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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.

#171

Post by aidenn0 »

KingFelix wrote: post #62
toast0 wrote: post #11

Post 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/

Stetson Dogge has created an awesome tool here - It's a crazy breakdown similar to the site you linked but with a bit more https://airtable.com/appQ7TstG5Wn17FjY/shrraH105YVJQF2Yr/tbl... and he made a website comparison as well https://www.bestphoneplans.net/

Nice; doesn't include my MVNO (Ting) though.

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

#172

Post by endo_bunker »

This is full of central-planning nonsense. He wants lower prices, but is also mad when the company does layoffs. US consumers probably have some of the highest if not the highest demand for mobile data in the world, and the cost of living is already higher regardless, yet he acts shocked that American consumers pay more for mobile data.

Not to mention the fact that I pay $15 for a very reasonable Mint mobile plan that would probably suffice for upwards of 80% of American consumers.

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

#173

Post by EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK »

Prices were always high in the US, before and after that merger. I think part of it is due to the low intelligence of an average US consumer, who wants to have his iphone "for free" with the contract, and is unable to calculate the real price he is paying.

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

#174

Post by walterbell »

A government condition of the merger was that T-Mobile had to offer low-cost prepaid plans without an MVNO. The program is called T-Mobile Connect, https://clark.com/cell-phones/connect-by-t-mobile/ & https://coveragecritic.com/t-mobile-connect-review/ & https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/connect/phone-plans

Monthly price for USA-only unlimited talk/text + 5G/LTE data, is $15/5GB, $25/8GB, $35/12GB + taxes/fees.

Outside USA, T-Mobile pSIM Wi-Fi call/text continues to work with cellular/eSIM data from 2nd line.

Eskimo has 2y ("global", excluding Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Qatar, Maldives, Morocco, Oman, Portugal, Singapore, South Africa) and 1y (regional) data eSIMs for about $4/GB, https://www.eskimo.travel

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

#175

Post by malfist »

ericcumbee wrote: post #160
Aloha wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think that materially really had anything to do with it. Sprint was dying - with extraordinarily high debt, in 2007, well before Softbank bought them, and indeed they lost money every year from 2008 forward - https://www.statista.com/statistics/481739/sprint-corporatio... The Merger with Nextel managed to kill what was great about Nextel, and what was good about Sprint, and they lost customers in droves (most…

and then there was also the Wimax debacle. Sprint had invested pretty heavily in Wimax being their future network before they realized this wasnt going to work.

I got bit by the wimax nonsense as a consumer. I had a 4G HTC flagship phone on sprint and it was awesome. Then when I went and upgraded my phone a few years later to another HTC flagship phone, also with 4G, I was very confused why I could only use 3G.

The first phone was labeled 4G and second one was 4G LTE, which sprint didn't have in my area. I had been using wimax.

I switched to Verizon not too long after that so I could have 4G again

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

#176

Post by ummonk »

endo_bunker wrote: post #172

This is full of central-planning nonsense. He wants lower prices, but is also mad when the company does layoffs. US consumers probably have some of the highest if not the highest demand for mobile data in the world, and the cost of living is already higher regardless, yet he acts shocked that American consumers pay more for mobile data. Not to mention the fact that I pay $15 for a very reasonable Mint mobile plan tha…

I agree with your general point.

However, we don't have particularly high mobile data usage. Countries with subscribers that use mobile to the exclusion of broadband (e.g. India) have higher mobile data usage per subscriber.

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

#177

Post by andy800 »

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…

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.

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

#178

Post by Aloha »

malfist wrote: post #175
ericcumbee wrote: post #160

Earlier quoted context omitted.

and then there was also the Wimax debacle. Sprint had invested pretty heavily in Wimax being their future network before they realized this wasnt going to work.

I got bit by the wimax nonsense as a consumer. I had a 4G HTC flagship phone on sprint and it was awesome. Then when I went and upgraded my phone a few years later to another HTC flagship phone, also with 4G, I was very confused why I could only use 3G. The first phone was labeled 4G and second one was 4G LTE, which sprint didn't have in my area. I had been using wimax. I switched to Verizon not too long after that s…

Wimax actually did work great in practical terms even if the clearwire network was made out of compressed spit.

All of them - all the CW sites, were under provisioned for backhaul.

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

#179

Post by nradov »

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.

That's a terrible idea. If the government owned wireless infrastructure then we'd still be stuck with 1G analog service. Competition between private cellular carriers is the primary factor driving innovation.

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

#180

Post by newhotelowner »

havaloc wrote: post #104
mattgreenrocks wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not all MVNOs are deprioritized. Many are, but the Reddit thread mentioned in a sibling comment outlines it well. Been with Verizon Wireless for 20 years. Got sick of how expensive their entry level 5G plan was with deprioritized data. Switched to US Mobile a few months ago. Half the price month-to-month, good prioritized data pool (35GB), and 5G UW access.

The US Mobile CEO is active on their subreddit and is attempting interesting things, such as allowing you to port between 2 major carriers (and soon all 3) up to 8 times a month as needed, and a beta of dual carrier coverage at a reduced price. https://www.reddit.com/r/USMobile/ https://www.reddit.com/r/USMobile/comments/1bl7qf4/hey_you_y... https://www.reddit.com/r/USMobile/comments/1cjn4qa/launching...

Plus International calling is included, and adding cheap/free/included international roaming.
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