I hope this doesn't kill / raise prices for the MVNOs that run on the Sprint network, specifically Tello. I pay $17 a month total for my and my wife's phones and I would hate to lose that.
FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
41–50 of 62 posts
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#42Quick question. Why do people continue to use Verizon or AT&T when Sprint or T-Mobile are so much cheaper? It looks like I could cut my Verizon bill in half by switching to T Mo.
Personally I typically don't buy anything based solely on price. For me I could save ~$3/mo on tmo, however after a month with tmo I found VZ coverage is well worth $3 more.
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#43Earlier quoted context omitted.
My municipality cannot even deliver water without making our kids mentally disabled from lead poisoning. Not sure I want them with a monopoly on telecoms too.
The average American "small-government" ruling class mentality chronically starves public goods and the commons from widely available resources, and then points to the failure of said services and goods as a reason why government cannot work. Eliminate this vicious circle and you see massive benefits; Chattanooga's municipal ISP has been extremely successful and popular. Also, municipal broadband or publicly owned br…
> chronically starves public goods and the commons from widely available resources, and then points to the failure of said services and goods as a reason why government cannot work
This is the lie that people trot out to explain the myriad failures of American government. Our schools suck because they’re “underfunded.” Oh, actually, they’re among the best funded: https://images.app.goo.gl/r4QwEWefuP34DZSj8. Our public transit sucks because it’s “underfunded.” Oh, the New York Subway receives far more public funding than say London’s tube: https://nypost.com/2018/11/06/the-cure-for-new-yorks-ailing-.... If California could build HSR for what it costs France, half the line would already be done for the $6 billion already spent. There isn’t a failure of government that can’t be explained away by lying about its funding levels.
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#44Quick question. Why do people continue to use Verizon or AT&T when Sprint or T-Mobile are so much cheaper? It looks like I could cut my Verizon bill in half by switching to T Mo.
T-Mobile might be cheaper but their coverage sucks in Wisconsin. In my previous experience with them, if you were not in Milwaukee or on the freeway you are out of luck.maybe it has improved but I won't bother with them.
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#45I think this is generally a good thing for consumers. One strong company with a solid network can provide more effective competition against Verizon and AT&T than two weak companies with crappy networks can separately.
People downvoting this are not seeing the whole picture. Yes, 4 competitors is better than 3. The problem is that Sprint is no longer a competitor and is on a downward spiral. Without a massive cash injection, they no longer had a viable path to catch up. Their service is bad because they don’t have enough cash coming in to improve their infrastructure, and customers aren’t giving them cash because their service is b…
The fourth player in a market doesn't need to be huge, in the UK the fourth provider (called Three) put huge pressure on the three incumbents.
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#46I really hope Starlink starts a boom in low orbit, low ping, internet providers... Because that's the only way we're going to see any competition emerge in wireless telecommunications. This merger is unlikely to do anyone good, IMHO, and is very likely going to make prices rise in a few years once the FTC isn't watching them. Look at the very expected level of bullshit AT&T has done with Dish Network's pricing... If…
This is a perfect example of how Silicon Valley mentality and technocratic solutions often overcomplicate, to a ridiculous degree, the mostly solved challenge of how to get obtainable and affordable high-speed internet in the United States. It's called municipal broadband.[1] Not everything has to be disrupted the way that SF startup cats want to. There is legitimately no reason you couldn't de-privatize spectrum and…
I used to be a proponent of municipal broadband, and I still am, but as a person now living on the outer edge of a minor municipality, and looking to move further from municipal jurisdiction, I personally find offerings like Starlink a solution to a problem municipal broadband can't solve. At some point there isn't a city that provides utilities to an otherwise inhabitable location, but with existing well water and septic technology combined with emerging renewable energy options, a low-latency high-bandwidth internet option is the last piece of the puzzle to allow a rural technologist to live the life they want.
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#47Earlier quoted context omitted.
Most municipalities can do that, so the problem is likely more with your municipality than the concept in general. Also why would municipal broadband be a monopoly? There are lots of municipal broadband projects that are one of many ISPs. This isn't a theoretical prediction of the future, there are already lots of examples.
They’re all doing awful: https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_w... > water consumption is down, there are still an estimated 240,000 water main breaks per year in the United States, wasting over two trillion gallons of treated drinking water > While drinking water infrastructure is funded primarily through a rate-based system, the investment has been inadequate for decades and will continue to b…
Doing awful compared to what? The person I replied to said their municipal water supply was poisoning kids, which is an anecdote that doesn't represent most municipal water supplies.
Now you're moving the goal posts to water main breaks for some reason when the point in the first place was that municipal internet is successful.
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
No it's not, now T-Mobile will have as much leverage as Verizon and AT&T and will become horrible like them. T-Mobile so far is nice here, but for example in Germany is one of the despised companies. The companies don't need to merge to become better for customers. They could for example have agreements and share their towers to improve each other's coverage.
> T-Mobile so far is nice here, but for example in Germany is one of the despised companies. that is bullshit
Can you explain why? I am not German but I have fairly significant amount of infrastructure colo'd in Germany - DTAG/T-Mobile/T-Online/whatever is obnoxiously bad.
They refuse to peer with neighbouring networks, they hold back deployment of local connectivity (DSL is still the best you can do in 2019?), they demand the doubly charge in the way of Netflix v Comcast.
Sending data to/from with any customers on their network (which, of course, considering how big they are...) costs so much more per megabit due to this bullshit.
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#49Quick question. Why do people continue to use Verizon or AT&T when Sprint or T-Mobile are so much cheaper? It looks like I could cut my Verizon bill in half by switching to T Mo.
I get sub-2 to 3 Mbps speeds on a postpaid business-type T-Mobile plan due to congestion/oversubscription. This is not in a rural wasteland, but in a major tech urban city.
Verizon and AT&T do just as badly, but not nearly as much (~8Mbps). Again, congestion, not because there are no towers nearby. I am on business postpaid higher tier plans, and should have tower priority according to them.
Sprint coverage disappears completely a few minutes after exiting major cities.
AT&T has a disgusting transparent proxy that breaks SSL half the time (if you try to negotiate purely-modern ciphers, your SSL connects typically fail) and modifies random files/headers in transit if plaintext. They do not/will not remove it. Plaintext HTTP exits through one IP (shared by an insane amount of people, seemingly), and all other traffic that it can't tamper with or doesn't know how to tamper with exits via another IP. This breaks some things.
Incidentally, I am typing this on a hotspot, and as my bus enters downtown CBD loading web pages (including HN, the lightest page of them all) ha started to take 10-30 seconds.
Re: FCC approves T-Mobile and Sprint merger
#50Earlier quoted context omitted.
They’re all doing awful: https://www.infrastructurereportcard.org/cat-item/drinking_w... > water consumption is down, there are still an estimated 240,000 water main breaks per year in the United States, wasting over two trillion gallons of treated drinking water > While drinking water infrastructure is funded primarily through a rate-based system, the investment has been inadequate for decades and will continue to b…
Doing awful compared to what? The person I replied to said their municipal water supply was poisoning kids, which is an anecdote that doesn't represent most municipal water supplies. Now you're moving the goal posts to water main breaks for some reason when the point in the first place was that municipal internet is successful.
The American Society of Civil Engineers gives our water infrastructure a “D.” That’s what I mean by “doing awful.” Poisoning kids with lead is one particular problem, that’s actually fairly common: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/lead-in-americas-water-systems-...
Safe Drinking Water Act violations are rampant among municipal water utilities: https://www.epa.gov/newsreleases/city-new-york-comply-federa...; https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/12/climate/drinking-water-sa...
The trillions of gallons of water lost to leaks is another piece of the puzzle, wasting a natural resource due to poor maintenance.
Municipal sewer systems are another huge problem. They release enormous amounts of untreated sewage into waterways each year, because municipalities haven’t invested in capacity and rainwater separation: https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/09/ameri...
There are isolated instances of successful municipal broadband, but hardly enough to say that the concept is “successful.” (We have some municipal cable systems on the eastern shore of Maryland. They were good at one time, but underinvestment has resulted in speeds falling behind over the years. Underinvestment is the same problem that plagues municipal water utilities.)
Most successful broadband networks around the world aren’t municipal services. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jul/10/uk-slips-...
Our privatized system does pretty well, doing better than France, Germany, the U.K., and Italy (which together have half the EU’s population). Most of the top countries, like Singapore and Norway, similarly rely on private companies. Part of Sweden (Stockholm) arguably has a municipal system, except it’s not like one that would ever be politically viable in the US. (The utility is publicly owned but not politically operated. They built out based on revenue potential and demand, not mandates to cover everyone. Imagine a US municipal utility that covered rich neighborhoods first and took 20 years to get around to wiring up poor neighborhoods.)