A lot of cell phone stuff is going on right now. Apple just released a few new iPhones including their new flagship phone: the iPhone X. Samsung is also rumored to be releasing their next phone early next year – that hasn’t been confirmed yet though.
If you haven’t seen it, they also released a clever ad comparing Apple’s iPhone and Samsung’s Galaxy series. As someone who coincidentally just made the switch from Galaxy to iPhone I still find the commercial funny.
And in the wake of all of that, the news of T-Mobile and Sprint combining would probably end up being the biggest news of all.
Why were they merging?
To keep it short and simple: Verizon and AT&T run this town. The two behemoths are so far ahead of Sprint and T-Mobile, that when Sprint and T-Mobile combined they would have approximately the same customer base.
However, not only was there concern from within the companies about a potential merger hurting them rather than helping, there were also worries about regulators striking down the merger. There would effectively stop being 4 major carriers, and we’d be stuck with 3.
Big mergers like that are discouraged by the government (and actively broken up sometimes) because it gets us one step closer to a monopoly. Basically, that would be bad news for the customer.
So this is a good thing.
Yes, this is good for normal people like you and me. Businesses look for ways to beat out their competition. Giant businesses will look for mergers and partnerships to effectively eliminate the competition instead – at the expense of the customer.
For now, we still have 4 major carriers and will hopefully keep it that way.