[HN Gopher] Verizon, AT&T customers sue to undo T-Mobile merger
___________________________________________________________________
Verizon, AT&T customers sue to undo T-Mobile merger
Author : rntn
Score : 238 points
Date : 2023-11-07 15:31 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| FactualActuals wrote:
| I would prefer to see Verizon or AT&T broken up before T-Mobile
| is. TMobile wasn't anywhere near as big as Verizon or AT&T pre-
| Sprint merger. And they still aren't as big.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| Maybe at this point we should be talking about all three major
| players as opposed to selecting one victim for partition. They
| all suck hard. They all stand to benefit from TMobile raising
| prices, because it will give them an excuse to do the same.
|
| I am personally tired of the oligopolies in US. Bring in some
| competition. I thought the free market was a thing here ( or is
| it just lip service ) .
| FactualActuals wrote:
| I 100% back breaking up Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile to create
| more wireless carriers. More competition is good for
| everyone.
| nradov wrote:
| Realistically the huge capital expenses involved in
| building reliable nationwide 5G networks make it impossible
| to have more than three carriers. Breaking up one of the
| incumbent carriers could only be done along regional lines,
| so regardless of where you live you wouldn't actually have
| more choices.
| genewitch wrote:
| we don't need 5G nationwide. You (or someone copying and
| pasting you) have said this two or three times in this
| thread, and i am not sure why we need to be educated that
| there's "huge capital expenses" for building out a
| network that requires orders of magnitude more points of
| presence than the LTE networks. None of the three
| actually have unlimited service (at least on post-paid)
| as an option, so giving us "gigabit cellular" at a huge
| capital expense doesn't make sense to us, as consumers.
|
| The only way it makes sense is if the wireless companies
| have _other_ customers that are served by having orders
| of magnitude additional antennas everywhere.
|
| And regardless of the arguments against the above, the
| cellular carriers were given billions and billions of
| taxpayer money, and tax breaks, and all manner of kid-
| glove court and legislative decisions in the past 30
| years. Consumers are getting screwed from every side
| possible, more taxes, more fees, and more monthly service
| charges.
|
| but at least the ads load blazing fast while i'm on the
| train, i guess.
| nradov wrote:
| You seem to be making things up or are just ignorant of
| the market dynamics. Regardless of your personal limited
| needs, there is actually huge demand for fast, reliable
| 5G service nationwide. Customers have voted with their
| wallets.
|
| Moving to 5G with more antennas also allows for more
| efficient spectrum use in most cases. Spectrum is
| extremely expensive, and a limiting factor in some areas.
| jasonlotito wrote:
| > we don't need 5G nationwide.
|
| I mean, I want 5G when I go travel without needing to pay
| extra, and that happens right now. I don't want to pay
| roaming charges just because I fly to Detroit or a small
| town in Missouri.
|
| And history has shown that smaller carriers aren't going
| to provide that kind of service.
| danaris wrote:
| Roaming charges have nothing inherent to do with the
| presence or absence of 5G. You can have multiple networks
| with their own 5G hardware that charge roaming fees, and
| you can have a mixture of 4G and 5G but agreements that
| no roaming will be charged.
|
| If you've got a _plan_ that specifically limits you to 5G
| if you want to avoid roaming charges, then that 's
| between you and your (likely oligopolistic) carrier.
| autoexec wrote:
| > The only way it makes sense is if the wireless
| companies have other customers that are served by having
| orders of magnitude additional antennas everywhere.
|
| The big reason to push 5G is surveillance. You could
| always be tracked to within half a mile or so with cell
| phone towers, but with 5G the cell towers alone can track
| you within a specific building. mmWave 5G provides
| location information with sub-meter precision. Telecom
| companies sell our location data, and with 5G that
| location data becomes much much more valuable.
| brewdad wrote:
| You have the freedom to choose between 2 identical services
| and one inferior one. At least where I live, T-Mobile stops
| working if I head 10 miles west or north. There's even a dead
| zone half a mile from my home in the middle of a suburb of
| 100,000 people.
|
| Free market has always been lip service in the US.
| coryrc wrote:
| Infrastructure is a natural monopoly. Of course it isn't a
| free market, just like roads. I wish we had privatized
| roads, maybe we wouldn't be so car-dependent.
| matwood wrote:
| VZW is the inferior one where I live, but your point
| stands.
| taf2 wrote:
| T-mobile was the main driver for all the user fees against
| every smb in the US though... IMO they did the most damage to
| text messaging as a reliable method of reaching a customer....
| Telco industry is massive so yes break them all up
| Johnny555 wrote:
| As a consumer, I don't think that's necessarily a bad thing,
| I don't _want_ businesses to find it cheap and easy to reach
| me by text message.
| swells34 wrote:
| Honestly, with things being as they are, I think the
| general sentiment of customers is that they do NOT want
| customer outreach; or, they want a single, high quality,
| hand written outreach. Apparently we don't like being brow-
| beaten into purchasing anymore. Basically, like being
| treated as something other than cash cows.
| no_wizard wrote:
| For ads, I don't. For customer support however, a verified
| phone number (that I can look up myself, easily, perhaps as
| part of a FCC website function, for example) would be a
| huge win though.
|
| I used the Apple Business Chat feature for support for a
| shipping issue I had recently with Everlane and it was
| actually amazing. It had its own verified icon, so I knew
| it wasn't a scam, I could answer when I was able, and they
| were able to respond as they were able (though, I did find
| it quite timely, even when I wasn't) and not at all did I
| have to call someone, or talk talk to a chatbot (as far as
| I could tell anyway). It was a seamless experience and it
| got my issue resolved.
|
| I personally like this model of customer support. No reason
| this can't extend to SMS
| no_wizard wrote:
| This, plus break up the broadband carriers (Comcast et. al) and
| enshrine open access to infrastructure into law, bonus points
| for net neutrality.
|
| That would be honest wins for the US telecom market, and drive
| lots of competition, while preserving some common sense / fair
| access to shared infrastructure for all.
| Veliladon wrote:
| I don't think we want to see national carriers broken up. If
| you don't think a mid-size carrier won't make fucking bank on
| roaming fees you haven't seen what a lot of them did in the
| '80s.
|
| What really needs to be done is the monopolistic elements of
| cell phone service like spectrum, tower, and backhaul provided
| at cost by a neutral (state owned) entity and the retail
| services built on top of reselling that.
|
| The barrier to entry on a ground up cell network is almost
| impossible to surmount without billions in capital but an MVNO
| that can work on the same cost basis and network as the
| national chains?
| THENATHE wrote:
| I absolutely do. In my area, the Verizon and ATT towers are
| so unbelievably crowded that we literally cannot use data
| anywhere in a 20+ mile radius. Maybe if there were 5
| companies here instead of 3 we would have more -> less
| congested towers
| iAMkenough wrote:
| You're asking to rely on a smaller company with fewer
| spectrum licenses, fewer towers, and therefore spottier
| coverage.
| toast0 wrote:
| You might have more towers, or you might have all 5
| companies on the same set of towers. Regardless, I think
| the spectrum is fully sold, so a challenger network isn't
| going to have spectrum to use, and if they get spectrum
| reallocated, existing towers that lose spectrum will be
| less effective.
|
| Edit to add: If your towers are as congested as they seem,
| the carriers should be aware, and the problem is likely a
| lack of available tower sites; either because of
| geographical considerations, site owners don't want towers,
| or local regulators don't want towers. Additional networks
| won't really help with that either.
| jsight wrote:
| I think it is more likely that they'd all outsource tower
| construction to a small handful of companies and leave
| congestion roughly equivalent to the current state.
|
| TBH, this happens a lot in large stable industries.
| czl wrote:
| The solution to congested towers is to add more towers and
| reduce the power levels making the coverage of each
| smaller. In a crowded room you can increase the number of
| simultaneous conversations by having people stand closer to
| each other and reduce voice volume levels at the limit
| people are whispering into each other's ears. Similar idea
| works with wireless devices. devices.
| jonwachob91 wrote:
| >>> you haven't seen what a lot of them did in the '80s.
|
| The commercial mobile phone network was invented in the 80's.
| Comparing market behaviors during the industry's infancy to
| the behaviors of established industries is wrong. The market
| took some time to figure out best practices, for consumers
| and industry health.
|
| 20's years ago roaming fees and texting fees where expensive,
| but then corporations figured out unlimited packages were
| more profitable. We pay a set price now for texting for the
| month, but it still costs the carriers money for each text we
| send. The carriers just hope that the power texters balance
| with the infrequent texters allowing them to turn a profit.
| The same with calling.
|
| I don't know if regional networks could compete with national
| networks. I just want to reinforce that market practices at
| the industry's infancy aren't the same as they are now.
| BizarroLand wrote:
| The cost per text is in the microfractions of a penny now,
| if that.
| mixdup wrote:
| This is not correct. As of Q3 2023 T-Mobile is number two by
| subscriber count:
|
| * Verizon Wireless: 143.3 million (Q2 2023)
|
| * T-Mobile US: 116.7 million (Q2 2023)
|
| * AT&T Mobility: 105.2M million (Q2 2023)
|
| source:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operato...
|
| By stock market cap:
|
| * TMUS: $170.51B
|
| * VZ: $150.84B
|
| * T: $113.22B
|
| (of course, VZ and T both have significant businesses outside
| of wireless so this isn't a super great comparison)
|
| Hard to argue that you should break up either of Verizon or
| AT&T and not T-Mobile by literally any metric, unless you think
| wireless companies shouldn't also have terrestrial networks
| adoxyz wrote:
| Good luck with that.
|
| I'm pretty sure that it has been the case in 99% of scenarios
| were consolidation always ended up in a shittier experience for
| the consumer and employees regardless of the promises the merging
| companies made.
|
| But money talks at the end of the day.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| And the alternative was that Sprint would have gone out of
| business. Sprint hadn't made money in over a decade
| ewoodrich wrote:
| My brief experience with Sprint a couple years before the
| T-Mobile merger had basically unusable coverage. Was
| genuinely surprised how far it had fallen.
| whaleofatw2022 wrote:
| They stopped maintenance on some cell sites in anticipation
| of selling to 'anyone'.
|
| Source: used to deal with permits for them in a metro area.
| yborg wrote:
| And T-Mo inherited all that and is now the bottom feeder.
| It's just a matter of time before one of the other two
| merges with them to "increase customer value and create
| jobs".
| rnk wrote:
| yields of course layoffs. Tmobile has been laying off
| people with the reason being overlap between the
| companies.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| T-Mobile acquired both Sprint and MetroPCS to increase
| their spectrum allocation. I literally travel all over
| the country and don't have an issue with T-mobiles
| service
|
| Right now I am in small town south GA and getting 120/40
| on cellular.
| S201 wrote:
| Anecdotal: I've been quite happy with T-Mobile's coverage
| for many years now. At least where I'm at they have just
| as good, if not better, coverage than Verizon does.
| Arrath wrote:
| I was quite happy with T-Mobile's service for the last 5
| years, in that I had no signal at all at my house and my
| work phone was, conveniently, T-Mobile!
|
| The universe enforced me being unreachable outside of
| work hours and I didn't mind that at all.
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Probably not a surprising fact, but fun fact: Sprint tried
| buying t-mobile first and it was blocked by courts. It was
| quite surprising to hear it happening the other way around
| since I thought Sprint was always larger than T-Mobile.
|
| But yes, the nextel merger and the bad gamble with wiMax
| definitely sunk them long term.
| astura wrote:
| AT&T was blocked from buying T-Mobile, not Sprint.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-
| Mobile...
| johnnyanmac wrote:
| Both happened:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Sprint_Corporat
| ion...
|
| >In December 2013, multiple reports indicated that Sprint
| Corporation and its parent company SoftBank were working
| towards a deal to acquire a majority stake in T-Mobile US
| for at least US$20 billion...On August 4, 2014, Bloomberg
| reported that Sprint had abandoned its bid to acquire
| T-Mobile, considering the unlikelihood that such a deal
| would be approved by the U.S. government and its
| regulators
|
| I guess saying it got blocked is subtly inaccurate,
| though. They simply stopped because they weren't
| confident in getting through antitrust.
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| I tend to agree.
|
| But it's pretty difficult to prove any of this, because you
| don't know what would have happened if there wasn't a merger.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > because you don't know what would have happened if there
| wasn't a merger.
|
| Yea.. but "not merging" isn't something that had to be
| approved by the DOJ. It's a false equivalence.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > But money talks at the end of the day.
|
| The whole reason to form the monopoly is to extract that money
| from the citizens. They have the money, the players merely want
| it.
|
| So, no.. apparently the money does not talk at the end of the
| day. Corruption clearly does.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| Sprint was losing money for over a decade. There was no world
| where they would be an ongoing concern and jobs wouldn't have
| been loss anyway
| mixdup wrote:
| There is, however, a world where they might've been bought up
| by Comcast and/or Charter and turned into a real 4th competitor
|
| DISH is about 12-24 months from bankruptcy and is losing
| subscribers, and does not have a true national network
|
| The cable companies are just MVNOs riding off Verizon, so that
| is kind of limited in how much actual competitive pressure
| they're applying to the market
| scarface_74 wrote:
| I can see Comcast's slogan now.
|
| "Comcast - bringing all of the customer service you relied on
| as your cable provider into your pocket".
|
| Besides, it would have been scientifically impossible for
| Comcast to be a real competitor with Sprints limited spectrum
| allocation.
| mixdup wrote:
| >Besides, it would have been scientifically impossible for
| Comcast to be a real competitor with Sprints limited
| spectrum allocation.
|
| But, they could've done what they're doing now: use a
| limited amount of spectrum in areas where their customers
| are concentrated and offload the rest to their MVNO partner
| (Verizon)
|
| Comcast and Charter both are buying up CBRS licenses and
| putting up both CBRS radios and outdoor strand mounted wifi
| hotspots in their wireline service territory. Since that's
| where 100% of their customers live, that will work to
| offload the bulk of the traffic they pay Verizon for. For
| the people who travel outside the service area, they'll
| just roam onto Verizon
|
| For sure it's not the same as VZ, T, and TMUS having a
| national network that competes for every single wireless
| customer period, but it would probably be more effective
| than the zombie DISH out there that supposedly has a
| network covering 70% of the US population, but a vast
| majority of their customers are on their MVNO partners in
| T-Mobile and AT&T.
| scarface_74 wrote:
| It's not just about coverage area. Certain frequencies
| are better for cellular and especially 5G than others.
|
| Back in the day, T-Mobile's access was poor in buildings
| because the only frequencies they had access to didn't
| work well through walls.
|
| https://forums.androidcentral.com/threads/how-well-does-
| tmob...
| AdmiralAsshat wrote:
| Has this ever worked in the past? I can't recall ever hearing of
| a merger being forcibly un-done. It seems like if you lie your
| way through the approval process and everyone's worst predictions
| come through, the worst that will happen is the US government
| will slap you with a monetary fine that amounts to less than 1%
| of your yearly profits.
| hn_throwaway_99 wrote:
| I thought this was an excellent question. It's easy to argue
| that the merger shouldn't have been approved, but seems like
| the plaintiffs want a time machine. Perhaps they're just
| looking for some sort of financial settlement?
|
| Has there _ever_ been a similar suit against a large merger
| like this in the past, successful or not? I 'm really curious
| how the legal system views these "please undo the past"
| requests.
| pasttense01 wrote:
| No, it's not the plaintiffs. If successful each subscriber
| might get a few dollars--while the plaintiffs' lawyers would
| get millions.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| Historically through divestiture or rescission (the later is
| effectively impossible to do with a publicly held
| corporation). Though the Clayton Act has only been
| infrequently applied in recent decades.
|
| https://scholarship.law.cornell.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?arti.
| ..
| cogman10 wrote:
| > I can't recall ever hearing of a merger being forcibly un-
| done.
|
| That's pretty much what antitrust actions are. It's super rare
| and I can't imagine there's a case here against T-Mobile as
| both Verizon and AT&T are bigger.
| ZoomerCretin wrote:
| It took a bit of searching, but yes!
|
| https://www.healthcarefinancenews.com/news/hospital-doctor-m...
|
| Claude summary:
|
| A U.S. district court judge ruled in favor of the FTC in an
| antitrust case, ordering St. Luke's to undo its acquisition of
| the Saltzer Medical Group. The FTC and others alleged the
| acquisition violated antitrust regulations by lessening
| competition and potentially increasing healthcare costs. St.
| Luke's argued the acquisition was vital to achieve healthcare
| reform goals and maintain business viability. The judge
| disagreed, saying there are other ways to improve care without
| violating antitrust laws and risking increased costs.
|
| Here is an FTC press release detailing how the un-doing of the
| merger was carried out: https://www.ftc.gov/news-
| events/news/press-releases/2017/05/...
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| A trial court ordering a full divestiture of an acquired
| company (doorskin manufacturers):
| https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/ca4/19...
|
| > the district court granted Steves and Sons' request to unwind
| the merger and plans to hold an auction for the merged assets
| after this appeal.
|
| Background of the case:
| https://www.natlawreview.com/article/fourth-circuit-affirms-...
| taf2 wrote:
| The main thing in mind that it did do is cause massive fees and
| restrictions for businesses to send text messages. The idea is
| this is to reduce spam. However it has fees and effectively was
| like this:
|
| Hey smb, we see you send notifications to your customers . It's
| be a real shame if those messages stopped delivering to your
| customer . Good thing you can pay us a brand registration fee
| just $50 and oh for each type of message a recurring $10 fee.
|
| It wasn't a price hike to consumers directly but really was mob
| style shake down.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| Yeah. Twilio's process was entirely focused on "campaigns",
| too, whereas we sent exclusively transactional ones. Very
| confusing, and we wound up removing our texting features
| entirely from our app.
| taf2 wrote:
| It wasn't twilio it's driven by the monopoly organization-
| the campaign registry.
| ceejayoz wrote:
| The registration requiremenet may not be Twilio's doing,
| but there not being any significant guidance on what
| transactional senders should do for their particular set of
| processes is.
| JustARandomGuy wrote:
| Glad to see someone else had that problem too - I spent hours
| reading through the Twilio documentation to try to figure out
| if transactional sms was allowed because all I kept seeing
| was campaign registration, campaign fees, and etc all about
| campaign sms. And if we had to pay the campaign monthly fees
| even if we sent transactional sms, not campaign.
|
| I understand that it's not Twilio's fault, but they
| desperately need to hire some developer evangelists to write
| some documentation.
| mritun wrote:
| Good riddance. Businesses have zero reasons for sending me
| unsolicited texts - and any messages thread not initiated by
| the user is unsolicited.
| jaywalk wrote:
| What if the user "initiates the thread" by taking an explicit
| action on a website? The carrier has no way of knowing that,
| so what should they do? Just block everything? Not workable.
| Terr_ wrote:
| Yeah, gotta consider multi-modal interactions... and also
| there's no good way to pre-validate ownership of a phone
| number.
|
| So suppose Carol clicks "Contact Me Immediately Please" on
| a website and and enters her phone number... But--oops--
| there's a typo. Now Alice is going to get an "unsolicited"
| message even though literally everybody involved is
| operating in good faith.
|
| Even if someone is maliciously pretending to be Alice,
| neither the website nor the phone-carrier has a better
| malice-detecting tool than simply sending it and seeing if
| the recipient replies "STOP".
| foobarian wrote:
| I would settle for stronger sender authentication. Of
| course SS7 and all that...
| saltminer wrote:
| > Even if someone is maliciously pretending to be Alice,
| neither the website nor the phone-carrier has a better
| malice-detecting tool than simply sending it and seeing
| if the recipient replies "STOP".
|
| I sometimes wonder how many people use the STOP function.
| I'm more inclined to ignore it (if it's a one-off) or use
| the spam reporting feature than I am to reply "STOP" if I
| don't recognize the sender/campaign because of how jaded
| I've gotten from email. If you hit the "unsubscribe" link
| on a spam email, you only get more spam because you just
| confirmed the inbox is a) active, b) monitored, and c) is
| checked by someone willing to open and interact with spam
| messages.
|
| By the time SMS spam became common, I just assumed things
| would play out the same, and have probably reported
| plenty of legitimate mistypes to Verizon as spam. It just
| doesn't feel like it's worth the risk to directly
| respond.
| autoexec wrote:
| Considering how many times phones get hacked just by
| viewing a text message it's probably best to delete any
| texts from an unknown number unread. If you've got an
| iphone you're probably screwed the moment it hits your
| device, but at least you can _try_ to avoid interacting
| with what might be a "specially crafted text message" as
| much as possible.
|
| 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/22/s
| tagefrig...
|
| 2018 https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvakb3/inside-nso-
| group-spyw...
|
| 2019 https://www.wired.com/story/imessage-
| interactionless-hacks-g...
|
| 2020 https://macsecurity.net/view/458-imessage-zero-
| click-exploit...
|
| 2021 https://www.wired.com/story/apple-imessage-zero-
| click-hacks/
|
| 2023 https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2023/06/02/
| warning-...
| chrisweekly wrote:
| "phones get hacked just by viewing a text message....
| iphone you're probably screwed the moment it hits your
| device"
|
| IIRC, there was a ~recent (2023) iOS CVE that matched
| this description, and it got a TON of attention because
| it was such an anomaly. I'm not shilling for Apple, but
| want to understand your comment better.
| autoexec wrote:
| It was anything but an anomaly. I added these to my
| original comment for clarity, but I'll put them here too.
|
| 2016 https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/jul/22/s
| tagefrig...
|
| 2018 https://www.vice.com/en/article/qvakb3/inside-nso-
| group-spyw...
|
| 2019 https://www.wired.com/story/imessage-
| interactionless-hacks-g...
|
| 2020 https://macsecurity.net/view/458-imessage-zero-
| click-exploit...
|
| 2021 https://www.wired.com/story/apple-imessage-zero-
| click-hacks/
|
| 2023 https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2023/06/02/
| warning-...
| Spivak wrote:
| > The carrier has no way of knowing that.
|
| Let's do that then. Seems like it would be the best of all
| worlds. Click on "Sign up for text alerts" go through the
| OAuth flow and the user grants you the ability to text them
| (and importantly _revoke_ that privilege) they never learn
| your number and you can send messages directly via API and
| avoid the Twilio overhead. The carrier(s) set up strict
| rules for what kinds of messages you can send and how often
| and violating them means your app id getting pulled.
|
| God I wish we would just do this for email as well. Spam
| would just stop being an issue for 99% of cases.
| nico wrote:
| They ramped up blocking text messages for months before
| introducing a2p 10dlc
|
| They certainly haven't gotten rid of spam messages, but they
| still block a lot of fully compliant text messages
|
| Unfortunately, they could probably keep raising prices and
| companies would have no choice but to pay up
|
| That's because the wireless companies banded together and
| formed a cartel
| nradov wrote:
| The nature of the market makes it impossible to not have a
| cartel. The previous situation with a bunch of regional
| cellular providers building their own towers and establishing
| a patchwork of roaming agreements was clearly untenable due
| to customer demands for nationwide service and the enormous
| capital expense to build a 5G network.
| pwg wrote:
| > The main thing in mind that it did do is cause massive fees
| and restrictions for businesses to send text messages.
|
| I am fully in favor of businesses incurring "massive fees and
| restrictions" for sending text messages.
|
| The negligible cost of sending an email, resulting in the email
| SPAM problem, has indicated that doing otherwise will result in
| a massive flood of unwanted text messages for everyone.
| starik36 wrote:
| The problem is that they used a wide brush and made it next
| to impossible to have a hobby project that uses text
| messaging. My projects send maybe 3-4 text messages a week -
| to me - to notify me of stuff.
|
| Before you just pay $20 to Twilio and that's enough to send
| messages for years. Now you have to create a fake "business"
| entry with them, pay them monthly, etc... It's not a lot of
| money, but I just don't want to deal with yet another monthly
| bill.
|
| I basically switched to using my employer's Twilio account
| for personal stuff. They don't mind with my volume.
| lesuorac wrote:
| The legislation [1] is already enough to deal with email SPAM
| and by extension SMS. The problem is that phone & email
| companies conveniently have no way of knowing who sent the
| spam so you can't go after them.
|
| It's an authentication problem not a cost problem.
|
| [1]: https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/resources/can-
| spam-act...
| WarOnPrivacy wrote:
| > The main thing in mind that it did do is cause massive fees
| and restrictions for businesses to send text messages. The idea
| is this is to reduce spam. However it has fees
|
| This is The Campaign Registry.
|
| Every inch of it is a confusing mess. It mandates setup and
| subscription fees. Last I checked, registration usually took
| 4-10 days but can be much longer.
|
| The way the regulation reads, every business that uses A2P
| 10DLC (software-sent text) needs to be registered and pay
| recurring fees.
|
| The purported intent is to determine which mass mailed texts
| are allowed. In theory, all others would be flagged or
| blackholed.
|
| The way the regulation is written however, it captures _every_
| software-sent text. This includes situations like a tech
| support session where a technician texts a diagram to a
| customer. The regs don 't differentiate between this and actual
| mass mailing.
| HillRat wrote:
| Not totally sure this is eventually going to survive a Twiqbal
| appellate review, and even then it's hard for me to buy the
| judge's "first step" harm analysis here. I'd love to see the bar
| for private antitrust suits loosened up, but the fact pattern
| (Sprint was not a particularly stable company at time of
| purchase, and no one's alleging any kind of price-fixing,
| collusion, or monopoly of essential facilities) and legal
| framework in this case don't feel like a great opportunity to do
| so.
|
| In general, I'm skeptical that we should punish a company,
| especially one that isn't the largest player in the market, based
| on (pretextual IMO) actions taken (or not taken) by its
| competitors. I don't think the merger should have been approved,
| but once that bell is rung I think the standard for judicial
| intervention needs to be very high, and I don't think bare market
| forces apply.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| There is a better case against the airlines since like you
| said, Sprint was clearly about to go bust had the merger not
| happened, and there still would've been three cell phone
| companies.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Pre consolidation airlines were not any more stable than
| Sprint. Even now, JetBlue is about to get merged with Spirit.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| JetBlue and Spirit are both profitable.
|
| IIRC the deal is more about the fact that they share a
| common aircraft type, and Airbus' order backlog is measured
| in years.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| JetBlue and Spirit do not have profits in recent years:
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/JBLU/jetblue-
| airwa...
|
| https://www.macrotrends.net/stocks/charts/SAVE/spirit-
| airlin...
|
| I am not an expert in airlines, and I am sure there are
| COVID effects, but it seems like the other domestic
| airlines have bounced back quicker since they are showing
| profits.
|
| But more importantly, I remember Jetblue wanting to
| provide a better than average flying experience when the
| airline started, so I presume the only reason they would
| want to merge with Spirit, a company who does the exact
| opposite, is because they are facing financial headwinds.
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Plane availability.
|
| Jetblue and Spirit both have a strategy of lowering costs
| by only running one aircraft type, the Airbus A320
| family, which means that their pilots, flight attendants,
| mechanics, only need training on one type of aircraft and
| can be flexibly deployed, they only maintain one set of
| spare parts, etc.
|
| The Airbus order backlog is several years long. If you
| need planes earlier than that, your only recourse is to
| buy someone else's planes.
|
| ---
|
| FWIW, Q2 2023, JBLU reported highest quarterly net
| profit: https://simpleflying.com/jetblue-record-
| quarterly-revenues-q...
| atlasunshrugged wrote:
| That's the strategy that Southwest pioneered right?
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Southwest, Ryanair, EasyJet etc.
|
| At this point it is the bread and butter of a low cost
| carrier. JBLU originally started as one. Legacy carriers
| are more likely to get different types of planes for
| different missions, and pit the duopolists against each
| other to secure better pricing.
| blessedwhiskers wrote:
| JetBlue also has pretty limited landing slots on the west
| coast, and missed out on purchasing Virgin Atlantic to
| Alaska a few years ago, which would have allowed them to
| diversify more outside the eastern US.
|
| Spirit isn't a perfect match (different market segments),
| but otherwise they use the same model of aircraft and
| have some operational efficiencies. I'd hazard a guess
| Spirit's branding and low cost model will be tossed out
| in favor of JetBlue's operating model, and that segment
| of the market will be left to Frontier.
| cma wrote:
| > Sprint was clearly about to go bust had the merger not
| happened, and there still would've been three cell phone
| companies.
|
| Or alternatively, Sprint's shareholders would have been wiped
| out, and its creditors could have continued operating it
| after taking a loss on their loans, preserving competition in
| the cellular service market.
|
| My source is that they reported they were set to be cash flow
| positive (meaning profitable outside of servicing debt) in
| 2019:
|
| https://seekingalpha.com/news/3413933-sprint-cfo-sees-t-
| mobi...
|
| That still might have been untenable for their shareholders,
| but it is misleading to say the alternative was still three
| cellular service companies.
| paulddraper wrote:
| Or the creditors would have sold assets to TMobile anyway.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > I don't think the merger should have been approved, but once
| that bell is rung I think the standard for judicial
| intervention needs to be very high
|
| Why? What particular harm are you worried about here? If
| there's harm to market participants then why should the players
| be immune? Why is a merger approval so inviolate?
|
| > and I don't think bare market forces apply.
|
| Why _wouldn't_ they? What forces _would_ you invoke to achieve
| justice? Or are you saying that because it's too inconvenient,
| we have to ignore the harms?
|
| Market's don't exist for the benefit of companies. They exist
| for the benefit of citizens who both participate in them as
| consumers and as laborers. We wrote a lot of anti monopoly law
| for very good reasons, if shareholders are inconvenienced by
| having to unwind bad deals that shouldn't have been approved in
| the first place, I see no reason to afford them greater
| protection or deference than the fundamental participants of
| that market.
| sydbarrett74 wrote:
| Exactly. Companies should be the servants, not the masters,
| of civil society.
| danielmarkbruce wrote:
| You may want markets to exist for the benefit of citizens as
| labor and consumers only. But that's not an agreed upon
| position. If there is no benefit for humans as investors,
| markets won't exist. Companies are legal fictions created for
| humans as investors to pool their capital today and turn it
| into more capital for tomorrow.
| ClumsyPilot wrote:
| > If there is no benefit for humans as investors, markets
| won't exist.
|
| This is so breathtakingly wrong, that 'Earth is flat' is
| more accurate.
|
| Ten thousand years ago, before investors, central banks,
| before currency, before the concept of money, primitive
| people had Markets
|
| Primordial market consists only of two peope - labourer and
| a customer. I trade my sheep for your fish.
|
| Even in the modern day, many companies have no investors -
| for example limited partnerships.
|
| The idea that markets would disappear without investment
| reads like an attempt by the pope to take credit for
| creating the world in 3 days.
| paulddraper wrote:
| > Why?
|
| Because changing rulings is by itself a bad thing that harms
| economic predictability
| dangus wrote:
| Did prices go up adjusted for inflation? I don't think they did.
|
| The original iPhone plan didn't even have unlimited minutes (450
| + 5000 night and weekend) and only came with 200 texts, for $60
| in 2008 dollars ($90 today).
|
| The current T-Mobile "essentials" plan is $60 with no taxes/fees
| besides sales tax, and it comes with unlimited voice/text with
| 50GB of data before throttling.
|
| I don't have a history of every single plan ever, but I don't
| think T-Mobile ever offered an "unlimited everything" plan for
| less than $50 or so, pre or post-merger.
|
| If you include T-Mobile subsidies like Mint Mobile, there's an
| argument to be made that prices have dropped dramatically.
|
| The other truth is that Sprint was always cheaper because it was
| by far the least reliable and desirable carrier. Sprint had the
| lowest prices and the lowest nationwide subscriber count because
| their product was inferior.
|
| Instead of two great carriers (AT&T/Verizon), one okay carrier
| (T-Mobile), and one god-awful carrier (Sprint), now we have three
| great carriers where you are likely to be able to reliably choose
| any three regardless of where you live. That wasn't really the
| case pre-merger.
|
| And of course, there's a great argument for the fact that Sprint
| would have probably gone bankrupt and been liquidated without its
| merger.
| slaw wrote:
| T-Mobile offered unlimited everything for $100 for 4 lines
| before merge. Sprint had $25 unlimited bring your own device
| plan.
| withinboredom wrote:
| > Did prices go up adjusted for inflation?
|
| Under Sprint, I was paying ~$300 per month.
|
| > The other truth is that Sprint was always cheaper because it
| was by far the least reliable and desirable carrier.
|
| It depends on where in the country you were (or were traveling
| overseas). Google-fi was originally built on Sprint
| infrastructure and (IIRC) used the same overseas billing
| system.
|
| Traveling overseas with them was fantastic and inexpensive.
|
| > If you include T-Mobile subsidies like Mint Mobile, there's
| an argument to be made that prices have dropped dramatically.
|
| My costs per month (same plans, same everything), are now $485.
| The only thing that has changed is the "fees" I pay monthly. So
| yeah, costs have gone up to consumers, even for us who didn't
| change anything and were forced to switch to T-Mobile.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| I have had ATT's highest unlimited plan (even the new ones)
| since mid 2008, and my costs have increased maybe 20% since
| 2008. But now I also get unlimited phone usage in almost the
| entire Western hemisphere now, whereas before, even Canada
| and Mexico cost extra.
|
| For 6 lines, I paid $276 back in 2017, and it is $310 now, so
| in ~6 years, the price went up 12%. And some of that was
| increased taxes.
| synergy20 wrote:
| using mintmobile here and it's reasonably priced, albeit service
| is so-so, but it's slightly better than tracfone which is part of
| verizon now, its service is such a waste of time I had to switch.
|
| Why should I care about this merge, will it raise my price
| because of the merge? yes I'm a prepaid phone user.
| fancy_pantser wrote:
| As part of the merger, TMO added very cheap plans called
| "connect" from $10 to $35/mo with no contract, 5G, and the data
| limit grows annually. They did this to put regulators at ease
| about pricing.
|
| https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhones/Carriers/T-Mobile
| pkaye wrote:
| Mint Mobile uses the T-Mobile network. Did it cause your rates
| to go up after the merge?
| synergy20 wrote:
| new to mint mobile, for 5GB-data and unlimited call/text at
| $15 a month, no contract needed, I'm OK with that and it's
| actually cheaper than verizon's prepaid.
| bdcravens wrote:
| Laughable argument when inflation across the board has been 19%
| since 2020 when the merger was approved.
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| I'm not convinced that splitting up any of these wireless
| companies will better the end consumer. Spectrum is already in
| short supply, splitting up the already finite resource even more
| will lead to less bandwidth overall. There also is the capital
| cost of erecting more towers, more antennas for each of these
| companies.
|
| It's not as simple as "lets split them up and it will all get
| better".
| epylar wrote:
| how about one independent company owns the towers and
| wholesales bandwidth, and the brand names become
| resellers/customer service?
| smcin wrote:
| As has been commented, consumers [EDIT: non-rural] do not
| actually need or want 5G. 4G is adequate for most of their
| needs.
|
| 5G densities are for factory automation, self-driving cars,
| drones, sensors, superdense urban centers etc.
| JoshGlazebrook wrote:
| I'm a consumer that wants 5G. There are many rural consumers
| that make use of 5G based internet.
|
| And the 5G you are speaking of is mmwave. Mid-band 5G is
| perfectly useable and a significant improvement over LTE.
| Verizon and T-Mobile push over 1Gb/s over mid-band 5G at the
| same reach LTE provides and much less latency. mmwave you can
| get up to 4Gb/s (at short distances). Even more so when
| Verizon moves rolls out SA 5G in place of the current NSA 5G.
| partiallypro wrote:
| Speak for yourself, I want 5G. Also, I think you're
| conflating 5G as a whole with the variations like low-band,
| mid-band, and mmWave. 5G allows carriers to have more
| customers in a more compact area and give speed benefits.
| Have you never had just random drops out in a big city or a
| big concert with 4G? It's enraging. 5G helps fix that
| problem. 5G can also help people in rural areas that have no
| access to high-speed internet services, something T-Mobile
| has been pretty good at pushing.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| How about "The People" own the spectrum and infrastructure and
| rent it out.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| That is kind of what happens when licenses for the spectrum
| are auctioned.
| nosefurhairdo wrote:
| How do "the people" make informed decisions on how to
| maintain/improve the infrastructure?
|
| When you say "the people", you really mean the government.
| Out of curiosity, how does your customer experience with your
| cell provider compare to that of the DMV, IRS or any other
| government agency you may have had the pleasure of
| interacting with?
|
| The solution to insufficient competition should not be to
| remove all competition (which would be the case with
| government ownership).
| jdofaz wrote:
| They had a merger condition that resulted in "Connect by
| T-Mobile" and I went from paying $50 a month to $15 for roughly
| the same service.
| tbihl wrote:
| I have absolutely no idea what these guys are all talking
| about. 15 years ago, when I was considering buying a cell phone
| in high school, I was looking at $40/mo for calls and texts, no
| data, and all sorts of crazy roaming things. Now I pay $25/mo,
| get subsidized smart phones, price includes fees and taxes,
| 50GB of data across the 4 participants in my plan, weird random
| freebees, etc. etc. And I'm way less price-conscious now than I
| was then. This lawsuit complains about something that bears no
| relation to reality, AFAICT.
|
| Sounds like AT&T and Verizon people should go to T-Mobile if
| their service is so expensive.
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > Sounds like AT&T and Verizon people should go to T-Mobile
| if their service is so expensive.
|
| If T-Mobile works in their area (or for those with specialty
| phones, with their phone).
| mweidner wrote:
| Same here. There is even a new $10/mo variant that is still
| plenty for me.
| chmod775 wrote:
| That's how T-Mobile got into the US market in the first place -
| by buying and merging with (failing) network operators a dozen
| times over and fixing their operations. It's literally their
| thing.
| jkmcf wrote:
| I'm not sure why 1. Companies say they won't
| raise rates, or that rates will go down 2. People believe
| them
|
| Every year, employees expect raises -- at least a cost of living
| adjustment, and every year senior management gets huge bonuses
| and such.
|
| Prices for parts and labor for repairs and upgrades will
| increase, if only because these costs are additive -- things will
| break, new tech will need supporting, etc...
|
| The real question, IMO, is at what frequency do costs rise and by
| how much? Sure, I'd like to limit the amount of big money
| transfers to execs, but that's not really possible.
| ajkjk wrote:
| Well no _consumer_ believes them.
| akira2501 wrote:
| > 2. People believe them
|
| No one believes them. The court just uncritically accepts
| cockamamie arguments from "expert economists" without any input
| from the public at all, typically.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Attorneys for T-Mobile called the lawsuit
| "unprecedented," and said the plaintiffs' damages were
| "speculative." "If plaintiffs are unhappy with
| Verizon and AT&T, there is a remedy available in the highly
| competitive market that wireless consumers enjoy today -- they
| should switch to T-Mobile, not sue it," attorneys for T-Mobile
| told the court.
|
| Okay, chump. That sounds real competitive.
| Osiris wrote:
| An argument could be made here for removing all vertical
| integration in communication services. Whoever owns the
| infrastructure shouldn't also provide the service.
|
| They can wholesale out the infrastructure to service providers
| who then have a lower barrier to entry and increases competition.
|
| T-Mobile already has many wholesale providers like Mint Mobile
| that offer much lower rates than Tmobile directly.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| Tmobile owns Mint.
|
| >Whoever owns the infrastructure shouldn't also provide the
| service.
|
| How does it benefit people to have another entity with all of
| its costs in the chain literally just collecting rent?
|
| Tmobile/Verizon/ATT all use different brands like Mint for
| price segmentation, selling the spectrum at different prices to
| different populations. And they prioritize traffic based on how
| important the client is (typically related to how much they
| pay):
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QoS_Class_Identifier
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/tn4733/qci_leve...
| mixdup wrote:
| >An argument could be made here for removing all vertical
| integration in communication services. Whoever owns the
| infrastructure shouldn't also provide the service.
|
| This doesn't make sense as a universal maxim. It does make
| sense in certain contexts such as government-funded monopolies
| (the former Bell System) or government-funded expansion efforts
| (RDOF and BEAD expansion being funded by the United States and
| separately by the several states)
|
| And it also doesn't make sense at certain technological levels.
| Old telephone lines were a point-to-point set of wires from
| your house to some central point. Allowing competitors into
| that central point and using the single set of wires that were
| dedicated to you, the consumer was very clean and easy to do
|
| Unbundling shared media like coaxial lines or radio networks
| where all of the traffic is intermingled--at what point do you
| differentiate between the different providers? What are the
| different providers actually....providing?
|
| It's like the deregulated natural gas market in Georgia. The
| monopoly no longer serves customers directly, but they still
| own all the pipes in the ground. The 'marketers' buy gas and
| sell it to us, the consumers, but it's all put into the
| pipelines at the same place by the old monopoly. It's all just
| a financial shell game with provider A essentially redeeming so
| many cubic feet of gas into the system. It's fungible and
| there's effectively no differentiation between the providers,
| who all have exactly the same pricing, exactly the same
| contracts, exactly the same policies. Except now you have half
| a dozen CEOs, and HR departments, and IT departments, and
| billing systems all adding costs--costs that are now
| unregulated since it's "competitive"
| anonymouskimmer wrote:
| > An argument could be made here for removing all vertical
| integration in communication services. Whoever owns the
| infrastructure shouldn't also provide the service.
|
| What market forces would then incentivize infrastructure
| upgrades? To do this and still incentivize upgrades you'd need
| political mandates.
| tzs wrote:
| > But Verizon and AT&T customers are also pissed, and are part of
| a new lawsuit against T-Mobile arguing that the merger raised
| prices for everybody due to the reduction in overall wireless
| market competition.
|
| But did it reduce competition compared to where we'd be if there
| had not been a merger?
|
| Sprint was on the way out. They were likely to go bankrupt and
| have their assets sold off to AT&T or Verizon. The result would
| be 3 national carries (just like we got with the merger) but with
| T-Mobile a distant third.
|
| With the merger, T-Mobile got Sprint's spectrum and became much
| more viable to many more people as an alternative to Verizon and
| AT&T. T-Mobile is now the #2 carrier, a little bit ahead of AT&T.
| jboydyhacker wrote:
| If Sprint had gone bankrupt you would have had the same effect-
| the assets including licenses sold to Tmobile. That said, I
| don't think Sprint would have gone bankrupt but it def was
| underinvesting.
| AnthonyMouse wrote:
| If T-Mobile isn't allowed to buy Sprint then AT&T and Verizon
| shouldn't be allowed to buy their spectrum. There are any
| number of companies that would pay money for a cellular network
| and spectrum allocation, and those companies might have
| continued to operate a fourth carrier.
|
| For example, Sprint's assets could have been sold to Google
| (which already operates an MVNO), or Comcast, Cisco, Amazon,
| Samsung, etc. These are all companies that could afford to buy
| it, and doing so would complement their existing business, but
| they don't already operate a major wireless carrier and so
| wouldn't reduce competition.
| mschuster91 wrote:
| Starting up a mobile carrier is _insanely_ capital expensive.
| We 're seeing this here in Germany with 1&1 as a fourth
| provider - they got the licenses in 2019, but _still_ have no
| network of their own up and running, mostly due to issues
| getting Rakuten OpenRAN deployed, and even the network they
| 're planning will take years and years to get full coverage
| across Germany (they're planning on a roaming agreement with
| Vodafone for the meantime).
|
| Getting a fourth carrier established from scratch would be a
| serious financial challenge even for companies like Google
| and Apple.
| jboydyhacker wrote:
| Going from 4 large competitors to 3 has obviously hurt completion
| and led to higher prices. Americans tend to pay a lot more for
| their cell service- especially single lines than other countries.
|
| There are mitigating factors such as T-mobile becoming a much
| more potent competitor with the mid-band spectrum they got from
| Spectrum.
|
| The FCC hoped that Dish would step in to emerge as that 4th have
| not materialized. We need Dish or someone else to emerge as a
| major competitor.
|
| That said, I don't think reversing the merger is a viable option
| at this point. We really need a 4th national competitor to merge.
| Dish has potential but so far it's not made a dent.
| nikolay wrote:
| T-Mobile competes with at&t for being the worst carrier on the
| face of our planet!
| hoistbypetard wrote:
| I'm a long-time T-Mobile customer, and I believe, 100%, they're
| worse since the merger and it's probably at least in some measure
| related. The merger definitely didn't help me. Once I needed to
| make a change to my plan (and therefore could no longer remain
| grandfathered into my old plan) I was paying more for service
| that has not been as good.
|
| We've also got AT&T in our house, and it's far worse, even after
| the degradation of T-Mobile.
|
| I think if the premise behind this lawsuit is that the
| consolidation did the damage, though, the plaintiffs have quite a
| row to hoe. Sprint was circling the drain prior to the merger.
| Can they argue that Sprint just going away and having their
| assets (like spectrum licenses) sold off to satisfy creditors
| after they went bankrupt was healthier for competition? That
| seems highly speculative.
|
| I'm not sure what the solution is, and I don't think the merger
| was good, but I don't see that disallowing it would've improved
| this particular market.
| finleymedia wrote:
| "T-Mobile's reddit forums are filled with employees saying the
| disruptive spirit of the company has been dead since the merger."
| This argument has less to do with the merger and more to do with
| AT&T's 3 Billion in cash T-Mo (Deutsche Telekom) received when
| AT&T failed to buy them is now gone. It's a little easier to be
| disruptive when you are spending someone else's money.
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