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Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

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Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#231

Post by CodeWriter23 »

Aloha wrote: post #150
CodeWriter23 wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sprint was cooked for one specific reason: parent company QWEST refused to do the prism-split of fiber cables into secret NSA colocation rooms like AT&T did.

Qwest never owned Sprint.

Ok young'n

In March 1998 Qwest announced it would acquire long-distance carrier LCI International Inc. for $4.4 billion. The deal created the fourth-largest long-distance carrier in the United States behind AT&T, MCI Worldcom, and Sprint Corp. The combined companies had about 5,800 employees and revenue of $2.3 billion. The acquisition gave Qwest 2 million long-distance customers and a well-established sales force.

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#232

Post by chris-smith »

walterbell wrote: post #230
baby-yoda wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC, Connect was proposed as a 5 year solution, I fully expect T-Mobile to discontinue Connect as soon as possible.

Merger was in 2020, which implies that Connect ends next year. If 2024 wireless price competition is lacking, can US regulators extend Connect beyond 2025?

No, but I won't be surprised if the plans stick around longer. Speculating here, but I think odds are good T-Mobile continues to offer them for longer than required & just stops the annual data increase it has been doing

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#233

Post by chris-smith »

kevin_thibedeau wrote: post #191
candiddevmike wrote: post #36

Earlier 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.

Mint is part of T-mobile now so it shouldn't be deprioritized any more.

I think it'll continue to be. T-Mobile needs to differentiate services somehow & last I checked, subscribers on T-Mobile's older in-house + low-cost brand, Metro, generally received low priority relative to customers on T-mobile-branded plans

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#234

Post by chris-smith »

I'm sympathetic to a lot of the points here, but a key part of the story got left out:

T-Mobile's performance used to suck vs. Verizon and AT&T.

When T-Mo's network was crummy, the company to differentiated itself by being cheaper and less gimmicky than its competitors. I'm not too surprised T-Mo is adjusting its strategy as the company's network narrows the gap w/ VZW + AT&T.

T-Mobile's performance was probably trending in a good direction even w/o the merger, but acquiring Sprint (and Sprint's spectrum) likely helped improve performance a good bit.

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#235

Post by phonon »

dmazzoni wrote: post #229
DataDive wrote: post #93

Did it kill price competition? My anecdotal observation is that there are more cheap phone plans now than, say, five years ago.

It seems to have created a two-tier system. You can get a "real" monthly plan from AT&T, Verizon, or T-Mobile for $50/month with unlimited data and prioritization. Or you can get a prepaid plan with data caps and no prioritization for $15 - 25 / month.

US Mobile has prioritized data.

https://www.usmobile.com/blog/unlimited-premium-coverage-on-...

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#236

Post by chris-smith »

cyberax wrote: post #153
aiauthoritydev wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The best way to resolve these issues is never "force the bad guys to do good things" but rather destroy the walls which enable their rent seeking. Regulators can work to make it extremely simple for new techs in this space to come up so there is real competition for ATT etc.

> The best way to resolve these issues is never "force the bad guys to do good things" but rather destroy the walls which enable their rent seeking. The walls here are defined by physics. There's only so much spectrum to go around. You can't have more than 3-4 large cell phone operators working in the same area. Decoupling the radio part and forcing everyone to play as MVNOs is a way to work around this.

That sort of decoupling could be fascinating. IMO, the walls may be as much a function of economics as physics.

Running a small number of powerful radios on low-frequency spectrum is a cost-effective way to cover large areas. Physics constrains how much of that can happen in the same area. But if networks are willing spend cash, they can get a ton of capacity by densely deploying high-frequency radios. Don't think we're anywhere near hitting the walls on what's possible there.

Putting this another way, networks provide enough bandwidth for everyone in Manhattan. It's just expensive.

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#237

Post by somenameforme »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #227
andy800 wrote: post #177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sprint went all-in on WiMax as it's 4G network. I owned an early Sprint 4G smartphone (made by HTC) and the 4G never worked. I would go to the Sprint store and ask to show me a signal with 4G turned on, and they would always blame congestion, or weather, or some other made-up excuse.

in all fairness, the 5G isn't much better these days, at least in my area. T-mobile seem to have inhereted Sprints bad coverage, to the point where they had to send me a booster modem for my own home.

5g is higher frequency, lower wavelength. That means it gets better potential speeds when it does work, but it's going to have more difficulty penetrating barriers, reaching longer distances, do worse in inclement weather, and so on. This is also a fundamental limitation of trying to reach higher speeds with this form of tech, because frequency and wavelength are inversely proportional. The point of this being that 5g is inherently less reliable/robust than 4g, and so it's not too surprising that you'd need a booster, especially if 4g in an area is not the hottest.

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#238

Post by selimthegrim »

drewzero1 wrote: post #223
selimthegrim wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you been a customer lately?

Yes, and haven't had issues with it recently... Was there some bad news I missed?

The reddit forum for Ting has a lot of complaints about billing issues, lack of eSIM support, and poor customer service (for the TMobile/DISH customers, of which I was one)

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#239

Post by RF_Savage »

somenameforme wrote: post #237
johnnyanmac wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in all fairness, the 5G isn't much better these days, at least in my area. T-mobile seem to have inhereted Sprints bad coverage, to the point where they had to send me a booster modem for my own home.

5g is higher frequency, lower wavelength. That means it gets better potential speeds when it does work, but it's going to have more difficulty penetrating barriers, reaching longer distances, do worse in inclement weather, and so on. This is also a fundamental limitation of trying to reach higher speeds with this form of tech, because frequency and wavelength are inversely proportional. The point of this being that 5…

At this point telcos are also deploying 5G to old bands, so the assumption that 5G is 3.5GHz and mmW only no longer holds.

In my part of the world I see 5G on 1800MHz and 2100MHz bands in addition to the 3.5GHz one.

Unfortunately that's not done near my home, so I get 1-2bars of 5G, instead of the full bars I see at the office and elsewhere in town.

Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.

#240

Post by HeatrayEnjoyer »

andy800 wrote: post #206
unsignedint wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Was it more about the device than the network? I used mobile WiMax from Clear for years until it ended its service. For what it was, it worked great. It wasn't necessarily a speed demon, but it was reliable. I used it to avoid public WiFi congestion, as a backup when my home network was down, and in 'bring your own infrastructure' situations.

That's possible but it was a Sprint-branded device bought from Sprint that was clearly supposed to be compatible with its new 4G network. And they charged an extra $10 4G access fee every month! The other bonus was that being a CDMA device, there was no connectivity when traveling internationally, and no option to buy a local SIM card. Wifi only.

Why does that exclude international use?
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