I really hope this doesn't go through. T-Mobile has been great for me, and shed a lot of the anti-consumer policies of the other carriers. I'd hate to regress.
I had a deeply discounted unlimited plan with Sprint (a couple family members worked there).
I left when T-Mobile offered a lower price for unlimited web + text. The only people I know who use voice use OTT services for it anyway. On top of that, T-Mob offered BYOD, letting me run pure Android, without all of Sprint's then unremovable NFL, NASCAR, and Facebook apps. It beat Sprint's employee discount plan for me, and easily.
My family members who work there were frustrated by the news. They mostly rationalized by bashing T-Mobile, claiming their prices were unsustainable, arguing it must be a risky, poorly run business.
I think those prices are only unsustainable when you have a major carrier's assumptions. Assumptions about acceptable levels of overhead and expected levels of profit.
I think Sprint did some really bold things in its history. It fought the good fight as MCI against an entrenched telecom monopoly, back when sentiment was against them, when legislators were literally talking up how wonderfully efficient the telecom monopoly was.* Today I feel like T-Mobile is more like the scrappy startup that benefits consumers primarily by running aggressively trim.
Unlike others posting here, I've never had any network issues with T-Mobile, and had routine congestion based or coverage based issues with Sprint. But that doesn't really matter. A larger network could offer more redundancy, and faster speeds on both sides of the network.
Historically though, conglomeration of telecom companies has reduced competition, and essentially led to monopoly rents for a service that is especially susceptible to price competition. (There's a reason they try to lock you in with contracts. Competition is the enemy.) Here, I worry that Sprint's management has noticed that T-Mobile is unlike other competitors, AT&T, and is competing on price, setting a dangerous precedent. I worry they're trying to squash this unruly behavior through the purchase.
Potential benefits might be nice, I just worry the downside risk is very large.
* Check out "The Master Switch" by Tim Wu, or at least this review: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/12/books/review/Leonhardt-t.h...
I run stock android BYOD style with Tmobile. I don't want them to switch to the Sprint model of terrible apps and higher prices. :/
And assumptions about acceptable levels of service and coverage. I'm saying that as a loyal T-Mobile customer, but it's readily apparent that when I visit my parents in my small home town, or drive a few hours east to the beach towns near me, or really go anywhere much outside a major city, my service is poor or non-existent, and my Verizon-customer friends' service is fine. I'm okay with that because I live in a big city, don't go to small towns often, and think the mediocre coverage is worth it for the lower price, but there's definitely a "you get what you pay for" aspect to all of this, at least in my experience.
Yeah, I think more testimonials are on your side here, so I don't doubt that T-Mobile subscribers face this issue, but it's strange to me, because I had exactly the opposite experience in reliability. Moving from Sprint to T-Mobile improved my reliability considerably.
Sprint would claim I had full bars, but downloads would stall out, webpages would just die half loaded. This was near their headquarters in Kansas City. T-Mobile's network has never crowded me off line, and has worked for me fairly consistently on the east coast.
Neither seemed to work very reliably in the long rural gaps between Kansas City and other metropolitan areas at the time. (Though I hear Sprint has I-70 covered fairly well now.)
I think part of my experience is driven by the fact on the spectrum of "voice user" to "web user," I'm really far to the right, probably outside of the mainstream. Could be T-Mobile's investments in data have come at the expense of their voice reliability? I'm not sure...
I guess if the main issue is T-Mobile's lack of coverage, then on net, things will improve after a merger. If the main concern is Sprint over-selling their network so that it becomes congested and unusable around 6 PM, then a merger is mostly just going to make things worse. It will be better in the short term, but as Sprint takes on subscribers, unless they change their strategy, they'll still overbook the lines.
Sprint coverage tends to be better, but their network has generally lagged behind in terms of technology.
If you need good coverage "everywhere" VZW is unfortunately your only real option. AT&T I guess is a close second.
Or to put it another way. I have lent my VZW phone out to dozens of people to make phone calls when they lacked coverage. I have never once had to borrow a Sprint or AT&T phone to make mine.
Amazon link for the lazy
https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/smile-always/jgpmh...
I am a current T-mobile customer and anti-Sprint. I think this is a good move.
This is more of a merger than a buyout.
[edit] As I said in another thread, my information for that is a few years old, so this may not be true anymore.
Given the sponsorships and the lack of coverage in certain markets, Sprint is the higher profile brand.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/05/29/us-softbank-tmobil...
"Deutsche Telekom may also be more accommodating with Softbank regarding a break-up fee than it was with AT&T, the sources said. That is because T-Mobile is likely to be the surviving brand and its CEO, John Legere, is likely to lead the new combined company, thus avoiding a loss of subscribers and momentum it had to contend with during the drawn out regulatory process with AT&T, two of the sources said."
Sprint is already sitting on tons of unused spectrum, and a larger subscriber base than T-Mobile. Nothing stops Sprint from fixing their own service. They just choose not to. And they choose to not fix their network, all across the nation in lots of areas.
My fear is that Sprint's lack of care and lack of effort, will bleed into T-Mobile's network, and we'll be down to just two functional service providers in the US.