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Comment by ck2 | Hacker News Reader

It's an underdog in the US because it doesn't have the infatructure that at&t and verizon do.

t-mobile is usually the better value but doesn't have the towers and signal strength

mvnos are changing the value part though, you can get verizon's towers and signal strength without paying verizon prices, it's just the average consumer has no clue

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Pre-paid plans seemed to have started their lives as a huge ripoff, and I think they still have that stigma. But MVNOs have made them an amazing value now, and T-Mobile has helped a ton too. Even buying directly from the other big three providers, the cost has come way down.

I wasn't aware of any Verizon MVNOs though, it seemed like they all went away or got bought up. Mind sharing which are available?

i did a survey of low-cost MVNOs over the xmas break, focused on data-centric plans that cost approximately $10 per month (i use google voice). there's also a link to the full list on wikipedia, which you can sort by carrier

http://blog.nqzero.com/2015/12/at-mvno-pay-as-you-go-data-pl...

When were prepaid phone plans ever a ripoff? I used prepaid going as far back as 2001 and they were a good option for light users such as myself.

T-Mobile was actually pretty rockin', the best of the bunch, in my town in Colorado. The cheapest, too!

However service in rural areas and along the interstate system was awful. I was either roaming on 1X or without service entirely for very nearly the entire stretch of Cheyenne to Tahoe.

I had to switch, but I think it's the right strategy for the capital-limited underdog. You only need a few towers to cover a city compared to the Great Plains or the interstates, and many people spend nearly all their time in town.

This will change, somewhat, as the new bands come online (particularly band 12, which is at 700MHz, and so it can travel farther and through obstacles more easily than higher bands at the same power). I noticed in a tiny Texas town that my T-Mobile hotspot (which has bands 2 and 12) had very strong 4G service, while my phone and tablet (which don't) had literally no service. The drive from that town to Austin or Round Rock was also devoid of service for miles at a time on the phone and tablet, but the hotspot had it pretty much all the way.

As I understand it, Verizon has historically had the strongest presence in the low frequency range, which is part of their reputation for the strongest network. Fewer towers can cover more ground more effectively at lower frequencies.

>As I understand it, Verizon has historically had the strongest presence in the low frequency range,

Yes this is correct, and the reason they have this 'monopoly' on the low frequency range is because Verizon has been the most shrewd at getting the government to grant them licenses for this spectrum.

I think the MVNOs, combined with smart phone market penetration, are the real driving force removing 2 year contracts. People aren't so bad at math that they won't eventually figure out that $200 (or less) + 24 * $40 is less than 24 * $60.

I guess the price point on good enough smart phones is also at least headed below $300 (for me it's less than $200, but people like shiny things).

> It's an underdog in the US because it doesn't have the infatructure that at&t and verizon do.

I get that. Still it has nearly as much employees as Verizon and AT&T combined. Telekom is one of the least start-up-like organization you can think of. Some of these employees still have the status of German Beamte and are unfireable. I do not know if you are familiar with German bureaucracy, but Kafka wrote some books about it …

Nevertheless articles like this treat T-Mobile like it's a small fast-moving start-up battling against evil corporations.

The US company appears to operate largely independently from the international owner.

And they keep trying to sell it.

Yep. In the past five years they've had four different suitors. In 2011 it was AT&T (blocked by FCC/FTC), in 2013 is was Softbank/Sprint (could not get enough assurance from FCC/FTC the deal would not also be blocked) and Iliad (French telecom, couldn't raise enough cash to meet DT's asking price), and in 2015 it was Dish (similar situation to Softbank/Sprint). My guess for the next suitor will be a cable company like Comcast or Time Warner Cable shortly after the 600 MHz auction.

As long as tmo doesn't adopt DT's peering policy, I'll be happy.

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