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Sprint and T-Mobile Merger Back on the Table as SoftBank Agrees to Cede Control of Sprint
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This still doesn't address the problem that then there would only be three major carriers, what we need to do is force there to be more carriers, not fewer.
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Honestly, I have driven over a lot of the country and Canada. My wife has T-Mobile and I have AT&T, in both countries she would have 4G LTE when I wouldn't have any coverage, so I have to say T-Mobile's coverage is far better than most are giving them credit for in my experience.
And supposedly my area has LtE, but go into a building and the signal dies. Their coverage outside of buildings is pretty good, though.
fair.
coverage in Minneapolis/St. Paul is great for T-Mobile too thankfully.
If you live/drive in rural areas, Verizon is your best bet for sure.
I'm with ATT (prepay) and thought many times of going to Cricket since now they are ATT but the one thing that keeps me doing it is the capped speed limitation set at max 8mbps download. I just don't know if I can do that. I get more than double and triple those speeds download right now on ATT prepay.
That looks promising, but zoomed out that much doesn't tell me much. They supposedly have coverage in my area and from that map it looks like they have great coverage in my area. Problem is it's always 1 bar and cuts out all the time while I drive around. They say they're within 1% of Verizon's coverage, but having 1 bar all the time is not the same as having 4 or 5 bars all the time.
You're not even a customer and just come here to bash Tmo because it's the cool thing to do.
How about yes? This would provide "more" competition the way you want it to be. STRONGER competition. These 2 companies, standing alone, can only provide so much pressure and have very real limits on how high their ceiling is. I think AT&T's half-assed (can I say that?) response to this unlimited charge highlights what they really think about the lesser players... as long as their stock keeps going up, which it has, they don't care. Verizon's has been flat and investors have beat them up over Yahoo in a big way, they had to act... AT&T is sitting pretty with DirecTV right now, and probably Time Warner Inc soon enough.
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Sprint's promise with Network Vision that [*supposedly*] is now complete is that they can support any technology over any approved FDD or TDD band almost instantly. They built it to allow them to host other networks at their sites. In theory, they could go doomsday on CDMA and switch it all over to UMTS (GSM is shut down) in an instant.
I tried to be a TMo customer but was always shifted to roaming. Last month a guy from WOW! came over and had to use my phone because his wouldn't work. His phone had no signal from TMo.
I don't know what "Econ 101" you took... but that's the opposite of what you learn. Economies of Scale dictate otherwise, and it's one of the most basic concepts in economics. When you have "10-20" different competitors building duplicate networks at the exact same cost, that burden is a shared one amongst those that purchase services - a much smaller group of people. That drives up the cost considerably.
What you're confused with mostly here, is the regulatory environment. You have very consumer-conscious regulatory bodies in Europe with pricing under intense scrutiny. You don't have "10-20" carriers in a country driving prices down, you have price controls in place. Unfortunately you're in the US, and when politicians talk about "cutting regulations"... what they really mean are cutting the protections in place for consumers so the crony capitalists can rake you over the coals. Landline telephone prices were never as low as they were when we had a monopoly. ~$5 a month at the time of breakup. Now it's over 50 for the same thing. The biggest change in the breakup was the industry was de-regulated... all the price-control protections disappeared overnight.
A lot of what many economic theories teach is based on what's good for corporations rather than citizens. For example, "free trade" is always taught to be a good thing. Companies make more money when they don't have to waste it on "protectionist" things like tariffs. This is normally true for large corporations and if you measure total economic activity, they will probably tell you it's almost always higher with free trade. The problem is where that economic benefit goes. If most of it only goes to the hands of a few (e.g. the top 1%), the "total benefit" won't mean much to those that suffer under those trade agreements (i.e. the other 99%). The "total" means nothing if only 1% gets it (unless you're one of those in the 1%). The theory of "trickle down economics" is ultimately voodoo because no one just starts pour syrup down the mountain for no reason. In other words, people are GREEDY and they don't want to spend one damn cent on anything they don't have to. "Companies create jobs!" Yes, they do. But they would rather create an $8 an hour job than a $20 an hour job and they would MUCH rather pay 10 CENTS an hour if they can get away with it (outsource to some 3rd world hell hold with damn near slave-like labor). Again, how is the money spread around?
What's good for the top 1% isn't always good for the country as a whole and that is where economic theory FAiLS HARD and yet sites like Forbes will try to pound it into your head day and night that free trade is GOOD and INEVITABLE and that we've entered a period of "globalism" that DEMANDS it. The top 1% will tell you any god damned fairy tale you want to hear to get at that money and will screw you, your family and the whole damn country to hell if that's what it takes to get that money.
The TRUTH is seldom heard (that we you NEED regulations to ensure fair/moral/ethical behavior from all parties involved) or else Capitalism falls apart. We learned that early on in the 20th Century when the robber barons came into being through monopolies that pretty much bought out or put out everyone else in business and thus created price controls that were not based on the market demand (as per Capitalism theory), but whatever the hell they felt like charging. Capitalism simply doesn't work without quite a bit of regulation, but it's that regulation that stands in the way of the ultra greedy from getting it ALL so they FIGHT TOOTH AND NAIL to get rid of those regulations, even ones designed to save the country from going into a major depression. The lure of easy/free money is too great. Just look around and see it all being dismantled right now. 2008 will happen again and again because GREED Trumps Common Sense and all forms of morality.
But it's argued that those "protections" are BAD for the economy. They're bad for big business and shareholders everywhere that deserve money for nothing! They're bad for your shares of stocks in banks and everything else! You must remove them so they can do every dirty handed trick ever thought of to separate people from their money! Protectionism is the PAST! Global Trade and Global Government and the New World Order MUST happen!!!! It MUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We must move forward! Globalism DEMANDS it!
But it's argued that those "protections" are BAD for the economy. They're bad for big business and shareholders everywhere that deserve money for nothing! They're bad for your shares of stocks in banks and everything else! You must remove them so they can do every dirty handed trick ever thought of to separate people from their money! Protectionism is the PAST! Global Trade and Global Government and the New World Order MUST happen!!!! It MUST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! We must move forward! Globalism DEMANDS it!
I'm a big fan of this entire comment, but I chopped it down so it wouldn't be so huge...
All I wanted to add was with the original AT&T (Ma Bell), you had a supremely wealthy, profitable company under constant government pressure to keep prices down. They also took their profits and invested more heavily in R&D than any company ever has... and they were only allowed to patent technologies directly related to telephony. So we're blessed with these free open-source things they invented, discovered, or added to. Things like stereo sound, UNIX, C++, the discovery of the Big Bang... and many more. I think people really need to look at what Bell Labs did at their own cost, essentially for the greater common good, before they attack Ma Bell as their supporting evidence on competition's benefits.
Except Montana where my parents used to live until last year
Never been there, going to have to take your word for it. How is Montana anyway?
I believe they would be fine over LTE as long as the phone the person has supports the bands. That's why I could use AT&T Sim in my verizon phone. However, I believe this would only work on lte, I believe the 3G technology is a bit more carrier specific (why Verizon's 3G sucks but atat and T-Mobile can be considered '4g'). So they might axe sprints 3G while keeping lte, which carriers like Verizon are already wanting to phase out. This would be in their best interest as well because they could increase lte coverage (what all carriers are advertising these days) while getting rid of sprints dreadful, awful 3G service that tmobiles is already far better than.
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Agreed, living in a semi rural area and AT&T is the best, with T-Mobile and Verizon coming up respectively. Verizon also has awful peak speeds, every weekend tourist flood where I live and even with LTE I can load nothing. It's pretty awful having 5 bars of lte and not being able to load a text page, while my friend has a bar of lte on T-Mobile and is speeding around like it's nothing. I switched back from T-Mobile to Verizon because of my family, and I honestly haven't really had a moment I can think of where if I had T-Mobile I would've been screwed, it's a great carrier now, and it has manged to create some uproar in an industry that has stagnated for far too long, a good company in my book.
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My theory PTT was only popular because of the small amount of minutes that was offered during that time frame. Once plans with more "generous" minutes became common, the need for PTT wasn't really there.
I was working in the trades back in the Nextel days. PTT was better for many reasons besides minutes if you worked in a field job. Suddenly everyone had a walkie talkie, so you could coordinate, bark orders, and get everyone on the same page instantly.
I still miss that feature to this day if I am trying to accomplish something with a group of people. Sure we have group chat now, but nothing beats chirping in super loud over the speakerphone, regardless of what social situation the recipient is in.
It got people moving that's for sure.