T mobile's purchases sprint is done.
Sprint is now a part of the T Mobile family.
What exactly does that mean?
We try to explain it all now.
So a lot has happened over the last two years of sprint and T Mobile have tried to merge, One thing is 5G that wasn't a thing in 2018 when these companies first entered into agreement to partner together now of course 5G is starting to become more ambitious.
Team mobile spread 18 team arising all have various 5G network and this is a big part of this deal.
Why this deal took so long however, is because there were a lot of different challenges.
One big one was the legal challenge.
Over a dozen state attorneys general led by New York and California tried to block the merger claiming it'd be anti competitive and lead to higher prices for consumers.
Later on, thanks to a deal brokered between T-mobile and dish by the Department of Justice, those concerns have been put aside for now and the deals obviously allowed to go through.
So what exactly does this mean?
That's obviously the really big question for everybody involved here.
If you're on sprint, this actually means quite a lot.
Pretty much immediately you can start taking advantage of T mobile's network and you don't even need to buy a new device to use it.
Thanks to a roaming agreement the two companies struck in response to the corona virus.
Because of that you don't even need to buy a new phone for most people.
If you have a phone in recent years, you could take full advantage.
Of T mobile's network right away.
If you're on T Mobile, this isn't going to mean as much at least not immediately.
With the sprint deal T Mobile is getting a lot of spectrum which is the very valuable wireless airwaves that carry your phone calls, text messages and data.
When it comes to 5G, this is where that spectrum really is going to start to shine.
Sprint has a ton of what's known as mid band spectrum which is two and a half gigahertz spectrum that is really good at offering really fast speeds that still work indoors.
T-Mobile has a lot of low-band spectrum, which is what they're touting heavily in their TV ads.
And this covers a large chunk of the country, but generally has speeds that aren't a lot faster than the 4G you have today.
On top of all this is what's known as millimeter wave, which T-Mobile also has a little bit And they're using this in urban areas like stadiums.
There's also the 5G that Verizon is touting heavily and that has super fast speeds.
So what this mid band spectrum T Mobile can do things like offer home broadband replacements, because the speeds are going to be hundreds of megabits per second.
Rival something that you may already have from your home broadband provider.
This coverage unlike the millimeter wave or T mobile's low band has a great combination of both speed and the ability to work in a whole bunch of locations including indoors.
This is very important for T Mobile going forward.
Of course, the other big concern here is that prices are going to go up because you have this consolidation of sprint and T Mobile into one carrier.
The good news at least for the short term is that's not going to happen.
T Mobile is part of its pitch to regulators to get this deal approved, promised that they would not raise rates for three years.
T Mobile CEO Mike Seaver also told CNN that sprint users who are going to T Mobile now won't have their plans changed.
It's part of what T Mobile does is that they don't Forced you to give up your old plants or at least for the short term, people who have T Mobile or sprint will be able to keep their plan and start getting all the benefits of this combined network.
So this is what dish comes in as part of its effort.
To get this deal approved, T Mobile agreed to sell off a whole bunch of sprint assets like spectrum and the boost brand.
To Dish.
Dish known for its satellite TV service has spent years and billions of dollars accumulating wireless spectrum and face a deadline to start putting that spectrum to use.
Regulators are hoping that by having Dish be propped up as a new carrier, they can keep pressure on T-Mobile and AT&T and Verizon to keep prices low.
To do this as part of this deal Dish while they're building out their own network gets to use T-Mobile's network for seven years.
So dish in theory should start to provide a competitive alternative to ATNT and Verizon and even to T Mobile.
