T-Mobile to acquire most of U.S. Cellular in $4.4B deal

https://www.cnbc.com/2024/05/28/t-mobile-to-acquire-most-of-us-cellular-in-4point4-billion-deal.html

by jmsflknr • 2 years ago

65 45 2 years ago

cnbc.com

thfuran2• 2 years ago

I hope AT&T buys up T-Mobile soon. I've been yearning for the halcyon days.

impulser_• 2 years ago

T-Mobile is almost twice the size of AT&T.

yial• 2 years ago

A quick Google search says t mobile has about half the customers of att. But 75% of the revenue.

tivert• 2 years ago

T-Mobile is almost twice the size of AT&T.

But if T-Mobile bought AT&T, the back-to-the-future telephone monopoly wouldn't be so obvious.

advisedwang• 2 years ago

They're just making a comment about the consolidation reversing the anti-trust breakup of Bell/AT&T.

notatoad• 2 years ago

this says AT&T is twice as big. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mobile_network_operato...

are you measuring by something other than subscriber count, or is wikipedia wrong?

tracker12• 2 years ago

You would literally have a hard time paying me enough to deal with AT&T ever again. Worst CS experiences ever, and I've managed to cancel XM-Radio and AOL before.

paul7986• 2 years ago

Totally agree i was an ATT customer for nine year who paid on time each month and then their network went down almost nationwide and the next month they reported they were hacked. Probaby both events are separate from each other but i felt uneasy and reached out to ATT for decent customer svc to find none exists as..

- You want customer svc in person at a ATT store they say call customer service

- You call and you have to wait 30 to 60 minutes to speak with someone

- You can speak with someone quicker by saying cancel service yet they offered me only a $30 savings and the temporary rate would take affect 3 months later(?).

- If you cancel your service in a billing cycle they force you to pay the full month (just snatched the money they didnt deserve as i left them in beginning of the month from my account).

thfuran2• 2 years ago

But Ma Bell was a different matter altogether. They were so great that everyone was their customer.

bilal4hmed• 2 years ago

Lina Khan still wasting her time on big tech (to prove out her paper) while other industries like this, glasses etc slip out from under her

rayiner3• 2 years ago

Monopolization in big tech is far more economically significant. The Big 3 cell carriers make $250 billion in annual wireless revenues combined. Their profit margin is about 15%. Google alone makes $300 billion in revenue, and has a net profit margin of 25-30%. Meta’s revenue is $130 billion and its profit margins are even higher, over 30%.

The tech industry is extracting vastly more monopoly profits from consumers than any other industry.

Scoundreller• 2 years ago

Better at extracting monopoly profits from consumers or from the advertisers?

tgma2• 2 years ago

Most of Google revenue is not made from US consumer. Telecom revenue on the other hand is mostly attributable to the US consumer, whom FTC is responsible to protect.

bydo• 2 years ago

Monopoly is about choice, not revenue. I don't care how little Comcast or Spectrum makes compared to Google or Facebook when I'm forced to use their terrible service because there are no other options available.

KorematsuFredt2• 2 years ago

No one is forced to use G or M but they make better products. It is not monopoly. There are excellent alternatives available very easily.

Comcast, ATT are different. You simply dont have much of a choice even in cities meant for internet. San Jose has like 1Gbps ATT and 100Mbps Comcast as the only options.

hollerith• 2 years ago

Officials tend to focus on internet services because they are a potent way to influence public opinion and consequently election outcomes.

averysmallbird• 2 years ago

Telecom mergers are handled by the FCC and DOJ, not the FTC, and the FTC has been bringing plenty of other industries than tech.

KorematsuFredt2• 2 years ago

Lina Khan is the enabler of these things.

willio58• 2 years ago

Lina Khan has honestly been doing an amazing job in her position. She's taking on the amazons of the world and you're complaining she isn't doing enough? In a perfect world we could just clone her so she could also break up these other industries.

throwaway-blaze• 2 years ago

She's single-handedly responsible for denying public markets investors the ability to reap the benefits (by investing in) from all of the hot tech startups that are too-small to go public but would have been attractive acquisition candidates in the past.

Now Meta/GOOG/MSFT/AAPL/AMZN know they cannot acquire anything large, so these companies either sell to PE or continue to raise from huge late-stage funds.

I don't like a lot of what "big tech" does but this isn't a good situation either.

flyingfences2• 2 years ago

US Cellular has great coverage back home (Maine) but shoddy coverage where I live now (New York) and T-Mobile vice versa. I've been on Google Fi for the past ten years because it is the only option (at least when I last looked) that jumps seamlessly between the two, and at a reasonable enough price (for a guy who doesn't use much data). If this merger makes another carrier that has good service throughout the northeast, that could change the game for a lot of customers.

I'm not optimistic, though; the T-Mobile - Sprint merger was supposed to improve their service but ended up [0] jacking their prices.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40379028

cognaitiv• 2 years ago

At least as of 10-15 years ago US Cellular owned their rural markets and leased their urban markets. In NYC they are likely reselling Verizon’s network.

synergy20• 2 years ago

isn't google fi using t-mobile network as the backbone?

toomuchtodo• 2 years ago

Yes, Google Fi is an MVNO of T-mobile's network.

timw4mail• 2 years ago

Basically exclusively at this point.

flyingfences2• 2 years ago

Google Fi used T-Mobile, Sprint, and US Cellular behind the scenes. At least, they did at the time I signed up, which was why I signed up. Sprint merged into T-Mobile a few years ago; Fi dropped US Cellular last spring.

Since then, I've stayed on from inertia. I'll probably switch to T-Mobile's $15 / 5 GB plan soon, since it's half the price I'm paying for now-no-better service from Fi and I rarely use more than 1 GB per month.

lxgr• 2 years ago

shoddy coverage where I live now (New York)

Do they have any coverage in New York? I thought they were using national roaming on AT&T there?

TMWNN• 2 years ago

US Cellular has great coverage back home (Maine) but shoddy coverage where I live now (New York) and T-Mobile vice versa.

US Cellular as of 2012 no longer operates in its headquarters city of Chicago. <https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/us-cellular-to-sell...>

move-on-by• 2 years ago

Ah yes, more consolidation. I’m sure this will in no way end up being anti-consumer. Maybe they can rebrand as Bell System as well.

_mlbt4• 2 years ago

What’s the alternative? Continue to have worse rural coverage than Verizon and AT&T and hope for the best?

Retric4• 2 years ago

4.4 billion could also pay for a lot of rural cellular infrastructure. As in most of the US, but it wouldn’t directly bring in customers.

T-Mobile to acquire most of U.S. Cellular in $4.4B deal

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