Vox

T-Mobile is introducing a new prepaid promotion with incentives for customers on other prepaid MVNOs to switch to Metro by T-Mobile, including waiving switching fees, a discount on an unlimited plan with 5G, and a trade-in offer for a new 5G phone. In other words, it’s doing exactly what it told regulators it wouldn’t do when it acquired Sprint a year ago.

Mark Zuckerberg announced that Facebook would strive to build a maximalist, interconnected set of experiences straight out of sci-fi — a world known as the metaverse. The company’s divisions focused on products for communities, creators, commerce, and virtual reality would increasingly work to realize this vision. The metaverse is having a moment; coined in Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson’s 1992 sci-fi novel, the term refers to a convergence of physical, augmented, and virtual reality in a shared online space.

When T-Mobile acquired Sprint in April of 2020, it brought our major wireless carrier choices from four down to three. Recognizing that this would indeed be a bad thing for US wireless customers (aka all of us), T-Mobile agreed to a set of conditions with the FCC’s blessing that would theoretically position Dish Network to fill the Sprint-shaped hole in our wireless landscape. In other words, one wireless competitor was allowed to reduce competition only if it agreed to help set up another competitor in its place. Sounds a little suspect, right?

To sell regulators on their $26 billion mega merger, T-Mobile and Sprint executives told anyone who’d listen that the deal would provide near-miraculous benefits. But economists warned that US telecom merger promises are historically meaningless, and the reduction in overall competitors would — sooner or later — result in higher prices and job cuts.