[HN Gopher] Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Compet...
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Sprint, T-Mobile Merger Killed Wireless Price Competition in U.S.
Author : rntn
Score : 251 points
Date : 2024-05-16 14:38 UTC (8 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.techdirt.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.techdirt.com)
| onlyrealcuzzo wrote:
| Ah, yes, that's what did it, not the reunification of Ma Bell.
| dehrmann wrote:
| We're in a better spot then with the AT&T monopoly because
| there are three viable carriers almost everywhere. The Baby
| Bells were local monopolies, and you had to get long distance
| service from the national monopoly. I never understood how
| people see that as a win.
| blihp wrote:
| The point being made is that AT&T should have never been
| allowed to reform itself as it did, probably along with
| numerous other acquisitions/mergers that the government
| approved that they should not have. There was a period of
| time late in the last century when many of us had numerous
| (i.e. 5-6) options for a while.
| vl wrote:
| AT&T we have now is not really related to this old evil
| AT&T. Actual company that uses this brand in mobile space
| is used to be called Cingular. They bought AT&T remains and
| promptly rebranded.
| dragonwriter wrote:
| > AT&T we have now is not really related to this old evil
| AT&T.
|
| Yes, it is.
|
| > Actual company that uses this brand in mobile space is
| used to be called Cingular.
|
| So, in the beginning there was AT&T, the telephone
| monopoly.
|
| It was broken up into 7 RBOCs (Regional Bell Operating
| Companies, also called "baby bells") providing local
| service (each of which got a corresponding chunk of the
| AT&T subsidiary doing mobile work as their own mobile
| subsidiary), and the reduced AT&T, which did long
| distance, and some other things. There were also two
| other local service providers (which, before the
| divestiture, weren't AT&T subsidiaries but did partial
| AT&T control.)
|
| The modern AT&T is the result of mergers of, among other
| things, the long-distance AT&T and 4 of the 7 baby bells.
| As part of the road to getting there, Cingular Wireless,
| which was formed as joint venture of two of the Baby
| Bells (SBC, which had already acquired Pacific Telesis,
| one of the other Baby Bells, and BellSouth) from their
| mobile units and other mobile and other firms (like, more
| than 100 in total), acquired AT&T _Wireless_ (not AT &T),
| which became part of Cingular (which was still an
| SBC/BellSouth joint venture)
|
| Then AT&T merged with SBC, making Cingular an
| AT&T/BellSouth joint venture. Then it was announced that
| the AT&T brand would be used for Cingular service when
| packaged with AT&T services. Then AT&T bought BellSouth,
| making Cingular an AT&T/AT&T joint venture...or, rather,
| just part of AT&T.
|
| So AT&T is the old long-distance AT&T after eating a
| bunch of other companies, but it's _also_ a very large
| portion of the older monopoly AT &T. Part of the wireless
| business was Cingular for a while between being AT&T
| before and then being AT&T again. (This leaves out a lot
| of mergers that went into forming the current AT&T that
| are not related to the claim that some company called
| Cingular that was completely unrelated to the old AT&T
| bought some minor remnant of AT&T and clothed itself with
| the name.)
| kbolino wrote:
| Verizon (originally Bell Atlantic)'s history is much the
| same. There's even some back and forth between it and
| what is now AT&T over who gets what of the RBOCs and
| their spinoffs/successors.
|
| Now, if Verizon and AT&T merge, then Ma Bell really will
| be back.
| voisin wrote:
| I'd love to see an economist tease apart the contribution of
| industry consolidation to inflation and wage suppression.
| jahewson wrote:
| Several have! There's no consensus on the relationship though.
| Some cases it does, some cases it doesn't. Unions are a big
| factor.
| exabrial wrote:
| DOE needs to stop approving mergers and acquisitions over $150
| mil or so. Every such merger: Facebook/Instagram, Google/Youtube,
| etc has been a disaster.
| nashashmi wrote:
| They were great investments for soon to be has beens. And
| helped the acquisition flourish too.
| robertlagrant wrote:
| Google and YouTube seems pretty good. YouTube is the most old
| school webby experience I have these days, although now in
| video form, now that the web web is so walled off.
| TeaBrain wrote:
| $150 million is way too low today. Nearly every small
| acquirable company will meet that threshold. I do think that a
| limit could possibly be set though for companies with
| significant market share in the same sector. The Sprint
| acquisition was over $20 billion. Exxon's acquisition of
| Pioneer last year was around $60 billion.
| bklyn11201 wrote:
| What do you think would happen to the venture-capital-funded
| tech ecosystem and the resulting tech salaries if this were to
| happen?
| exabrial wrote:
| The hope would be a vast increase in employers available
| rather than consolidation down to FAANG, increasing demand
| and driving salaries up.
| mavelikara wrote:
| > increasing demand and driving salaries up.
|
| Despite the demand, the revenue per employee for the
| company might be low, and those companies might not be able
| to pay high salaries to employees.
| zer00eyz wrote:
| do you know how easy it is to get to a million bucks a
| year in revenue? Do you know how easy it is to have that
| pass 50% margin? 75?
|
| If you know how to build a stack, and have a useful
| service finding people to pay 20 bucks a month for it is
| not that hard.
|
| 5000 users is a fairly low target...
| lolinder wrote:
| > Google/Youtube
|
| Just a reminder that Google purchased YouTube in _October 2006_
| , about 18 months after it launched. Google already owned
| YouTube when "Charlie Bit My Finger" went viral in 2007. Google
| owned YouTube _before_ they launched Chrome, back when they
| were still the heroes of the internet.
|
| There might be _some_ people who are still nostalgic for a pre-
| Google YouTube, but for most people the better times that they
| 're remembering were still part of the Google era. The
| acquisition didn't ruin YouTube, Google ruined YouTube about 10
| years later when Google as a whole pivoted for the worse.
| vl wrote:
| YouTube as we know it today is only possible with Google's
| acquisition. YouTube burned through literally billions of
| dollars for many years until it became profitable much later.
|
| Only likes of Google could have bankrolled it. Google did
| this intentionally to destroy all competition in the video
| space. Ultimately successfully.
| nceqs3 wrote:
| DOE? The Department of Energy?
| mikestew wrote:
| Department of Education. https://www.ed.gov
|
| I can only assume a typo in the comment.
| exabrial wrote:
| yeah, DOJ apologies
| jahewson wrote:
| "Let's just abolish capitalism". Seriously though, a world in
| which the government runs the economy and picks the winners is
| a bad one indeed.
| throwway120385 wrote:
| Where in the parent comment does it say that?
| coldpie wrote:
| Yeah. The FTC under the current admin has done more anti-merger
| work than in the entire rest of my lifetime. I intend to do my
| part to let them continue on that path this November.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| I will say, I'm not terribly fond of mergers on principle.
| However, based on my insight as a former customer and shareholder
| of the company, Sprint's goose was most definitely cooked to a
| crisp. If this merger had not happened, I could have seen Sprint
| file for bankruptcy, with Verizon and AT&T picking the carcass
| clean.
|
| I think folks forget how dire Sprint's straits were at the time,
| and this specific merger truly was the least of all evils.
| mchannon wrote:
| A Sprint bankruptcy may have been inevitable, but Verizon and
| AT&T would have been forced to steer clear (a failed merger
| having made that inevitable).
|
| The private market would have provided a bounty of suitors for
| Sprint if it couldn't recover from bankruptcy. It may have
| emerged in a far weaker fourth place, but it would still be
| around.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| The only other possible dark horse that could have emerged
| was either in US Cellular or Dish Network. However, I believe
| there were concerns with issues like market capitalization
| (in the case of US Cellular) or having different priorities
| (like Dish) that would have jeopardized a proper fourth
| option for the US.
|
| I'm not suggesting the merger was "good" or anything like
| that. Just that the other options seemed quite unlikely.
| derefr wrote:
| As a Canadian (so possibly biased here), my own hypothesis
| for what would happen if a sufficiently-large long-tail
| power vacuum emerged in the US cellular data market --
| either back then or today -- is that one of the major
| Canadian carriers would try to move in, beginning by
| serving cities just across the border from major Canadian
| cities.
|
| You could easily do cell-tower-maintenance truck-rolls from
| offices in Vancouver BC to towers in Seattle or Portland;
| from Toronto to Buffalo (or, less plausibly, to Chicago);
| or from Montreal to Boston. And that's only if they even
| bother to operate towers -- if they tried today, they could
| just as well operate as pure MVNOs.
|
| In fact, flagship plans on Canadian carriers today, already
| usually build in no-cost full-speed US roaming data access
| through partnership with US carriers operating on the same
| frequency bands. It's a very short distance from there to
| operating an MVNO atop the same carrier's network.
|
| (I would say that I'm surprised they haven't tried to do
| this already; but until recently, Canadian carriers were
| addicted to the extremely-high-profit-margin rate plans
| they built up through oligopolist price fixing. Our current
| government has seemingly broken that up for now, with much
| cheaper plans finally appearing -- so they might finally
| decide it's time to expand their TAM to stay profitable.)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Dish is already making a hash out of its mobile customers
| (Ting, etc)
| drewzero1 wrote:
| What's wrong with Ting?
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Have you been a customer lately?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| There is already a burgeoning dark horse competitor to the
| wireless companies: SpaceX. I believe within a few years
| Starlink will be a viable global wireless network.
| bogwog wrote:
| I don't follow this industry at all, so I'm out of the loop.
| Are you saying Sprint could not have possibly reversed course?
| (E.g. through pricing or even new leadership)
|
| Sometimes when companies are trying to merge, executives from
| both sides will come out and say it's "necessary" and push the
| narrative that one or both will go bankrupt without the merger.
| In cases where that strategy doesn't work it, unsurprisingly,
| turns out to be a lie. The companies will just keep competing
| and figure out a way to operating as usual. (I remember reading
| not-too-long-ago about an example of this exact thing, but
| don't remember what it was)
|
| So personally, I don't trust anything a business says when a
| merger is on the table.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| To be frank, I thought the merger was necessary at the time
| as a lowly shareholder, only a few dozen shares at best,
| based on what I could tell on financial reports. I really
| wanted Sprint to not be a complete mess and be strong again,
| but they made way too many boneheaded decisions back in the
| day and the chickens were coming home to roost.
| nradov wrote:
| Sprint could not have possibly reversed course because they
| had already wasted too much capital on a failed WiMax network
| and couldn't afford to build a competitive nationwide 5G
| network. Their options for raising more capital weren't
| looking good. New leadership or a different pricing model
| wouldn't have changed that reality.
| briffle wrote:
| if memory serves, Sprint had huge debts racked up from buying
| Nextel, as well as buying massive amounts of spectrum for
| WiMAX. They also purchased Clearwire. But WiMax never
| actually happened, everyone went to LTE, so sprint did as
| well.
|
| The main reason they were attractive to T-Mobile is that
| large amount of spectrum they owned, which was very valuble
| for 5G.
|
| https://www.rcrwireless.com/20160401/featured/worst-week-
| bol...
| sumoboy wrote:
| A huge costly mistake for Sprint trying to grow
| subscribers. Nextel's network was incompatible with
| Sprints, just a ton of business and technical issues.
| Sprint was always trying to be on the forefront of
| technology whether wireless or fiber. They spent a ton
| money on a project called ION that was last mile fiber to
| businesses, ahead of there time but a ton of costs actually
| laying down fiber doomed it. Poor timing for a lot of ideas
| and projects I saw. Source: ex-sprint emp.
| fooey wrote:
| Were they legitimately in financial straights? or was it the
| thing where they want to force regulators to allow the deal by
| blowing up their own company?
|
| For example, Albertsons is blatantly doing this so Kroger can
| acquire them.
| idontwantthis wrote:
| Is that why they are absurdly expensive compared to all of
| their competitors?
| fooey wrote:
| They're paying out an excessive dividend that completely
| empties their cash reserves and makes operating the company
| unsustainable
|
| https://www.opb.org/article/2022/11/12/oregon-ag-files-
| court...
| lupire wrote:
| Corporate bankruptcy is a scam. Any merger on auction
| should acquire existing debts, and execs should be a lien
| against wealth and future income.
| nradov wrote:
| What a ridiculous proposal. Eliminating corporate
| bankruptcy and making employees personally liable for
| business debts would wreck the US economy. If debtors
| take a haircut then it's their own fault for lending in
| the first place; no one is forced to buy corporate bonds
| and vendors always have the option of requiring cash on
| delivery.
| idontpost wrote:
| > making employees personally liable for business debts
| would wreck the US economy
|
| Letting employees loot the company for their own profit
| isn't any better.
| nradov wrote:
| Shareholders and lenders already have the necessary legal
| tools to prevent employee looting, if they choose to use
| them.
| hylaride wrote:
| Counter-argument, moneylenders shouldn't loan money to
| companies doing this. And secured lenders have their
| protections.
|
| Anyways, they knew the game. Bankruptcy auctions are
| essentially debtors recouping as many of their costs as
| possible before writing off the rest (further minimizing
| future taxes).
| intuitionist wrote:
| I don't have a real strong view on this specific
| situation one way or the other but it's relevant that the
| appeals courts pretty quickly threw out this suit and
| allowed Albertsons to pay the dividend.
| Aloha wrote:
| Yes, they consistently lost money from 2008-2019.
| tw04 wrote:
| What makes you think someone else wouldn't have picked up the
| pieces? Whether that be dish/comcast/google, or just some
| private equity.
|
| Being acquired by a competitor wasn't their only exit option,
| and pretty much anything else would've resulted in more
| competition.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| To be honest, I truly do not know all possible ends, as I'm
| not an oracle. Based on the information I had at the time, I
| felt that this merger was the best option out of all of the
| ones being explored at the time. I'm happy to have been wrong
| about this if they went a different direction and it worked
| out better, but history is history.
| bityard wrote:
| In an infinite universe of possibilities, you're right: a
| failing brand with a household name being acquired by a
| competitor is not the only possible outcome.
|
| But it is historically far and away the most likely one.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| Isn't that circular reasoning? Regulators have to allow the
| merger because other outcomes are unlikely, but they are
| unlikely because regulators always allow the merger. If the
| merger is blocked, the probability of that outcome falls to
| 0, and the others' increase, no?
| hylaride wrote:
| You're assuming anybody else would have wanted to acquire
| a debt-laden company with an enormous infrastructure
| deficit as they mismanaged the move to 4/5g. Sprint
| essentially was only valuable to a company with a better
| LTE/5G network already in existence that users could me
| moved to and then Sprint's old spectrum repurposed.
| Anyone else would have been left with many tens of
| billions in network upgrade costs.
| ElevenLathe wrote:
| If the merger was blocked and no one else wanted to buy
| it whole, then their assets would get sold off and the
| proceeds divied up by creditors (and if anything was left
| after that, to shareholders), same as any other company.
| Why is this an unthinkable scenario? There would have
| been _some_ market-clearing price for the Sprint brand
| name and CDMA network (possibly separately, or even the
| network itself parted out) and even if that price was
| zero, then it was the shareholders (and possibly
| creditors) who should have taken the bath, not the entire
| phone-using public.
|
| Allowing an anti-competitive merger simply because the
| alternatives for Sprint shareholders were bad is a
| bailout by any other name.
| hylaride wrote:
| The sprint shareholders already took a bath going from
| over $80/share in 2000 to $5. Hard bankruptcy and selling
| off its network would have been disruptive to their
| remaining customers, more complex/expensive to unwind
| (causing more of the money to go lawyers), and would
| still result in 1 less major carrier, resulting in
| essentially the same thing. The results would have most
| likely been most Sprint customers eventually being part
| of the other carriers anyways. If there was a market
| clearing price for sprint, a private equity firm would
| have snapped it up - that didn't happen because there was
| too much debt to go on as its own entity.
|
| Could things have been done differently? Sure. A
| condition of the merger could have been guaranteeing MVNO
| access or selling off a portion of the spectrum (maybe
| that happened).
|
| But T-Mobile, combined with Sprint, went from being a
| distant competitor in subscriber numbers competitive. If
| sprint was "sold off" separately, T-mobile would most
| likely eventually run out of steam and end up like
| Sprint. They just wouldn't have the number of subscribers
| to amortize costs down the way AT&T and Verizon could.
|
| Keeping struggling, small players going somehow would
| likely of only delayed the inevitable.
| samtheprogram wrote:
| Sprint had outdated technology w.r.t their infrastructure and
| cell towers, so an outside acquirer didn't make as much
| sense. It needed an existing player with more advanced
| infrastructure to take on the customer base, or a large
| investment in upgrading it's own infrastructure.
| hylaride wrote:
| Pretty much this. Sprint bet the farm several times on
| ultimately dead-end tech (CDMA, WiMAX) and were too focused
| on other things to get ahead of technical evolution. They
| ended up saddled with debt by the end of it, which hampered
| any ability to actually upgrade their networks (another
| poster already pointed out the technical issues with
| running LTE without UMTS). By the time of the merger, the
| only things of any value they had was the spectrum and
| customer base to be moved over.
|
| An external acquirer would almost have to build from
| scratch after absorbing all the legacy costs and run the
| risk of inheriting Sprint's bad business decision culture
| or spending an enormous sum building out a new team. Of
| course, they'd still have to support the old and new setups
| at the same time for awhile as the new stuff was built out.
| The ROI would have been decades at best.
|
| With a merger with another telecom, people can be migrated
| over already existing infrastructure (with some upgrades to
| deal with new traffic) and have sprint's old spectrum
| slowly merged into the existing infra.
|
| I'm oversimplifying of course, but one gets the idea.
| Aloha wrote:
| By the time they merged with T-Mobile, they had a fully
| modern LTE network - I know because I helped to deploy it.
|
| That never would have happened without Softbank buying them
| however.
| hedora wrote:
| The regulators could have forced the big four carriers (now
| three) into a common carrier model.
|
| In that setup, all cell providers would effectively be an MVNO,
| and the three (then, four) physical networks would be operated
| at arms length from the consumer facing side. Also, the four
| networks could be structured so that their financial incentives
| were to improve cell coverage and bandwidth instead of
| undermining each others' operations.
| kelnos wrote:
| That's kinda orthogonal to the merger deal, though, no? The
| government could do that today, if there was the political
| will to do so. Of course there isn't, though, and the merger
| (or lack thereof) didn't change that.
| issafram wrote:
| I mean Sprint was strictly CDMA, so that would be an issue on
| it's own.
| nradov wrote:
| Sprint had started as CDMA. They were in the process of
| building a 5G network but lacked the capital necessary for
| competitive nationwide coverage.
| Aloha wrote:
| They didnt start to build their LTE network until
| 2012-13.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| > I mean Sprint was strictly CDMA, so that would be an
| issue on it's own.
|
| How so? Sprint operated 4G LTE, which is a GSM technology
| (or alternatively, unified the two, depending on how you
| look at it).
| neelc wrote:
| The reality is, when a CDMA carrier deploys LTE without
| deploying UMTS, there are usually compatibility layers
| between CDMA and LTE such as CSFB and eHRPD for when
| VoLTE is absent. CDMA was never designed to interoperate
| with LTE as LTE was built around IMEIs and SIM cards but
| CDMA was built around burned-in ESNs and PRLs, so LTE
| support was hacked on.
|
| This is why Sprint and Verizon used whitelists: they
| literally couldn't accept GSM-only devices because you
| wouldn't be able to make a phone call (the phone would
| try UMTS but only the non-supported CDMA2000 can be used
| to actually call, so in turn no phone calls).
|
| Sprint went further by using the CDMA provisioning system
| on top of LTE instead of just using SIM cards and 3GPP
| provisioning like most GSM and CDMA carriers. This was a
| nightmare for custom ROM users like me as custom ROMs
| were designed for GSM carriers in mind and Sprint was at
| best an afterthought.
| Tyrannosaur wrote:
| I once got tossed out of a sprint store for pissing off a
| salesperson with this factoid.
| chimeracoder wrote:
| This is a story that's just begging for more detail
| Tyrannosaur wrote:
| Meh, I was a smart-alec kid there with my friend. The
| salesperson had to go get a sim card "for the LTE to
| work" and I said "oh right, because LTE is GSM and
| requires a sim". The salesman insisted Sprint didn't use
| GSM so I looked up the wikipedia page for LTE on one of
| their demo phones and started reading out loud "In
| telecommunications, long-term evolution (LTE) is a
| standard for wireless broadband communication for mobile
| devices and data terminals, based on the GSM/EDGE and
| UMTS/HSPA standards."
|
| That's when the salesman told me to leave.
| lagniappe wrote:
| Sprint also had Wimax
| https://www.rvmobileinternet.com/farewell-wimax-sprints-
| orig...
| Aloha wrote:
| CDMA, from an RF performance perspective regularly
| outperformed GSM, but as is noted downthread, the
| provisioning/auth system was inherited from AMPS/D-AMPS,
| CDMA2000 with a GSM network core would have been amazing.
|
| Which, tbh, is exactly what LTE is.
| aiauthoritydev wrote:
| The best way to resolve these issues is never "force the bad
| guys to do good things" but rather destroy the walls which
| enable their rent seeking.
|
| Regulators can work to make it extremely simple for new techs
| in this space to come up so there is real competition for ATT
| etc.
| pjc50 wrote:
| Regulators cannot magic spectrum into existence.
| babypuncher wrote:
| The problem is that there is finite spectrum available. The
| upfront cost of building a national cellular network are
| also astronomical, regardless of regulatory hurdles.
|
| The FCC was created to manage the scarcity inherent to the
| radio spectrum. It's not an area where regular free market
| economics apply. GP's proposal would actually make it
| easier for startups to horn in on the territory of the big
| established players, since the underlying infrastructure
| would effectively be socialized.
| specialist wrote:
| Out of curiosity: What are some examples of "regular free
| markets"?
| chrisco255 wrote:
| There are finite amounts of everything. Free market
| economics solve this problem all the time. There are
| finite amounts of food, land, energy, shelter, human
| resources, etc. The problem isn't that spectrum is
| finite, it's that there is no way to prevent
| interference.
|
| It's questionable if the FCC is really optimal though.
| There are huge amounts of spectrum still devoted to dying
| industries like AM/FM radio and broadcast television.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| We the People should own infrastructure. Want to start a
| new shipping company to compete with UPS? You don't have to
| build roads, We the People provide those to you. So, do the
| same with wireless.
| JumpCrisscross wrote:
| > _We the People should own infrastructure_
|
| Going 4 to 3 sucked, let's go all the way to a state
| monopoly!
| dTal wrote:
| It didn't suck for the shareholders of the remaining 3.
| With a state monopoly, we'd _all_ be shareholders. Win!
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Right, because we only have one single shipping company
| using all the roads...
| trinsic2 wrote:
| This is the biggest solution to the problem that many
| people seem to ignore. If you want your communities to
| prosper, then the public needs to own the infrastructure
| that companies provide services for. Full stop.
|
| Anything less is giving companies control over something
| they should not have control over.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| I think there's an argument to be had on 'owned by the
| public, but operated by private industry.'
|
| Another on 'built by private industry, but owned by the
| public.'
|
| Government ownership isn't a panacea and has historically
| faultered when faced with innovative and expert
| requirements.
|
| But I do think anything that trends towards monopoly
| makes sense as 'let the public own the simplest level,
| exposed via standards, and innovation happen above and/or
| below that.'
| aiauthoritydev wrote:
| Nothing prevents you from working with liked minded
| individuals to create your own "infra". The phrase "we
| the people" sounds cool but in reality what you mean is
| "your money, my idea".
|
| Roads is a very common argument, but none of the roads
| are build by "we the people". Government takes your money
| by force irrespective of how you think it should be spent
| and then a completely unaccountable red tapy system that
| employs otherwise unemployable people decides how to
| spend it. After a massive waste you have some roads which
| are poorly built even worse maintained.
|
| There is no need for roads to be public infrastructure.
| It can be fully privatized and people be asked to pay for
| its use. (While entire compontent of taxes that go
| towards road building be returned back to the people.)
|
| We will have better roads, less traffic and more money in
| pocket with that model.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| > Government takes your money by force
|
| Oh good grief.
|
| > We will have better roads, less traffic and more money
| in pocket with that model.
|
| I call bullshit.
| nerdbert wrote:
| > There is no need for roads to be public infrastructure.
| It can be fully privatized and people be asked to pay for
| its use. (While entire compontent of taxes that go
| towards road building be returned back to the people.) We
| will have better roads, less traffic and more money in
| pocket with that model.
|
| As evidenced by the many successful and popular real-
| world cases where it's played out exactly this way. For
| example, um, uh...
| nradov wrote:
| That's a terrible idea. If the government owned wireless
| infrastructure then we'd still be stuck with 1G analog
| service. Competition between private cellular carriers is
| the primary factor driving innovation.
| kbolino wrote:
| There is no "We the People". There is a government, or
| really layers of government, composed largely of
| politicians and bureaucrats. Whether those people running
| the cellular network is good or not ought to be assessed
| on what actually exists or is reasonably possible, not
| appeals to vague abstractions.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| And yet even with all that infrastructure, the market has
| coalesced around 3-5 shipping companies for vast majority
| of consumer shipments.
| cyberax wrote:
| > The best way to resolve these issues is never "force the
| bad guys to do good things" but rather destroy the walls
| which enable their rent seeking.
|
| The walls here are defined by physics. There's only so much
| spectrum to go around.
|
| You can't have more than 3-4 large cell phone operators
| working in the same area. Decoupling the radio part and
| forcing everyone to play as MVNOs is a way to work around
| this.
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Or as I once heard by way of explanation: the capacity of
| an early analog cellular ~30km AMPS cell was ~60
| simultaneous calls.
|
| Modern protocols do magic things with spectrum
| efficiency, but there's only so much you can do.
| lxgr wrote:
| > If this merger had not happened, I could have seen Sprint
| file for bankruptcy, with Verizon and AT&T picking the carcass
| clean.
|
| This situation seems extremely similar to the failed
| Spirit/Jetblue acquisition [1].
|
| [1]
| https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2024-03-04/jetblue-a...
| goda90 wrote:
| That's what's going to happen with US Cellular:
| https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2024/05/report-t-mobile-...
| Benjammer wrote:
| >Sprint's goose was most definitely cooked
|
| The reason their goose was cooked is because they previously
| were planning to acquire T Mobile, but SoftBank got back-
| channel info that it would never be approved by the anti-trust
| regulators. At the time they had Marcelo Claure running Sprint,
| basically a corporate "fixer" guy for SoftBank. So he ran the
| company into the dirt in order to make the merge feasible to
| regulators (e.g. - Sprint purchased a 33% stake in Tidal, the
| music streaming service. Or how they entered a partnership with
| bankrupt RadioShack after it got scooped up by PE, and decided
| it was a good idea to take over all the physical RadioShack
| locations and turn them into Sprint stores).
|
| "Oh, whatever shall we do, our company is failing, you MUST let
| us merge with one of our primary competitors or we'll go
| bankrupt. No company at all is worse for consumers than a
| merged company."
| cherioo wrote:
| How is ruining and destroying the value of Sprint, that
| SoftBank owns, possibly good for SoftBank?
|
| What is SoftBank to gain here from enriching TMobile?
| georgeecollins wrote:
| I don't know if the OP post is true-- or partly true-- but
| to explain how it might be good for SoftBank: This was an
| all share deal, so sandbagging the value of Sprint shares
| so you can merge with TMobile could be good in the long run
| because you own shares in the new entity which has much
| less competition.
| dralley wrote:
| I'm not sure if SoftBank deserves the credit of assuming
| that their actions are based on sound logical reasoning.
| Benjammer wrote:
| They want to spend whatever billions it costs to
| consolidate the industry and then reap the monopolized
| profits down the road.
| Aloha wrote:
| I don't think that materially really had anything to do with
| it.
|
| Sprint was dying - with extraordinarily high debt, in 2007,
| well before Softbank bought them, and indeed they lost money
| every year from 2008 forward -
| https://www.statista.com/statistics/481739/sprint-
| corporatio...
|
| The Merger with Nextel managed to kill what was great about
| Nextel, and what was good about Sprint, and they lost
| customers in droves (mostly former Nextel ones). In reality
| Sprint bought Nextel's OAM equipment and their customers, and
| moved all the legacy Sprint customers onto the surviving
| billing and network management platforms (Nextel). The iDEN
| turndown also lost even more customers, most of whom who
| realized they didnt need PTToC after all (which is too bad,
| because on dedicated CDMA hardware, it worked really great).
|
| Then they needed to start rolling out LTE (Network Vision) -
| and NV didnt start in earnest until 2012/13 - and as someone
| who was on the field end of it, was very very very poorly
| managed. Sprint some years prior had outsourced all their
| engineering expertise to Ericsson, which means they had no
| one in house with any knowledge. They only realized that 18
| months in, and then scrambled to get people back from
| Ericsson (who I will note, they did not contract any of the
| deployment management to).
|
| I only know this because I was in the middle of the
| deployment as a field resource in Seattle.
|
| My guess is only half the sites in the network (in Seattle
| Market) had enough customers to pay their fixed costs.
|
| I concluded while I worked there that there was no way for
| four carriers to be viable, there isnt enough spectrum
| allocated, and you pay the same fixed costs over and over
| again.
|
| I'll go further, Sprint had a massive switch facility for the
| LD operations with room for like 4 DMS250's in Tacoma, but
| that's not where they put the SPCS 5ESS, that was in Kirkland
| in a rented building (and interestingly enough, it's still
| part of T-Mobiles operations today), there was also another
| Motorola iDEN switch also in Kirkland.
|
| Post merger they never really made any effort to reduce their
| fixed costs (sites, switching centers, et al), because that
| would have cost money - they also got bled dry by having to
| foot the entire bill for rebanding the SMR band, which was on
| the order of 2.5 billion dollars. They did close stores (and
| RS was a major outlet for Sprint Sales, before it went belly
| up) which contributed to problems later.
|
| So I don't know where you got your info, but I think its
| hooey - before Softbank bought Sprint, they didn't have the
| capital to upgrade their 2G/3G network to LTE, much less
| consider a merger with T-Mobile.
| ericcumbee wrote:
| and then there was also the Wimax debacle. Sprint had
| invested pretty heavily in Wimax being their future network
| before they realized this wasnt going to work.
| malfist wrote:
| I got bit by the wimax nonsense as a consumer. I had a 4G
| HTC flagship phone on sprint and it was awesome. Then
| when I went and upgraded my phone a few years later to
| another HTC flagship phone, also with 4G, I was very
| confused why I could only use 3G.
|
| The first phone was labeled 4G and second one was 4G LTE,
| which sprint didn't have in my area. I had been using
| wimax.
|
| I switched to Verizon not too long after that so I could
| have 4G again
| Aloha wrote:
| Wimax actually did work great in practical terms even if
| the clearwire network was made out of compressed spit.
|
| All of them - all the CW sites, were under provisioned
| for backhaul.
| Benjammer wrote:
| >before Softbank bought Sprint, they didn't have the
| capital to upgrade their 2G/3G network to LTE, much less
| consider a merger with T-Mobile.
|
| I think both of us can be right at the same time though.
| Just because they had problems before the SoftBank
| acquisition as well doesn't necessarily make what I'm
| saying unreasonable. There was still sentiment in 2013 when
| SB closed the deal that regulators would not have approved
| of Sprint acquiring T Mobile [0], despite the struggles
| going on at Sprint at the time (that you describe). Sprint
| was definitely putting together a bid to acquire T Mobile,
| WSJ reported on it [1].
|
| As you yourself said, Sprint was _dying_ at the time of the
| SB acquisition, but as far as large firms go, they were far
| from bankrupt yet. SoftBank simply twisted the dagger and
| then presented the corpse to congress instead of the dying
| patient.
|
| [0] https://www.theverge.com/2014/2/4/5376824/fcc-chief-
| reported...
|
| [1] https://www.wsj.com/articles/SB100014240527023032936045
| 79256...
| Aloha wrote:
| I remember saying at one point to my operations manager
| at Ericsson, "how does anyone make money in this
| business?" he laughed and said "I have no idea".
|
| I cannot explain how poorly managed Sprint was, it'd take
| me an essay to just explain the various dysfunctions I
| saw there.
|
| That said, it did improve some once Softbank bought them.
| andy800 wrote:
| Sprint went all-in on WiMax as it's 4G network. I owned an
| early Sprint 4G smartphone (made by HTC) and the 4G _never_
| worked. I would go to the Sprint store and ask to show me a
| signal with 4G turned on, and they would always blame
| congestion, or weather, or some other made-up excuse.
| TheAmazingRace wrote:
| I think the only place I knew where WiMAX actually worked
| properly was in Japan.
| unsignedint wrote:
| Was it more about the device than the network? I used
| mobile WiMax from Clear for years until it ended its
| service. For what it was, it worked great. It wasn't
| necessarily a speed demon, but it was reliable. I used it
| to avoid public WiFi congestion, as a backup when my home
| network was down, and in 'bring your own infrastructure'
| situations.
| ganoushoreilly wrote:
| I had a clear hotspot puck in the DMV area, worked well
| most of the time. I don't think I had any issues with
| price paid vs performance given the current state of tech
| at the time. I think targeting homes was just a hard
| battle, FIOS and others were really ramping up their
| initial push into fiber and it was just not going to
| compete sadly.
| andy800 wrote:
| That's possible but it was a Sprint-branded device bought
| from Sprint that was clearly supposed to be compatible
| with its new 4G network. And they charged an extra $10 4G
| access fee every month!
|
| The other bonus was that being a CDMA device, there was
| no connectivity when traveling internationally, and no
| option to buy a local SIM card. Wifi only.
| TallTales wrote:
| Yeah it depends on the market you were in. I helped build
| the WiMax network but it was built very quickly and in
| places it was built by people who didn't care very much.
|
| It was all microwave back hauled so rain fade in stormy
| weather was absolutely a thing. Most of those were FCC
| licensed or should have been but I know of at least 1
| market where they just never filed the paperwork to get
| the licenses and built it anyway.
| explorigin wrote:
| Let's not forget the amazing Palm Pre that was released 18
| months too late. If it could have been released on time, it
| might have done much to save Sprint. But by the time it was
| released it was merely competitive instead of compelling.
| chrisco255 wrote:
| Radio Shack was a major retail channel for Sprint since the
| 90s. By the mid-00s, I would wager most of Radio Shack's
| gross profit came from wireless retail. They were already
| more or less Sprint stores with some overpriced PCs and
| stereos by then.
| Benjammer wrote:
| Why would it be a prudent move to take on the corporate
| real estate costs associated with RS if it was already a
| profitable retail channel? What does that change other than
| increasing overhead for Sprint? And if RS was working, why
| would converting them to solely cell phone stores make
| things any better?
| ethbr1 wrote:
| Because the choice presumably wasn't {Radio Shack
| business-as-usual} vs {acquire Radio Shack stores}, but
| rather {Radio Shack disappears as a retail entity and
| channel for Sprint} vs {acquire Radio Shack stores}.
| TallTales wrote:
| I'm a former engineer at Sprint and I strongly disagree with
| this characterization. Sprint's goose was cooked but it was
| due to debt from selling junk bonds to build Network Vision
| at the time of the original LTE rollout. Their credit was
| ruined by that point from 30+ years of absolutely terrible
| and corrupt c-suite executives.
|
| Marcello has a lot of faults but he didn't run Sprint into
| the ground. He is actually pretty smart and at that time we
| cut over a billion dollars out of the operating budget circa
| 2016/2017 iirc. It was an impossible position and it's really
| sad because it was a great old company in my estimation.
| T-Mobile is just the worst.
| afavour wrote:
| I believe you but I also think there was a third path
| available... wasn't Dish going to buy them at some point, or
| something like that? Sprint were in dire straits but plenty of
| their core businesses seemed viable if placed in competent
| hands.
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Sprint was cooked for one specific reason: parent company QWEST
| refused to do the prism-split of fiber cables into secret NSA
| colocation rooms like AT&T did.
| tomohawk wrote:
| Hmmm - interesting!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Nacchio
|
| EDIT: more info here:
| https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2007/10/qwest-ceo-nsa-
| punished...
| Aloha wrote:
| Qwest never owned Sprint.
| Aloha wrote:
| You're spot on, I posted a long comment downthread elsewhere,
| but you're 100% correct here.
|
| Sprint lost money basically every year after they merged with
| Nextel (having to pay for rebanding was part of it).
| paul7986 wrote:
| Dish network the supposed new 4th wireless carrier's goose is
| being cooked now and i bet will file for bankruptcy in the next
| year or so. Satellite pay TV is a dying to dead industry.
| leeoniya wrote:
| and they acquired Mint, which almost certainly means my $30/mo
| prepaid plan will disappear soon.
| stevenicr wrote:
| Really sad to see the got Mint.. Cheers for the people that
| profited, but I feel this is a more serious blow than the
| sprint takeover.
| nerdkid93 wrote:
| Check out US Mobile. They follow a similar ethos of prepaid
| plan, but you don't necessarily even need to sign up for months
| at a time like Mint.
| rqtwteye wrote:
| I just switched to US Mobile and so far it looks very good.
| You can even choose between Verizon and GSM networks.
| hersko wrote:
| +1 for US Mobile. Very happy with them.
| tiltowait wrote:
| T-Mobile was the worst, most incompetent company I have had the
| displeasure of working with in recent years. I fled to Mint. To
| say I'm chuffed by that acquisition is an understatement.
| bagels wrote:
| I'm confused by this. You don't like T-Mobile, but you're
| happy you'll be returning?
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Long ago I had a T-mobile prepaid plan that had the wrong
| caller ID info. They claimed it couldn't be fixed because
| it was prepaid and they were unable to properly manage
| those accounts. Mint has been much better and will remain
| cheaper for now.
| n00bskoolbus wrote:
| Wait so are you really happy they got acquired? Or does
| chuffed mean something else in the states?
| dangus wrote:
| I think it was sarcasm...or just the word being misused.
| accrual wrote:
| I don't know how long it will last, but Mint advised their
| rates were staying the same.
|
| https://www.cnet.com/tech/mobile/t-mobile-closes-mint-mobile...
| meragrin_ wrote:
| Really? In 2018, a voice only family plan was more than twice
| than a voice, text, and data plan I have today. Mind you, it just
| went down $10/month a few months ago so it isn't like all the
| price drops happened years ago.
| yuliyp wrote:
| I'm struggling to feel the lack of price competition here in the
| US. It feels like mobile service has continually improved over
| time with fairly constant competition from MVNOs serving to
| experiment with different pricing models, as bandwidth has
| continued to be deployed.
|
| T-Mobile needed that Sprint merger to remain a viable nationwide
| competitor to Verizon and AT&T, and now they've done that.
| toast0 wrote:
| Post merger I went from a $25/month t-mobile plan to a $15/month
| t-mobile plan. Not entirely apples to apples, but close.
|
| My spouse went from $30/month to $25/month on Verizon for more
| data.
|
| And there's lots of options at https://prepaidcompare.net/
| Schnitz wrote:
| Prepaid sounds great unless you ever want roaming, it's either
| straight up not possible or priced in a way that makes it
| impractical.
| throwaway5959 wrote:
| I've been on prepaid since at least 2015 and never have had a
| problem with roaming in the US.
| bt3 wrote:
| Data-only global eSims are super cheap. Having done a lot of
| international travel lately, this is undoubtedly the best way
| to go.
|
| Cheaper and better coverage too.
| hedora wrote:
| Also, things like iMessage, FaceTime and Signal definitely
| work with those sims. Not sure about "wifi" calling or SMS
| with your home country's plan though.
| johnkpaul wrote:
| Where would you recommend someone find one of these? Do
| they expire, or could I get one to cover years worth of
| travel? Thanks!
| walterbell wrote:
| Eskimo has a 2y global SIM, excluding a handful of
| countries, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40382377
| therealcamino wrote:
| I've used the Airalo app to buy data-only eSims in
| multiple regions, and they have global ones also. I would
| guess it's not as cheap as you'd get if you waited to buy
| from local providers in arrival, but it's very
| convenient.
| ciabattabread wrote:
| What keeps me on a postpaid plan is that I like not having to
| worry about my phone plan when I go abroad on vacation.
| soylentcola wrote:
| Haven't done that in a year and a half, but when I spent a
| few weeks out of the country it was a simple matter of
| buying a $30 prepaid SIM from a vending machine at the
| airport and having more data than I had time to use.
| Honestly, no contracts or carrier locks has always made it
| easier to deal with travel compared to friends who
| occasionally have issues just swapping SIMs.
| ndiddy wrote:
| Unfortunately, the increasing prevalence of eSIMs in new
| phones makes temporarily switching to a foreign carrier
| far more inconvenient than "just buy a SIM at a vending
| machine".
| hedora wrote:
| The last time I traveled to Europe, I got an eSim for
| like $20, and they emailed it to me. I had coverage
| before the plane taxied.
| nickpp wrote:
| iPhones (and probably Androids too) support up to 10
| eSIMs with 2 active at the same time, if I'm not
| mistaken. And you can buy data eSIMs before even leaving
| the country in an app like Airalo.
| therealcamino wrote:
| Yes, it's much easier to buy ahead of time in the app and
| have it automatically activate upon arrival, instead of
| having to find a kiosk in the airport.
| tssva wrote:
| The increased prevalence of eSIMs has made using a
| foreign carrier easier than ever. You don't even need to
| find a vending machine or store. You can purchase your
| eSIM online before you even get to your destination.
| alistairSH wrote:
| How so? I have my US number on an eSIM. If I went abroad,
| the hardware slot is available. Or, pretty sure I can
| just add a second eSIM, no?
| toast0 wrote:
| I had international roaming on the $25/month tmobile prepaid,
| but if I'm saving ~$8/month (25/month was all in, 15/month
| charges taxes), I can figure something out if I need it if I
| leave the states.
|
| My two work trips a long time ago, I managed to get prepaid
| sims abroad that worked enough.
|
| Pretty much nobody offers meaningful domestic roaming
| anymore, no matter the cost, so while I'd love that, I'd need
| a dual sim, dual active phone to approximate it, and I don't
| care about dead zones near me enough to do it. But my spouse
| and I are on different networks, so if we're both somewhere
| we rarely both have no coverage.
| res0nat0r wrote:
| I'm looking to switch to Visible here soon after being on
| Google Fi for many years. Just looks like a cheaper rebranded
| Verizon to me, and has all the features I would need for a
| cheap price.
|
| https://www.visible.com/
| whodev wrote:
| I moved from T-Mobile to Visible, and my SO from AT&T to
| Visible. It was well worth it, we now pay $80 combined with
| unlimited 5G (incl. cellular for our watches) and have had
| no issues. We've been to concerts (Taylor Swift) and never
| had any issues with our connection. So far, this was a
| great choice.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Visible is really good, only reason not to use them is when
| you have to travel internationally a lot.
| sgerenser wrote:
| I switched away from Visible to US Mobile due to
| deprioritization. I believe they now offer a non-
| deprioritized plan for $40/mo though, but U.S. mobile is
| less expensive for a non-deprio plan.
| Alupis wrote:
| On Visible, your first 50GB of mobile data are not
| deprioritized.
|
| Some people use a lot of mobile data - but I'm on my
| phone all day/night for business and pleasure, watch a
| lot of video content etc, but usually am within Wifi
| range of my home or office. I struggle to use more than
| 6GB of mobile data per month...
|
| Before switching to Visible, I worried _a lot_ about
| prioritization etc. After switching from Verizon (proper)
| - > Visible, and I can honestly say I haven't noticed any
| difference in performance. My bill is significantly lower
| though, which I do enjoy.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Looks like that's only on the nicer plan?
| Alupis wrote:
| Looks like you're right. I pay $35 a month for my line -
| there's some $10 monthly credit they applied to my
| account. With their annual payment option, it's $33
| monthly.
| tssva wrote:
| The new yearly Visible+ plan has 50GB of non-
| deprioritized data a month, not that I ever really had an
| issue on the normal Visible plan, free calling in Canada
| and Mexico, 2GB of data a day in Canada and Mexico,
| double the tethering speed and a free global pass per
| month. It is $395 which works out to $32.92 per month.
| jdeibele wrote:
| I use Mint Mobile because it's cheap and has been reliable
| for my family.
|
| A couple of months ago, I traveled to Belize with my iPhone
| 14 Pro, which only has eSIM. The websites for the two local
| companies said that I could buy them at a local store but
| none of the stores at the airport sold eSIMs or SIM.
|
| Mint Mobile offered me 10GB of data for $40/week. Plus fees,
| as it turned out, so total of $42 or $43. I took it because I
| couldn't find a local solution and it was only about $20
| difference.
|
| I was happy with the service. My wife uses prepaid Verizon
| and it was $10/day for their service in Belize which is more
| in line with what I was expecting. We ended up never feeling
| like we needed to turn it on.
|
| Half of the time we were in the mountains where there wasn't
| any cell service so I only ended up using about 1GB of
| cellular and the rest the resort's WiFi there. But it was
| nice to be able to search on the road for restaurants, coffee
| stops, etc.
|
| On a trip to Croatia and Italy a few years ago, the situation
| for local SIMs was confusing enough that I ended up not using
| any cell service, just downloading maps from Google Maps in
| offline mode from the hotel WiFi. Worked great with just GPS
| but only for places I'd pre-selected - no searching for
| anything.
| asah wrote:
| Google Fi plus wifi calling or whatsapp/zoom/etc.
| candiddevmike wrote:
| The problem with MVNOs, at least that I'm noticing as a Google
| Fi subscriber, is I believe MVNOs are deprioritized. In a
| congested area, folks who have direct service with Verizon or
| T-Mobile seem to have better reception and bandwidth than I do.
| bearjaws wrote:
| Google Fi is not deprioritized AFAIK and it's been discussed
| in the MVNO subreddit a bit.
|
| That being said, most ARE and they are damn near unusable now
| in places that are growing.
|
| Here in Orlando, Mint mobile can't even stream Spotify if you
| are stuck in traffic, that's how bad it has gotten. Forget
| being downtown or at an event of any kind.
|
| I use Google fi specifically because its not lower priority.
| dragontamer wrote:
| Are you using a Google Pixel 6/7/8 ?
|
| Its widely accepted that Google Pixel's radio is weaker than
| the competition. Google stopped using Qualcomm chipsets on
| Google Pixel 6. (Or the last time Google used a Qualcomm
| radio in its phones was in Pixel 5 generation).
|
| I'm sure Google is working on making its radio better, but it
| still a shame that of all the things they decided to cut to
| make it cheaper / hit the $600 pricepoint (instead of the
| $800+ flagship tier) is... the radio.
|
| On the other hand, I hear that Qualcomm is basically raising
| prices behind the scenes, which is what's causing all of this
| in the first place.
| rs999gti wrote:
| I have a Pixel 7 Pro, the mobile connectivity is hot trash.
| wyldfire wrote:
| > Qualcomm is basically raising prices behind the scenes
|
| > it still a shame that of all the things they decided to
| cut to make it cheaper / hit the $600 pricepoint (instead
| of the $800+ flagship tier) is... the radio.
|
| If it's truly a shame that they went to a lower-performing
| competitor then maybe Qualcomm thinks that their modem is
| worth more than they were charging because they provide a
| superior product.
| dangus wrote:
| Bingo. They do. Apple bought Intel's modem unit but they
| still use Qualcomm modems.
|
| https://www.theverge.com/2023/9/21/23883565/apple-5g-mode
| m-f...
| callalex wrote:
| True but it's unclear how much the performance difference
| is from Qualcomm delivering value vs. Qualcomm destroying
| competitors' value through blatant patent trolling.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Having a better product and charging more for it very
| quickly becomes overcharging in a market that has such
| limited competition.
|
| Their premium was very very likely already plenty.
| sgerenser wrote:
| MVNOs are definitely often deprioritized, as I experienced
| with Visible wireless where I'd often have no data access
| despite having 2-3 bars of service. Switched a year or two
| ago to US Mobile which is apparently one of the few that is
| _not_ deprioritized on the Verizon network (bizarrely as long
| as your phone is 5G capable, even when only using 4G). So
| there 's options out there without paying $70/mo for Verizon
| postpaid.
| codydh wrote:
| I believe if you get the higher-priced Visible plan
| (Visible+), you have higher/equivalent to postpaid
| priority. I switched to this plan a year ago from Verizon,
| in an area where being deprioritized on any of the carriers
| means it's useless much of the day, and it's been great.
| tssva wrote:
| Visible is 100% owned by Verizon and therefore technically
| not a MVNO. I use Visible and my wife is on Verizon. Her
| service is provided through her employer. Sometimes she has
| better data than I do and sometimes I have better data. For
| instance during a recent trip to Puerto Rico she struggled
| to receive reliable data and I had no issues. Don't think
| it has anything to do with prioritization. I recently
| upgraded to the yearly Visible+ plan since I added an Apple
| Watch and will be traveling to Vancouver frequently in the
| next year. It includes 50GB of Verizon premium tier data
| and then you fall back to whatever prioritization normal
| Visible has. It also includes 2GB a day in Canada and
| Mexico along with Apple Watch service. $395 for the year
| which is around $32.92 a month.
| peter_l_downs wrote:
| For anyone wondering, voice/data on Visible's entry-level
| $25/mo plan is deprioritized in times of congestion, and
| their $45/mo plan is not. Hotspot usage is throttled on
| both, differently. You can read the full details on their
| plans page [0] by pressing the "Get all the details"
| buttons.
|
| Visible $25/mo:
|
| > Typical 4G LTE & 5G download speeds are 9-149 Mbps. Video
| streams in SD. In times of traffic, your data may be
| temporarily slower than other traffic.
|
| > Visible includes mobile hotspot with unlimited data at
| speeds up to 5 Mbps. Video streams in SD. While more than 1
| device may be connected to your Hotspot at one time, a
| single connected device will experience optimal speeds.
| Performance will be reduced if multiple devices access data
| through the Hotspot simultaneously. Actual data speed,
| availability and coverage will vary based on device
| capabilities, usage, your location and network
| availability. Service is not available while roaming.
|
| Visible $45/mo:
|
| > Visible+ gives you unlimited premium data on Verizon's 5G
| Ultra Wideband network, the fastest 5G network access we
| offer -- up to 10X faster than median 4G LTE speeds.
| Premium data means no data slowdowns due to prioritization.
| Download apps, games, entire playlists and TV series in
| seconds.
|
| > Visible+ also gives you 50 GB/mo of premium data on
| Verizon's award-winning 5G & 4G LTE networks when 5G Ultra
| Wideband is unavailable. Premium data means no data
| slowdowns due to prioritization.
|
| > Typical 4G LTE & 5G download speeds are 9-149Mbps. Video
| streams in SD. After 50 GB, in times of traffic, your data
| may be temporarily slower than other traffic.
|
| [0] https://www.visible.com/plans/
| codydh wrote:
| There's a good guide to the prioritization (QCI) of various
| carriers here: https://www.reddit.com/r/NoContract/comments/o
| aophe/data_pri...
| afavour wrote:
| It feels crazy-making to me that information like this only
| exists in Reddit threads. Prioritization is, IMO, a totally
| valid way to price differentiate. But it should be clearly
| stated when you're buying in the same way GB data limits
| are.
| lotsofpulp wrote:
| There's different levels of priority within the same mobile
| networks, at all of them. MVNOs are just a price
| discrimination tool. It's all the same electromagnetic waves
| being sold at different price points and priorities.
|
| ATT just increased their higher priced consumer plan by $7
| per month.
| zitterbewegung wrote:
| I buy service from this company that is a MVNO and is a
| prioritized cellular company :
| https://xcapeinc.com/mvnovoice.html
|
| You aren't going to get service that is cheap but they do
| offer things like static IPs and peering.
| mattgreenrocks wrote:
| Not all MVNOs are deprioritized. Many are, but the Reddit
| thread mentioned in a sibling comment outlines it well.
|
| Been with Verizon Wireless for 20 years. Got sick of how
| expensive their entry level 5G plan was with deprioritized
| data. Switched to US Mobile a few months ago. Half the price
| month-to-month, good prioritized data pool (35GB), and 5G UW
| access.
| havaloc wrote:
| The US Mobile CEO is active on their subreddit and is
| attempting interesting things, such as allowing you to port
| between 2 major carriers (and soon all 3) up to 8 times a
| month as needed, and a beta of dual carrier coverage at a
| reduced price.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/USMobile/
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/USMobile/comments/1bl7qf4/hey_you_
| y...
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/USMobile/comments/1cjn4qa/launchin
| g...
| newhotelowner wrote:
| Plus International calling is included, and adding
| cheap/free/included international roaming.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Mint is part of T-mobile now so it shouldn't be deprioritized
| any more.
| KingFelix wrote:
| Stetson Dogge has created an awesome tool here - It's a crazy
| breakdown similar to the site you linked but with a bit more
|
| https://airtable.com/appQ7TstG5Wn17FjY/shrraH105YVJQF2Yr/tbl...
|
| and he made a website comparison as well
|
| https://www.bestphoneplans.net/
| aidenn0 wrote:
| Nice; doesn't include my MVNO (Ting) though.
| silisili wrote:
| I went from a $15/mo Mint plan to a $0/mo Dish plan. So, worked
| for me I guess?
| joshstrange wrote:
| I wish there was an equivalent of https://prepaidcompare.net/
| for IoT.
|
| I had to scour a bunch of different providers and often
| call/email for pricing to put together a list of options in a
| spreadsheet. I needed cellular service for iPads but they are
| only used a handful of times a year (normally <50MB each) and
| Verizon/T-Mobile/AT&T all wanted something like $30/mo per iPad
| (every month). Even their "IoT" plans with pooled data wanted
| an absurd per-device fee every month.
|
| I finally settled on SimpleX [0] which has been working very
| well though I wish their API was a little nicer. I pay an
| upfront fee ($3) for each eSIM then, based on the plan I
| picked, I pay $0.04/MB and $0.25/device/mo. I wanted a lower
| per-device per-month fee for a higher per-MB fee. They have
| other plans where the MB cost is cheaper and you pay more per
| month. If I ever get to the point where I'm using the iPads
| more frequently then maybe it will be worth switching to one of
| those plans but as it is I pay <$100 per event I do for all my
| data which I'm very happy with (42 iPads).
|
| [0] https://simplexwireless.com
| smm11 wrote:
| Mint, or at least some time back.
| hersko wrote:
| Anecdotally, i'm now paying far less then I used to for wireless
| service. $26/month on verizon's network for two lines through US
| mobile.
| RIMR wrote:
| The only bright side to the merger was that T-Mobile inherited
| Sprint's permanent contract with Mobile Citizen, and now
| nonprofits can get extremely low prices on uncapped, unthrottled
| 5G hotspots from T-Mobile, something you can't get as a normal
| consumer. Before the merger, you were stuck with Sprint's not-so-
| great network, but after the merger you end up with all of
| T-Mobile's coverage and speeds exceeding 1gbps in some urban
| areas.
|
| If you meet certain income requirements, you can get one from one
| of Mobile Citizen's resellers (such as PC's for People) for
| around $15/month.
|
| Or, for like $400-500/year you can get one through the Calyx
| Institute as a "gift" for donors.
|
| There's no getting out of this contract either. It's part of a
| deal Sprint made when they took over $1B in taxpayer money to
| build out their LTE infrastructure. This is how they pay it back
| - forever.
|
| If you needed something to help swing the pendulum back towards
| the consumer, still, the merger wasn't good for wireless
| competition in the U.S.
| ComputerGuru wrote:
| How would one secure one or more of these for a non-profit?
|
| Thinking redundancy for current AT&T fiber hookup for the admin
| staff and voip gateway.
| toasted-subs wrote:
| Maybe why I'm having so much difficulty working
| treis wrote:
| Am I missing something or is there no actual evidence in the
| article that proves the title?
|
| All I can see is a comparison between countries. Which is pretty
| weak evidence in general and definitely doesn't show anything
| about what happened in the US after the merger.
| mrosett wrote:
| Does this article actually provide evidence for the headline
| claim?
| DataDive wrote:
| Did it kill price competition?
|
| My anecdotal observation is that there are more cheap phone plans
| now than, say, five years ago.
| brink wrote:
| Same. I can get an unlimited prepaid plan at $25/mo on AT&T. I
| remember unlimited plans being like $70 when Sprint was around.
| ensignavenger wrote:
| It is hard to imagine mobile prices for a national network the
| size of the US. I pay less than $30 per month total for 3 lines.
| maybe it would be cheaper if the Sprint/TMobile merger never
| happened, but the adticle doesn't seem to present any hard
| evidence.
| maxsilver wrote:
| How exactly are you doing that? The average price of a
| standard-feature line (i.e., not a MVNO with strict
| deprioritization) is approximately $70 USD a month (including
| taxes and fees, but not including any phone subsidy or
| equipment plans)
|
| Even a strict hyper-cut-down MVNO (say something like Mint
| Mobile) is still about $20 a month per line on average, for
| their cheapest plan. And T-Mobile acquired Mint, so it's
| pricing will almost certainly rise in a year or two. (T-Mobile
| did the same thing to Metro when it acquired their network +
| subscribers, prices were doubled after a few years)
| ensignavenger wrote:
| US Mobile, an MVNO, I am on the Verizon network as they have
| slightly better coverage in the outskirts around me. I have
| never had any trouble with deprioritization.
| aiauthoritydev wrote:
| Mobile scene in USA is much improved than 10 years ago in my
| opinion. ATT/Verizon were too expensive and T-Mobile despite that
| poor service made a big difference. Google Fi has been my fav
| though as it gives me basic connectivity when I am abroad and
| cheap international calling to countries I care about.
| Animats wrote:
| Four. As in a European study, price competition requires four
| significant competitors.[1] This should be a basic rule of
| antitrust regulation.
|
| [1] https://www.techdirt.com/2024/05/16/report-sprint-t-
| mobile-m...
| CodeWriter23 wrote:
| Meh. Go with Consumer Cellular or other discount MVNO. Plenty of
| competition at that strata.
| nikolay wrote:
| Absolutely! T-Mobile started to increase prices with their newer
| plans, which offer less for more.
| paul7986 wrote:
| T-mobile for years and still is cheaper then ATT & i assume
| Verizon. I was paying $165 for 4 unlimited lines with mobile
| hotspot. Now with T-Mobile same level of svc is $130 a month. Its
| up in the air tho if the service is a reliable and good as AT&T
| as i do have issues with T-mobile .. echoes heard on calls, calls
| not going thru/just dropping instead of connecting and no service
| at all where i previously had it with ATT (in southern york
| county pa by MD line).
| ApolloFortyNine wrote:
| The graph they chose to use in the article has to be one of the
| main poster childs for 'correlation does not mean causation'.
|
| I don't know what's worse, not adjusting for purchasing power, or
| not adjusting for country size.
|
| Also targeting 100GB screams 'writer had an agenda' to me. My
| screen on time is absolutely atrocious and I still rarely get
| over 20gb a month. I'm guessing the stats must change if you
| choose a number that fits in most plans defaults.
| dragontamer wrote:
| I use 2GB a month and I thought I was a doom-scroller...
|
| I guess 2GB of text / forums / newspapers is very different
| from like, Netflix every day on the phone though.
| endo_bunker wrote:
| This is full of central-planning nonsense. He wants lower prices,
| but is also mad when the company does layoffs. US consumers
| probably have some of the highest if not the highest demand for
| mobile data in the world, and the cost of living is already
| higher regardless, yet he acts shocked that American consumers
| pay more for mobile data.
|
| Not to mention the fact that I pay $15 for a very reasonable Mint
| mobile plan that would probably suffice for upwards of 80% of
| American consumers.
| ummonk wrote:
| I agree with your general point.
|
| However, we don't have particularly high mobile data usage.
| Countries with subscribers that use mobile to the exclusion of
| broadband (e.g. India) have higher mobile data usage per
| subscriber.
| icedchai wrote:
| Yep, you can get cheap plans like that through T-Mobile MVNOs
| or even their own prepaid plan. I'm generally near wifi all the
| time. A couple gigs of data a month is fine for me.
| EVa5I7bHFq9mnYK wrote:
| Prices were always high in the US, before and after that merger.
| I think part of it is due to the low intelligence of an average
| US consumer, who wants to have his iphone "for free" with the
| contract, and is unable to calculate the real price he is paying.
| walterbell wrote:
| A government condition of the merger was that T-Mobile had to
| offer low-cost prepaid plans without an MVNO. The program is
| called T-Mobile Connect, https://clark.com/cell-phones/connect-
| by-t-mobile/ & https://coveragecritic.com/t-mobile-connect-
| review/ & https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/connect/phone-plans
|
| Monthly price for USA-only unlimited talk/text + 5G/LTE data, is
| $15/5GB, $25/8GB, $35/12GB + taxes/fees.
|
| Outside USA, T-Mobile pSIM Wi-Fi call/text continues to work with
| cellular/eSIM data from 2nd line.
|
| Eskimo has 2y ("global", excluding Argentina, Brazil, Chile,
| Qatar, Maldives, Morocco, Oman, Portugal, Singapore, South
| Africa) and 1y (regional) data eSIMs for about $4/GB,
| https://www.eskimo.travel
| nashashmi wrote:
| Might be a change of guards that is causing this
| https://www.reddit.com/r/tmobile/comments/17tl1du/why_is_mik...
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