The FCC has voted to approve the T-Mobile-Sprint merger
theverge.com
theverge.com
Before Ting I was on StraightTalk, before StraightTalk I was on AT&T, before AT&T I was on Alltel, specifically because less than two month's later the contract was dissolved when AT&T purchased them and I sold the phone to a NewEgg partner so that I could buy a Noctua NH-D14 for "free".
Everyone go buy a contract phone?
ATT and Vz in the cell phone arena need only two major names, and basically set Sprint up to fail in a way that it exists as a zombie company and allows them to pass regulatory requirements by claiming they're a viable alternative (Sprint has not been one for like, oh, 5+ years).
So, T-Mobile being an actual contender for the #1 network spot in the country fucks up their shareholders and most of the Republican party: ATT and Vz need a party in their pocket to make sure companies cannot fairly compete.
As much as I hate the Democrats, they aren't as corrupt as the telecom/Republican relationship is.
Disagree.Who bought Sprint around 2013? Oh, that's right, the company everyone is screaming about whenever WeWork comes up.
Even while the merger was still going on, Sprint was letting their networks degrade (by that, I mean we were told to not replace certain equipment when it broke).
That was only one component however. Other big mistakes included:
- WiMax
- Partnership with HTC. While this ties in to WiMax (because they were the main maker of WiMax handsets) The Evo series was full of problems unacceptable for a flagship product.
- I'm not sure how much of it was regulatory/ROI or whatever, but the amount of time it took to actually sunset the iDEN network (Boost/Nextel) and replace it with a better long-term tech seems like a missed opportunity. How much is up for debate, since it's not like WiMax was ever going to operate in that spectrum range.
However, Agree that the major telcos (and cable providers) are absolute corrupt garbage.
ATT and Vz had unexplained shady dealings to make sure Sprint was unable to buy LTE gear at an acceptable volume and/or price to adopt LTE; in addition, they were unable to acquire conventional 4G-friendly frequencies from the Bush-era FCC auction (the same auction that locked T-Mobile out of a growth path until the Obama-era Digital Dividend auction).
Sprint was then forced to adopt WiMax, which at the time, didn't look so bad, as it looked like Asia was mass adopting WiMax, and thus, LTE would be the one of two major worldwide standards, not the sole survivor. WiMax opened up the CBRS band, something LTE did not yet have access to, giving Sprint cheap usable frequency space nationwide (useful, since they could not transition to 4G without it after being cockblocked by ATT, Vz, and the FCC).
However, that ended up not being that useful, Huawei and several other companies had promised handsets and backend equipment for WiMax, but decided to pull back from the US market instead and also pull out of WiMax entirely and back the Chinese-lead LTE-TDD adoption instead (which is also the part of the LTE spec that adopted the CBRS band for fixed position LTE usage, which also happens to be where WiMax excelled); the parts of Asia that still use WiMax are switching (or have already switched) to combined WiMax 2+ + LTE-TDD equipment to eventually transition to 5G LTE over the next decade.
I think Sprint played a bad hand badly that the house had conspired to give them. I think they could have easily pushed their existing WiMax holdings into a very powerful fixed Internet offering for home users, and went after the ATT/Vz cartel in other ways. T-Mobile seems to be hot on acquiring that CRBS band for that exact purpose, thus the Sprint merger.
I'm not arguing that Sprint's leadership wasn't staffed with complete morons, that much is self-evident, but that they did not start out this journey with the intention of destroying a company with bad decisions. They clearly had help with that.
Republicans in recent years have been focused on removing barriers to companies. The focus to decide if mega mergers are cool is "can price to consumers lower?" Thus, they are expected to support many mergers.
Democrats are more interested in "can this create pressure/inertia that isnt based on value to consumers". (Or _will_ consumers benefit, including long term) Given that companies are rarely merging to drop consumer price without strengthening their industry power, Dems are expected to oppose many mergers.
Because both sides are acting on potential, and both sides are erring on the side they value more (business free to innovate to create consumer vs not hurting existing consumer value), they are opposed with no "clearly correct" answer.