CDMA is antiquated and anti-consumer. Why anyone would want to stay with that rather than moving to GSM is beyond me.
Lots of people who have no need for LTE and would be FORCED to buy NEW phones when the CDMA shut-down is/wil be allowed at some point. At least Dish provided us hardware when they moved on to new tech, but not filthy rich and massively big wireless companies--all much larger companies than Dish, and our govt. is allowing it. Yes, Verizon, et al. have been pushing LTE and new phones to get as many customers upgraded at the customer's expense, but the planned shut-down of CDMA means that your LTE PHONE, that also relies on CDMA with NO VoLTE capability, will become a brick as far as VOICE phone call services, and YOU get to pay for new hardware that wireless companies are waiting to SELL you at your desperation prices, and the group of people most negatively affected by this are those who have the least such as low income and retired on Social Security who most often JUST want to make VOICE calls and either have no money or NO INTEREST in "upgrading" their perfectly functioning for their use
CELL flip or older smart phones every 2 years because they don't have much use for Apps that depend upon the latest OS and the fast LTE network. And BTW, hardly anyone in the general public KNOW about the looming CDMA shut-down. It will be a kick in the tummy for a fair number of people.
Also, this is clearly anti-competitive behavior on T-Mobile's part. Now T-Mobile has an interest in hurting its competition that made it possible for Sprint to merge with T-Mobile. How ironic. The ONLY reason the Justice Department allowed the merger was because Dish was supposed to be a viable 4th player in the wireless business
(Dish, the ONLY company willing to buy what T-Mobile was required to shed--or no Sprint/T-Mobile merger would have occurred), now T-Mobile is doing what it can to end such 4th player. All about the superior technology? Yeah, right.
NOT!
Even Verizon has delayed, multiple times, its date to retire its CDMA both after having a difficult time getting people to move from CDMA to LTE and
ESPECIALLY AFTER it announced plans to acquire TracFone (and all its different brands of MVNO services), the LARGEST MVNO of all and by far Verizon's LARGEST MVNO customer already operating on the Verizon network, especially on its CDMA network. So, now, Verizon is no longer in such a rush to close CDMA (it eventually will, but not at a date to hurt itself should the purchase of TracFone and all its different brands of MVNO's be approved), but T-Mobile has competition on their CDMA, so T-Mobile wants to such it down right away, and would T-Mobile be tied to a planned shut down of CDMA if it still owned Boost Mobile with 9 million subscriber? No, they would not be in such a hurry, and we all know that. What will all those Boost Mobile users do when the lights are turned off and their non-VoLTE phone no longer work for voice calls? January 2022 is NOT far away. In the meantime, they are expected to buy new phones.
The point here isn't just about whatever agreement and planned date of a shut down of CDMA, but
HOW that agreement will affect the CONSUMER. This is why Verizon has delayed and delayed its CDMA shut down: because it does NOT serve
their interest and would greatly negatively affect its customers. However, Boost Mobile customers are no longer "T-Mobile" customers, but are instead customers of its next level competition, so it is in T-Mobile's interest to shut down CDMA as soon as it can because it has the nice effect of greatly hurting its competition with 9 million subscribers.
There are chip shortages, cell tower backlogs/shortages, and then Covid-19 related shortages and work slow-downs. So, any claim that a company makes that it became impossible to meet a deadline has great credibility compared to T-Mobile's inflexibility of a shut-down date only because it had claims of being "transparent." Given the realities of PRE-Covid 19 wireless phone business shortages and the slow-downs and the current Covid-19 shortages and work slow-downs, it is not unreasonable for T-Mobile to set a later date for its full closure of its CDMA to no sooner than January 2023 because
that is in the PUBLIC interest, not necessarily Dish's nor T-Mobile's interest, but if one of those parties benefits from the extra time, so be it, so long as it is in the PUBLIC interest.
If this new Government is really different from the previous TWO administrations (Obama's "hands off" FCC and the last Administrations "anti-consumer" FCC had much more in common than different), they should not allow the shut down of the T-Mobile CDMA because it is an anti-competitive action that harms the owners of Boot Mobile and its potentially 9 million customers, while enhancing T-Mobile's position at the expense of Boot Mobile. The FAT CATS are at it again.