Kellen
T-Mobile is still trying to complete its acquisition of Sprint and merge the two into the New T-Mobile. Since announcing their plans, they promised that a merger would bring about a bunch of stuff, like more jobs, more competition, greater value, and lower prices. This week, they gave their word to the FCC that they also don’t plan to raise prices for the next 3 years as they combine.
Wait, how did we get from a promise of lower prices to only promising no price hikes? Well, T-Mobile’s John Legere suggested that the New T-Mobile will deliver the “same or better rate plans” with Sprint joining them. And look, that’s proper marketing wordplay at its finest. T-Mobile keeps suggesting “lower” prices all over its merger promo kit, like they are doing with the FCC, but could just mean lower prices than Verizon and AT&T, not a price drop. See the difference there?
T-Mobile added that they’ll try and avoid price increases, but could have to change policy and make customers pay for taxes and fees. As you know, part of the beauty of T-Mobile ONE is that the taxes and fees are all built-in to the plan price. That sure sounds like a price hike.
As I mentioned shortly after they announced the merger, it would be pretty surprising to see T-Mobile lower prices. They want to build a massive 5G network and you shouldn’t be shocked if that means price hikes at some point. After all, these carriers are all investing billions in 5G and I can’t imagine they all want to absorb those costs.
// Reuters
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