T-Mobile acquires Sprint

http://money.cnn.com/2018/04/29/news/companies/t-mobile-sprint-merger/index.html

This is pretty huge, considering that these two companies are two of the largest in America. Now that leaves the United States with only three major carriers (T-Mobile, AT&T, and Verizon). However, this could also signal the death of CDMA as we know in the US because Verizon has pretty much moved to GSM, and Sprint was the last carrier to use CDMA for its everyday network use. T-Mobile utilizes GSM technology.

Additionally, Sprint has struggled as a company. They were typically in last place for customer service, pricing, and reliability, whereas T-Mobile was typically higher up.

So, thoughts?

I hope it makes the service better, because from what I hear, Sprint is actual garbo.

I'm curious to know how this affects Ting, Tello, and other such providers riding on Sprint. Hopefully not in a bad way, if at all.

Not gonna lie, I feel pretty bummed out.

Not to digress, but it makes me feel significantly uneasy when one company acquires another and the market starts to turn into a race over who can hold the biggest monopoly over a certain market. It just makes me uneasy, and it doesn't matter if it's wireless carriers, it doesn't matter if it's even Google or Apple or whoever else in Silicon Valley that does it; I always felt it was more appropriate to have more varied choices in competition.

Then again, I dunno. These are just the three LARGEST wireless carriers and I'm unsure if, like Hiatus stated, that this merge will affect smaller wireles carriers like Straighttalk, Ting, etc.

As long as people have more option than The Big Three to go to, I suppose.

It's pretty disappointing, and damning for competition in the American cellular market. You may think other 'providers' like Ting, Straighttalk, Cricket et. al. are alternatives, but really they're not. They have to license infrastructure from one of these big three nationwide providers, and that's going to come at the price of ever becoming serious competition for them.

The reason these three mega-corporations have a stranglehold on the market is mostly to do with the regulation surrounding cellular bands from the FCC. When cellular internet was first becoming a thing in the 70s and 80s, the FCC divided the entire country into over 700 districts based on metropolitan and micropolitan economic boundaries, and divvied up a special 20 districts around hot areas (NYC, LA, Seattle, etc) to be auctioned off before the others. Originally, these districts were supposed to protect opportunities for local cellular providers, but over time they became increasingly irrelevant as the cellular market exploded and the big players began pushing to obtain nationwide licensing.

They now have FCC licenses to use frequency bands nationwide, which makes the whole district system completely pointless, and there's more than just a problem of cronyism at work preventing them from licensing more. Even if there were some ultra-rich company bidding for licensing, the number of usable frequency bands are limited by the laws of physics. Venture too far out either way and your cellphone signals will start ricocheting off of the ionosphere or being unable to go through walls, among other things. Needless to say, these existing cellular providers have of course already bought licenses for the best frequency bands, and they're exclusively licensed as well so the carriers need not share any open protocols for communication.

One less company to participate in this mess is without a doubt going to help maintain the stunted growth and highwayman-robbery prices that are so characteristic of American cell service. Even if the companies continue to skirt the Sherman Antitrust Act, it could collapse like a house of cards if a new company manages to find a way to provide cell service without using the same bands everyone else does. There are tonnes of bands besides these that are very desirable for all kinds of communication, from HAM Radio to LEO satellite communications.