When the T-Mobile-Sprint merger was first announced on April 29, 2018, it appeared that getting the U.S. Justice Department to agree to the transaction was going to be a huge issue. After all, the number of major U.S. carriers was going to be reduced by 25% and in the eyes of the DOJ, that means less competition and higher prices. However, an ingenious plan was crafted that would turn Dish Network into the “fourth nationwide facilities-based network competitor,” replacing Sprint.

Boost Mobile founder says that Dish will throttle prepaid service on purpose in order to get unprofitable customers to leave

But if the founder of Boost Mobile, Peter Adderton, is correct, Dish will end up looking to cut costs by jettisoning as many as 2.5 million prepaid customers. These would be wireless consumers that Dish doesn’t believe it could make any money on. Adderton founded Boost in 2000 and sold it to Nextel in 2003. Two years later, Sprint gobbled up Nextel picking up Boost Mobile in the process. Adderton believes that if Dish does complete its transaction with Sprint, it will need to cut costs so that it can pay for the build-out of its 5G network. He says that Dish will throttle the data speeds of certain prepaid customers in the hope that they will decide to take their business elsewhere.

The lawsuit that is holding up the T-Mobile-Sprint merger will go to trial starting on December 9th. The plaintiffs are concerned that a combined T-Mobile-Sprint will raise prices and prevent low income Americans from accessing the internet. T-Mobile addressed these issues this morning when it announced that it would launch nationwide 5G service in the U.S. on  December 6th. It also announced a low-cost plan called T-Mobile Connect which offers unlimited talk, text and 2GB of data for $15 a month. The plan will remain priced at that level for five years with the monthly data cap rising by 500MB every year. So after the first year, subscribers will get 2.5GB of data each month during the next year, 3GB per month the next year and so on.