sirozha

seanismorris said:

sirozha said:

beowulfschmidt said:

So instead of a "duopoly", we'll have a "tripoly" that will make it even harder for little guys to get involved.

Little guys can’t get the involved in this. For sure not in a huge country like the US. 

The merger of T-Mobile and Sprint will be good for the consumer, as there will be three wireless carrier if approximately equal size, so the pricing pressure that T-mobile puts on Verizon and ATT will become much stronger. 

I for one actually have T-Mobile, if degraded performance is “good” there you go.  

T-Mobile was great.  Is it going to better saddled with Sprints debt?  I doubt it.  Like most mergers, there will be “right sizing” also known as a wave of firings.

Sprint was the low cost wireless provider.  They got their “low cost” by providing poor (see non-existent) customer service.  They’d also scam you on the billing (first hand experience).  They were the worst company I’ve ever dealt with anywhere.

T-mobile was the value provider that still provided decent customer service.  Do they still need to bother?  There’s no other competition...

Verizon is the “premium” provider.  Pricy but good.

ATT is the “bundling” provider.  They wanted to force consumers to have DirecTV (which has gone to crap after getting bought) and upsell content.  ATT has lost about 1/3 of its market cap this last year.

All these providers are going to push 5G which consumers don’t really need, and use it as an excuse to raise prices.

Consumers having less options, and there being less competition in the industry isn’t “good” unless you’re a wireless exec.

I have T-Mobile and it works well. No issues. 

Sprint has always lost money in mobile phones. I worked for Sprint 17 years ago. It was horrible then and it’s horrible now.  They were always the bottom feeder. They had customers with the worst credit who didn’t pay their mobile bills. The churn was awful. The service was bad. Nothing changed. 

T-Mobile is getting spectrum and towers with this acquisition. The customers are not that much of a value. But, T-Mobile at this point can really do something spectacular in the US, since they are not going to be the little brother to Verizon or ATT anymore.  

Out of the three companies, T-Mobile is the one that gives me the most hope.

beowulfschmidt said:

So instead of a "duopoly", we'll have a "tripoly" that will make it even harder for little guys to get involved.

Little guys can’t get the involved in this. For sure not in a huge country like the US. 

The merger of T-Mobile and Sprint will be good for the consumer, as there will be three wireless carrier if approximately equal size, so the pricing pressure that T-mobile puts on Verizon and ATT will become much stronger. 

wizard69 said:

mac_dog said:

sirozha said:

My town is inundated with H1B-visa Indians who have replaced 50% or more of American IT personnel. About 35% of doctors are Indian on H1B visas. They have pushed Americans out of the jobs here, and these are not manufacturing jobs. These are high-tech and medical jobs. As a result, housing prices are  through the roof. These temporary Indians are buying several houses each on interest-only loans, knowing full well that they are going to have to leave within 5-6 years and can simply abandon their houses (if the market turns down) with no consequences. Their monthly mortgage payments are significantly lower than apartment rentals because of the ARM-type loans that they take out.  In the meantime, they are collecting rents on the multiple houses that they purchased with no credit history and no permanent status here. How can a temporary worker buy a house in the US on a mortgage is beyond comprehension. We have not learned anything from the 2009 housing crash. 

If we don't want to manufacture anything, we don't want to build anything, we don't want to work in agriculture, we don't want to study sciences, we don't want to work as engineers, we don't want to be doctors, what the hell are we good for? Are we going to be pigs for the rest of the world to raise until we get fat enough to be slaughtered? 

We can have robotic factories built in the US and train our citizens to maintain and program robots. If we don't know how to do this, let's invite Chinese, Japanese, and Germans to help us out, pay them handsomely, and learn how to make our own crap efficiently by leveraging the latest robotic technologies for manufacturing. This could not be done three decades ago, but with the advance of technology, it is now possible. 

We’re already too fat. Seriously, though. Companies hire the best. Period. We don’t even have an adequate school infrastructure. This is what happens when you have 10x the amount of money pouring into the military. You leave nothing for educating the masses. The irony about Indians is that they modeled their school system after our public system of the 60’s & 70’s. 

This is non sense, public schools have never been a problem.    The problem rests directly with companies that want cheap labor over social responsibility.   Believe me these H1B people are not any better nor any worse than the average American.    What is different is their being willing to work with substandard wages and benefits.  This drives the whole living standard in the country down.  Thus jobs that might have been appealing end up not being able to sustain people that have to pay the taxes  and otherwise sustain the community.   

We have a shortage of Americans wanting to study Engineering, Science, or Medicine. Americans want to go to Finance or Law. We are now bringing in engineers, scientists and doctors from third-world countries. None of them are good. It's scary to be treated by an Indian or Pakistani doctor. I have some horror stories to tell about the past couple of years of being treated by an Indian and Pakistani doctors. 

Our educational system is absolutely failing Americans. We can't teach math or science in regular public schools unless those are specialized science and technology schools. Our kids are scared of math and science. Most don't want to touch those subjects with a 10-foot pole. We are also bad at teaching foreign languages, music, and pretty much everything else. Our gold standard is an iPad for every student and standardized tests. Kids don't learn anything useful in schools, yet we spend more on each kid's education than any other country in the world. We are preparing our kids to be consumers, not creators.  

My town is inundated with H1B-visa Indians who have replaced 50% or more of American IT personnel. About 35% of doctors are Indian on H1B visas. They have pushed Americans out of the jobs here, and these are not manufacturing jobs. These are high-tech and medical jobs. As a result, housing prices are  through the roof. These temporary Indians are buying several houses each on interest-only loans, knowing full well that they are going to have to leave within 5-6 years and can simply abandon their houses (if the market turns down) with no consequences. Their monthly mortgage payments are significantly lower than apartment rentals because of the ARM-type loans that they take out.  In the meantime, they are collecting rents on the multiple houses that they purchased with no credit history and no permanent status here. How can a temporary worker buy a house in the US on a mortgage is beyond comprehension. We have not learned anything from the 2009 housing crash. 

If we don't want to manufacture anything, we don't want to build anything, we don't want to work in agriculture, we don't want to study sciences, we don't want to work as engineers, we don't want to be doctors, what the hell are we good for? Are we going to be pigs for the rest of the world to raise until we get fat enough to be slaughtered? 

We can have robotic factories built in the US and train our citizens to maintain and program robots. If we don't know how to do this, let's invite Chinese, Japanese, and Germans to help us out, pay them handsomely, and learn how to make our own crap efficiently by leveraging the latest robotic technologies for manufacturing. This could not be done three decades ago, but with the advance of technology, it is now possible. 

Whom would you rather have for a family member living with you: a professor who is hard of hearing or a dumbass with perfect hearing?