SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
T-Mobile Closes Sprint Merger after Two-Year Battle:
Two years after announcing a $26.5 billion merger with Sprint, T-Mobile is ready to get to work integrating the two companies. On Wednesday, the carrier announced that it has closed the deal, which will allow it to begin combining the third- and fourth-largest US wireless providers.
Both companies claim the merger will let them better compete with industry giants Verizon and AT&T. The move will see T-Mobile divest Sprint's Boost prepaid brand and spectrum to Dish, which will enter the market as a new fourth carrier. Dish, led by Charlie Ergen, has spent years and billions of dollars accumulating its own wireless spectrum and was previously under a deadline imposed by the Federal Communications Commission to put some of its spectrum trove to use by March of this year or risk losing it.
[...] These moves will potentially remake how Americans will get their wireless service over the coming years. T-Mobile and Sprint's combined assets should supercharge their ambitions to roll out 5G across the country, and the merged company's larger presence should enable it to better compete against larger rivals Verizon Wireless and AT&T. Dish, meanwhile, represents a new low-cost alternative once it gets its service rolled out.
Also at: Ars Technica.
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Thursday April 02 2020, @01:53PM
For anyone that did not know... both Virgin Wireless and Boost Mobile have been wholly owned subsidiaries of Sprint. Well, one minor concession that was made in this competition-killing deal was that Virgin Mobile and Boost would both be sold to Dish Network (yes, the satellite TV people) on the flimsy premise that Dish could take those two and re-create a 4th competitor.
I was actually on Virgin Mobile for roughly 5 years. In January, Virgin told me that they were ceasing operations and that all accounts were being transitioned to Boost. Knowing about the Sprint/t-mobile merger, I took this all with a grain a salt and it wasn't really unexpected. The transition date happened on Tuesday (2/11/2020) Which, lucky me, was the same day as my payment due date.
Well, I went to the Boost login page specified in the email from Virgin so that I could pay my bill. Surprise, surprise, my login failed. and it did not fail because of bad credentials, but due to a website error. And the technical error was some type of message saying that the parameters passed to a function were invalid data types for the parameters expected... i.e. someone fsck'd up badly. And while that type of error is usually not due to the browser, I did try it in both chrome and firefox with the same lack of success. (no IE on linux)
Well, my phone service was disconnected due to not paying my bill. (MVNOs are quick to do that.) I tried going back to the virgin website, only to be redirected to Boost. There is a live chat feature on Boost's website, it allows you to ask a question, and gives FAQ answers, but before being connected to a live person to chat with, it requires that you login. Even when you state that your problem is that you are unable to login, it tells you to log in to be connected to a live person.
Needless to say that without phone service due to non-payment, and being unable to login to pay my bill for 3 days straight, with the only help being told to login first, I got pretty annoyed and pissed. So I went and ordered a brand new phone to use with Google FI. (Google's MVNO) Oh, and before i am told about the horrors of Google now tracking me directly as a phone carrier, I am well aware of the implications. But the fact is, that I use Android OS on my phone so its not like they are getting any more information from being a network carrier than they get from Android already regardless of carrier.
How did that hurt me... I was without phone service for 3 days and I had to buy a new phone. OFC, I just bought a new phone for use with Virgin in October because the micro-USB connector on the old phone started to not connect, thereby not being able to be recharged. (and what a waste of money it is to pay for a new phone and only use it for 4 months)
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P