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T-Mobile Announces UScellular Acquisition, Promises Improved Connectivity in Rural Areas
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US Cellular was never a player. We will at least have three major carriers covering all of the US. T-Mobile is pulling the death by 1000 cuts on AT&T and Verizon with their simple pricing and ever improving coverage area.
As a T-Mobile customer from before Un-carrier I remember how forum posters here loved to mock and were otherwise pissing on T-mobile. Lots of posts about how how they suck and their network sucks and how if you were a customer of them you were a sucker.
A lot of "Don’t piss on our heads and tell us it’s raining!" comments, but of course from a different perspective then the one you're trying to communicate here.
Common theme being that T-mobiles best outcome would be to be acquired.
Woe be it if you were (or I was) trying to point out why such criticism was naïve.
I've been looking at WeBoost signal boosters. I had a signal booster decades ago and loved it. I doubt it'll help much with tmobile's "oversubscribed" towers, but can't hurt.
These mergers are an incredible benefit for all Americans. Many cell phone plans have increased in price since the US went from 4 carriers to 3, resulting in healthier profits for shareholders around the world. Prices will get even higher if they can all merge into one. This can only happen with strong support from the US legislature, lobbyists, and a healthy dose of dark money.
Let's eliminate the essential features of capitalism now!
With love,
Ajit Pai, former FCC Commissioner
/s
Let's eliminate the essential features of capitalism now!
With love,
Ajit Pai, former FCC Commissioner
/s
Normally I would oppose such a consolidation, but US Cellular has had zero ambition to be remotely competitive for well over a decade now. And their "roaming" agreements were basically non-functional. I don't see a scenario where this hurts the national marketplace, and can only help what US Cellular customers still exist (there are pockets of rural areas where US Cellular is your only functional choice).
They already bought a competitor recently. I don’t think they should be allowed to buy another one
Now there is a history lesson! Alltel was buying smaller companies to become a national, rural player, then Verizon scooped them up and basically fleshed out their rural map in one swoop. I think Sprint should have went for US Cell around that time but they didn't seem interested in anything but cities and interstates. I sold Alltel for a hot minute in my life, still have my QUACK certificate... Bravo for unlocking that memory
I love T-Mobile but I also understand that corporations gonna corporate so hopefully this doesn't make them too evil... But AT&T is truly the Legion of Doom so even if they become half that bad it's still an easy choice for me any day. I've been thoroughly pleased with their coverage, speeds and top-notch customer service.
Exactly! I can see the old Sprint tower from my house, but it's currently inactive. The T-Mobile towers are 1.5 miles away over a slight hill. External antenna on my chimney works great for TMHI, but cell reception in my house is terrible. It's also terrible for AT&T and Verizon. First provider that puts a tower near my house will probably get me to switch my cell phones.
My problem with T-Mobile isn’t the lack of coverage, it’s that the wavelengths they use don’t penetrate into buildings as far as Verizon. I hate that.
Enhanced competition from them against the other 2 big carriers I think is what they mean
I'm stoked they’re getting a bit of spectrum out of this, I hope they can keep building out their rural network to truly compete with blue and red
Even in my hometown in Ohio, which isn’t exactly remote (it’s north coast), coverage is pretty bad. It’s amazing in Cali though :3
Surprisingly I still get a signal with T-mobile inside the elevator inside my apartment building, and in our one-story-underground parking garage. I’ve been really impressed. This is in Cali though, results may vary lol
Yeah, I figured Sprint would have made the move on Alltel at the time and that was very strategic by VZW. But also "Sprint Nextel" was still fighting affiliates at the time, had to gobble them up and add more debt.
T-Mobile's "extended range" 600Mhz penetrates almost anything, giving up standard definition TV was worth this premium spectrum.
Also Macrumors seems to inject their own commentary about merger capability without even looking that while T-Mobile will buy the network, it will only purchase 30% of USCellular's spectrum, allowing them to maintain 70% to capitalize on, preventing anti-trust concerns.
To be fair though? I'm not sure how many people with US Cellular were finding it a great service when they traveled?
I remember US Cellular specialized in coverage in parts of West Virginia, for example, where you'd get no data or really slow data with the other carriers. (Whole area just past Harpers' Ferry.) So people living and working out there would all go with US Cellular. But the phones would be on roaming data as soon as they drove anyplace more populated and subject to a lot of usage restrictions.
Arguably, they'd get more usefulness out of their plan if the whole thing was under the T-Mobile umbrella.
I used to love my US Cellular service in the midwest, many years ago. But that was back in the era of the Moto Razr phones as the hot new thing. The current US Cellular is a much smaller carrier.
It might be true that purchasing 30% of a spectrum might reduce some antitrust concerns, but that is far from the only antitrust concern. MacRumors commentary isn’t playing arm chair lawyer, it’s a very reasonable and natural commentary to add by anyone who has paid any attention to the news. Particularly since Lina Khan has been appointed, pre-Bork analysis is on the rise again. And even before Khan, an acquisition by one of three industry players is expected to be scrutinized and noticed by the FTC.
Said another way, the math the FTC will run isn’t T-Mobile plus 30%USCellular. It’s more like (T-Mobile + Sprint + 30%USCellular) / (AT&T + Verizon + T-Mobile).
Yes it is armchair lawyer. This deal also doesn't include buying USCellular's 2000 towers, just leasing space on them, and the spectrum buy at first glance barely even puts T-Mobile over the FCC soft cap in very few markets, and it's not even known if those are in the 30% purchase, which it's likely not. This deal is crafted strategically not to buy everything because it won't be possible without divestiture, but also USCellular isn't "going away"
Rather they spent some of that money to provide a minimum level of speed to Internet 5G service. Those with that service are LAST on the list to get access to the tower or in other worse - when there is a lot of traffic/congestion, the first to feel it will be the last to get it - Internet 5G home users. What would be at 450 Mbps goes down to a crawl under 1 Mbps at times. Holiday you might not even get consistent connectivity.