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I think that combined, T-Mobile and Sprint will provide stronger competition to AT&T and Verizon. It'll be "the big three", rather than "the big two and the smaller cousins."

I agree. Someone in an earlier post referred to T-Mobile and Sprint as "bottom feeders." Which is an admission in itself that the current state of affairs in the cellular industry is that we have the Big 2 and a bunch of bottom feeders. I believe a "Big 3" would be of more benefit to healthy competition than the current state.

As for the MVNO's, very few of them run on T-Mobile or Sprint only. Boost Mobile (Sprint) being the best known exception, but the majority are hosted on 2 or more carriers with AT&T and Verizon making up the lions share.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_mobile_virtual_network_operators
 
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I'm curious how this proposed merger would affect TMobile's coverage map.
Right now, I have AT&T and the service is great however, I find the coverage map inferior compared to Verizon.

I investigated switching to T-Mobile earlier this year and I loved their superior customer service however, my only disadvantage if I switched to them would be a smaller coverage map.
 
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Also keep in mind that there haven't been CDMA-only phones for quite some time now; any phone with LTE capability also has GSM capability, so 90% of Sprint's customers should be able to move to T-Mobile's network just fine. Offer enticing upgrade deals for the remaining 10%, and once everyone is off the CDMA network it can be nuked and the frequency bands repurposed for LTE or 5G.

Thank you for posting this. The GSM/CDMA thing is confusing. I have iPhone 6 through Sprint and it receives LTE signals. So hopefully I can keep this phone if T-Mobile takes over.
 
hopefully this will improve the service of both. ive tried both here in houston and while its acceptable inside the city, just seconds outside and the coverage is horrific. live in nw houston and couldnt complete a phone call on either to save my life. would watch my phone bouce from no service to a single bar (on both, although admittedly, sprint was just slightly better - neither were reliable though).

so we were stuck with either att or verizon as our only options. both are expensive, but i need my devices to actually work as intended.
 
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This CDMA versus GSM argument is STUPID. Wake up! T-Mobile, Verizon, and AT&T all have voLTE! Sprint is transitioning to voLTE as well. CDMA for Verizon is being sunset on December 31, 2019. Sprint would then lose all that CDMA voice roaming on Verizon, hence the push for voLTE as well with them. Bottom line, using CDMA as your example as to why this is a bad idea is dumb and ill-informed. Sprint is the only carrier that currently does not have mass-deployed voLTE, but even they are trialing it. By the end of the targeted 2-3 year merger process, Sprint will have been able to replace the CDMA only devices (which are already the minority of devices on the network as most cell phones have LTE).
 
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This is a good fit, their combined messaging about 5G, improved spectrum profile, and job growth since TMobile merged with MetroPCS is what will sell this merger.

The fact John Legere and Mike Sievert will run the new company, is also a plus. These guys have been a bulldozer in the industry. We can thank them for killing long term contracts, and the more liberal cell policies today.

Not sure i agree with the job growth. They are saying that will save 4 billion a year just by closing stores that will not be needed. That means job loss not growth.
 
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90% of Americans living close to or below the poverty level use T-Mobile, Sprint, or one of their MVNO carriers that operate on their network. The two carriers and their MVNOs make up 14 of the top 18 MVNO carriers, all which would be at risk if the two merged.

Lol poverty people are only ones using t mobile. GTFO. That is the most ridiculous thing I have read.

He said "people in poverty mostly choose T-Mobile, Sprint, or one of the MVNOs". That is 100% different than "only poor people use T-Mobile".

You completely misinterpreted his statement into something that it wasn't, and then laughed at your own misinterpretation as being ridiculous.
 
Why the hate on CDMA? CDMA is so superior that the "GSM" carriers use it now instead of GSM.

Nobody uses CDMA anymore, and it sucked. There’s 2 legacy networks in this country that are shutting it down over the next 3 years. Every company has joined in the GSM Association/3GPP progression plan.

If you’re referring to UMTS - which is based on W-CDMA... well that’s not CDMA2000 (aka, “CDMA”). It’s Wideband CDMA (aka, “3G” when CDMA phones used to split your signal between 1x and EVDO across 2 bars) and it’s an air interface totally unrelated to the other, and explicitly made to be compatible with GSM (the 2G network type that died with EDGE). And LTE is yet another air interface...
 
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I seriously doubt their claim. Neither of them have decent coverage outside of major cities as it stands. The only thing they have going for them is price. There is no hope of catching AT&T and Verizon though they will close the gap.
 
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Guys, girls, there is no way this is a good thing for the consumers. How many examples of industry consolidation playing out over decades do we need to get the point?

Airlines, cable companies, auto manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, movie studios, media companies, car rentals...the list goes on and on. Same result: customer pays more, has less choice, higher switching costs, product quality declines.

The jobs, 5G implementation, that's all political talking points to get the merger through the DOJ. The real reason is raising pricing, cutting costs to deliver services with higher margins, which ultimately translate into more profits for shareholders. And as far as shareholders go; if today's stock price is any indication, they're not buying any of this BS.
 
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Until very recently, Sprint was not able to finish merging NextTel infrastructure and systems into their business, it was a nightmare. I am curious how they think they will pull this off. :eek:
 
t-mobile isn't even a mobile company. Its a bottom feeder finance company trying to sell financing on everything in sight to whatever fool happens to walk in their store.

Been 100% happy with T-Mobile since day 1 moving to the USA from Canada (where cellphone rates are through the roof). I travel regularly and always have fast and reliable coverage in urban and rural areas all at no extra charge (internationally) while my colleagues are all paying travel pack rates on AT&T and Verizon - now that's foolish!
 
They didn't kill long term contracts, they simply reversed the structure and placed the financial burden on the consumer. You now pay $1,000 for a phone you used to pay $200-300 for with contract. You had an ETF if you break that contract but the ETF was to cover the phone discount you inherently received when signing the contract. The vast majority of AT&T and VZWs customers are long term, repeat subscribers. The days of bouncing from carrier to carrier are over. Knowing this, the companies realized that people wanted the latest smartphone and they (AT&T/VZW/T-Mo/Sprint) no longer had to subsidize a phone to get people to use their service.


Say what? All these years later you still think you actually paid “only” 200-300 for that phone?

That’s interesting... and wrong.

They gave you no discount whatsoever. Just an initial “discount” before you paid off the rest. Every month. Built into your bill. Even after the phone was “paid off.” No discount after the fact ever.

Talk about financial burden for the consumer.

Now you aren’t even paying the full bill for the phone as you can get another if you choose after a year and start again without being locked into the same phone for 2 years and while still never paying it off.


Most people I know who have these phone had their bills go down as the transparency kicked in and you saw your actual data bill and your device bill.

Screw those old days. You can have it. I much prefer the landscape now at least regarding that 200 dollar phone shakedown.
 
Guys, girls, there is no way this is a good thing for the consumers. How many examples of industry consolidation playing out over decades do we need to get the point?

Airlines, cable companies, auto manufacturers, pharmaceuticals, movie studios, media companies, car rentals...the list goes on and on. Same result: customer pays more, has less choice, higher switching costs, product quality declines.

The jobs, 5G implementation, that's all political talking points to get the merger through the DOJ. The real reason is raising pricing, cutting costs to deliver services with higher margins, which ultimately translate into more profits for shareholders. And as far as shareholders go; if today's stock price is any indication, they're not buying any of this BS.

Sprint has over $30 billion of debt and has struggled to turn any profit over the last 10 years. They are on the road to bankruptcy. Consolidation in the industry is going to happen whether any of us like it or not because Sprint is not a profitable company.

Only way to keep Sprint in business by itself long-term would be a government bailout with taxpayer money. Guessing nobody here wants that to happen.
 
Not sure i agree with the job growth. That means job loss not growth.

Jobs being trimmed is a natural and needed process of mergers, and, it IS a good thing. The jobs duplicated just for the sake of "keeping jobs" are a drain on our finances, and will show up in our bills.

Most jobs lost here will be the ones not building/maintaining the phone companies' infrastructure, i.e., PR, and such trim.
 
A merger is usually followed by job lay-off to decrease or eliminate position duplication such as customer service personnel, accounting, etc ,as many many merged company companies. So creating job is almost fake news unless newly created positions which do not exist prior to the merger are created for unlimited period of time, which are rare. All promises by both CEOs should not be believed until they materialize. More customers are definite because Sprint customers become T-Mobile customers. Improved coverage is sure but not much to be able to be equal with Verizon. Sprint coverage is worse than T-Mobile. “unprecedented network capacities” is fake news. There are some precedents network capacities before. Do your research. Lower prices for customers? That is unlikely unless there are some cuts or innovation made to compensate T-Mobile profit margin. No companies want to have low profit margin especially their shareholders. In summary, for all T-Mobile and Sprint customers and employees, do not get too excited about the merger with all good times be true promises. Analyze all facts from business perspective and merger history of other organizations with similar type business situation: the one who takes over trying to maximize their position with the ones who got taken over who merged, which is usually weak on their business position. What are impacts to competition word and customers?

The problem with this summation is it takes from former acquisitions and brand remodelling by USA carriers in the past: ATT, Cingular, then the new AT&T (circa iPhone debut; OG).

Here we have a carrier funded by a much more profitable German carrier of the same name, getting 69% voting rights after the merger, more spectrum combined to take on the other big 2 nationwide.

He NMVOs will suffer disband, customers will migrate to T-Mobile or go elsewhere - churn never goes away ina. Very healthy competitive mobile marketplace, so get over it. Virgin mobile as an MNVO will stick around the have the finances to back them up.

Sprint failed miserably for 5 yrs horrible financial and investment decisions. T-Mobile with John L has been making huge strides in marketing and in good uptake with more subscribers and has stressfully increased while reducing churn year after year for the past 5-7yrs. Their customers for contracts or no contracts are getting better value especially with upgrades to hardware by comparison to Verizon and AT&T especially when it comes to international roaming fees. Corporations are going to love this.

The win here is although initial increases in rates when 5G launches ... it’ll be business like Amazon, Walmart, FedEx, and UPS types that require fleet tracking in real time, others in the automotive industry (and their customers) will also absorb the increased rates initially. Car real time mapping and AI assisted driving - federal legislation and rules for this will happen at a breakneck speed by all this year. Mobile phones should not see a huge cost increase.

Regular smartphone usage will not really benefit from 5G not without a huge battery life hit (6-7” screens will boom again), moreover laptops with eSIM or nano sim slots will be utilized by corporations heavily especially those that work remotely 80% of the year as cost savings for office space will be taken in heavily. They already pay for their phone and monthly bills why not an add on for laptop data for a more reliable transportable and roaming ability for more secure wireless connection?!

T-Mobile, Verizon and ATT will offer direct corporate VPN tunnels as a service over 5G working with Cisco, etc to enable this. Robotic operations though minimal field transport also could benefit.

Until fully unlimited data occurs for most mobile plans for smartphones over 5G I think most users will enjoy better bandwidth increases using LTE as medical state and emergency services (police, ambulance, and fire departments) get dedicated 5G connection upgrades freeing up LTE bandwidth.

That’s how I’m seeing this. The two top dogs haven’t had real competition yet now they will.
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As a current T-Mobile subscriber, and I can't believe I'm saying this, this merger might be a good thing.

1. John Legere has demonstrated during his tenure at T-Mobile that he's good at reshaping the wireless industry, and doing so by bringing customers value add. Eliminating contract plans, eliminating hidden phone subsidy's, and offering reasonable unlimited plans were major shifts in the wireless industry that T-Mobile introduced. Seriously, we were all paying to add TEXT MESSAGING.

2. Combining largely LTE user bases won't nearly be as challenging as it was when it was truly GSM and CDMA. The vast majority, if not just about all Sprint phones sold in the last what 5 ish years can work on the existing T-Mobile LTE network. Obviously, none of us have the exact numbers, but again, this isn't the technical hurdle that it once was.

3. The combined T-Mobile will still a slight underdog to Verizon and AT&T, plenty of encouragement for them to continue pushing the value proposition in the wireless industry.

4. Sprint was a dead company walking - It was hemorrhaging subscribers and had no real long term growth plan. You know it's bad when their commercials say "we're worse, but it's not as bad as you think".

5. This is far more long term, but T-Mobile's ambitions may go beyond just mobile wireless, again, more motivation to tackle things beyond just challenging ATT/Verizon.

Oh, and current Sprint customers can finally stop using their WAP browsers. I KID I KID

Well said.

I think sprint customers could stop using the Chirp Chirp network saying “who is that?!” ;) hoping you get this commercial reference.
 
I can’t support this merger as it feels like it’s more about “Flexing and subscriber count”.

With that said some of the stuff I’ve seen online “T-Mobile will be number one, att is dead”.

T-Mobile is gonna have to deal with all of that debt from Sprint and will have to raise prices. So no more uncarrier.

This merger benefits no one except for the Softbank CEO, John Legere and the Germans who own DT
 
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Apple doesn't need to be splitting its attention any more than it's already doing.
Apple MVNO will be a cash cow! Roll it out and put it on autopilot $$$!
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Obviously one less company is good for consumers. Gee I hope the .gov doesn't step in and ruin the merger. Heck they should just let all the companies merge so there is just one worldwide company that provides everything for us, that would be best of all!!!

We could call it "the company" or "mommy."
It used to be called AT&T! It was referred to as MA Bell! Antitrust laws broke it up into about 7 entities back in the landline days of glory.
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I currently have Sprint and it will be interesting to see how it goes. One thing I like about T-Mobile is they have 50 gigs per line on their unlimited plans each month. Sprint is 23 gigs, AT&T is 22 gigs, Verizon is 22 gigs. 50 gigs is a heck of a lot more friendly to the consumer.
Have you ever heard of Wi-Fi?
 
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It'll be interesting to see how this shakes things up.

hopefully by switching folks over to TMobile and GSM rather than continuing Sprint's CDMA. especially in terms of their outdated account verification. Verizon figured out how to put it all on the sim but that's been too much for Sprint. having a sprint based account is a nightmare
 
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