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Thursday 31 March 2016

T-Mobile Plans to Raise $1B to Attain 700MHz



T-Mobile seeks to raise $1 billion in bonds to fund the acquisition of 700 MHz and above spectrum and other airwaves. T-Mobile is the nation’s third-largest carrier with reasonable cell phone service and has spent more than $1 billion in recent months to buy 700MHz licenses from Cellular South, Cavalier and others in order to cover major areas in the South.




"In January 2016, T-Mobile acquired spectrum licenses covering nearly 20 million people in seven major metropolitan markets for approximately $0.6 billion in cash," T-Mobile said in an SEC filing earlier this year. "Additionally, in January and February 2016, T-Mobile entered into agreements with multiple third parties for the exchange of certain spectrum licenses and the acquisition of 700 MHz-a block spectrum licenses covering approximately 48 million people, for approximately $0.7 billion in cash."

T-Mobile has been smart enough to buy 700 MHz spectrum to spread out its coverage in rural and urban areas to make its network competitive with other major carriers like Verizon and AT&T. 700 MHz is considered as good for covering large geographical areas because of propagation characteristics. Other U.S. carriers will suffer as soon as they face this competition and will perhaps seek to provide cheap cell phone services to compensate this T-Mobile revolution. T-Mobile has consistently referred to the spectrum as its “Extended Range” LTE service. Although T-Mobile appears to be the primary owner of 700 MHz licenses in the U.S., as depicted by the map from Allnet Insights & Analytics, showing the current status of A Block ownership throughout the country.

Recently, T-Mobile has planned to leverage its wide network by growing its retail presence in the suburban and rural areas where it initially wasn’t present. "We now cover 305 million people in the U.S. with our 4G LTE footprint, and we think right now we have the opportunity to expand our distribution into another 30 to 40 million POPs here in the U.S. where we have zero penetration. The ecosystem's there," T-Mobile CFO Braxton Carter confirmed at an investor conference earlier this month, clarifying every new handset the carrier sells supports 700 MHZ.

T-Mobile’s new bond is likely to be issued in the form of senior notes that is relatively secure and must be repaid in case of bankruptcy. Furthermore, they will be issued in a registered public offering and come due in 2024.

Sunday 20 March 2016

To promote newly launched FiOS, Verizon is offering double data allotments to mobile users in Northeast US



Verizon mobile users in the Northeast US have a reason to be pleased. The wireless carrier is offering double monthly data allotments to all their customers in the Northeast US, new and existing, who sign up for the company’s newly launched FiOS service. 

                                       
                           





The carrier quietly launched a regional, limited-time promotion that doubles the monthly data buckets for users with its XL or XXL plans who sign up for FiOS, the operator's fiber-based wired Internet service. The offer increases the XL plan to 24 GB per month and the XXL plan to 36 GB per month. The promotion wasn't officially announced. While Verizon isn't specifying how long the offer will last, and even the spokesman declined to say whether the carrier intends to roll out the campaign to more locations where it offers FiOS.   
Recently, Verizon agreed to sell its wireline properties to Frontier in California, Florida and Texas. After that sale closes, Verizon's FiOS footprint will be mainly concentrated in the Northeast U.S. Verizon has said that the area is underpenetrated when it comes to FiOS: "If you're going to launch broadband to the home, you're either going to pick the East Coast or the West Coast, and we have the East Coast population density from Washington, D.C. to Boston," Verizon CFO Fran Shammo said at a recent investor conference. "It's a very good footprint for us and we believe the property we have are still underpenetrated."
The nation's largest mobile operator is clearly hoping to use its leverage in mobile to shore up revenues in a fixed-line broadband market in which telcos are struggling. Verizon's broadband business saw only 23,000 net customer adds during 2015, and the nation's top telcos lost a total of more than 185,000 subscribers last year. Verizon's promotion is just the latest example of a mobile network operator bundling and cross-promoting to build businesses on multiple platforms.