T-Mobile Passes AT&T To Become Second Biggest US Carrier (phonedog.com) 35
In T-Mobile's Q2 2020 earnings call today, the company says that it has surpassed AT&T in total branded customer count to become the second biggest carrier in the U.S., trailing only Verizon. PhoneDog reports: In Q2 2020, [which is the first quarter that includes Sprint following the merger of the two carriers] T-Mobile added 1.245 million customers, giving it a total subscriber count of 98.3 million. To compare, AT&T finished Q2 2020 with 93 million postpaid and prepaid customers.
T-Mo also shared some good news regarding its 5G network today. The magenta carrier's 2.5GHz mid-band 5G is now live in Atlanta, Dallas, and Washington DC. That 2.5GHz 5G coverage is also live in parts of Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia. T-Mo touts that its average download speeds on 2.5GHz 5G is around 300Mbps with peak speeds of 1Gbps.
T-Mo also shared some good news regarding its 5G network today. The magenta carrier's 2.5GHz mid-band 5G is now live in Atlanta, Dallas, and Washington DC. That 2.5GHz 5G coverage is also live in parts of Chicago, Houston, Los Angeles, New York City, and Philadelphia. T-Mo touts that its average download speeds on 2.5GHz 5G is around 300Mbps with peak speeds of 1Gbps.
So far so good (Score:2)
As a T-Mobile customer I was pretty excited about the merger, as the combined resources of Sprint and T-Mobile should really improve resources from coverage and network upgrades.
So far the merger has been fairly neutral from my perspective - I've not noticed any improved coverage at home,
So far I've not seen any downsides, so we'll see what happens..
Re:So far so good (Score:5, Interesting)
As a T-Mobile customer, I'm not at all thrilled with the merger. I mean, my service hasn't changed, it's still good. Prices haven't gone up yet.
But I think they will. Less competition is not a good thing unless competition is eliminated because something was socialized.
Now we actually have competition... (Score:1)
But I think they will. Less competition is not a good thing
T-Mobile and Sprint were not individually large enough to offer real competition to AT&T and Verizon.
Only now do we truly have three carriers competing, I think we'll see overall benefit.
Especially as more phones move to 5G, that network support would have taken forever under T-Mobile and Sprint separately, now it should happen much faster. Maybe even faster than AT&T. So already we'll have some immediate benefit.
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At least we can confirm what cellular tribe SuperKendall belongs too. Regrettably, it includes the worst cellular company ever to exist in Sprint.
Of course, the merger might result in 5G taking longer, it's easy to speculate when there are no consequences or commitment to truth, kind of like when you said that people had partial immunity to Covid. Remember that, SuperKendall?
Well yes when I find a non-abusive carrier... (Score:1)
At least we can confirm what cellular tribe SuperKendall belongs too.
Yes, there you are spot on.
But there's a good reason for that, I've been with ever other carrier and T-Mobile has worked way better for me.
I will freely admit that for what I've been doing, part of why T-Mobile has been so much better is free international data use. If you were staying in the U.S. it could well be that Verizon or AT&T simply had better coverage in some area you really needed it. Verizon for me I found hideously expen
It takes two.... (Score:2)
The price of hard disk storage dropped precipitously from 1980 until now. Yet at the same time the number of hard drive manufacturers declined. Players falling out of the market didn't stop the benefits of competition.
Market competition doesn't require a certain number of players to create downward pressure on prices.
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We had our internal company earnings call today I think you might be surprised over the next 6 months.
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No doubt you've tested this carefully. I'm sure TMobile is grateful to have an expert like you doing their heavy lifting.
What downsides would you expect to see? What improved coverage might you have expected? How can you spin this to benefit Apple or Trump? Still on your parent's plan, SuperKendall?
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I was pretty excited about the merger, as the combined resources of Sprint and T-Mobile should really improve resources from coverage and network upgrades.
The ideal system is where there is a single entity that has all the resources and there is zero duplication. Maybe we should merge all the companies into one, or nationalize it, which is basically the same thing.
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T-Mobile's 2.5 GHz 5G band mentioned in the summary is Sprint's old channel 41 band [droid-life.com]. Sprint had been using it for 4G as part of their Spark LTE (3 LTE bands vs. 2 for the other carriers). They had repurposed it for for their halted 5G rollout. T-Mobile is now using it for their 5G, so that will be a direct benefit of the merger to T-Mobile customers (well, the ones with newer 5G phones).
T-Mob
Thanks! (Score:1)
Thanks for the very informative followup! I hadn't been following along with exactly details about how each company was actually rolling out 5G.
As a Sprint user (Score:2)
As a Sprint user, I saw no practical difference so far, except for some rebranding efforts and an occasional annoying cheerful text with TMobile branding.
As long as they do not touch my (cheap unlimited + world wide data roaming) plan - I don't care what they call themselves.
2 biggest US carrier (Score:2)
Wouldn't that be one of the Nimitz class
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No surprise (Score:3)
As a recent switcher from AT&T to T-Mobile, I can say T-Mobile rocks.
T-Mobile gives you a way better deal for the money and the phone support people aren't twitchy assholes like so many of the AT&T customer reps.
We're getting 3 lines, $25 per line monthly, with unlimited everything. Without the military veteran discount it would be $10 more a month, still waaaaaay better than AT&T.
Lol (Score:3)
As a contractor currently at T-Mobile, I can say they "merged with Sprint" the same way a snake "merges" with a mouse.
Isn't that better though? (Score:1)
As a contractor currently at T-Mobile, I can say they "merged with Sprint" the same way a snake "merges" with a mouse.
Having T-Mobile now and Sprint in the past, I have to say the idea of Sprint being more absorbed than merged, sounds like a good thing to me. How does it seem from inside? It seems like you'd have a much clearer view as to how well a merge/absorption is going.
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All in all, the merger actually seems to be going pretty well from what I gather.
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Oligopifying an industry almost never makes it better. The co's always claim they need "economy of scale" but are usually full of it, as it's smaller nimble companies who usually end their reign, not other fat cats.
About the only time it's better than having more competition is one-off "moon shot" projects.
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As a real Eng employee that came over from Sprint, your full of shit.
So far this has been the best merger I've even seen and the T-Mo management has actually listened to us. There has been zero "my way or the highway" moves there taking there time and reviewing everything to keep the best from both colors.
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there taking there time and reviewing everything to keep the best from both colors.
Which is probably why my manager has already filed the paperwork to eliminate your position.
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Sure there tough guy. Pretty much any contractor worth there weight has been hired already but feel free to keep telling yourself whatever little petty lies you need.
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LOL, you sound triggered.
10 (Score:2)
>"T-Mo touts that its average download speeds on 2.5GHz 5G is around 300Mbps with peak speeds of 1Gbps."
I would be happy with a reliable, usable, 10Mbps wherever I go. Several months ago, that was mostly doable. Now I regularly get 1Mbps. Sometimes 0.5Mpbs. Sometimes 0.1Mbps. Almost never close to 10Mbs unless it is really late at night and then it could be 20+. I am really tired of hearing about 300+Mbps. I also don't care about "peak speeds." What matters is what speed I get when I need it
Ex AT&T customer here (Score:2)
I was with them for years and they were just constantly jacking up rates and tacking on fees until I got fed up and decided to give T-Mobile a try. Not only was it a lot cheaper, the service was better. I'm never going back to AT&T and it looks like a lot of other people feel the same way.
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...and I don't care... (Score:3)
Cellular stores, particularly Verizon's, are becoming as ubiquitous as Starbucks. My small town has six with a seventh one on the way. There are currently 10 Starbucks locations in the same area. The profit margin on a cellular store must be enormous.
Mindblowing (Score:1)
When I was a teenager I rode my bicycle to a Commodore 64 user group. At the user group they had connected two Commodore 64's together via a modem at probably 300 baud (or about 2k bits/sec). I'm not that old. It still blows my mind how far we've come.
T-mobile "Free for Life" lie (Score:2)
Although I've had OK experience as a paying customer, I had one of my devices on their "Free Data for life" deal, which one day stopped working. I spent hours on phone support and in-store to get it resolved, but no dice. It still can't access anything other than the T-mobile web site. I think they have no interest in providing support for non-revenue accounts. Needless to say, I cancelled my paid account and moved elsewhere.