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Oppose a single GSM carrier (Score:5, Insightful)
As a regular VISITOR to the US, I would oppose anything that reduces your already meagre choice of 2 major GSM networks, to 1. (A visitor from almost any other country is going to be carrying a GSM phone, making Sprint and Verizon non-options from the start)
At the moment, a visiting tourist's two options are:
a) AT&T, who prefer to sell you a crappy GoPhone handset rather than just a SIM. Oh and if you find an AT&T store that actually understands what you're trying to do, and you insist on just a SIM, make sure you don't tell them it's for an iPhone, because they won't let you activate a normal (i.e. non AT&T locked down) iPhone on their network. Just tell them it's for some old Nokia or something, activate the SIM using said old Nokia (and it's associated non-iPhone IMEI), then transfer the SIM to your iPhone. And BTW that doesn't include any data by default and you have to call some number to add a data pack taken from your existing credit blah blah.
b) T-Mobile is a lot friendlier to tourists wanting some prepaid voice + data and are happy to sell you a SIM without caring what kind of phone you put it in. Hooray! BUT ... unfortunately they use some wacky HSDPA frequency/band that nowhere else in the world does (and thus your phone is almost guaranteed not to support it). Result is, you'll get your voice service, but your data will only be at GPRS or EDGE speeds. Better than nothing though and it's still worth it for not having to jump through the hoops that AT&T make you do.
I have no idea what a merger between the two companies would look like from a visitor's perspective but I can't imagine it would be good. Probably more like the current AT&T than the current T-Mobile. Either way, why does it have to be so much more complicated (and expensive) than in every other country where you can literally pick a SIM up for $2 bucks in the arrivals hall at the airport and have it instantly activated? You can't seem to do this in the US since the carriers don't seem to have shops in most airports like carriers do everywhere else.
From 'our' perspective, the mobile phone market in the US is bizarre. It's overpriced and relies on coupling particular phones to particular networks. You overhear comments from Americans along the lines of "I want a *phone X* but it's only available on *network Y*" - a concept foreign to most of the rest of the world. I also understand that even if you DO buy an unlocked phone outright in the US, and you go to your carrier to get a plan for it, you still have to go on a contract, and you still have to pay handset repayments as part of the cost of the plan anyway (!?!) (i.e. the plan cost doesn't change if you bring your own handset). It would make me rage uncontrollably if I lived there full time ;)
Re:How should I know? So, Pox it is. (Score:2, Insightful)
well then STOP FUCKING UP the world!
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)