Hacker News Reader

Comment by dheera | Hacker News Reader

I feel like antitrust should like the merger because it actually gives hope for a third real player in addition to Verizon and AT&T. Otherwise the market is effectively 2 players and some noise.

View on HN

Reducing competition to increase competitive liability has generally not been good for consumers. See: airline consolidations.

We've seen in other markets that going from four to three results in increases in costs for consumers, while keeping investment levels flat: https://www.economist.com/news/business/21699143-country-mer...

I was under the impression that air travel was an extremely competitive market with slim profit margins. Am i wrong?

Everybody is mad that airlines are temporarily making profits during the lag between fuel prices dropping from peaks and ticket prices catching up.

> Everybody is mad that airlines are temporarily making profits during the lag between fuel prices dropping from peaks and ticket prices catching up.

I knew nothing about this. My irritation towards the airline industry is entirely based on poor quality / service, which seems (to me) to be the result of my having no meaningful options as a consumer.

Nah it's because most of us are cheap as fuck and book flights by whichever is cheapest. So it's a race to the bottom for pricing which means cost minimisation ie. Shit support and service.

Exactly.

Try starting an airline with free checked baggage, free meal and more legroom. If your ticket price reflects the added cost you'd be bankrupt in a few months.

Southwest has two out of three though. Just no free meal.

Sure. But merging legacy carriers, in my opinion, seems more likely to throttle the market's competitive features.

Would it be so terrible if the legacy airlines were thinned, and more Southwest/JetBlue/Virgin America-type newcomers showed up? As it is American, United, and Delta are the largest three airlines in the world because they all had fairly sizable mergers.

TMobile is a real 3rd player. AT&T and Verizon are just happy if their net adds in a year are positive vs TMobile which is adding a million+ every quarter for past 10 quarters.

I thought this, but for the last several years, it looks like Verizon and at&t have both grown faster than T-Mobile. E.g., https://www.statista.com/statistics/283507/subscribers-to-to...

I wonder how much of this is BECAUSE of T-Mobile? Finally the big carriers are offering not-horrible (but, at $10/day, not great either) international roaming, more unlimited plans than ever, etc. It's hard to tell what prices are doing because of the constant un-bundling of subsidies, and dropping BYOD discounts and so on, but overall, data quotas are going up, at least.

I agree that T-Mobile is having an outsized, positive effect on the market. I just was disappointed to find they weren't gaining on the big 2 as fast as I thought they were, and are instead continuing to lose ground.

This makes me wonder if those advantages of scale aren't greater than I thought, and maybe the merger would be beneficial.

But as a great admirer of what T-Mobile has done, and a since-voicestream customer, I'd hate to lose their scrappy underdog nature.

Really? T-Mobile and Sprint are _the_ real third and fourth. Everything after the first four is entirely categorically different: purely virtual operators that typically target low income and no contact customers. T-Mobile and Sprint are way closer to at&t and Verizon than to the virtual operators.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com