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You’re ignoring how monopolistic markets actually work.

The reason we’re paying $80+ for throttled speeds isn’t because of technical limitations — it’s because the big three carriers have carved up the market, locked out real competition, and trained consumers to believe that pricing is somehow justified.

MVNOs can’t offer better deals because they lease capacity from the same networks that have no reason to undercut themselves.

That’s not capitalism — it’s market capture in plain sight. Be well++
The US cellular market is not monopolistic. "Mono" = one carrier/supplier. Nor is it a duopoly. There are three (really 4, Dish), and they are highly competitive.

You are probably trying to describe the situation as 'high barrier to entry' which is an appropriate designation. But just because a market has a high barrier to entry (think auto, airline industries) doesn't mean the participants are greedy, that they're not competitive or aren't as capitalistic as other/smaller industries.
 
I will never understand how people need anywhere close to that much data each month. I use ~1GB-2GB and I've been going on more apps without being on wifi in recent months compared to how I was before.
20% of people in the US don't have home internet. And if you're consuming a lot of video (not difficult, especially for younger demographics), then you can chew through 100GB without difficulty.
 
I know some have bad experience but I have had Verizon for around 25 years I guess, since I started driving I think. Only left to get iPhone with ATT but then went back to Verizon when iPhone worked. Think that was the iPhone 4?

tried to save money and get various plans for my wife and kids and it ended up being a money saving yes but a money saving headache. brought them all back this month. they don’t care about the 5g speed. yes it is a contract but they will need the phones and lines for 36 months anyway.

4 iPhone 16 with four lines on the basic unlimited plan. phones free and lines are a total after fees of $35.52 a month per line. unlimited basic data and iPhone 16 for $35 total per line. good deal for us.
also have data plan on my iPad. total after fees of $11 a month.
and this week I got a 16 pro with the top of the line plan in this article. total price after everything for my line is $57.16
 
Yeah I love having unlimited Disney plus, Hulu and ESPN...which Verizon has been doing everything in their power to get me to switch.

I have an entire text conversation where they try to convince me to move to even more expensive plans because they were more valuable...when I kept giving them a cost break down of how it wasn't...they kept going in circles.
Same here! They have tried to get me to switch, and even when they did the "analysis", it was a difference of $10. I said, but the "new plans" with Hulu, Disney+, and all HAVE ADS. Mine don't. So why would I pay MORE to get what I already have, with no additional perk? I said, so to keep what I have now would make the plan more expensive than what I have now. They agreed.

If I did not use the plans, I get it, but with kids, the amount of travel I do and download content to watch on my trips, there is no way I am willing to move over.
 
The US cellular market is not monopolistic. "Mono" = one carrier/supplier. Nor is it a duopoly. There are three (really 4, Dish), and they are highly competitive.

You are probably trying to describe the situation as 'high barrier to entry' which is an appropriate designation. But just because a market has a high barrier to entry (think auto, airline industries) doesn't mean the participants are greedy, that they're not competitive or aren't as capitalistic as other/smaller industries.
While you may technically be right about the definition — the U.S. cellular market isn’t a monopoly — it does function as an oligopoly, where three major carriers control roughly 99% of the postpaid market and act so similarly they might as well be one. That’s what I meant by monopolistic forces.

This level of concentration creates a system where prices stay high, service innovation slows, and all players benefit by not truly undercutting one another.

Take Verizon’s “5G Ultra Wideband” rollout — they’ve heavily marketed it for years, yet deployment remains limited to pockets of urban areas. Meanwhile, Verizon’s annual profits have remained in the $20+ billion range, suggesting the bottleneck isn’t technical or financial — it’s just not incentivized when competition is weak.

MVNOs can’t disrupt pricing because they lease capacity from the same networks, often under agreements that include speed caps, deprioritization, or limited access to new technology like 5G.

So no, it’s not about whether capitalism exists — it’s about how capitalism behaves when barriers to entry are high and incentives reward stagnation over competition.

Calling that “greedy” is just shorthand for a system where consumers pay more, get less, and can’t switch to anything meaningfully better.

That’s not a functioning free market — it’s a captured one, run by an oligopoly.

Be well++
 
MVNOs do undercut the big 3 for basic services - text, voice and data. You don’t get the extra perks but if all you want is service tehy can be a lot cheaper.
Depends on what mvno you are referring to. And I think generally the problem is the big three haven’t really increased their bottlenecks for bandwidth (speed).. so ya MVNOs are not seen as much different than their providers, but there are slights/degradation that does exist it’s just not overly so compared to the bottlenecks main carrier options.

(I have visible and by and large love it and feel the pricing is appropriate for the service. It’s “good enough” and is basically the same as what I had when I was with Verizon themselves)

my point was that there is just no real want to compete with each other for the big three—so they pocket profits and see little to no upgrades to their network holistically—or even more simply.. they are coasting and stuffing profits. Good for them.. not so much for the consumers (us).
 
Take Verizon’s “5G Ultra Wideband” rollout — they’ve heavily marketed it for years, yet deployment remains limited to pockets of urban areas. Meanwhile, Verizon’s annual profits have remained in the $20+ billion range, suggesting the bottleneck isn’t technical or financial — it’s just not incentivized when competition is weak.
I'd recommend you continue to research more technical aspects of your theories.

"Ultra Wideband" or mmWave spectrum is indeed limited in deployment, and always will be. Due to they physical nature of the spectrum, it is very short range (you correctly point out its limited availability typically in urban areas), and is highly sensitive to interference (even a tree or window is extraordinarily disruptive to the signal integrity). The nature of mmWave also necessitates higher-powered telco radios and baseband processing equipment.

Regardless of profit volumes, every company makes ROI evaluations. Spending that $20B so more rural areas can have mmWave deployments would lead to shareholders voting for board members, who would ultimately fire the C-suite responsible.

So yes, there are both technical and financial reasons why you don't have mmWave covering every square mile in the US.

It's easy to shake your fist in frustration, as opposed to peeling back the nuances of what's really going on.
 
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Ah, no. Verizon, like AT&T, do not support true mid-band 3GPP NR 5G like T-Mobile USA does. Indeed, if I'm close to a cellphone tower used by T-Mobile, I can get as high as 1,600 megabits per second download speeds on 5G with my iPhone 16 Plus, something you really can't get with AT&T or Verizon unless you're they're using their C-band towers, which I believe are still not that common.
 
The data is always unlimited. The question is how much data do you get high speed vs slower speeds. It isnt unlimited speeds. You can download 3 TB worth of data, youll just be running at a slower speed at X limit.
There actually is a data limit on all of these plans. You can calculate how much data you can transfer at the reduced speed during the remaining part of the billing cycle once you’ve used up your high speed data. I can guarantee you there is a finite value. I’m always surprised that there hasn’t been a class action settlement based on this fact.
 
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I switched to Visible and never looked back.
Yeah, similar, I switched from a Verizon unlimited plan, where I used maybe 10GB/mo, for something over $80/mo, to a Mint Mobile 15GB/mo plan for $20/mo (when I still use perhaps 10GB/mo), and haven't looked back. Verizon had slightly better coverage in my home, but on either one my phone has switched to WiFi calling by then anyway. Mint and Visible are a much better deal than Verizon.

People keep saying, "but you get these extras 'for free'" - yeah, no, I'd rather pay separately for the bits that I actually want, instead of having some items bundled in to the price of my cellphone service - it's not like I'm having to physically write separate checks each month, that went out years ago.
 
The US cellular market is not monopolistic. "Mono" = one carrier/supplier. Nor is it a duopoly. There are three (really 4, Dish), and they are highly competitive.

You are probably trying to describe the situation as 'high barrier to entry' which is an appropriate designation. But just because a market has a high barrier to entry (think auto, airline industries) doesn't mean the participants are greedy, that they're not competitive or aren't as capitalistic as other/smaller industries.
Dont forget all of the MVVMs which offer great deals.
 
There actually is a data limit on all of these plans. You can calculate how much data you can transfer at the reduced speed during the remaining part of the billing cycle once you’ve used up your high speed data. I can guarantee you there is a finite value. I’m always surprised that there hasn’t been a class action settlement based on this fact.
Its unlimited for all intents and purpose, even if you were running on the reduced speed on AT&T for example for an entire month straight you would be downloading 16.2 GB of data a day or about half a TERABYTE a month.

For verizon their unlimited is even better, after 500 GB of data you are throttled down to 4Mbps which assuming you were downloading 24/7 for an entire month straight that would be close to 2 TB a month of bandwidth, which is less than 6% of HOME BROADBAND users consume.

Their "ultimate unlimited" has ZERO slow down limits on normal 5G/LTE etc only their mobile hotspot is reduced to 6 Mbps after 200 GB is used in a month, which would be a total of 2.2 TB of downloaded data assuming you ran at 6 Mbps 24/7 for an entire month.

Not that ANY of the above is relevant because again THERE IS NO LIMIT ON THE DATA YOU DOWNLOAD. Its not like they will charge you if you hit 4 tb. Its unlimited DATA not unlimited SPEEDS (which wouldnt make sense anyways). You would have zero case. It would be like you arguing EZEE fiber is not offering unlimited data because my speeds that I am paying for are only 1 Gbps up and down therefore it is NOT unlimited because if I ran my internet at full tilt downloading I can "only" download 335 TB in a given month meaning I am being SCAMMED!

Silly and semantic argument.
 
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EXACTLY! People do not understand that while MVNo's do indeed lease their lines, say, from Verizon, they don't lease "ALL" of them. Just some. They couldn't afford to charge the lower prices if they did lease all. It's just a matter of what MVNO leases what towers around what area that works best for you. But you do not get the FULL tower coverage that you would get from the 3 major tower owners which are AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.
Say what? Everything I've read on the topic suggests that it's all the same towers (they're not running separate wires for this, that's where the "Virtual" part of MVNO comes in), and the distinction is the priority that you get in the system - MVNO traffic is generally "deprioritized" compared to full-fare traffic - if an area gets congested, the expensive traffic gets priority.

In practice, I haven't found it to be a problem, in the couple of years I've been on Mint.
 
OMG!!! Is this how much you really pay in America?! It's not as if you don't have the population to have lower costs. I pay $43 per month for 470GB 5G in Australia (huge country the size of the USA but a tiny fraction of the population). Americans are being scammed on such a scale - WOW!

[edit] Oh, and I forgot to mention - I get free global phone calls to most countries included!
 
OMG!!! Is this how much you really pay in America?! It's not as if you don't have the population to have lower costs. I pay $43 per month for 470GB 5G in Australia (huge country the size of the USA but a tiny fraction of the population). Americans are being scammed on such a scale - WOW!

[edit] Oh, and I forgot to mention - I get free global phone calls to most countries included!
Yes, the wireless prices in the US are quite high compared to other areas. And every time this comes up, we get dozens of people from other countries who all have to individually tell us that their prices are SO MUCH LOWER. We get it. We really do. Yes, from you. And you too. And you over there it the corner. But it gets really tiring to hear the same thing over and over and over.

In the wireless carriers defense, they're providing coverage over a vastly larger area which means orders of magnitude more infrastructure (we have individual states that are larger than many entire countries - many people outside the US really do not grasp just how large it is - I could go out right now and drive 11 hours, in a mostly straight line, at freeway speeds, and still be in the same state). BTW, Wikipedia figures for total area suggest Australia is about 78% the size of the US, not the same size.

But yeah, the US wireless carriers are also price gouging the heck out of the market, because they can. Smaller companies that once would have been in competition with each other, have been allowed to merge into a small number of larger companies, that have much less incentive to offer lower prices. Lack of regulation has led to lack of competition and lack of choice, and that has led to higher prices. But that said, I've got all the cellphone data capacity I'll never need, for $20/mo.
 
Yes, the wireless prices in the US are quite high compared to other areas. And every time this comes up, we get dozens of people from other countries who all have to individually tell us that their prices are SO MUCH LOWER. We get it. We really do. Yes, from you. And you too. And you over there it the corner. But it gets really tiring to hear the same thing over and over and over.

In the wireless carriers defense, they're providing coverage over a vastly larger area which means orders of magnitude more infrastructure (we have individual states that are larger than many entire countries - many people outside the US really do not grasp just how large it is - I could go out right now and drive 11 hours, in a mostly straight line, at freeway speeds, and still be in the same state). BTW, Wikipedia figures for total area suggest Australia is about 78% the size of the US, not the same size.

But yeah, the US wireless carriers are also price gouging the heck out of the market, because they can. Smaller companies that once would have been in competition with each other, have been allowed to merge into a small number of larger companies, that have much less incentive to offer lower prices. Lack of regulation has led to lack of competition and lack of choice, and that has led to higher prices. But that said, I've got all the cellphone data capacity I'll never need, for $20/mo.
I don't think you read my post correctly, Australia is the same size as the USA - so by your logic, it should be far more expensive in Australia. There's no excuse for how costly mobile data is in the US, Americans are being ripped off. But better to just take it and not stand up for yourselves.
 
Switched to Spectrum and couldn't be happier. It's just rebranded Verizon service at 1/3rd the cost.
 
EXACTLY! People do not understand that while MVNo's do indeed lease their lines, say, from Verizon, they don't lease "ALL" of them. Just some. They couldn't afford to charge the lower prices if they did lease all. It's just a matter of what MVNO leases what towers around what area that works best for you. But you do not get the FULL tower coverage that you would get from the 3 major tower owners which are AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.
You have anything to back this up? I'm not necessarily saying you are wrong, but in researching MVNOs, I have never come across anything making this suggestion. As others have said, usually it's a difference in priority (though not for all MVNOs).
 
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Say what? Everything I've read on the topic suggests that it's all the same towers (they're not running separate wires for this, that's where the "Virtual" part of MVNO comes in), and the distinction is the priority that you get in the system - MVNO traffic is generally "deprioritized" compared to full-fare traffic - if an area gets congested, the expensive traffic gets priority.

Not only that, but a tower often is not owned by the cell company and can have multiple cell company antennas on it. Towers are expensive pieces of valuable vertical real estate, so it makes sense for one company such as Crown Castle to own and operate the towers and lease space to cell companies.

In practice, I haven't found it to be a problem, in the couple of years I've been on Mint.

I suspect most people don't have that problem.

I don't think you read my post correctly, Australia is the same size as the USA - so by your logic, it should be far more expensive in Australia. There's no excuse for how costly mobile data is in the US, Americans are being ripped off. But better to just take it and not stand up for yourselves.

Everyone looks at one of the most expensive plans available and conclude Americans are being ripped off; while the reality is there are a wide range of plans at various price points, and with various discounts off the rack rate the actual price per line may be less.

I can't get my unlimited data on my Portuguese phone plan while elsewhere in the EU; and my cheap hotspot plan won't let me roam at all. Not to mention if I spend too much time roaming outside of my home country I can be charged on top of my plan fees. Move to another country and keep your home number, not unless you want to pay. Even the EU suggests cross border workers get a second local sim or connect to their home country network the days the roam to avoid roaming fees. Compared to the US, roaming is a mess in the EU, but that's how they decided to set their rules.

As for being charged more being a ripoff, I'm pretty sure there are items that are more expensive in Australia than in the US, so are Australians being ripped off by those companies?
 
There actually is a data limit on all of these plans. You can calculate how much data you can transfer at the reduced speed during the remaining part of the billing cycle once you’ve used up your high speed data. I can guarantee you there is a finite value.

That's true even for high speed data, you can only get so much data no matter the speed. But that's not what unlimited means. They do not cut you off or charge you extra for the data you use, even if they can throttle it since the contract is pretty clear about their having the ability to do that if needed.

I’m always surprised that there hasn’t been a class action settlement based on this fact.

I think any reasonable judge would look at an attorney making that argument and point them to the courtroom door.

My local restaurant offers unlimited drink refills, but that doesn't mean they have to stay open 24x7 since closing limits my total amount; or they have to run to my table and keep my glass filled and not serve other customers faster.

Edit: typo fix
 
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I don't think you read my post correctly, Australia is the same size as the USA - so by your logic, it should be far more expensive in Australia. There's no excuse for how costly mobile data is in the US, Americans are being ripped off. But better to just take it and not stand up for yourselves.
I don't think you read my post correctly - Australia is NOT the same size as the USA, it's about three-quarters the size. I'd let it slide, but you decided to repeat the exact same mistake again, after I pointed to evidence to the contrary.

Yes, our prices are too high - I SAID THAT.

And as far as "just taking it", dammit, we've got bigger problems to fight right now than wireless service prices - but sure, ignore what I said and lecture me on that.
 
Who pays? I suppose people unlike you that aren't grandfathered in some old plan from some old defunct company who at the time took advantage of an unrealistic deal that can't be had today. That's who. ;)

One thing I dislike about these topics is everyone comes out from the woodwork to gloat about their 10 year old plan at prices that no one can get today and think everyone is dumb for not getting as good a deal today.
That is fair, but I’ll stick to my 3 unlimited lines on T-Mobile for 100 a month. 🙂 Seriously though that is an expensive plan and one can do better. If you care about overseas usability T-Mobile is the way to go anyway unless of course you live in an area where the service is spotty.
 


Verizon today announced new features for its Unlimited Ultimate plan, which is the company's highest-tier plan at the current time.

verizon.jpg

Unlimited Ultimate customers now have access to 200GB of premium Hotspot data, which downgrades to 6Mb/s after that. Verizon is also offering unlimited data in more than 210 countries and destinations around the world, plus customers can choose one of 140 countries to get up to 300 minutes of calling from the US per month.

High-speed data worldwide is capped at 15GB per month, and after that, speeds are limited to 1.5Mb/s.

Verizon's Unlimited Ultimate plan is $100 per month, but it drops to $90 per month with Auto Pay enabled. It offers 5G UWB data, up to 4K video streaming, 50 percent off data plans for a watch and tablet, and talk, text, and unlimited data in Mexico and Canada.

The plan also supports adding streaming features like Hulu, Netflix, YouTube Premium, Apple Music, and Max for an additional monthly fee.

Verizon's other unlimited plans include Plus for $90 per month, and Welcome at $75 per month, with $10/month discounts available for Auto Pay.

Article Link: Verizon Updates Ultimate 5G Plan With More Data and New Features
I pay 35 euro a month and I think that’s plenty. What’s included? 1000 minutes and 1000 texts, truly unlimited data and 32 GB data in the EU. Can’t imagine I could use either 1000 minutes or texts in a month - usually go barely above 300
 
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