Politics - Verizon has long been short on bandwidth, but more radio was made available a few years back the terms were setup such that Verizon decided forced to sit out, while t-mobile got it for cheap (AT&T didn't need it and so didn't bid). Now t-mobile has lots of radio bandwidth, and so is selling it. Verizon needs customers to go elsewhere, but they still have the least coverage gaps so many are staying despite the high prices. (this isn't a good problem - if tmobile gets just a few more gaps in service closed people will go there and Verizon will be forced to lower prices to keep existing customers while tmobile has more volume of customers)