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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.

#131

Post by cherioo »

Benjammer wrote: post #92
TheAmazingRace wrote: post #5

I 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…

>Sprint's goose was most definitely cooked The reason their goose was cooked is because they previously were planning to acquire T Mobile, but SoftBank got back-channel info that it would never be approved by the anti-trust regulators. At the time they had Marcelo Claure running Sprint, basically a corporate "fixer" guy for SoftBank. So he ran the company into the dirt in order to make the merge feasible to regulator…

How is ruining and destroying the value of Sprint, that SoftBank owns, possibly good for SoftBank?

What is SoftBank to gain here from enriching TMobile?

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

#132

Post by drewzero1 »

selimthegrim wrote: post #87
TheAmazingRace wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Dish is already making a hash out of its mobile customers (Ting, etc)

What's wrong with Ting?

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

#133

Post by georgeecollins »

cherioo wrote: post #131
Benjammer wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Sprint's goose was most definitely cooked The reason their goose was cooked is because they previously were planning to acquire T Mobile, but SoftBank got back-channel info that it would never be approved by the anti-trust regulators. At the time they had Marcelo Claure running Sprint, basically a corporate "fixer" guy for SoftBank. So he ran the company into the dirt in order to make the merge feasible to regulator…

How is ruining and destroying the value of Sprint, that SoftBank owns, possibly good for SoftBank? What is SoftBank to gain here from enriching TMobile?

I don't know if the OP post is true-- or partly true-- but to explain how it might be good for SoftBank: This was an all share deal, so sandbagging the value of Sprint shares so you can merge with TMobile could be good in the long run because you own shares in the new entity which has much less competition.

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

#134

Post by sumoboy »

briffle wrote: post #108
bogwog wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't follow this industry at all, so I'm out of the loop. Are you saying Sprint could not have possibly reversed course? (E.g. through pricing or even new leadership) Sometimes when companies are trying to merge, executives from both sides will come out and say it's "necessary" and push the narrative that one or both will go bankrupt without the merger. In cases where that strategy doesn't work it, unsurprisingly,…

if memory serves, Sprint had huge debts racked up from buying Nextel, as well as buying massive amounts of spectrum for WiMAX. They also purchased Clearwire. But WiMax never actually happened, everyone went to LTE, so sprint did as well. The main reason they were attractive to T-Mobile is that large amount of spectrum they owned, which was very valuble for 5G. https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160401/featured/worst-week-…

A huge costly mistake for Sprint trying to grow subscribers. Nextel's network was incompatible with Sprints, just a ton of business and technical issues. Sprint was always trying to be on the forefront of technology whether wireless or fiber. They spent a ton money on a project called ION that was last mile fiber to businesses, ahead of there time but a ton of costs actually laying down fiber doomed it. Poor timing for a lot of ideas and projects I saw. Source: ex-sprint emp.

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

#135

Post by asah »

jdeibele wrote: post #119
Schnitz wrote: post #20

Earlier 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.

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 be…

Google Fi plus wifi calling or whatsapp/zoom/etc.

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

#137

Post by lagniappe »

chimeracoder wrote: post #91
issafram wrote: post #77

Earlier 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).

Sprint also had Wimax https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/farewell-wimax-sprints-orig...

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

#138

Post by [deleted] »

codydh wrote: post #54
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.

There's a good guide to the prioritization (QCI) of various carriers here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/oaophe/data_pri...

[deleted]

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

#139

Post by JumpCrisscross »

HumblyTossed wrote: post #128
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.

We the People should own infrastructure. Want to start a new shipping company to compete with UPS? You don't have to build roads, We the People provide those to you. So, do the same with wireless.

> We the People should own infrastructure

Going 4 to 3 sucked, let’s go all the way to a state monopoly!

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

#140

Post by hylaride »

samtheprogram wrote: post #82
tw04 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Sprint had outdated technology w.r.t their infrastructure and cell towers, so an outside acquirer didn’t make as much sense. It needed an existing player with more advanced infrastructure to take on the customer base, or a large investment in upgrading it’s own infrastructure.

Pretty much this. Sprint bet the farm several times on ultimately dead-end tech (CDMA, WiMAX) and were too focused on other things to get ahead of technical evolution. They ended up saddled with debt by the end of it, which hampered any ability to actually upgrade their networks (another poster already pointed out the technical issues with running LTE without UMTS). By the time of the merger, the only things of any value they had was the spectrum and customer base to be moved over.

An external acquirer would almost have to build from scratch after absorbing all the legacy costs and run the risk of inheriting Sprint's bad business decision culture or spending an enormous sum building out a new team. Of course, they'd still have to support the old and new setups at the same time for awhile as the new stuff was built out. The ROI would have been decades at best.

With a merger with another telecom, people can be migrated over already existing infrastructure (with some upgrades to deal with new traffic) and have sprint's old spectrum slowly merged into the existing infra.

I'm oversimplifying of course, but one gets the idea.

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