FCC Formally Approves Merger of T-Mobile and Sprint

[doctor-don]

Hopefully, they replace the T-Mobile management with the people from Sprint.

My experience with T-Mobile since 1997 has been better than any experience with Bell South / AT&T.
I won't touch Verizon after they bought MCI who had increased - gradually - my wired phone bill from $23 to $52 per month. No better service for the increase so that was cancelled.

 

[ghanwani]

I would have much preferred if they forced AT&T and Verizon to break up.

America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge

The Nobel Prize winner argues that an economy dominated by large corporations has failed the many and enriched the few.

www.thenation.com

But that would be asking too much of our regulators.

We pay some of the highest prices for cell phone service in the US.

The Cost Of Mobile Internet Around The World [Infographic]

A new analysis into the amount people pay for mobile data has found that India has the cheapest prices worldwide.

www.forbes.com

 

[iMerik]

I would have much preferred if they forced AT&T and Verizon to break up.

America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge

The Nobel Prize winner argues that an economy dominated by large corporations has failed the many and enriched the few.

www.thenation.com

But that would be asking too much of our regulators.

We pay some of the highest prices for cell phone service in the US.

The Cost Of Mobile Internet Around The World [Infographic]

A new analysis into the amount people pay for mobile data has found that India has the cheapest prices worldwide.

www.forbes.com

Exactly what I was thinking. I think concerns should be first directed at how much control AT&T and Verizon have over T-Mobile and Sprint merging to be able to better compete against the big 2.

 

[hrpuffnstuff]

I have been with T-mobile since 2003 and it was never perfect signal wise but for me it was over all good. I had nothing but a good experience when I was with Sprint in the 90's because I was a Field tech in the Boston area and always had service and also in my home state of Rhode Island. T-mobile has always been improving to the point I went from Edge only in my house in 2003 on my Nokia 3650 to 5 bars of LTE on my Samsung Galaxy Note 9 so I can't complain.

THIS >> "The real danger is when Legere leaves. No CEO will be able to take over the reigns."

 

[4jasontv]

I would have much preferred if they forced AT&T and Verizon to break up.

Verizon was Bell Atlantic.
AT&T was Bell South.

They were each born from regional carriers.

Before that they were a part of Ma Bell.

They don’t see themselves as the product of industry consolidation but rather the Neosporin of a bored deity.

They consider themselves God’s debris.

 

[BuffaloTF]

I would have much preferred if they forced AT&T and Verizon to break up.

America Has a Monopoly Problem—and It’s Huge

The Nobel Prize winner argues that an economy dominated by large corporations has failed the many and enriched the few.

www.thenation.com

But that would be asking too much of our regulators.

We pay some of the highest prices for cell phone service in the US.

The Cost Of Mobile Internet Around The World [Infographic]

A new analysis into the amount people pay for mobile data has found that India has the cheapest prices worldwide.

www.forbes.com

We don't have the miniscule country sizes of these other nations - most which fit inside of single states here - nor the population density to do network setups at low costs. It has nothing to do with number of carriers and everything to do with size and density. But in any regard, most of those countries have 3 nationwide carriers -- so carrying out the logic, I guess 3 is the magic number.

India is an exception and their cell service sucks once you leave a city... and they have 1.3 billion people to pay for network infrastructure.

The US has 330 million.

 

[alexandr]

I'm a t-mo customer and really happy with their service. I'm skeptical of this merger though. Fewer companies always lead to higher prices. I'm keeping my grandfathered plan as long as possible.

same here. i'm surprised there is talk of not raising prices for 3 years. to me that pretty much says that they will rise after, which is unfortunate. but we're gd'd with t-mobile one, so hopefully all will be ok.

i just wonder if we will notice any improvement in service, which would be much needed!

 

[Mousse]

T-Mobile uses GSM while Sprint uses CDMA; any idea how this merger affects their network?

Most likely they will drop CDMA like when AT&T merged with Cingular.

Those opposed to this deal should think ahead. Sprint is pretty much on life support and would probably be dead within the decade. When that happens, AT&T and Verizon would throw a lot of $$$ at the FCC to buy the spectrum currently assigned to Sprint. Y'all can kiss the competitive market good-bye then. Because T-Mo will get squeezed out and whomever brought Sprint's spectrum would have a larger market share, ergo mo' money to buy T-Mo's vacated spectrum.

 

[zorinlynx]

Is it me, or have cellular plan offerings gotten more expensive and restrictive?

For example, a lot more companies are offering unlimited, but they throttle video services to 1.5mbps. You have to pay a lot more money to get video unthrottled.

Right now I'm on an AT&T Mobile Share Advantage plan that offers 12GB a month. No video throttling, hotspot allowed, and rollover data. They don't even offer that plan anymore; their share plans top out at 8GB now and video throttling is mandatory. The "unlimited" plans cost more than I'm paying now for two lines and throttle video.

It's getting pretty bad, and it's probably only a matter of time before AT&T forces me off this reasonably good plan with price hikes.

 

[wolfboy]

LOL! Well, that's reassuring, isn't it? After those three years, the sky's the limit!

It won't really affect current Tmo/Sprint customers because we'll just be grandfathered into the lower rate we're paying now. After the 3 years, Tmobile will likely match the prices to what Verizon and AT&T charge. Once all carriers are the same price, they'll compete for new customers only through whoever has the best coverage and perks.

 

[Santiago]

I think the BIGGEST takeaway from all of this that no one is mentioning is the fact that DISH is poised to become the FOURTH major carrier lmao.

DISH?! Damn. I wonder how that’s going to go....

Realistically, it won't. It's a sop to make it look like there will be the same amount of market competition. Dig into the details, and it turns out that the merged company will have to let Dish operate on their combined network as an MNVO until it gets it own infrastructure up, but the fines for failing to get said infrastructure built are way, way less than the cost to do so. Thus, expect that they're already planning to not build it and in a few years you'll hear that Dish is giving up on its failed attempt to enter the wireless market.

 

[EvilEvil]

Is it me, or have cellular plan offerings gotten more expensive and restrictive?

For example, a lot more companies are offering unlimited, but they throttle video services to 1.5mbps. You have to pay a lot more money to get video unthrottled.

Right now I'm on an AT&T Mobile Share Advantage plan that offers 12GB a month. No video throttling, hotspot allowed, and rollover data. They don't even offer that plan anymore; their share plans top out at 8GB now and video throttling is mandatory. The "unlimited" plans cost more than I'm paying now for two lines and throttle video.

It's getting pretty bad, and it's probably only a matter of time before AT&T forces me off this reasonably good plan with price hikes.

It's because you're on AT&T. They'll continue to nickle and dime you. Same with Verizon.

 

[konqerror]

We pay some of the highest prices for cell phone service in the US.

The Cost Of Mobile Internet Around The World [Infographic]

A new analysis into the amount people pay for mobile data has found that India has the cheapest prices worldwide.

www.forbes.com

Not for what we get. All of these fake news "analysis" are done by going to carrier's webpages and looking at the plan costs, and not understanding the details of what you actually pay.

The link you showed is blatant in that it's not PPP normalized, China's minimum wage is 1/7 that of the US. Indeed, China's mobile Internet is far less affordable than the US. Roughly according to minimum wage, that would be $40/GB in US-equivalent.

US LTE coverage is far more pervasive than even Western Europe, which still has GSM-only coverage areas, for example, in parts of the UK. GSM is gone from the US.

US long distance and roaming have been free for decades. In Europe particularly, you travel 30 miles and you're international roaming and calling. The EU hates that and now has complicated capped roaming rules (made necessary in part due to the huge variance in costs of living). You can't move 3000 miles and keep your number and plan, like we do in the US.

For example, retirees split time between the Northeast and Florida. This would basically require two numbers and two plans in different countries in Europe. Your friends and family would need to know which to call. This is why dual SIM is a thing.

Many countries have calling-party-pays, which leads to gaming the system. You end up paying 10-20 cents per minute to call somebody's cell phone because carriers don't have motivation to drop prices. And going back to Europe, calling more than a few hundred miles attracts international long distance of 5-10 cents per minute.

 

[Braderunner]

Why, Sprint is the worst, I hope its the opposite and to my knowledge, its T-Mo taking over Sprint

Exactly. Sprint has the worst customer service. Ever.

 

[ghanwani]

We don't have the miniscule country sizes of these other nations - most which fit inside of single states here - nor the population density to do network setups at low costs. It has nothing to do with number of carriers and everything to do with size and density. But in any regard, most of those countries have 3 nationwide carriers -- so carrying out the logic, I guess 3 is the magic number.

India is an exception and their cell service sucks once you leave a city... and they have 1.3 billion people to pay for network infrastructure.

The US has 330 million.

I disagree. The cost per gigabyte should be going down each year (that is how technology works), yet it has not. My bill should be halving every 2-3 years.

AT&T recently without my permission added 3 GB to my plan and $5 to my bill, even though I don’t use that much data. They charge me cell phone prices for international calls over whatsapp when I'm not on WiFi.

These are abusive practices and the reason they can get away with this is the lack of competition from being part of an oligopoly.

 

[rpe33]

We can expect low prices in the beginning, but don’t worry, they will gradually increase. Think of the live TV streaming services how they had it fooled. Now, their prices are increasing every few months to years.

They only fooled the gullible and ignorant. Anyone with at least half a brain knew that the OTT services couldn't sustain their incredibly low price points forever. People always want more channels and with more channels comes a higher price...it's just common sense.

 

[ghanwani]

Not for what we get. All of these fake news "analysis" are done by going to carrier's webpages and looking at the plan costs, and not understanding the details of what you actually pay.

The link you showed is blatant in that it's not PPP normalized, China's minimum wage is 1/7 that of the US. Indeed, China's mobile Internet is far less affordable than the US. Roughly according to minimum wage, that would be $40/GB in US-equivalent.

US LTE coverage is far more pervasive than even Western Europe, which still has GSM-only coverage areas, for example, in parts of the UK. GSM is gone from the US.

US long distance and roaming have been free for decades. In Europe particularly, you travel 30 miles and you're international roaming and calling. The EU hates that and now has complicated capped roaming rules (made necessary in part due to the huge variance in costs of living). You can't move 3000 miles and keep your number and plan, like we do in the US.

For example, retirees split time between the Northeast and Florida. This would basically require two numbers and two plans in different countries in Europe. Your friends and family would need to know which to call. This is why dual SIM is a thing.

Many countries have calling-party-pays, which leads to gaming the system. You end up paying 10-20 cents per minute to call somebody's cell phone because carriers don't have motivation to drop prices. And going back to Europe, calling more than a few hundred miles attracts international long distance of 5-10 cents per minute.

We’ll just have to disagree on that. Not saying we should be the lowest but our cost per GB should be going down year after year, not staying the same or going up.

 

[routine_analyst]

This is bad for consumers. The fact this was approved, along with ATT buying WarnerMedia, Comcast buying NBCUniversal, Verizon buying AOL/Yahoo, Disney buying Fox... all terrible for the days ahead.

 

[konqerror]

I disagree. The cost per gigabyte should be going down each year (that is how technology works), yet it has not. My bill should be halving every 2-3 years.

That's not "how technology works". You're misinterpreting Moore's law, which is very specific on digital chip costs. That means Intel can make faster CPUs by selling more hardware. (Moore's law is dead anyway, but that's a different story)

The fundamental issue is that cell phones are power limited. Moore's law doesn't make a prediction on that. The main issue is that battery capacity has been stagnant for more than a decade. You can't cram in more hardware to improve speed until transistors become more efficient, or they come up with better batteries.

They're so desperate that your iPhone doesn't even use silicon in critical radio components. They switched to semiconductors unheard of in PCs (SiGe, GaAs, InGaP). The guy who figured out how to make the special transistors in your phone got his own Nobel Prize (Herb Kromer).

On top of that, laws of physics kick in. Basically the size of radio waves, how they absorb by buildings, available bandwidth, radio frequency safety limits. Look up "Shannon Limit". This is stuff that wireline communications, via cable and fiber, don't have to deal with (yet), but wireless does.

Therefore, your tower ends up having the same capacity, but demand increases, so you have to build smaller cells, and cost increases.

 

[ghanwani]

That's not "how technology works". You're misinterpreting Moore's law, which is very specific on digital chip costs. That means Intel can make faster CPUs by selling more hardware. (Moore's law is dead anyway, but that's a different story)

The fundamental issue is that cell phones are power limited. Moore's law doesn't make a prediction on that. The main issue is that battery capacity has been stagnant for more than a decade. You can't cram in more hardware to improve speed until transistors become more efficient, or they come up with better batteries.

They're so desperate that your iPhone doesn't even use silicon in critical radio components. They switched to semiconductors unheard of in PCs (SiGe, GaAs, InGaP). The guy who figured out how to make the special transistors in your phone got his own Nobel Prize (Herb Kromer).

On top of that, laws of physics kick in. Basically the size of radio waves, how they absorb by buildings, available bandwidth, radio frequency safety limits. Look up "Shannon Limit". This is stuff that wireline communications, via cable and fiber, don't have to deal with (yet), but wireless does.

Therefore, your tower ends up having the same capacity, but demand increases, so you have to build smaller cells, and cost increases.

Not talking about Moore’s law. Do some research on the history of cost per gigabit for running a network.

 

[konqerror]

Not talking about Moore’s law. Do some research on the history of cost per gigabit for running a network.

And that past success has been driven by Moore's law. You can cram more bits in the same pipe by doing more digital processing, i.e. MIMO, better error correction, equalization, OFDM, etc.

Mobile wireless communications is led by the concern that if we add feature A, can we implement it on a battery-powered handheld phone with the same power we burn now? That's less of a concern for wireline fixed networks.

Look at another thing: wired Ethernet. Why have we been stuck on gigabit Ethernet on laptops and desktops for nearly two decades? 10 Gigabit exists for 13 years. Answer: power.

 

[Naaaaak]

Counting the days until my monthly bill goes up.

Each day = $1. Probably.

 

[neoelectronaut]

I guess at this point I'm never touching my plan because it's only gonna get more expensive from here.

 

[quietstormSD]

What should happen is that the government should force AT&T and Verizon to break up their 70% monopoly of the market instead of having 2 smaller carriers merge together so now that there are 3 big carriers that now have a monopoly on 100% of the market.

 

[ghanwani]

I guess at this point I'm never touching my plan because it's only gonna get more expensive from here.

Your carrier might touch it for you. AT&T bumped my rate $5 while adding 3GB with no option to opt out. My consumption is well below my current plan so I had no need for the bump. The only option I was presented with was switching to one of their current available options which pretty much cost the same.