T-Mobile has started decommissioning parts of Sprint’s network in select locations following the merger, but it does not expect widespread shutdowns to begin until 2022.
The company completed its $26 billion acquisition of Sprint earlier this year. Observers have been watching for details about how and when the legacy Sprint network will be retired as the combined company rolls out its upgraded infrastructure—the “New T-Mobile”—which the carrier says will deliver significantly greater capacity over the coming years.
At a UBS investor event, T-Mobile CEO Mike Sievert acknowledged that limited shutdowns have already occurred: “We’ve already done some on an isolated basis.” He added that the majority of deactivations are expected to take place in 2022, after most Sprint customers have migrated to T-Mobile’s network.
This approach is not new for T-Mobile. In 2012 the company acquired MetroPCS’s regional network and later dismantled it. Similarly, Sprint itself previously retired networks after acquisitions—for example, it shut down the WiMAX network it inherited from Clearwire following that acquisition in 2016.
Maintaining two overlapping networks is generally inefficient from a business perspective, so consolidations and decommissions are a standard part of major carrier mergers.
T-Mobile has highlighted approximately $6 billion in expected savings from the Sprint merger. The company plans to combine Sprint’s midband 2.5 GHz spectrum with its existing low-band 600 MHz 5G assets, a combination that T-Mobile CTO Ray Neville has said will substantially improve the overall 5G experience.
Neville outlined plans in May to expand the company’s footprint from roughly 65,000 towers to about 85,000 macro cell sites. That strategy includes building around 15,000 new towers and retiring redundant Sprint sites. T-Mobile is also adding 2.5 GHz radios to its existing towers at a pace of roughly 1,000 installations per month.
Sievert has set targets for 5G coverage using 2.5 GHz spectrum to reach 100 million people by the end of this year and 200 million by the end of 2021.
(Photo by Ed Robertson on Unsplash)
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