Verizon and T-Mobile are trying to gobble up US Cellular
theverge.com
theverge.com
On the utilization topic: T-Mobile was able to purchase and consolidate a ton of the available 2500mhz N41 licenses (EBS/BRS it's called). Out in my market most of the towers are hitting around 700mbps as a ceiling on 100+80mhz N41 carriers (combined with another 15mhz x 2 of N25 and N71). Should be around 2gbps with that deployed. Meanwhile TDD configuration on the UL sucks, so upload speeds have actually gone down as more N41 capacity is online because they are inefficiently using something like 90% of the airtime for downlink and handset vendors are rarely using UL-MIMO and UL-CA in devices.
On poor historic licensing problems: I'm not exactly complaining that T-Mobile got N41 consolidated, EBS licenses (which covered most of this) ended up being a really scammy setup: Tons of free spectrum was doled to schools and other nonprofits, and they mostly didn't use it... they were allowed to lease it, so there was a whole industry of leasing out these EBS licenses that schools never intended to use. Just doesn't make sense, so FCC opened it up to auction some years back.
On antitrust shenanigans after T-Mobile/Sprint merger: Crappy DISH was propped up to be a 4th carrier after squatting AWS-3 for a decade and only having a single test tower to show for it. Post-merger they've been building out their network but it's by no means nationwide yet, they are still mostly a MVNO in most markets (under Boost branding). Part of the terms of the merger's antitrust agreement was T-Mobile also had to make their SMR 850mhz spectrum license from Sprint purchasable by DISH, but DISH couldn't pony up the money they promised to, so now that has to go to auction. Which sucks around me because T-Mobile actually left it on-air on the old Sprint towers NIMBYs won't let them service. So I'll get service gaps when it's eventually gone, but yeah...
https://specmap.sequence-omega.net/ is a really good resource for seeing who currently owns the licenses in a given area.
In my current area, US Cellular doesn't have any spectrum, so I guess their users are constantly roaming.
Charter/Spectrum Wireless is also wiggling their way into high-band 5G.
Interesting footnote in history:
.c 2005 The reception of Verizon on Stanford campus was terrible while AT&T worked well because it owned Cingular towers (2G/3G?) on the hill. Neither carrier was then incentivized to invest in improvements.
> You are eligible for Service only if you or your employer has a customer or business address within UScellular licensed market area. If you meet the eligibility requirement only through your employer's business address, you may only be eligible for certain rate plans.
> At least 50% of your monthly usage for each device on your account must be used in UScellular licensed markets.
These kinds of terms are common for cellular plan, but it's less of an issue for companies with "nation-wide" networks.
I would love to switch to a MVNO that runs on multiple networks. It would certainly be more expensive, but it would be nice for people in areas with poor coverage, since roaming is dead.
[1] https://www.uscellular.com/legal/customer-service-agreement
Since I don't live near US Cellular, it's just a TMobile MVNO now.
Back when TMobile and Sprint were separate, it did it kind of, with weird software. If your phone didn't work with their weird software, it was just TMobile.
I'd like a SIM that will legitimately roam to say TMobile and Verizon, or either of those and ATT, or all three would be great. This is possible, some foreign sims have roaming with multiple US carriers... but I haven't seen it for a US targetted sim.
Additionally a ton of things like banks don't like that it's a VOIP number and won't let you use various services tied to it.
EDIT: In case you're not from US, US Cellular is a full regional cellular provider, they aren't asking how to get a US phone number.