Hot Potato: T-Mobile will shut down Sprint’s LTE network no later than June 30, 2022, the operator confirmed. By then, T-Mobile will have already retired Sprint’s legacy 3G (CDMA) network. What impact does this have on his agreement with Dish Network?
T-Mobile ended its massive merger with Sprint on April 1, 2020 — the same day T-Mobile president John Legere resigned. In order to gain regulatory approval, T-Mobile had to agree to several concessions that would help Dish Network become the fourth largest wireless operator in the country, including offloading Boost Mobile and making spectrum available to the Dish Network for some time.
Things started heating up earlier this year when T-Mobile announced plans to shut down Sprint’s CDMA network by January 1, 2022. This is a problem for Dish because some Boost Mobile customers are still using CDMA-based phones and will need to upgrade to the latest hardware. before the deadline.
In response, Dish exited and signed a 10-year service agreement with AT&T to provide connectivity to Boost, Ting and Republic Wireless customers. The deal is worth at least $5 billion, Desch revealed in a filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission.
Oddly enough, T-Mobile has also announced plans to pull the old GSM 2G and UMTS 3G networks, but no date has been set yet.
