from the we-are-now-fully-enshittified dept
Within the wake of the Dash T-Cellular merger, wi-fi carriers immediately stopped trying to compete on price (precisely what deal critics had warned would occur whenever you scale back sector competitors). T-Cellular, which as soon as tried to distinguish itself because the consumer-friendly “uncarrier,” nearly instantly started behaving similar to AT&T and Verizon, beginning with firing 9,000+ people.
It’s how senseless and dangerous consolidation all the time works. We all know this, there’s infinite proof of this, and one way or the other it by no means appears to matter in a rustic too corrupt to perform.
In the previous couple of years, T-Cellular’s been going through lawsuits and shopper blowback as a result of it’s continually jacking up the worth for purchasers who believed they had been below a “price lock” guarantee due to a 7-year-old promotion promising that their value would by no means change.
Extra just lately, T-Cellular introduced it will be kicking roughly 8 million subscribers off of their traditional (and often cheaper plans), and onto dearer and shittier new T-Cellular plans. These new value hikes have joined a bunch of different value hikes to make all people’s payments considerably dearer and all of their connections much less characteristic wealthy and helpful:
T-Mobile frames the present migration as a median $4-per-line adjustment, in accordance with CNET. That sounds modest till you stack it on the $5-per-line hike that already hit many legacy smartphone plans again in April 2025. PhoneArena studies some prospects on older grandfathered plans face whole will increase approaching 60% compared to their authentic charges. In the meantime, administrative charges for voice traces climbed from $3.99 to $4.49 monthly — raised twice inside a single yr, in accordance with tmo.report — with cellular web line charges transferring from $1.60 to $2.10.
This should be extra of that deregulatory, consolidative innovation my Libertarian pals at “non revenue” “free market” “assume tanks” have spent years telling me about.
This was, after all, one thing merger critics warned about, very vocally, for a very long time. I wrote repeatedly, at multiple outlets, about how this deal’s pre-merger guarantees had been totally nugatory. It didn’t matter, as a result of the federal authorities is simply too corrupt to perform within the public curiosity, antitrust reform now not exists, and the citizens very clearly has a head stuffed with cottage cheese.
In the meantime all the oldsters accountable — whether or not corrupt politicians, shitty Libertarian free market assume tanks, or cocky executives — have long-since moved on to different horrible concepts and reminiscence holed all the factor, whereas customers and labor — as all the time — are compelled to eat the entire real-world prices.
Anyway, bear in mind when T-Cellular bribed Trump to get the merger approved, eradicated all of its “DEI” requirements like an obedient poodle, or that point they employed Corey Lewandowski as a guide simply days after he mocked a Down Syndrome kid on cable TV? Nice stuff. So many reminiscences.
Filed Underneath: competition, consolidation, enshittification, john legere, layoffs, mergers, price hikes, prices, telecom, wireless
Firms: t-mobile
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