this post was submitted on 16 Jun 2025
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I'm sure it will 'compete' in the same way as all his other failed businesses.
See, here's the thing when you're the President. You can just have your FCC chair shut them down. You can actively quash literally any boundaries to being a monopoly, and nobody can do anything about it (from a legal or regulatory standpoint).
If he actually launches a Trump phone service, it’s going to be a MVNO that just piggy backs off the main operators’ infrastructure. It’s not like he or his idiot sons are going to buy spectrum and build towers.
He wouldn’t really be competing with T-Mobile, Verizon, or AT&T. He’d be competing with Boost Mobile and companies like that.
Maybe they are planning to take back that spectrum they gave to Boost/Dish on a pinky-promise that they'd actually become a competitive network, during the Sprint and T-Mobile antitrust case.
Which would fit with the FCC's increasingly mob-like behaviour under Trump.
You're missing the point. The admin has full control over spectrum licensing. This means Trump could easily have the FCC just revoke all other spectrum licenses for cellphone comms, and just forcibly seize those towers. Don't look at it like it's going to operate like a corporation, because I promise you it won't.
Wasn't Starlink experimenting with phone calls? Could be a deal with Elon.
Yeah, but I doubt they're close to having the capacity to offer full 5G service like a traditional carrier. I have T-Mobile (Deutsche Telekom‘s US subsidiary) and they have a deal with Starlink but it’s (a) in beta and (b) limited in what you can do. Unless things have changed, even when it launches, it’ll be just LTE text and voice and you need a pretty modern phone.
So, it’s not like a drop in replacement for a land-based plan where you get internet and stuff. Plus, Trump and his kids aren’t going to do any of the hard work. Even before his presidency, “Trump” was just a licensing brand and now it’s a pretty shitty brand. It’s not like the family was running Trump Steaks and packing boxes for shipment or whatever.
Makes sense.