T-Mobile and Sprint are merging
 

I am trying to get some work done, put pages are refusing to load. As far as I know it is the server and there is not anything that I could do. I decided to load Fox News while I was waiting just because people decide they are angry when Fox News comes up.

To be honest, browsing their home page was annoying, but whatever. This is the only headline that interested me. "The merger will create more new jobs than T-Mobile and Sprint would separately, the two companies said in a press release." https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/...all-stock-deal

Has that ever happened in the history of mergers? Don't they always lay off redundant positions--in the case of Albertson's and Safeway, all of the competent Safeway staff probably responsible for the company being profitable?

Don't blame Fox, this is from T-Mobile.com: "Combination Will Create Thousands of American Jobs and Boost U.S. Economic Growth." https://newsroom.t-mobile.com/news-a...s/5gforall.htm

Who knows?

This is the interesting part. They don't decide to be angry, they decide they already are angry?

I am sure they would claim Fox News makes them angry. Is that like making my friend ink?

That assumes they take greater market share away from their competitors, in which case, they didn't create jobs, they just shifted workers from other companies over to their own.

I'm not sure where this is going. Sprint uses the CDMA protocol and T-Mobile uses GSM. Sprint had previously bought Nextel and the lower bandwidth frequencies they owned. I would guess they will own the broadest spectrum of the radio frequencies with this move, and compatible phones would be international roaming capable due to GSM.

I wonder if Google Project Fi was an early sign of the merger considering the collaboration between Sprint / T-Mobile and Google? Nexus phones have had the capability to connect to either network for years.

At some point there's no more competitors to gobble up.

....and then SpaceX nukes them on price with broadband HTML from low Earth orbit.

There are always MVNOs to compete against. I've had my wife on various ones since I've known her.

I put my parents on an MVNO beginning about 7 years ago. I've got experience with Republic Wireless, Ting, FreedomPop, RingPlus, Straight Talk, and Project Fi.

On the Project Fi plan, the total for unlimited talk / text on the Sprint / T-Mobile network for 3 people is $55 / month. Data is $1 / 100 MB, which is pricey, but they hardly use data considering how ubiquitous WiFi is.

I'm of two minds on this:

As long as TMO is in charge, it seems like a good thing, because TMO has basically been the driving force behind the move to no-contract, no overages, cheaper data, and breaking the "rent" cost of your phone out of your bill. The combination of the two will be much closer in size (and the ability to compete, hopefully) with ATT/Verizon.

But it will also be sad there are only 3 players left in the market. Easier to collude, the lower than number is.

We'll see, I guess.

Sam

I read Verizon customers liked having contracts, but Verizon took them away anyway. I pay just as much as before, but now I need to come up with the money for a new phone when mine breaks.

https://entertainment.slashdot.org/s...buy-tv-service

How much are you paying per month for cell service? Have you explored the MVNO options?

Bundling the cost of phones into the monthly payment insulates the customer from feeling the burden of cost, which contributes to higher overall costs. It's why healthcare is so expensive, because the outrageous costs are bundled into the monthly premium and distributed over the course of your entire life.

Good used phones can be had for $200 or less, and you can always finance one on a credit card, or make due with an older spare phone until you save enough for the one you want.

My point is, bundling isn't a great service offered to consumers, rather a tool of deception unwitting consumers partake in.

Meh. My household is a heavy user with multiple roommates and video streaming. 60 Mbps is fine. It's the upload speed which always sucks, and which is never disclosed in ANY literature. I challenge any person to find out what the improved upload speeds will be.

There's something to be said about good old-fashioned copper-wire dialup!!!

That it is bad?

Before: $50 a month and free phone every two years.
Now: $50 a month and a $200 "good" phone I find on my own.

How am I saved from myself?

Part of the reason that I took the full-time school job was because the local service provider snuck in a household data limit. Instead of figuring out who was downloading too much and telling them to cut back, the landlord raised everyone's rent. Allegedly they were also giving us twice as fast a connection, but we needed to ask when it became effective because, not only did we not observe it working better, it still worked poorly.

Apparently the provider up here also has a limit, but instead of being a terabyte, it is only 350 GB, and I still do not know how we hit it. I have been watching "Psych" using data because that is unlimited, although it will probably slow down at some point.

I was trying to find actual news about the teacher strike here and someone posted that the Tempe city council held a vote on creating a municipal 100GB fiber optic system. However, the poster did not link to anything, and all that I found was a brief mention on the city's website stating they considered renting space in the city's conduits for providers to run lines and increase competition.

The poster claimed the deciding no vote was a councilwoman who said "We don't need it, we already have a 100GB system."
"That is only for traffic lights."
"We still do not need it because [the local monopoly] says so."

Brilliant.

When I had a job I often left my phone at home. When I did bring it I rarely used it, but if someone needed to reach me, they had other methods, and they usually used those. My supervisor would not text me from across the room, she sent me e-mails!

The only place with reliable wifi is home, but that has a limit. Only Verizon works here, the last place that I lived, and somewhere I lived before that. It took a while to find out which bargain providers use the Verizon network: https://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2375644,00.asp

I will reevaluate my needs when I actually start working.

I'm not saying you specifically will benefit from decoupling phones from the monthly bill, but that the overall market is better served by reflecting the full price of the phone rather than hiding it in a fancy financing program (FFP, I just invented the acronym).

My guess is the attractive MVNO pricing has reduced market share for plans that bundle phones into the monthly cost, as few people will tolerate $75 monthly bills anymore. There is also the cost you pay by remaining a "loyal" customer by way of rate creep, or in your case, losing the "free" phone.

If you're going to stream video on mobile networks, you're going to spend more for the plan, plain and simple. Voice, text, and most browsing poses little burden on the wireless infrastructure, but video is a much bigger burden.

The only way I exceeded the data cap imposed by CenturyLink was back when I had a 20 device phone farm running video ads 24/7. Never had a problem after that, even with roommates streaming Netflix, etc.

If I were a landlord, I'd probably discuss the issue with the tenants to see if overall they would limit their use, or would rather pay more for a higher tier of service. That said, what people say they will do and what they actually do are often different, so just passing the added cost to the renters is simpler.

I'm paying all utilities including internet for my tenants and monitoring costs. If they get outside of reasonable usage, I will pass that cost on to them. I've got better renters than most.

Pay to receive [direct marketing] calls? I think not.

If I dropped back from 1.5Mbps DSL I could save ~$7 a month.
I tried cell phones a wireless modem. When I asked about the ambiguous literature they invoked the sales manager who assured my down and up were the same speed. (LIES)

I used to regularly meet with Sprint reps on behalf of the company I worked for and insisted at least 1 of those reps be a technical sales rep. What's the point of a non-technical sales rep? If I wanted lies, I could just tell them to myself.

It frustrates me to no end that there is even a place for non-technical sales reps in society.

Ask that sales manager to state it in writing with his signature at the bottom.

DSL used to be $9.99 around here, good luck finding DSL, let alone $9.99

I guess my $4.99 dialup isn’t a bad deal after all


Funny thing is Sprint had a bring your own free unlimited data plan for a year with no contract and I mean free, you paid no monthly bill

I guess this merger and the free plan make more sense now.

I couldn't agree more. I meet with sales reps fairly often, but the ones we do a lot of business with give us terrific customer service with technical knowledge.

...then there's that one guy with, probably a great product, who doesn't know his ass from his elbow.

We've had FAR FAR more computer DSL drop-outs and outages than we've EVER had problems with copper-wire telephone. Loose power and computer/modem stops...and so does the "digital phone."

This is finally moving forward? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vI4nq_sXYfk

YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook are merging.

The company is to be called “YouTwitFace”.

Judge approves $26 billion merger of T-Mobile and Sprint
 

Dependent on the Republic of California:
CNBC

Would the company be called Sprint, or T-mobile?

I expect they will have the best network after the merger, especially if their phones can do voice over the low frequency Nextel bands. I remember being surprised to get a push to talk call on my Nextel while out in the middle of nowhere Peru 10 years ago.

Probably T-Mobile, since they are bigger, and Sprint will only get smaller.

They also mentioned Dish Network trying to start their own cell phone service and a U.S. district judge ruled that Sprint might go bankrupt otherwise. Also:
So, T-Mobile would eat Sprint, but Dish Network would create its own cell phone provider.
Do you think they will buy the old Sprint stores?

Dish should go away and be replaced by the Tesla low orbit mesh providing 1 data connection for all household data needs.

I don't care about 5G, and I doubt many others do either. That said, I'm just about always wrong about these things. What, do people need to stream 8k video on their 6" cell phone screens?

People always want more. Maybe it is my phone, but there are a number of dead spots near my clients (like fifteen miles around any reservation), and I do not always have a great signal in-town. I would rather they filled in gaps before they let me use my phone to stream 4k video for my 43" television.

The CDMA / GSM distinction went away with LTE which uses a new protocol. Mobile providers are quickly killing off old 2G / 3G networks so they can reuse the spectrum for LTE and 5G

• Verizon completely killed their 2G / 3G CDMA network at the end of 2019
• AT&T killed their 2G network at the end of 2016 and will kill 3G at the end of 2021
• T-Mobile started sunsetting 2G and 3G in 2016 and says 90% of their traffic is LTE today.
• No word on Sprint but I suspect their CDMA will be going away with the merger with T-Mobile.

As I understand it Google Fi is mostly WIFI calling and voice over LTE. I've had good luck with Fi internationally but have never used it in the USA.

Here I have a company provided phone with a global AT&T plan. My wife is on AT&T prepaid paying $25 a month for unlimited talk and text + 8G of data that works in the US, Canada and Mexico. (Paid a year at a time to get that price) Before that we were on Cricket for quite awhile and a whole bunch of MVNOs.

There's a lot of confusion with cellular terminology. CDMA is a technique (code division) to allow multiple users to share the same frequency, whereas GSM is a protocol, and utilizes a different technique, TDMA (time division) to share the same frequency.

4G is a benchmark throughput (1 gbps stationary). It doesn't define a protocol or frequency sharing technique as far as I can tell. There's no definition I can find of what method of multiple access it must use. CDMA still might be used to achieve 4G

5G seems ambiguous except that it can include shorter wavelength frequencies and potential for higher bandwidth. I don't see any benchmarks to qualify something as 5G.

For LTE if your phone has the correct band it will work on the network as long as you have service. When LTE first came out carriers used it for data and legacy 2G / 3G CDMA and GSM networks for voice. With Voice over LTE technology those old networks are no longer required.


Here is a good summary: https://www.whistleout.com/CellPhone...cies-explained

From that: "In terms of their relevance to 3G and 4G LTE bands and frequencies, the thing to know is that CDMA and GSM only use 3G technology. So the CDMA vs. GSM discussion is really a 3G discussion."


I was incorrect on Verizon's sunset date. They had said since 2016 that they were shutting down CDMA at the end of 2019. They seem to have changed their mind and are allowing current customers a longer grace period but stopped activating new CDMA phones in 2018 but will keep the CDMA alive until the end of 2020 for retail customers. Enterprise customers get a longer grace period and Verizon will serve them until December 2022

https://www.lightreading.com/mobile/.../d/d-id/753147
https://dmp.com/2019/5/22/Key_Dates_...twork_Shutdown