What does a T Mobile Sprint merger mean for you? Amrich Damiro.
This is Rich on Tech Daily.
While in case you haven't heard, T Mobile announced it's buying Sprint for twenty six billion dollars. The combined company would be named T Mobile, and T Mobile CEO John Ledger would continue as CEO of the new company. The two companies are saying that this will be a big deal for five G, you know, the next generation wireless network, and the new company is going to be a force for positive change in the US wireless video and broadband markets.
Remember T Mobile recently bought a cable company called Layer three. Now, the big thing these two companies are saying is that they will build a five G network faster than their competition.
Can. They certainly have the spectrum to do this.
They estimate that they can get speeds fifteen times faster nationwide by twenty twenty four, with lots of customers getting speeds one hundred times faster than early four G, which sounds really good, but let's be honest, early four G was pretty slow. The two companies say they're going to spend up to forty billion dollars in the first three years to invest in their new network and businesses, which is forty six percent more than T Mobile and Sprint
spent combined in the past three years. And what I love about facts and figures like this is how in the past T Mobile would always send out press releases saying how they're spending so much on their network, but now apparently all that was not enough. Of course, the question we all want answers to This sounds great for the two companies, but what about me and my bill and my phone. For starters, T Mobile and Sprint run
two different types of networks. T Mobile is GSM, Sprint is CDMA, but both of them use the newer technology called LTE. According to reports, about twenty million phones used by Sprint customers can work on both kinds of networks. This includes recent iPhones and Samsung Galaxy phones, so some folks would see increased coverage immediately from both networks. Other customers might have to upgrade their phones to take advantage of a new roaming deal. As for plans, customers would
probably be able to keep their current plans. Sprint's cheapest is sixty dollars a month for unlimited. T Mobile is seventy dollars a month. Both also offer add ons like HD Video for an extra ten dollars a month. But here's what usually happens in circumstances like this. Yes, you can keep your plan grandfathered in, but usually the company, the new company is going to offer something slightly better for a similar price, just so they can get folks on a new plan which is less confusing.
So that's what I would expect to happen.
I would expect to see the new Tea Mobile offer some sort of compelling combined plan to entice new customers out of the gate, since they will promote increased coverage across both networks. Now, when it comes to the new five G network they're promising, which could be really fast and really a game changer that would definitely require a new device, But that is still a ways off, so you've got lots.
Of time to figure that one out.
So what about all the perks you might get as a subscriber of either Sprint or T Mobile. You know, T Mobile has those Tuesdays with all the benefit and that free Netflix offer, plus Sprint offers FREEHLU to customers. Then you've got Google's Project five, which combines both networks into one and many more carriers that latch onto these two networks, they call him MVNOs.
All of these deals would probably be up.
In the air at some point, maybe at renewal time, but probably not immediately. Keep in mind, this will be a new company that doesn't have to prove as much as the old Sprint and Tea Mobile did when they were separate and trying to win over customers. This time around, they will actually have a pretty decent network to put up a good fight, So that leaves the biggest question
will this deal be approved? While perhaps the President's silence on Twitter says a lot, we've heard nothing yet about a challenge from the administration, and the focus on a five G network seems right in line with what the President has talked about wanting before, although he is not a huge fan of foreign ownership, especially in the communications sector, and with the new Team Mobile, we'd have a German and Japanese company having lots of ConTroll over the new company.
That's gonna do it for this episode of the show. If you liked the podcast, please leave a rating and review in the Apple.
Podcast sapp and tell your friends I'm Richie Dmairo You can find links to everything I talk about here at richontech dot TV.
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