TDS
#It's <UNK>.
Let me start with that.
Up until two hours ago, when the markets opened, I felt we were marching right down that path.
I looked at what we produced for the quarter, what we produced relative to our own guidance, what we produced relative to consensus, and I'm real happy with where we started.
The fact that we've got some part of our base that's looking for something different, I can only deliver on what I've kind of set out as our strategy; and our strategy is to continue to improve our local market position, continue to strengthen the company, grow revenues and grow cash flows.
And I don't see anything else on the short-term horizon that's going to either change our strategy or change our trajectory.
<UNK>, this is <UNK>, I will just reiterate what <UNK> said.
We are pleased with progress that US Cellular has been making.
You know, it doesn't come overnight.
We are committed to helping them be successful and at some point, whether the shareholders recognize that are not; we think they will.
You know, we don't have any imminent transactions, engineering-type things that would drive any immediate shareholder excitement, if you will, but we are committed to US Cellular.
<UNK>, great question.
As you so aptly put it, strategic asset.
It's important to us.
It is critical as we continue to evolve our network, and it's critical especially given some of the, I'll call it, games, some of the tower companies are starting to play, in terms of trying to extract more value out of their assets from their perspective of being a landlord.
And so having a large portion of our towers that we own, and not subject to those pressures, is important.
Secondly, we continue to lease out our asset.
I look at it kind of on the same-store basis or comparable basis on a year-over-year basis, our tower rentals were up 10%, about 11% year over year.
And so, we will continue to capture as much value as we can in the marketplace off of those assets, while retaining the strategic control we need so that we can continue to evolve our networks.
It's amazing how we are just finishing out 4G, we are about to embark on Voice over LTE, which will require more modifications, and people are already testing 5G.
Well, that's going to put more strain on those very assets, or increase their value even more in the future.
Yes, <UNK>, I'm going to stick to the old answer to that.
We are committed to our investment strategy of for every three dollars we invest in the business returning one dollar to the shareholders over the long term.
And I think you will see that play out this year as well.
Good morning, <UNK> thanks for the question.
First of all, with respect to VoLTE, yes, it is a pretty well-documented fact that the coverage on the voice side with CDMA is a wonderful, wonderful product.
And when you have built your network with that product and then you then try to overlay Voice over LTE in the same cell sites, there's an initial coverage, what I'll call gap, almost.
And it is something that we saw in the tests that we ran last year, and it's something that our deployment schedule has been built around, in order to eliminate it.
And there are various techniques our engineers are using, such as moving equipment to the top of the towers, which gets back to having control over those towers, so you can move your equipment when and where you need it.
And they are using other engineering tools so that when we do turn on VoLTE, we are able to deliver our customers the same and better services than they are getting now.
So that's why we haven't been rushing to it.
We're going to be very deliberate and proceed with caution, like we have in every other technology change in the past.
Around your A block question, our primary competitors in our markets are Verizon and AT&T, in that order.
And it's based upon, you know, which of them have the original cellular license in that market; which allows us, who have one of them, and Verizon or AT&T that have the other, to really on an economical basis, build out a very vibrant coverage area.
The 700s have some of the very similar characteristics, and so we've heard about other carriers starting to build out their 700s and increase their competitive footprint.
But particular to the question you asked about T-Mobile, they are building out, it's my understanding, the 700 A block.
And we have been successful in most of our markets acquiring that 700 A block.
So if we own it, they don't own it.
So we are seeing them in a couple markets, but for the most part, they are building out in markets around us, near us; and as we get to us turning on VoLTE, looking forward to be able to serve their customers as they roam into our markets.
We have time for one more question, operator.
A couple things.
One, I will look at ---+ I don't have any information as I'm sitting here talking to you now that bridges one or the other, or talks about one component of our revenue or not.
We will look and see what might be in the corners of all of our other analysis, but I have any of that right now.
On the timeframe, there isn't a drop date.
I think <UNK>'s talked about how we are committed to this business.
We've continued to grow the customer base, which is the precursor to growing the revenue.
We also talked about the work we're doing around roaming.
We ---+ not talked about the work we are doing around advertising.
There are many different sticks and logs on the fire that we are all working on to drive revenue, which is the key metric in any long-term business.
But no, I don't have a drop-dead date to give you.
Okay.
Would like to thank everybody for joining us this morning and we're available for questions throughout the day, and we will hopefully see some of you next week.
Thank you.
