4 Million Sprint Customers Are Now on Our Network

Dash clients are having a greater expertise on the T-Cellular community, however it is going to be fairly some time till the 2 networks are actually merged, based on high T-Cellular executives who spoke on the Citi Global TMT West conference yesterday.

„North of 20% of Dash customers are on the T-Cellular community,“ says T-Cellular President of Expertise Neville Ray.

He estimates that is a bit greater than 4 million clients, and describes „on the T-Cellular community“ as Dash customers who spend „a majority of their time“ on T-Cellular cell websites.

However even the customers who’re nonetheless totally on Dash websites are seeing a greater expertise, as T-Cellular is filling within the gaps in Dash’s community with its personal.

„Dash clients, numerous their site visitors is on the T-Cellular community … we have greater than tripled the Internet Promoter Rating amongst Dash clients,“ says T-Cellular CEO Mike Sievert.

Thankfully, T-Cellular does not want to show off or solely merge Dash’s community to put in its personal „extremely excessive capability“ 5G on Dash’s outdated Band 41 „Spark“ spectrum, execs say. Dash’s community structure implies that the high-capacity, shorter-range Band 41 LTE might be phased out whereas Dash’s narrower-band protection layer stays, with out a lot impact on T-Cellular’s 5G rollout plans.

„On the extremely high-capacity mid-band layer, to have 106 million lined pops inside 9 months is outstanding. We’re focusing on 200 million nationwide by the top of this 12 months,“ Ray says. He estimates that speeds on the Band 41 community have been averaging 280-320Mbps, or 7-8 occasions what T-Cellular subscribers get on LTE.

With loads of airwaves out there, there is no actual rush to completely shut down Dash’s community. „The decommissioning goes to come back on the tail finish of this course of,“ based on Peter Osvaldik, T-Cellular’s CFO.

What Is 5G For?

The execs additionally tried to strategy the thorny query of why customers ought to care about 5G. Whereas we have heard rather a lot previously few years about speculative new 5G makes use of, no actual new 5G functions have come to customers.

Sievert places 5G within the context of the 4G transition, which created new functions like Uber and Snapchat. „Our job is to construct a high-capacity community that’s pleasant to {hardware} and software program innovators,“ he says.

5G will probably be a giant matter at CES subsequent week. Whereas T-Cellular does not have an occasion there, Verizon CEO Hans Vestberg will give his perspective on 5G, and we’re hoping to listen to about actual functions that customers will use 5G for this 12 months.