T-Mobile and the AT&T fall out

During the last year, T-Mobile made a number of changes to the way its run in order to make it more appealing to its suitor, AT&T. Fortunately, the AT&T deal went south, but T-Mobile still seems to be making the same mistakes.

• Customer service is getting worse. And T-Mobile is using the opportunity to cut customer service jobs, instead of improving the service.
• Plans are truly awful. With the removal of EMP, and the laughable creation of "Value plans" (contract plans that are cheaper than T-Mobile's regular plans, but in a dynamic industry absolutely guaranteed to be uncompetitive), T-Mobile has nothing that distinguishes themselves from other carriers except temporary price advantages.
• Prepaid service whose plans are designed to appeal to contract customers, but whose services are awful.

What I'd like to see is T-Mobile undo some of the damage. But when the original AT&T take-over announcement occurred, for the first time in nearly a decade I started to look at other carriers. My wife and I will probably switch away within the year, and I'm not overly happy about losing that old friend that Voicestream was.