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Comment by walterbell | Hacker News Reader

A condition of the Sprint merger was that T-Mobile had to offer low-cost prepaid plans without an MVNO. The program is called T-Mobile Connect, https://clark.com/cell-phones/connect-by-t-mobile/ & https://coveragecritic.com/t-mobile-connect-review/ & https://prepaid.t-mobile.com/connect/phone-plans

Monthly price for USA-only unlimited talk/text + 5G/LTE data is $15/5GB, $25/8GB, $35/12GB + taxes/fees.

Outside USA, T-Mobile pSIM Wi-Fi call/text continues to work with any cellular provider's eSIM data on the 2nd line of iPhone.

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>Monthly price for USA-only unlimited talk/text + 5G/LTE data is $15/5GB, $25/8GB, $35/12GB + taxes/fees.

By global standards, that is hilariously expensive. Here in the UK, I pay $13/mo for unlimited talk/text and 100GB of 5G data. I can get truly unlimited data for less than $22/mo.

https://www.moneysavingexpert.com/cheap-mobile-finder/sim-on...

The US covers a lot more land. More towers to put up. Higher wages to pay. Less density than UK.

By global standards, the United States has hilariously low density and has hilariously high incomes, which means it's significantly more expensive to maintain a network. You're comparing a network that doesn't have 5G coverage in towns 20 miles away from the center of London [1] to one that has coverage over a gigantic proportion of the area that actually contains people at any given time. [2]

1: https://www.nperf.com/en/map/GB/-/164526.Vodafone-Mobile/sig...

2: https://www.nperf.com/en/map/US/-/85.T-Mobile-inc-Sprint/sig...

If you exclude legacy CDMA sites, the US and UK have basically the same number of cell sites per capita.

https://opencellid.org/stats.php

"Please note that Logical network numbers are only loosely correlated with physical infrastructure like cell towers."

Is cell sites per capita a relevant measure?

US postpaid service for a single line is $65+.

Even by US standard it’s ridiculous. AT&T offers a $25/mo prepaid plan with 16gb 5G and unlimited 4G. Not an MVNO but AT&T directly.

The worst part though is TMobile’s predatory billing practices. They lie through their teeth about fees and prices when you sign up and it’s absolutely impossible to understand what the hell is going on with their billing.

Fuck TMobile.

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