It is hard to imagine mobile prices for a national network the size of the US. I pay less than $30 per month total for 3 lines. maybe it would be cheaper if the Sprint/TMobile merger never happened, but the adticle doesn't seem to present any hard evidence.
Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
111–120 of 259 posts
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#112Earlier 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.
There's a good guide to the prioritization (QCI) of various carriers here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...
It feels crazy-making to me that information like this only exists in Reddit threads. Prioritization is, IMO, a totally valid way to price differentiate. But it should be clearly stated when you’re buying in the same way GB data limits are.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#113Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
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.
Regulators cannot magic spectrum into existence.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#114Mobile scene in USA is much improved than 10 years ago in my opinion. ATT/Verizon were too expensive and T-Mobile despite that poor service made a big difference. Google Fi has been my fav though as it gives me basic connectivity when I am abroad and cheap international calling to countries I care about.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#115DOE needs to stop approving mergers and acquisitions over $150 mil or so. Every such merger: Facebook/Instagram, Google/Youtube, etc has been a disaster.
“Let’s just abolish capitalism”. Seriously though, a world in which the government runs the economy and picks the winners is a bad one indeed.
Where in the parent comment does it say that?
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#116It is hard to imagine mobile prices for a national network the size of the US. I pay less than $30 per month total for 3 lines. maybe it would be cheaper if the Sprint/TMobile merger never happened, but the adticle doesn't seem to present any hard evidence.
How exactly are you doing that? The average price of a standard-feature line (i.e., not a MVNO with strict deprioritization) is approximately $70 USD a month (including taxes and fees, but not including any phone subsidy or equipment plans)
Even a strict hyper-cut-down MVNO (say something like Mint Mobile) is still about $20 a month per line on average, for their cheapest plan. And T-Mobile acquired Mint, so it's pricing will almost certainly rise in a year or two. (T-Mobile did the same thing to Metro when it acquired their network + subscribers, prices were doubled after a few years)
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#117Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean Sprint was strictly CDMA, so that would be an issue on it's own.
> I mean Sprint was strictly CDMA, so that would be an issue on it's own. How so? Sprint operated 4G LTE, which is a GSM technology (or alternatively, unified the two, depending on how you look at it).
I once got tossed out of a sprint store for pissing off a salesperson with this factoid.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#118Earlier quoted context omitted.
The point being made is that AT&T should have never been allowed to reform itself as it did, probably along with numerous other acquisitions/mergers that the government approved that they should not have. There was a period of time late in the last century when many of us had numerous (i.e. 5-6) options for a while.
AT&T we have now is not really related to this old evil AT&T. Actual company that uses this brand in mobile space is used to be called Cingular. They bought AT&T remains and promptly rebranded.
> AT&T we have now is not really related to this old evil AT&T.
Yes, it is.
> Actual company that uses this brand in mobile space is used to be called Cingular.
So, in the beginning there was AT&T, the telephone monopoly.
It was broken up into 7 RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating Companies, also called “baby bells”) providing local service (each of which got a corresponding chunk of the AT&T subsidiary doing mobile work as their own mobile subsidiary), and the reduced AT&T, which did long distance, and some other things. There were also two other local service providers (which, before the divestiture, weren’t AT&T subsidiaries but did partial AT&T control.)
The modern AT&T is the result of mergers of, among other things, the long-distance AT&T and 4 of the 7 baby bells. As part of the road to getting there, Cingular Wireless, which was formed as joint venture of two of the Baby Bells (SBC, which had already acquired Pacific Telesis, one of the other Baby Bells, and BellSouth) from their mobile units and other mobile and other firms (like, more than 100 in total), acquired AT&T Wireless (not AT&T), which became part of Cingular (which was still an SBC/BellSouth joint venture)
Then AT&T merged with SBC, making Cingular an AT&T/BellSouth joint venture. Then it was announced that the AT&T brand would be used for Cingular service when packaged with AT&T services. Then AT&T bought BellSouth, making Cingular an AT&T/AT&T joint venture…or, rather, just part of AT&T.
So AT&T is the old long-distance AT&T after eating a bunch of other companies, but it’s also a very large portion of the older monopoly AT&T. Part of the wireless business was Cingular for a while between being AT&T before and then being AT&T again. (This leaves out a lot of mergers that went into forming the current AT&T that are not related to the claim that some company called Cingular that was completely unrelated to the old AT&T bought some minor remnant of AT&T and clothed itself with the name.)
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#119Post merger I went from a $25/month t-mobile plan to a $15/month t-mobile plan. Not entirely apples to apples, but close. My spouse went from $30/month to $25/month on Verizon for more data. And there's lots of options at https://prepaidcompare.net/
Prepaid sounds great unless you ever want roaming, it’s either straight up not possible or priced in a way that makes it impractical.
I use Mint Mobile because it's cheap and has been reliable for my family.
A couple of months ago, I traveled to Belize with my iPhone 14 Pro, which only has eSIM. The websites for the two local companies said that I could buy them at a local store but none of the stores at the airport sold eSIMs or SIM.
Mint Mobile offered me 10GB of data for $40/week. Plus fees, as it turned out, so total of $42 or $43. I took it because I couldn't find a local solution and it was only about $20 difference.
I was happy with the service. My wife uses prepaid Verizon and it was $10/day for their service in Belize which is more in line with what I was expecting. We ended up never feeling like we needed to turn it on.
Half of the time we were in the mountains where there wasn't any cell service so I only ended up using about 1GB of cellular and the rest the resort's WiFi there. But it was nice to be able to search on the road for restaurants, coffee stops, etc.
On a trip to Croatia and Italy a few years ago, the situation for local SIMs was confusing enough that I ended up not using any cell service, just downloading maps from Google Maps in offline mode from the hotel WiFi. Worked great with just GPS but only for places I'd pre-selected - no searching for anything.
Re: Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
#120It is hard to imagine mobile prices for a national network the size of the US. I pay less than $30 per month total for 3 lines. maybe it would be cheaper if the Sprint/TMobile merger never happened, but the adticle doesn't seem to present any hard evidence.
How exactly are you doing that? The average price of a standard-feature line (i.e., not a MVNO with strict deprioritization) is approximately $70 USD a month (including taxes and fees, but not including any phone subsidy or equipment plans) Even a strict hyper-cut-down MVNO (say something like Mint Mobile) is still about $20 a month per line on average, for their cheapest plan. And T-Mobile acquired Mint, so it's pri…
US Mobile, an MVNO, I am on the Verizon network as they have slightly better coverage in the outskirts around me. I have never had any trouble with deprioritization.