She works for one of the major power utilities here in Michigan so she hate's utility deregulation. Feels it isn't right other companies can sell service that doesn't have to produce it or maintain infrastructure and she feels it's the same with wireless.
If it helps, let her know that the wholesale and MVNO market here in the United States is
voluntary. There's absolutely no regulation
or deregulation on the books demanding that the MNOs sell off airtime to third parties as they do. It's not at all like Europe where there's a legal mandate to allow fair access and pricing to network resources. (I could get into a massive rant here about the US telecom industry, but it's nothing I haven't said before and not exactly germane to the discussion at hand.)
What this means from a practicality standpoint is that AT&T, T-Mo/Sprint, and Verizon are
voluntarily reselling this airtime (for the time being) to MVNOs, even in an era where the FCC and Executive appears to not give a crap if they shut down all wholesale network access and merged into a single monolith (unless that merger apparently involves CNN as an asset). It's also worth noting that even in Sprint's "dire" financial situation, it (and all the MNOs) have still been turning obscene profits for years in a saturated market, even with their wholesale customers. If it wasn't profitable for them to do it, they wouldn't be doing it.
It also ignores the carrier owned prepaid and off-brand pseudo MVNOs as well. AT&T owns Cricket. T-Mobile owns MetroPCS and in a year will likely include Sprint's own in-house brands Virgin and Boost as well. I personally don't recommend these brands for the
same reason I rant about the condition of the mobile industry and the lack of regulation and mandated fair wholesale network access like in Europe as from the first paragraph, but it doesn't mean they don't exist. Dropping postpaid billing and off-network roaming does save a significant amount of money, even when buying directly from the carrier.
As you can see, the argument is
technically hollow.
However, happy wife, happy life. Don't push the issue as her being wrong, let her come to her own conclusions with the simplest of facts, and support her even if she doesn't come around. This is an argument about ethics as worked in a flawed and damaged world to the best of her knowledge and understanding. It would be a disservice by feeding more strife and anguish into the world through bitter disagreement as you're both trying to achieve the exact same goals with different sets of information as filtered through personal bias.