this post was submitted on 17 Oct 2024
483 points (99.0% liked)

Technology

60086 readers
5148 users here now

This is a most excellent place for technology news and articles.


Our Rules


  1. Follow the lemmy.world rules.
  2. Only tech related content.
  3. Be excellent to each another!
  4. Mod approved content bots can post up to 10 articles per day.
  5. Threads asking for personal tech support may be deleted.
  6. Politics threads may be removed.
  7. No memes allowed as posts, OK to post as comments.
  8. Only approved bots from the list below, to ask if your bot can be added please contact us.
  9. Check for duplicates before posting, duplicates may be removed

Approved Bots


founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] toiletobserver 28 points 2 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 13 points 2 months ago (2 children)

It won't last, oligopolies are buying out mvnos to consolidate further. Maybe anti trust fear will halt them but doubtful.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 2 months ago

The planet won't last. I just have to make sure my cell coverage is cheap until society collapses.

Ten-twenty years?

[–] [email protected] 2 points 2 months ago (1 children)

There are still a ton of MVNOs though, and from what I can tell, MVNOs are generally not getting bought out by other telecoms, but by companies looking to diversify/transition their business. For example, Dish bought Ting and Boost, probably because they see their core offering (satellite TV) dying out w/ streaming taking over, and they want to diversify a bit. I've been seeing a lot of internet companies trying to offer mobile service, and it honestly doesn't bother me if that's the kind of consolidation we're seeing.

Verizon buying Tracfone is a lot more troubling, but that seems to be more of the exception rather than the rule. I don't necessarily like it because any acquisition tends to change the business model, but I don't think it's dangerous in any way, it just means customers may end up needing to shift around who they get service through to find what they're looking for.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Mint and Tmo?

I shot off the hil based on tmo and vz deal.

Point being if they want to, they can cut us off.

Mint was taking too much biz from tmo is why it was bought out is my understanding

[–] [email protected] 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Yeah, that one is painful too. But again, those deals are fairly rare, and for every Mint, there's another MVNO.

The only real change we should make here is to require network operators to offer their service to MVNOs at reasonable rates. Ideally, the network would operate as a separate business from the carrier. But we only really need to enforce that if MVNOs disappear, and there are still a ton of options.