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T-Mobile's Mega-merger with Sprint Can Move Forward, Justice Department Says
@Lewis: In my opinion, the merger will bring economy of scale into play. I think the consumer will benefit having another player that can compete with the eight pound gorillas VZ, and T. Regards, Ted
I've heard that the big 3 will now control 95% of the US cell phone market. Does anyone here use any of the other providers such as Cricket, Boost, Consumer Cellular or other? If so what has been your experience? Thank you.
@Mark- given the huge allocation of physical resources, and of course the monetary requirements of funding such a national network, I have to wonder if providers such as the ones you mention actually are alternative systems (physically), or do those "providers" simply lease bandwidth from the big three?
I've heard that the big 3 will now control 95% of the US cell phone market. Does anyone here use any of the other providers such as Cricket, Boost, Consumer Cellular or other? If so what has been your experience? Thank you.
Mobile Virtual Network Operators, or MVNOs such as the ones you mention operate over the Big 4's networks, as OJ speculated. Sometimes they're even owned by the "real" network, such as Metro PCS (recently rebranded as Metro by T-Mobile). T-Mobile acquired it in 2013.
Will prices for wireless service go up? Probably - but it's not that simple. Will my wireless service quality improve? For Sprint customers, maybe. It remains unclear whether customer support quality will get better or worse after the merger.
Mobile Virtual Network Operators, h'mm? I like that "virtual" part. Kind of like the way I divide my large hard drives into "virtual" drives. What's in a name, anyway?
MVNOs use the same towers/networks as the big players they lease from, with a few differences:
- they get lower network priority compared to paying/pre-paid customers, esp during congestion
- they may not have the same domestic network roaming agreements in place as you might get on a pre-paid Big Three account so you could find more deadzones and/or face roaming charges
MVNOs are fine for budget conscious folks ... I've used them myself over the years. I'e been on TMo prepaid since 2010 and love them, and hope the service/customer services doesn't get infected with Sprint's rot during the merger.
Comments
Regards,
Ted
@Old_Joe My understanding is all of these alternative providers use the networks of the bigger players.
Here's a list of the major MVNOs: https://bestmvno.com/mvnos/
And a couple of columns from MyMoneyBlog on cheap phone plans (starting at $1/mo) and cheap talk/data plans (starting at $15/mo), over MVNOs:
https://www.mymoneyblog.com/list-of-cheap-basic-prepaid-cell-phone-plans-under-10-a-month.html
https://www.mymoneyblog.com/lesser-known-cheap-data-cell-plans.html
The NYTimes has an analysis of the merger that tends to agree with Lewis - dubious benefits and expected price increases:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/26/technology/personaltech/t-mobile-sprint-merger.html
MVNOs use the same towers/networks as the big players they lease from, with a few differences:
- they get lower network priority compared to paying/pre-paid customers, esp during congestion
- they may not have the same domestic network roaming agreements in place as you might get on a pre-paid Big Three account so you could find more deadzones and/or face roaming charges
MVNOs are fine for budget conscious folks ... I've used them myself over the years. I'e been on TMo prepaid since 2010 and love them, and hope the service/customer services doesn't get infected with Sprint's rot during the merger.