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Comment by Dirlewanger | Hacker News Reader

Another win for Big Business. The 2nd Gilded Age is alive and thriving.

I see this opinion a lot. I guess the argument is that we are going from 4 cell providers to 3, but realistically Sprint and TMobile were so minor we are probably going from 2 providers to 3

This. Neither T-Mobile or Sprint ever rank as legitimate carriers for most cases. Find me a enterprise business that equips their employees with either. Pretty much all corporate and government wireless is AT&T or Verizon.

T-Mobile + Sprint provides the best opportunity to create a legitimate third carrier.

T-Mobile is fairly popular in the SMB space and with companies that are "large-ish" with 500-750 employees. They are competitive there.

Though mostly I agree it's Verizon / AT&T in the large corp space. Should be interesting to see if this merger can penetrate the corporate ranks. My guess is probably not, but TMO/Sprint will continue to win marketshare at the consumer/individual level.

I'll become interested in the kabuki once there is any indication of an actual increase in competitive pressure on ATT or Verizon, of which there is currently close to zero.

But I'm betting there won't be. (Literally.)

I'm not sure about "either", but Google-Fi is both - ie service from both Sprint+T-Mobile on one device.

Unfortunately, given the shutdown plans for the Sprint side of the combined network, I'm not convinced (though remain hopeful) that this will be competition to AT&T and Verizon.

Presumably the fact that Fi is consider a decent enough cell network suggests this merger will succeed at its goals. I wouldn't expect T-Mobile to shut down Sprint's network without adequately replacing it. The merge plan probably includes shutting down 'extra' towers that are adequately covered by the other network, but probably retaining and upgrading any towers with coverage unique to only one network.

T-Mobile's coverage area almost completely encompasses the coverage provided by Sprint and also covers a lot of areas Sprint does not. This merger also makes T-Mobile by far the largest owner of sub-6 GHz cellular spectrum in the US. As long as they invest wisely they should have no trouble building a network fully competitive with AT&T and Verizon.

And somehow it would have been better if the merger wasn’t allowed and Sprint went out of business? Sprint has been losing money and customers for a decade. SoftBank was getting tired of backing them.

Very possibly yes. That would be a chance for additional entities to bid on Sprint's spectrum, or even to break that spectrum up. When irreplaceable assets like that are concentrated into the hands of a few bigger and bigger companies, the whole economy becomes less dynamic.

Who would these additional entities be besides other major carriers - probably the larger two? What smaller entity could afford to build out a network, open retail stores, get customers from the major carriers, etc?

Sprint’s network is already the worse one.

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