New Sprint, T-Mobile Plans Threaten AT&T, Verizon Dominance

Before long, people may look back on mid-2013 as the point where the balance of power in the wireless market began to shift.

In recent years, AT&T and Verizon Wireless have become increasingly dominant, holding the most spectrum and gaining the first (and sometimes the only) access to some of the hottest devices for periods of as long as a year. But that’s starting to change. T-Mobile’s aggressive discounting already has boosted the company’s prepaid market share and is “poised to do so in post-paid as well,” according to a report issued from influential financial research firm Moffett Research. And now that Sprint has received a cash infusion from Softbank, gained control of Clearwire’s vast spectrum holdings, and begun making aggressive moves such as the Sprint unlimited plan announcement, it’s likely to see similar results. The picture of an industry with two “haves” (Verizon and AT&T) and two “have nots” (Sprint and T-Mobile) “simply doesn’t fit anymore, portending a more competitive future,” wrote Moffett Research.