Sprint T Mobile Merger approved

I am not too sure this is a bad thing. Neither T-Mobile nor Sprint was big enough separately to really scare Verizon or AT&T. Together they may be. Hopefully this will lead to better network coverage for both carriers, with prices staying competitive due to there still being three major carriers. We are currently a Sprint customer, but my coverage is not nearly as good as it was when I was with Verizon. We have friends with T-Mobile, and their phones do not even work in our house, and it's not as if we live in a rural area. I switched after retiring, as Sprint was substantially less expensive and I no longer was on-call 7x24x365. It's still frustrating to lose coverage in areas where I know Verizon works, though.

 

Ironically, this merger has allowed for more competition in my rural area. Prior to the proposed merger, there was Verizon and local mobile carrier Choice Wireless. In the last year or so, Spectrum has added mobile phone service (using Verizon's network) and T-Mobile has come to town to roll out their 5G service (where is Verizon's 5G?). To appease the FCC, T-Mobile was somewhat pressured to roll out 5G in rural areas to help the FCC get more high speed internet options in those areas.

So, where there was previously only two providers in town, now there are four. I'm not sure I see this as a bad thing....

Plus, Verizon slammed me into an Unlimited plan last month, and it took several hours on the phone to clear that up, and when the next billing cycle started, I suddenly had NO data in the bank, even though I was back on my old 2 Gb data plan. I called Verizon again to complain. They claimed it was a glitch in their system, where it was now taking a few extra days for data to be refilled at the beginning of a new cycle. I told the supervisor on the phone that I was getting fed up with all these issues caused by Verizon over the last two months, and that in another month I would qualify for T-Mobile's 55 and Over Unlimited plan which was the same price as what we were currently paying for Verizon's 2 GB plan, plus the fact that T-Mobile already had 5G available in my area. She offered me an additional 2 Gb of bonus data per month for the next 12 months at no charge to keep me as a customer. It worked.

I'd say competition is much better now thanks to the merger.

 

I agree, Todd. If the competition is big giant corporations, the only way to keep them honest is to have equally big giant corporations competing against them. A tiny mobile company with a small user base isn’t a threat to Verizon and can be ignored; another national behemoth vying for the same large customer base can’t be dismissed so easily.

 

Choice Wireless is a bit of a joke. Coverage only extends about 100 mile radius, and they are on their own network. Ironically, for the longest time, T-Mobile was sub-contracting with Choice, using Choice's network as a roaming partner. That partnership soured about five years ago, and just last year T-Mobile began offering 4G LTE service here in town, and we were part of their initial 5G rollout last month.