Admittedly, Verizon stock has delivered a mediocre performance for years. Price competition from T-Mobile (NASDAQ: TMUS ) destroyed the potential to derive huge profits from wireless. Furthermore, the need to adopt 5G forced Verizon and its principal peers to spend billions of dollars building nationwide 5G networks. Still, assuming T-Mobile's merger with Sprint (NYSE: S ) finally occurs, only Verizon, T-Mobile, and AT&T (NYSE: T ) will own a 5G network.