Hey everybody, David and David here from payetteforward.com and upphone.com, and in this video, we're
going to tell you everything you need to know about the T-Mobile / Sprint merger. So Sprint's
been lagging behind for a while now. They have the lowest customer base and they have
the worst network. T-Mobile has the third largest customer base and they have a —
they have a decent network. They said, "Hey, what if we combine forces and then we can
kind of catch up to AT&T and Verizon?" Right. So they said, "Hey, let's merge!" and some...
they've had some complications with that. I think that it can really be summed up by
The Verge's headline of their article, which says, "The court let T-Mobile by Sprint because
Sprint completely sucks." Yep. And then later on in the article it says, "Judge Marrero
thinks Sprint is a bad company with a crap Network run by dummies." Yeah. So the federal
courts just said this is okay. There's still one legal battle to overcome and that's in
California. If California blocks the merger, they're going to appeal to federal court,
and because of the way the courts are set up right now, Sprint and T-Mobile will probably
win that case. Another hurdle right now is that Deutsche Telekom, the parent company
of T-Mobile, is trying to renegotiate the buying price of Sprint. Right. Which may delay
things a little bit further. Right. So the only way this was going to happen, because
of the antitrust and monopoly stuff, is if there are four major wireless carriers in
the US. So DISH mobile — DISH Network — DISH mobile is going to be the next one. Apparently.
Allegedly. Allegedly. So this sort of imaginary network that DISH is going to build is going
to exist, and sometime in the near future. It doesn't exist yet. There are some rules
to this merger. T-Mobile has to allow DISH to use their Network for three years. Now
after three years, they can cap the amount that DISH can use the network. So they have
three years, what? To build out an entire nationwide network? Because T-Mobile can just
be like, "Now we're going to cap the amount that you're allowed to use our Network," which
will essentially make them an inferior carrier. Yep. I sort of suspect that DISH is going
to crash and burn and that someone like Google or Amazon is going to buy them out in five
years or so. But this just doesn't seem like it's gonna work out for DISH. Right. It doesn't
seem like that at all. And the judge had a couple of quotes that I wanted to share with
you guys in set. He said that, "DISH's track record and numerous awards for innovation
and customer experience, as well as evidence of the currently confidential and creative
strategic Partnerships that DISH is planning suggest that DISH would compete as a disruptive
'maverick' in the wireless markets, offering low prices for innovative and high quality
services." Yep. It sounds like a lot of maybes. Yeah, but here's the thing too: T-Mobile has
promised that for the next three years, they're not going to raise cell phone bill prices,
and T-Mobile's prices are already pretty low. So I don't know how DISH is going to compete
in that way. Yeah. It really doesn't make a lot of sense. Yes, you're thinking, " What
does this mean for me, the consumer?" Well, is this good for T-Mobile customers? Your
plan is probably not going to raise in price for three years after that. I don't know.
We don't know. There's gonna be three major carriers. I mean, that's my prediction. I
think it's yours as well. And yes, I don't think that DISH Mobile is going to be able
to compete as a major carrier versus Verizon, AT&T, and now Sprint plus T-Mobile. If you
have a Sprint phone and it's CDMA locked, you might actually have to buy a new phone
to get onto T-Mobile's network, which could be an issue for you. One reason people are
excited about this merger, though, is that it'll probably help 5G roll out faster. Right.
T-Mobile is already sort of leading the way with the low-band, bottom-of-the-barrel 5G
coverage nationwide. That's what they're always talking about. And there was a recent commercial
that Verizon put out. It's got T-Mobile's 5G Network versus Verizon's 4G LTE network,
and Verizon's network is twice as fast. Yeah. So 5G — and we have a video about this,
too — we'll link to it in the description section below; card up above — 5G consists
of a whole bunch of different types of services: high band, mid-band, low band — it's not
just one technology like 4G is. It's a lot more complicated, so companies are really
taking advantage of that to try to sell it to the consumer. Even though, for instance,
the highest speed ones... If you notice, in Verizon commercials, everybody's outside because
it doesn't go inside the building. So great for sports stadiums. Great for being outside...
look how fast it is. I'm going on top of a roof! But as soon as you go into your apartment,
you can't use it anymore. Yep. I can go on a rant. Check out our other video about what
it is. So what does this mean? Maybe you're an employee of Sprint or T-Mobile, and you're
thinking, "What does this merger mean for me?" I would say start... start updating your
resume. Yeah, because there are reports that there will be layoffs. Especially if you're
a Sprint employee. Yep. I mean, now, maybe you're saying, "I own stock in T-Mobile or
Sprint," and you're saying, "What does this mean for me?" Well, your portfolio is probably
doing pretty well right now because the stock price keeps going up for those two carriers.
Yeah. What do you think, David? Should I buy Sprint right now? I wouldn't, because they're
gonna... although we are not legally giving stock advice, or financial advice, or any
of the other things because we're totally not qualified, and please don't sue us. This
is not financial advice. Right. Just to be clear. Yes. We are clueless! If you take our
advice, you're a moron! Yep. Alright. One other thing to think about here is that John
Legare — I think I'm pronouncing that right — is the CEO of T-Mobile and kind of the
face of the organization right now. He's stepping down and being replaced by another guy and
T-Mobile guys like him. I don't really know much about him, but John Legare is out. So
if you liked him... I didn't know who he was before David told me about him. So he was
kind of the guy who rebranded T-Mobile has the "Uncarrier" and kind of revolutionized
what T-Mobile is doing. He said, here's our great new plans and changed the game in the
wireless carrier space. I like T-Mobile as a company. We met with a guy from T-Mobile
at CES last year and T-Mobile is just like... the people of seem to be approachable in a
way that AT and&T Verizon people were not. They're kind of like, "Stay away." Yeah. They
were too big for their britches. Yeah. They didn't want to talk to little old us. Yeah!
The guy gave us a free hat too. Free hats: How can you hat that? Yeah. So some concerns
that I have personally: Antitrust laws and now talking about moving to three, and we've
already seen in Canada where there are three major carriers right now, and the cell phone
bills are so bad in Canada that the major parties — the liberal party and the new
Democratic Party — part of their platforms are like, "We're gonna lower cell phone plan
bills." An idea! That's how bad the problem is, that the candidate, Justin Trudeau, is
talking about capping cell phone plan bills. People are literally tying strings to the
ends of cans and running them across the street to their neighbors. So we're going to probably
gonna see... I think we're going to see something similar in the U.S., because this is going
to fail. Yeah. And yeah, I don't think they stand a chance. And I don't think this judge
thinks they stand a chance either. Yeah, I don't know where the money's going, but money's
being money's going somewhere in this deal. Another thing that annoys me about this is
that carriers aren't even delivering reliable 4G to the entire country right now, and they're
already trying to move, you know past 4G to 5G now. But a lot of the country doesn't even
have 4G access. Yeah, and we don't even need 5G access. They're coming up with these crazy
use cases for, you know, like we're gonna have drones that can talk to each other and
you know, okay, there might be some need for this, but I'm telling you 5G is not going
to change the way that you use your technology or you use your phone, because we have Wi-Fi
and we have wired internet. I mean, 5G is like this magical thing that they're saying
is going to be faster, but the technology just does not exist. Right. There's no point
to that. I don't know. We're not super excited about. Don't even get me started. Yeah, but
5G. Yeah. And they're charging more money for it. Verizon has these plans where you
have are 10 dollars a month more to get 5G. There's 5G iPhone. I guarantee you that there
are people that have these unlimited plans on Verizon that have iPhones. Yeah, they should
be shot. It's turned into a 5G video. Yeah. Well that's good. It's part of — the big
part of the roll-out to those that the Sprint / T-Mobile part of their thing is we want
to roll out 5G faster, and we can do that if we combine forces. Yeah, DISH mobile. Also
they were talking about the "innovative new strategic creative partnerships" that they're
talking about have to do with them becoming more of a software-based network, and not
like an infrastructure, so they would rely more on Amazon and more on Google for this
cloud-based stuff. But as far as I know — now maybe I don't know a lot, but I think you
need cell phone towers — You need hardware to be able to make this crap work. Right.
So if there's no hardware, it's not going to work. Yeah, I don't understand what they're...
yeah. Yeah. So short-term for consumers, though, the prices should stay pretty steady short-term.
But after that three year window is up, I mean, yeah, all bets are off. Yeah. Who knows
what's gonna happen with DISH Mobile there? They're going to — to fail. Yeah, they're
going to fail. Amazon is going to buy them, and yeah, Google — and then we'll have less
competition. Not good. I don't support the merger. I don't know what you think. I think
it's a bad idea. I give it two thumbs down. Thanks for watching this video. Give it a
thumbs up if you enjoyed. Leave a comment down below. Tell us your thoughts about this
merger or if we missed something in this video that's important, and don't forget to subscribe
to this channel for more great videos about cell phone plans.