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Department of Justice Approves $26B Merger of T-Mobile and Sprint
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Quit thinking in terms of "wireless customers" and "cellular carriers." If all works out as promised. the new T-Mobile will be a formidable competitor in the home broadband business (as well as the TV business). Cox, Comcast, Charter.... etc need to be stripped of their monopolies they have in their respective markets.
[doublepost=1564185180][/doublepost]Justice Department requiring T-Mobile and Dish to support eSIM as part of merger approval
[doublepost=1564185180][/doublepost]Justice Department requiring T-Mobile and Dish to support eSIM as part of merger approval
Big fan of T-mobile’s free data and such while traveling overseas. With AT&T I was paying hundreds more every year for international roaming packages and overages. Also had to aggressively manage my data usage while there- turning cellular data off until I needed it, and then making sure stuff like photos wasn’t eating it all up when it was on.
No reason for them to change that..I hope.
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Cheaper for them to pay the fines when caught.
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cause in a couple of decades all data will likely be over the air, super fast tower speeds with hard lines to people’s homes a thing of the past. Cell phone companies are in a better position to dominate once this happens.
Spectrum in SoCal have also started their own cellular business.
No reason for them to change that..I hope.
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Cheaper for them to pay the fines when caught.
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cause in a couple of decades all data will likely be over the air, super fast tower speeds with hard lines to people’s homes a thing of the past. Cell phone companies are in a better position to dominate once this happens.
Spectrum in SoCal have also started their own cellular business.
I’ve been really trying hard to like T-Mobile for the last two years. While I love their pricing (my family plan was $130/mo more expensive with AT&T), my coverage is mediocre at best. Some people say their new 600mhz antennas and coverage will help that. Jeez, I hope do, because I would like to keep them. Don’t like AT&T, in part because of their DirecTV shennagins, and Verizon doesn’t have a pricing plan that even comes close.
It is only illegal if they collude DIRECTLY with each other under current law.
Every single CEO of every large company learned day one in Bschool that when you are in an Oligopoly situation, you just inch up your price, bit by bit, and that in itself SIGNALS the other CEOs (without "direct" collusion, (said CEOs also took the same Bschool classes), that it's time to inch up their prices to match. They also learn to never enter a price war, as that only hurts all the companies' bottom line, including the one who started the war. Price increases are done gradually, in calculated fashion, with frequent meetings (lots of PowerPoint graphs lol) to ensure maximum possible revenue is always being extracted from the consumer, divided between the companies in the Oligopoly.
See the article on "Monopoly Rents" in Wikipedia for a quick overview of what they are doing.
Again this is NOT illegal, it's standard procedure, being taught in Bschool every year for the last 25 years, and it's why regular Americans have been getting bent over for the last 25 years by EVERY industry.
This teaching and theory started at Yale in he late 80s, was picked up by Stanford around 1992, and spread from there down even to undergraduate business classes today.
More coverage.
and
Because if they can, then they will.Earning more money is their fiduciary responsibility to their stockholders.
I might have switched to t-mobile a while ago. But there are a few places I go and where my mom works that Verizon is the only carrie that works. So I switched from AT&T to Verizon no regrets. Their is something to be said for having good coverage.
Well..
I've been a long time Sprint user (ok, quit that laughing!) and I have generally been happy with it. Though customer service sucks with them. But for $90/month (including taxes and all other associated fees and such) I get unlimited everything. So I have stuck with them.
I hope I would be able to remain on that plan or something similar from T-Mobile once this goes through. And normally I am not in favor of mergers such as this. But Sprint really has been such a minor player in the field for quite some time. I don't think Sprint's pricing/service is really doing much to affect competition these days. It might even have gone out of business had this merger not been approved. At least T-Mobile now will be a more formidable opponent now to the larger cellphone companies.
Here's my question though. Stupid me recently bought a Sprint CDMA iPhone 8 plus. I thought approval of this merger wouldn't happen for quite some time (if at all). So I ordered the phone a couple of days ago. It is advertised as CDMA only. Which didn't bother me since my phones are with Verizon and Sprint respectively. But T-Mobile uses GSM, right?
So which network will the merged company use? GSM? Or will CDMA be grandfathered in for awhile?
I've been a long time Sprint user (ok, quit that laughing!) and I have generally been happy with it. Though customer service sucks with them. But for $90/month (including taxes and all other associated fees and such) I get unlimited everything. So I have stuck with them.
I hope I would be able to remain on that plan or something similar from T-Mobile once this goes through. And normally I am not in favor of mergers such as this. But Sprint really has been such a minor player in the field for quite some time. I don't think Sprint's pricing/service is really doing much to affect competition these days. It might even have gone out of business had this merger not been approved. At least T-Mobile now will be a more formidable opponent now to the larger cellphone companies.
Here's my question though. Stupid me recently bought a Sprint CDMA iPhone 8 plus. I thought approval of this merger wouldn't happen for quite some time (if at all). So I ordered the phone a couple of days ago. It is advertised as CDMA only. Which didn't bother me since my phones are with Verizon and Sprint respectively. But T-Mobile uses GSM, right?
So which network will the merged company use? GSM? Or will CDMA be grandfathered in for awhile?
...and companies get away with illegal business practices all the time? It's all about the spin, and who's in office.
I’m not sure why they would advertise it as CDMA only, but you are good to use it on both GSM and CDMA. The issue would have been if you purchased an ATT or TMobile phone, which is exclusively GSM and does not have the CDMA antenna. CDMA iPhones also contain GSM as LTE is only GSM.
T-Mobile is garbage. Long time user here. I switched between Verizon and T-Mobile over the last 15 years or so.
The only reason why I keep coming back is because it’s cheaper and because I travel internationally quite often, which is obviously something that Verizon is really bad with. But as far as consistency and speeds go, you get what you pay for.
I can always get 100+ mbps download speeds on Verizon where I live. Doesn’t matter what time of day it is or what the “peak” hours are.
With T-Mobile, I can only get those speeds late at night, which means that it’s not a “coverage” issue, but insane throttling. I’m on the $75 unlimited plan.
During a typical work day, I’m lucky to get 10-20 mbps with T-Mobile. Sometimes I get so fed up, especially when I want to quickly look something up online - I have to wait up to a half a minute for a page to load. There are times when I would gladly pay $20 or $30 more for the reliability and speed of a Verizon network.
If Verizon ever adopts true international usage as part of the main unlimited package (like T-Mobile currently does), then I will instantly ditch T-Mobile forever.
The only reason why I keep coming back is because it’s cheaper and because I travel internationally quite often, which is obviously something that Verizon is really bad with. But as far as consistency and speeds go, you get what you pay for.
I can always get 100+ mbps download speeds on Verizon where I live. Doesn’t matter what time of day it is or what the “peak” hours are.
With T-Mobile, I can only get those speeds late at night, which means that it’s not a “coverage” issue, but insane throttling. I’m on the $75 unlimited plan.
During a typical work day, I’m lucky to get 10-20 mbps with T-Mobile. Sometimes I get so fed up, especially when I want to quickly look something up online - I have to wait up to a half a minute for a page to load. There are times when I would gladly pay $20 or $30 more for the reliability and speed of a Verizon network.
If Verizon ever adopts true international usage as part of the main unlimited package (like T-Mobile currently does), then I will instantly ditch T-Mobile forever.
The same reason why AT&T bought DirecTV and Verizon was rumored (before this deal made that impossible) to be pursuing Dish; the same reason why Comcast and Spectrum offer MVNO cell service that's considerably cheaper than the network they ride on charges...
ARPU... by being able to offer triple play, or quadruple play bundles, you've made the products you sell "stickier" (actual sales term in the services world). So while you may technically make a few cents less per service sold in the bundle per user by having a customer tied to more than one, you make it more difficult for that customer to drop one of those services because the prices form the remaining services rise.
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"LTE is only GSM"...
... sort of...
GSM is long dead, as a technology (it is only 2G). It was last heard from with EDGE (which was technically its 3G data technology until they found a better service and the '2.9G' term was coined). UMTS, and it's data enhancements with HSPA... those are W-CDMA. The GSMA (GSM Association) -- or more specifically the 3GPP -- has gone to great lengths to ensure compatibility between networks, hand-offs from W-CDMA down to GSM and back up. They did the same with LTE, which is neither GSM nor CDMA... it's its own thang. Qualcomm tried to work the same hand-off capabilities to LTE with CDMA as the 3GPP did with UMTS, but it's just not going to happen. CDMA shutdowns have already begun and this merger should hasten it, since it sucks anyway.
However, the iPhone sold for Sprint and Verizon is immune to any concerns of a CDMA shutdown. And Android's going back to like the Galaxy S4 also have both 3G techs available -- but not as comprehensively as the iPhone on the LTE side... but you'll always have all 5 bands for UMTS available.
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I moved from T-Mobile to Cricket recently since pricing made the most sense to me. I'd have stayed with tmovike if they have honored their "magenta" plan (preciously "ONE" for $140 for four lines but that's only for new customers or if you're adding at least two lines.
As it stands, most of the data three of our lines use is streamed video and that is throttled at the same rate on T-Mobile and cricket. The 3 megabit all time throttle is noticeable but totally doable, even on FaceTime.
After 90 days we can just come back to T-Mobile as new customers and reap the benefits of the discount, assuming it still exists. Or, if we remain happy, keep saving.
I know Verizon also has an mvno that we were mulling over but ultimately we wouldn't have saved any money going that route (I believe it's a flat $40 per line)
As it stands, most of the data three of our lines use is streamed video and that is throttled at the same rate on T-Mobile and cricket. The 3 megabit all time throttle is noticeable but totally doable, even on FaceTime.
After 90 days we can just come back to T-Mobile as new customers and reap the benefits of the discount, assuming it still exists. Or, if we remain happy, keep saving.
I know Verizon also has an mvno that we were mulling over but ultimately we wouldn't have saved any money going that route (I believe it's a flat $40 per line)
That is only for select Enterprise customers. If you have a source for anything more than that, please share it.
Is it just me or is Sprint Unlimited Premium actually a pretty good deal? 100GB 4G LTE hotspot per line, international roaming and data roaming, unlimited talk text and data (with at least 50GB before throttling), Tidal Masters included $19.99 per month normally, Amazon Prime, Hulu Basic and Lookout (I don't use) and Twitch prime. Their coverage isn't the best but this deal beats the heck out of Verizon and AT&T...
It's a great deal if the following are true:
1) Sprint/T-Mo has coverage in the areas you frequent
2) You actually use the additional services they offer
I think it may have already been mentioned in this thread, but T-Mobile and Sprint announced that they signed a roaming agreement either shortly after or along with the original merger announcement. So Sprint customers are already roaming on the T-Mo network.
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You could also consider moving to Sprint if you find one of their plans is a better value for you and they have coverage in the areas you frequent.
I'm actually trying out Visible (the Verizon MVNO you mentioned) right now. It is OK, but I feel that I often get de-prioritized during the day.
I tell anyone who will listen to go with the least expensive cellular service that has coverage in the areas you frequent and periodically re-evaluate your choice to see if better alternatives have come along.
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Not if Dish picks them up as employees which would be necessary for them to build out a new cellular network.
Curious, how does Sprint roam on T-Mobile if Sprint is CDMA and T-Mobile is GSM?
I'm sorry. I don't know. However, what I do know is that Google Fi is able to use T-Mobile, Sprint and U.S. Cellular networks and both T-Mobile and Sprint use LTE technology in addition to GSM and CDMA respectively.
Many smartphone these days have radios for multiple networks already built in and Sprint smartphones use SIM cards for LTE. It is possible that it is done through a firmware update. But I just don't know enough about the technology to know anything for sure.
You are correct. It is for m2m connections. The problem is that Verizon can’t free up all the spectrum that is using CDMA. It will have to wait until all machine connections are phased out.
The main benefit of shutting down CDMA is to refarm the spectrum for newer technologies (LTE).
I've been a Sprint customer for 12 years. Coverage in my area (Omaha, NE) has been more or less acceptable, but in/around my office (down near the airport) and generally anywhere outside of town (particularly areas north) and 3G/LTE reception is garbage (whereas my girlfriend w/a 6S on Verizon gets reception just fine).
Currently I've got a grandfathered unlimited plan that is only about $75 or so/mo. My 6 is on its way out and I'm planning on scoring an XR once the price drops and the new models come out in the fall here.
Now I could wait and see whether coverage gets better eventually, or move to Verizon and save some money (buying a phone outright through them, porting my number over and going w/the 5GB plan for $40/mo - with my employer discount, I could save even more on top of that). Am still on the fence, but reaping the potential savings has me leaning toward the latter.
Currently I've got a grandfathered unlimited plan that is only about $75 or so/mo. My 6 is on its way out and I'm planning on scoring an XR once the price drops and the new models come out in the fall here.
Now I could wait and see whether coverage gets better eventually, or move to Verizon and save some money (buying a phone outright through them, porting my number over and going w/the 5GB plan for $40/mo - with my employer discount, I could save even more on top of that). Am still on the fence, but reaping the potential savings has me leaning toward the latter.
Your problem is not “insane throttling”. It’s congestion on the network. If it was “insane throttling” then you would never see high speeds at any point in time.
Throttling = artificially capping speeds.
Congestion = reduced performance during peak times when everybody and their dog is hitting the network, which then disappears at off-peak times when most people are asleep or otherwise not using the network.