Re:T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up ...
by sanp on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @11:44AM
(#35170061)
Why would a monopolist keep things the same or better? As you said, consumer surplus is the key here. The monopolist will capture almost all of the consumer surplus. This is a worse situation for customers than with competition. With competition this isn’t likely.
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Re:T-Mobile Reaches Agreement to Acquire Mint Mobile for Up ...
by nwah1 on Wednesday March 15, 2023 @01:51PM
(#35172106)
Mint Mobile is a service that offers cheap phone plans but doesn't have their own telecommunications stack.
It is just enabling a lower tier of customer to operate on the same stack as everyone else.
This is vertical integration, not horizontal integration.
The level of monopolization remains the same.
And even with a monopoly, some of the benefit of simple convenience could come into play when there is acquisitions.
Not having to go to a separate store and maintain separate accounts for different things.
Having a cable company that sucks and a phone company that sucks is not good. If they merged and the service remained the same then now you just have two bundled services that both suck.
Yet, having a bundled plan would potentially be more convenient.
T-Mobile offers streaming services, home internet, and other things that Mint doesn't.