They were competitors to T-Mobile. They offered lowered prices, even though they did use their network.

This has direct effect on competition, T-Mobile can raise prices or run it into the ground.

I don't disagree, but as someone who uses T-Mobile, the only thing they have going for them is their cheap prices and freebies. And even then they're barely worth it. If prices rise their customer base will disappear.

I am also a T-Mobile customer, but more companies is better even if don't use them. For me paying few dollars more is nothing and we get priority on the T-Mobile network. However, some people might really need that few dollars, few bucks here and there add up.

A big MVNO has far more power to negotiate lower rates for use of the network than the MVNO's individual customers do. And the MVNO can provide far better customer service. And have better computer security for customer data. And present its customers with fewer dark patterns. And...

Looks like T-Mobile's found a fix for those "problems".

This is the cycle of MVNOs. They are selling a commodity with tight margins, are almost always dependent on a single network, and when money gets tight, they sell to the network they're dependent on.

I've never seen an MVNO do a very successful switch to another network, and if you can't switch networks, you have less negotiating power than consumers.

The only one I ever saw do a switch was Republic Wireless (very early on they were on Sprint IIRC, and then slid over to Verizon or something, I wasn't paying much attention) but that has a whole separate VOIP over phone/wireless confusion to deal with.

Yeah, Republic Wireless was started by Bandwidth.com, a registered CLEC and leading provider of wholesale telephone services. It's not surprising that they'd have the wherewithal to build their MVNO with switching in mind, or that they owned the voice calling portion.

Apparently it was spun off in 2016, and is now owned by Dish. And looks like they switched to ATT and carrier based calling. I'm just summarizing wikipedia though; I don't know if there were SIM replacements or if the SIMs were network independent so they "just" had to have a different network allow attachment.

I used them for a bit right after they switched, and iirc it was a shitshow technically, this was BEFORE everyone had wificalling as an option, and the phones had to be relatively specific Android models, and there were some older ones you had to send back to get a new one or you had to limp along on the old network.

I didn't care because I was 99% wifi at the time anyway.

Do you work for the CRTC?