I’ve said it before, and I will say it again: the endgame of a capitalist system are monopolies or cartels.

Usually it takes the following steps:

1. Bunch of little start-up - everyone wants a piece of the pie

2. Some start-ups can’t hack it and either go under or are absorbed by other start-ups

3. Surviving start-ups grow to mid-size of major sized ventures depending on how many competitors or competitor market shares they absorbed

4. Repeat step 2 with remainder of companies until a few are left

Presto changeo you got yourself a cartel or monopoly. Consumer power is nil.

Example sectors to look at for this: food production industry, mining, computing/silicone Valley

As a Google Fi customer, I have noticed this. I bought into Fi because in my neck of the woods, T-Mo tended to cover Sprint’s gaps, and vice versa, and Fi used both. So while the process of switching between them was sometimes glitchy, I could get coverage anywhere in town. Now, it seems they might have turned off Sprint’s towers here, believing that T-Mo has them covered, so I am out of signal in some places.

I also bought into Fi for the free international roaming, and it’s still the cheapest plan for that if you don’t mind bring billed by the Gb. But I don’t travel as much internationally now as before the Pandemic. But if Fi continues to not work in many places they might force me out.

tmobile (and sprint when it existed) and att suck around here. they are only built-up along the interstate. verizon (through acquisitions) and uscc were the legacy cellular providers. towers everywhere, in every small town and every other farm field in between. it’ll make tmobile better here, but at the expense of higher prices across-the-board with one less player in a game with far too few left.

att still exists, duopoly not monopoly