[scarface_74]

And the alternative was that Sprint would have gone out of business. Sprint hadn’t made money in over a decade

[ewoodrich]

My brief experience with Sprint a couple years before the T-Mobile merger had basically unusable coverage. Was genuinely surprised how far it had fallen.

[whaleofatw2022]

They stopped maintenance on some cell sites in anticipation of selling to 'anyone'.

Source: used to deal with permits for them in a metro area.

[no_wizard]

except Dish network, because they tried multiple times[0]

Ultimately they got some assets in the merger though

[0]: https://www.cnbc.com/id/100637184

[yborg]

And T-Mo inherited all that and is now the bottom feeder. It's just a matter of time before one of the other two merges with them to "increase customer value and create jobs".

[scarface_74]

T-Mobile acquired both Sprint and MetroPCS to increase their spectrum allocation. I literally travel all over the country and don’t have an issue with T-mobiles service

Right now I am in small town south GA and getting 120/40 on cellular.

[kulahan]

Meanwhile I live in a city of 300k people about a mile away from the capitol building and I can't get cell access when on the incorrect side of the BK down the road.

[S201]

Anecdotal: I've been quite happy with T-Mobile's coverage for many years now. At least where I'm at they have just as good, if not better, coverage than Verizon does.

[Arrath]

I was quite happy with T-Mobile's service for the last 5 years, in that I had no signal at all at my house and my work phone was, conveniently, T-Mobile!

The universe enforced me being unreachable outside of work hours and I didn't mind that at all.

[wannacboatmovie]

"Bottom feeder" is a funny way to describe the only carrier in the US with a realistically functioning 5G network.

[rnk]

yields of course layoffs. Tmobile has been laying off people with the reason being overlap between the companies.

[johnnyanmac]

Probably not a surprising fact, but fun fact: Sprint tried buying t-mobile first and it was blocked by courts. It was quite surprising to hear it happening the other way around since I thought Sprint was always larger than T-Mobile.

But yes, the nextel merger and the bad gamble with wiMax definitely sunk them long term.

[astura]

AT&T was blocked from buying T-Mobile, not Sprint.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attempted_purchase_of_T-Mobile...

[johnnyanmac]

Both happened:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merger_of_Sprint_Corporation...

>In December 2013, multiple reports indicated that Sprint Corporation and its parent company SoftBank were working towards a deal to acquire a majority stake in T-Mobile US for at least US$20 billion...On August 4, 2014, Bloomberg reported that Sprint had abandoned its bid to acquire T-Mobile, considering the unlikelihood that such a deal would be approved by the U.S. government and its regulators

I guess saying it got blocked is subtly inaccurate, though. They simply stopped because they weren't confident in getting through antitrust.

[mschuster91]

> Sprint Corporation and its parent company SoftBank

Why am I not surprised to see that name. Is there anything that SoftBank touched that's not a complete failure? What the fuck have they been doing besides burning Saudi oil sheik money?