DOE needs to stop approving mergers and acquisitions over $150 mil or so. Every such merger: Facebook/Instagram, Google/Youtube, etc has been a disaster.
DOE? The Department of Energy?
Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
71–80 of 259 posts
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#72Earlier quoted context omitted.
Is that why they are absurdly expensive compared to all of their competitors?
They're paying out an excessive dividend that completely empties their cash reserves and makes operating the company unsustainable https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/12/oregon-ag-files-court...
Corporate bankruptcy is a scam. Any merger on auction should acquire existing debts, and execs should be a lien against wealth and future income.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
Prepaid sounds great unless you ever want roaming, it’s either straight up not possible or priced in a way that makes it impractical.
What keeps me on a postpaid plan is that I like not having to worry about my phone plan when I go abroad on vacation.
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Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with MVNOs, at least that I'm noticing as a Google Fi subscriber, is I believe MVNOs are deprioritized. In a congested area, folks who have direct service with Verizon or T-Mobile seem to have better reception and bandwidth than I do.
MVNOs are definitely often deprioritized, as I experienced with Visible wireless where I'd often have no data access despite having 2-3 bars of service. Switched a year or two ago to US Mobile which is apparently one of the few that is not deprioritized on the Verizon network (bizarrely as long as your phone is 5G capable, even when only using 4G). So there's options out there without paying $70/mo for Verizon postpa…
Visible is 100% owned by Verizon and therefore technically not a MVNO. I use Visible and my wife is on Verizon. Her service is provided through her employer. Sometimes she has better data than I do and sometimes I have better data. For instance during a recent trip to Puerto Rico she struggled to receive reliable data and I had no issues. Don’t think it has anything to do with prioritization. I recently upgraded to the yearly Visible+ plan since I added an Apple Watch and will be traveling to Vancouver frequently in the next year. It includes 50GB of Verizon premium tier data and then you fall back to whatever prioritization normal Visible has. It also includes 2GB a day in Canada and Mexico along with Apple Watch service. $395 for the year which is around $32.92 a month.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#75I will say, I'm not terribly fond of mergers on principle. However, based on my insight as a former customer and shareholder of the company, Sprint's goose was most definitely cooked to a crisp. If this merger had not happened, I could have seen Sprint file for bankruptcy, with Verizon and AT&T picking the carcass clean. I think folks forget how dire Sprint's straits were at the time, and this specific merger truly w…
What makes you think someone else wouldn’t have picked up the pieces? Whether that be dish/comcast/google, or just some private equity. Being acquired by a competitor wasn’t their only exit option, and pretty much anything else would’ve resulted in more competition.
In an infinite universe of possibilities, you're right: a failing brand with a household name being acquired by a competitor is not the only possible outcome.
But it is historically far and away the most likely one.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#76I will say, I'm not terribly fond of mergers on principle. However, based on my insight as a former customer and shareholder of the company, Sprint's goose was most definitely cooked to a crisp. If this merger had not happened, I could have seen Sprint file for bankruptcy, with Verizon and AT&T picking the carcass clean. I think folks forget how dire Sprint's straits were at the time, and this specific merger truly w…
The regulators could have forced the big four carriers (now three) into a common carrier model. In that setup, all cell providers would effectively be an MVNO, and the three (then, four) physical networks would be operated at arms length from the consumer facing side. Also, the four networks could be structured so that their financial incentives were to improve cell coverage and bandwidth instead of undermining each…
That's kinda orthogonal to the merger deal, though, no? The government could do that today, if there was the political will to do so. Of course there isn't, though, and the merger (or lack thereof) didn't change that.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#77I will say, I'm not terribly fond of mergers on principle. However, based on my insight as a former customer and shareholder of the company, Sprint's goose was most definitely cooked to a crisp. If this merger had not happened, I could have seen Sprint file for bankruptcy, with Verizon and AT&T picking the carcass clean. I think folks forget how dire Sprint's straits were at the time, and this specific merger truly w…
The regulators could have forced the big four carriers (now three) into a common carrier model. In that setup, all cell providers would effectively be an MVNO, and the three (then, four) physical networks would be operated at arms length from the consumer facing side. Also, the four networks could be structured so that their financial incentives were to improve cell coverage and bandwidth instead of undermining each…
I mean Sprint was strictly CDMA, so that would be an issue on it's own.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
A Sprint bankruptcy may have been inevitable, but Verizon and AT&T would have been forced to steer clear (a failed merger having made that inevitable). The private market would have provided a bounty of suitors for Sprint if it couldn't recover from bankruptcy. It may have emerged in a far weaker fourth place, but it would still be around.
The only other possible dark horse that could have emerged was either in US Cellular or Dish Network. However, I believe there were concerns with issues like market capitalization (in the case of US Cellular) or having different priorities (like Dish) that would have jeopardized a proper fourth option for the US. I'm not suggesting the merger was "good" or anything like that. Just that the other options seemed quite…
As a Canadian (so possibly biased here), my own hypothesis for what would happen if a sufficiently-large long-tail power vacuum emerged in the US cellular data market — either back then or today — is that one of the major Canadian carriers would try to move in, beginning by serving cities just across the border from major Canadian cities.
You could easily do cell-tower-maintenance truck-rolls from offices in Vancouver BC to towers in Seattle or Portland; from Toronto to Buffalo (or, less plausibly, to Chicago); or from Montreal to Boston. And that's only if they even bother to operate towers — if they tried today, they could just as well operate as pure MVNOs.
In fact, flagship plans on Canadian carriers today, already usually build in no-cost full-speed US roaming data access through partnership with US carriers operating on the same frequency bands. It's a very short distance from there to operating an MVNO atop the same carrier's network.
(I would say that I'm surprised they haven't tried to do this already; but until recently, Canadian carriers were addicted to the extremely-high-profit-margin rate plans they built up through oligopolist price fixing. Our current government has seemingly broken that up for now, with much cheaper plans finally appearing — so they might finally decide it's time to expand their TAM to stay profitable.)
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm looking to switch to Visible here soon after being on Google Fi for many years. Just looks like a cheaper rebranded Verizon to me, and has all the features I would need for a cheap price. https://www.visible.com/
I switched away from Visible to US Mobile due to deprioritization. I believe they now offer a non-deprioritized plan for $40/mo though, but U.S. mobile is less expensive for a non-deprio plan.
The new yearly Visible+ plan has 50GB of non-deprioritized data a month, not that I ever really had an issue on the normal Visible plan, free calling in Canada and Mexico, 2GB of data a day in Canada and Mexico, double the tethering speed and a free global pass per month. It is $395 which works out to $32.92 per month.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#80Earlier quoted context omitted.
Haven't done that in a year and a half, but when I spent a few weeks out of the country it was a simple matter of buying a $30 prepaid SIM from a vending machine at the airport and having more data than I had time to use. Honestly, no contracts or carrier locks has always made it easier to deal with travel compared to friends who occasionally have issues just swapping SIMs.
Unfortunately, the increasing prevalence of eSIMs in new phones makes temporarily switching to a foreign carrier far more inconvenient than "just buy a SIM at a vending machine".
The increased prevalence of eSIMs has made using a foreign carrier easier than ever. You don’t even need to find a vending machine or store. You can purchase your eSIM online before you even get to your destination.