysts, who noted that TMO now has 1,160 MHz of mmWave spectrum across the USA in 24 GHz, 39 GHz and 47 GHz (though 47 GHz is not currently supported in commercial equipment and devices).
The New York roll-out also provides hints of how TMO will approach the wider integration of its network and spectrum with Sprint’s, a process which will take a hefty chunk of the MNO’s $60bn budget, spread over 2020-2025, to build a fully nationwide 5G network in all its bands.
So far, there has been no talk of TMO using equipment from Samsung, which was a supplier to Sprint for 4G and 5G (and provides 5G kit to Verizon and AT&T as well).
TMO has said it will decommission about 35,000 cell sites, mostly among those it acquired with Sprint, and in parallel, will build around 10,000 new sites, mostly in suburban and rural areas. By 2023, it expects to have about 85,000 cell sites in total down from the 110,000 it currently has since the acquisition of Sprint.
T-Mobile may be moving quickly to leverage Sprint assets to boost 5G performance while improving efficiencies, but its relationship with Dish – an essential part of the arrangement that enabled the Sprint merger to be cleared by regulators – may prove to have been a necessary evil.
To allay fears that the Sprint/TMO marriage would reduce competition, it was agreed that pay-TV provider Dish Network would take over Sprint’s prepaid brand and customer base, Boost Mobile, along with certain network assets. These, together with Dish’s extensive spectrum holdings and a “favorable” MVNO agreement with TMO, would form the foundations for a fourth national operator.
But the relationship between Dish and ‘New T-Mobile’ already seems to be strained. Dish had opened temporary access to its as-yet unused 600 MHz spectrum to TMO and others at the start of the pandemic crisis, to enable them to boost broadband coverage to underserved people forced to work at home. But Dish has complained that TMO
inappropriately used the spectrum as a marketing ploy to gain new subscribers.
“Since T-Mobile gained temporary access to Dish’s 600MHz spectrum on March 15, the company has publicized the capacity benefits of this spectrum in press statements, tweets and advertisements in an apparent effort to acquire new subscribers. This includes television commercials highlighting the doubling of their 600 MHz capacity,” a Dish executive complained in an email to TMO, copied in a regulatory filing. “The purpose of Dish’s initial grant was to help T-Mobile increase capacity during the crisis to serve customers, not to use Dish’s spectrum as part of a commercial marketing effort.”
The row could have longer term consequences. TMO and Dish had previously said they were open to the larger operator leasing Dish’s 600 MHz spectrum, and Wall Street analysts New Street Research estimated that Dish could charge up to $373m a year for this deal. But now, TMO has asked the FCC for permission to use just 56 of the 486 licences owned by Dish in this band, which would bring in fees of about $135m a year, New Street calculates.
T-Mobile may have less need for Dish’s sub-GHz assets now, since it has agreed a deal with Columbia Capital to lease that firm’s 600 MHz spectrum for three years.
Meanwhile, the final transfer of the Boost Mobile division, for which Dish will pay $1.4bn, has not yet happened, despite the date having been set at June 1. “We are unaware of why Dish has not closed the Boost deal,” wrote Walter Piecyk and Joe Galone of Wall Street analyst firm LightShed. “It should have been done by June 1st. Something is up.”
They speculated: “If T-Mobile is not delivering certain technical capabilities under the transition services agreement, the Department of Justice has the ability to compel them to do so. If Charlie Ergen [chairman of Dish] is stalling or negotiating in bad faith, it also has the ability to compel Dish to close.” However, the DoJ’s final deadline is not until July 1.
One issue, which Ergen mentioned on Dish’s first quarter earnings call on May 7, may be cross-provisioning. Dish will need to provision the Boost customers, and any new adds, on the TMO network, not the Sprint platform that has supported Boost until now. “We don’t necessarily want to go back and we don’t want to necessarily put people on the Sprint network, and then have to go back and switch them later, and the cost of switching later to T-Mobile network,” Ergen said.