This is my personal opinion and experience…
I am a Sun cellular postpaid customer for about 8 years . I am one of those people who was enticed to be a postpaid customer although service wise during that days sun cellular sucks big time… If you would make a sun to sun call every 15 minutes your call will be cut off, weak signals are the only consistent part of their service, a lot of delayed messages and if you call customer service it would take eternity too be accommodated.
As years goes by services and perks improve year in and year out. Due to these improvements and loyal customer base competitors are afraid of them. As the saying goes, if you can’t beat them then buy them which what Smart cellular did.
At first i thought that the merger would mean better services and perks but rather than improvement of service what i noticed is that Smart is trying to regain their investment immediately by pushing their billing department to “Nag” their customer to pay immediately unlike before sun cellular would only send text message if you haven’t paid your bill. Smart also have a well oiled axe that they use to cut your line even if your not yet on your credit limit.
In reality Smart have the right to do all of that but from a consumers perspective/experience especially from us old plan holders is that Smart is bullying its customer as if it is saying “you have no choice, we now hold almost 60-70 % of the market and you are at our mercy.”
In short it is a simple way of monopoly although technically Globe is still on the market but based on subscribers it an overwhelming Smart-Sun subscribers. If i am not mistaken a few years back Smart also bought red mobile.