Experts Say the DOJ Justification For T-Mobile/Sprint Merger Approval Is a Joke (vice.com) 98
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard: The Department of Justice has approved T-Mobile's controversial $26 billion merger with Sprint. And while the agency proposed a number of remedies it says will mitigate the competition and job-eroding impact of the deal, experts say the fixes will do nothing of the sort. From the beginning, the biggest issue with T-Mobile's planned $26 billion merger with Sprint was the fact that it would reduce the number of major U.S. carriers from four to three. Historically, (say in Canada or Ireland) such consolidation results in two things: much higher prices, and a significant culling of jobs as redundant positions are eliminated. The DOJ says it will impose requirements offsetting the competitive harm of the deal. More specifically, the DOJ says that T-Mobile and Sprint will need to offload Sprint's Boost Mobile and some spectrum to Dish Network, who'll then attempt to build a new, viable fourth competitor from these scraps to offset the elimination of Sprint from the market. But experts consulted by Motherboard say the proposal isn't likely to work, and the end result of the merger will still very likely be higher prices and worse service for all. Gigi Sohn, a former FCC lawyer and telecom expert, says the deal "certainly won't lead to a viable fourth competitor any time soon, if ever." She notes that Boost Mobile only has just 8.8 million subscribers, a far cry from the 158 million and 156 million subscribers of AT&T and Verizon, respectively. Building a viable fourth competitor requires far more than just a small prepaid company and some spectrum.
Consumer groups like Public Knowledge blasted the proposal, noting that a far more simpler solution would be to block the deal and force Sprint to find a suitor outside of the merger process. "Sprint is a significantly stronger competitor today than a new fourth competitor could be for the foreseeable future," the groups said. The struggles that Dish and other would-be new entrants have consistently faced underscore that even with the best of intentions and a full commitment to deploy and compete, nothing is certain. Consumers will face considerable harm if the marketplace does not develop as the DOJ envisions."
Consumer groups like Public Knowledge blasted the proposal, noting that a far more simpler solution would be to block the deal and force Sprint to find a suitor outside of the merger process. "Sprint is a significantly stronger competitor today than a new fourth competitor could be for the foreseeable future," the groups said. The struggles that Dish and other would-be new entrants have consistently faced underscore that even with the best of intentions and a full commitment to deploy and compete, nothing is certain. Consumers will face considerable harm if the marketplace does not develop as the DOJ envisions."
A joke? (Score:4, Informative)
Just like the rest of the Trump administration!
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Instead he just gets to combine Sprint's footprint with T-Mo, because T-Mo just bought all of Sprint's towers?
How is this bad again?
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I guess I don't understand what these "experts" are getting at.
Instantly having 8.8 million subscribers sounds like a good way to kick off a business. It sounds like unless you can instantly be at the scale of AT&T, then you just aren't viable and may as well give up?
What a dumb fucking "expert" opinion. Everyone has to start somewhere, and having spectrum, name recognition, and millions of pre-existing paying subscribers to give you capital for growth is a much better place to start than with a giant
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The process would be the same and subject to the same regulatory approval. Even if Sprint's assets were up for auction, it would require regulatory approval.
I think this merger makes a strong competitor for AT&T and Verizon and will drive innovation to a point. cellular communications could also get disrupted in the future by satellite communications.
Stop Complaining (Score:5, Funny)
Well??? Did you like the joke? (Score:4, Insightful)
This is pretty much how government does it.
It has happened regardless of if a D or R is in power! It's almost like regulations or regulatory agencies don't matter! But has... as long as they "feel" like they matter to some of you.
Re:Well??? Did you like the joke? (Score:5, Insightful)
This is pretty much how government does it.
It has happened regardless of if a D or R is in power! It's almost like regulations or regulatory agencies don't matter! But has... as long as they "feel" like they matter to some of you.
Regulatory agencies don't work if they don't attempt to regulate. And they definitely don't work if they attempt to do the opposite of what they were conceived to do.
For example the EPA. The Environmental Protection Agency. With a mission "To protect human and environmental health" . The mission of the Environmental Protection Agency is not to ensure that big industry can still make a profit. There are other components of government for that. If you appoint people to the EPA with the mission of deregulating acts that contribute to pollution and human heath then you have not only failed but you have betrayed humanity. If you accept and carry out a leadership position in the EPA with the intent to cause harm to human life or the environment then you have failed. ( but you haven't just failed, you have harmed millions of lives)
This shit is happening in broad daylight while we all watch and say "that's odd". No its more than odd, it's fucked up. We need to become more concerned than we are right now.
It isn't just the EPA, it's almost every agency and facet of government. Working against it's intended purpose. Putin and Xi have much to celebrate, the rest of the world will have to hope they do the right thing with their new found power (hint: they won't)
All for what? So you could tell someone that knew what they were talking about that it doesn't matter because now your the winner? It feels good now , it feels like your on top of the world right? What did you win? The end of truth and justice? the end of Democracy?
Since you didn't understand what you were doing to begin with , you don't realize that you are making your lives, and the lives of your children either really horrific or completely non-existent.
Yay trump won , we are the smart ones now, you know-it-alls can fuck off with your facts and logic and reason and effort. I want polluted air and dirty water, i want Russia and China to rule the world.
Re:Well??? Did you like the joke? (Score:4, Informative)
Money : wealth, power, control. The super rich individuals and corporations want to keep control. Pro-tip: they are willing to lie and manipulate and destroy in order to do so.
They are trying to trick you. They are hoping that you are too stupid to catch on, or that you don't care, or that you think you might become one of the 2%. Pro-tip : we can't all be in the 2%, which means that 98% of us (looking at you) are meant to be tricked or swindled.
Good news is we don't have to be. Think of a colony of ants , one ant is no big deal, but a colony of ants could drop an elephant if it wanted to.
So they divide us up. Pit us against one another, squabbling over insignificant crumbs while they take control of the world.
When someone wants equality , or justice, or to feed the hungry, or to make sure sick people can get affordable health care, or that the environment stays clean, or that kids have proper education, or that the prison system is fair. They are NOT trying to fuck you over and rule the world, they are trying to give you the world.
You really need to pay attention to the big picture people, look for the strings. They do not lead to someone trying to make sure an old person has something to eat besides dog food, it's true.
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All for what? So you could tell someone that knew what they were talking about that it doesn't matter because now your the winner? It feels good now , it feels like your on top of the world right? What did you win? The end of truth and justice? the end of Democracy?
Since you didn't understand what you were doing to begin with , you don't realize that you are making your lives, and the lives of your children either really horrific or completely non-existent.
Yay trump won , we are the smart ones now, you know-it-alls can fuck off with your facts and logic and reason and effort. I want polluted air and dirty water, i want Russia and China to rule the world.
It's not that it doesn't matter because the republicans won. This illustrates, that today, for the most part, to the modern republican party, it never mattered. They talked about the debt, but only when the other team was in office. They talked about protecting rule of law, but only when the other team was in charge. They never much cared for the environment, at least in recent years. They always just talked about how it was hurting business. They talked about a president abusing power, but only when
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All for what? So you could tell someone that knew what they were talking about that it doesn't matter because now your the winner? It feels good now , it feels like your on top of the world right? What did you win? The end of truth and justice? the end of Democracy?
Since you didn't understand what you were doing to begin with , you don't realize that you are making your lives, and the lives of your children either really horrific or completely non-existent.
Yay trump won , we are the smart ones now, you know-it-alls can fuck off with your facts and logic and reason and effort. I want polluted air and dirty water, i want Russia and China to rule the world.
It's not that it doesn't matter because the republicans won. This illustrates, that today, for the most part, to the modern republican party, it never mattered. They talked about the debt, but only when the other team was in office. They talked about protecting rule of law, but only when the other team was in charge. They never much cared for the environment, at least in recent years. They always just talked about how it was hurting business. They talked about a president abusing power, but only when it wasn't their guy. They talked about a president lying, when Obama told the partial truth about keeping your health insurance. They hammered that for what 7 years or so, but that guy that is over ten thousand false or misleading statements they say nothing. That is four orders of magnitude worse. They went after Obama when he alked with the Castro regime, yet Trump is in blissed out love with the North Korean guy who does truly awful things to his people.
Republicans, at least today's republicans, for the most part have no ethics, no founding principles beyond cutting taxes and inflating profits for wealthy people. It's all a con for power... Maybe some had ethics around the edges, but for almost all of them the ethics only appear if they know they aren't going to run for re-election. Ethics don't exist if the only time you exercise them is when they are consequence free.
As far as the merger goes, well, either various people plan to make some money, or they simply don't care and go with it because of the default big business is good.
I tried my best to keep parties out of my rant but i guess mentioning "trump" gave me away. But i really don't want to lump all republicans together, because many of them really do not agree with what "their" party has become. Some are appalled and ashamed. And I think that those are the people that we need to connect with. Those are the people that need to stand up and speak.
And for those in positions of power, those that are appalled by what they see and want to quit to send a message of disapproval, I
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EPA's job is to make rules that once a company acts within those rules they're off the hook.
great plan? no? like, they can't be sued for lead paint if epa okayed it. or asbestos. aaaanyhow would dish be renting airspace from the resulting company from this merger to run boost? because if it is then this whole thing is such a joke.
but then again, you know, usa market has already been screwed over by the telecoms companies making huge profits for like 30 years now so why would you think it would change at a
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America still has cheap plans and high data limits compared to Canada, but our telecommunication companies are likely more profitable. It's not like the 3 companies actually compete, except to see who can screw their customers first.
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Loonies are only legal tender up to $25, even toonies are only legal tender up to $40, much too low to pay for most plans.
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Just another day in the US of A... (Score:5, Insightful)
So... big business will win, by reducing competition and enabling higher prices as a result. The average Joe will lose because of said reduced competition and increased prices.
We can now replace Lincoln's Gettysburg Address with the new version for 21st Century America.
"...this nation, under God, shall have an improved revenue stream for the wealthy — and that government of the people, by the elite, for the elite, shall not perish from the earth".
Remember folks, that money in your pocket... it is not yours. You are just being allowed to hold it for a short while until its rightful owner comes to claim it.
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Big Business always wins.
Everyone wants big business to win, including the folks that claim to be against big business. The moment people sat down and said... let us create government to rule our lives, they created the rich and elite.
One cannot be had without the other? The poor shall eternally serve the rich and the poor will war among each other for scraps from their tables.
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Big Business always wins.
Everyone wants big business to win, including the folks that claim to be against big business. The moment people sat down and said... let us create government to rule our lives, they created the rich and elite.
One cannot be had without the other? The poor shall eternally serve the rich and the poor will war among each other for scraps from their tables.
This is true. Unless you realize otherwise. "you" is me, and "you" is the judge that sits on on a bench. "you" is the guy collecting curbside trash. "you" is the teacher instructing our children. "you" is the president of the united states. "you" is the bank teller. "you" is the collection agent. "you" is the mailman.
To see one has only to look. (an adaptation of the shopkeeper from "Gremlins" the movie , when he casually mentions that "to hear, one has only to listen"
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So it's better if Sprint just goes insolvent and AT&T and Verizon can buy up the bones left over for pennies on the dollar and become even bigger and more anti-competitive?
I'd rather have a viable #3 keeping #1 and #2 honest, and creating a marketplace that at least has the chance of legitimate competition.
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Remember folks, that money in your pocket... it is not yours. You are just being allowed to hold it for a short while until its rightful owner comes to claim it.
You are not wrong; however, your possession of that money allows you the possibility to exchange it for goods and services that actually are yours.
All that means is that holding on to money is a fools game. Money is a tool and you can not deny that it is useful.
Or to put it another way, money is a representation of value, not a thing of value. Or ... to put it in programming terms, money is a pointer, not data.
Ask yourself... (Score:4, Interesting)
Are we better off with three players or two. Without the merger, we will likely be down to 2 in a few years. This merger actually makes sense— the previous approval of the AATT juggernaut makes absolutely no regulatory logic though. Verizon is only slightly more logical, beyond abandoning FIOS.
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This is a really good point. Sprint is not viable anyway, so either they merge with and strengthen T-Mobile into a real competitor against Verizon & ATT or they can fold and go into bankruptcy. That would only strengthen the top two carriers and increase the gap to T-Mobile because the big two can just outbid them for the valuable spectrum assets.
The idea from the DOJ to try to create a new fourth carrier out of the discarded remains of the merger is probably not effective. I doubt Dish will really b
Re: Ask yourself... (Score:1)
That's a false choice. The correct one is to break up Verizon and AT&T so that there's 6 competitors rather than 4. It would solve a lot of problems with a lack of choice.
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Are we better off with three players or two. Without the merger, we will likely be down to 2 in a few years. This merger actually makes sense— the previous approval of the AATT juggernaut makes absolutely no regulatory logic though. Verizon is only slightly more logical, beyond abandoning FIOS.
That's the wrong approach.
The right approach is to force providers to compete on price and customer service. Ban carrier locking and require that every phone a given carrier sells have the hardware to operate on every other US carrier's network. Also, require carriers to streamline the process of number porting -- it should never take more than five minutes and never cost more than a few dollars. Also, require carriers who sell phones on a payment plan to allow the debt to be transferred to another car
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No, because you still end up with over-towered areas due to overlap between companies, and under-towered areas due to lack of competitor towers in others. We can better optimize bandwidth allocation and better coverage by having one provider for towers who is mandated by law to provide services for the entire country.
No, because over-towered areas will generate less revenue per tower, and under-towered areas will be a revenue opportunity. Markets are really good at optimizing this sort of thing.
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> Are we better off with three players or two.
I spend most of my time in Northern New England and here we have one option: Verizon.
Outside of cities forget about T-Mobile. Outside of Interstate corridors forget about AT&T or Sprint. Outside of those and tourist areas, forget about USCC.
If you're on vacation here you'd better have VZW if you want to get signal, maybe even data. Forget about the FCC's maps - they're fraudulent. OpenSignal has real maps. Setting up streaming for a festival in the m
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Any thoughts on how to improve the situation? Festivals in remote mountainous rural locations are a bit of an outlier, but usually the most logical approach is a temporary point to point link with local WiFi (or a portable cell site), but beyond that isn’t the point of living there to be detached?
Foxes Are Watching the Henhouse (Score:5, Insightful)
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i'm seeing a trend in sentiments....
LOL Fourth competitor (Score:3)
[...] Building a viable fourth competitor requires far more than just a small prepaid company and some spectrum.
Especially if the fourth competitor is a satellite company that will have recently acquired MVNO (mobile virtual network operator). They key word here is "virtual". Boost is just reselling Sprint's service and I doubt that Dish will be able to handle their own cell traffic using satellite receivers.
Do we have a viable fourth competitor now? (Score:3)
T-Mobile and Sprint will need to offload Sprint's Boost Mobile and some spectrum to Dish Network, who'll then attempt to build a new, viable fourth competitor
Is this honestly any worse than what we have now?
Right now we have TWO viable competitors, AT&T & Verizon. Then we have companies that are pretty far behind in service coverage, T-Mobile and Sprint.
I would argue that however weak that new fourth entity might be, at least after the merger we might actually have a third viable competitor that can truly go head to head again the main two carriers, instead of two weak third place companies. To my mind it means actual competition in the market where little exist3ed before.
I say this as a T-Mobile customer that is pretty happy with the service now, except coverage is not as good as Verizon (or AT&T). After the merger I would look forward to seeing better coverage across the country, and we'll see how it affects pricing...
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T-Mobile and Sprint will need to offload Sprint's Boost Mobile and some spectrum to Dish Network, who'll then attempt to build a new, viable fourth competitor
Is this honestly any worse than what we have now?
Right now we have TWO viable competitors, AT&T & Verizon. Then we have companies that are pretty far behind in service coverage, T-Mobile and Sprint.
I would argue that however weak that new fourth entity might be, at least after the merger we might actually have a third viable competitor that can truly go head to head again the main two carriers, instead of two weak third place companies. To my mind it means actual competition in the market where little exist3ed before.
I say this as a T-Mobile customer that is pretty happy with the service now, except coverage is not as good as Verizon (or AT&T). After the merger I would look forward to seeing better coverage across the country, and we'll see how it affects pricing...
There is some merit to what you say. A strong third competitor to the top two players sounds like a win. And it might be.
But think about why you are : a T-Mobile customer. Is it because you desire better coverage? Or is it because you wanted better rates? If its the latter then this might not be the best merger for you. The new merged company might have "earned" the justification for falling in line with high end pricing by becoming one of the top 3 players. Of course nothing will happen right away, it'll
Coverage before rates (Score:2)
But think about why you are : a T-Mobile customer. Is it because you desire better coverage? Or is it because you wanted better rates?
I say coverage before rates, but the meaning of that is not as straightforward as it might seem...
When I say that, I truly mean global coverage - I travel internationally from time to time, and I get free (though somewhat slow) data roaming from T-Mobile in almost every country.
Locally, I do support the merger mostly because of better coverage, even if rates increased somewha
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
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If the #3 company out there can't survive unless they merge with someone else, it sounds like the lack of regulation in the industry is the problem. Yep... I'm sure justifying more mergers will solve that.
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Not that long ago.... (Score:2)
Sprint + TMobile still only mobile focused (Score:2)
While I am not a huge fan of this (as a TMobile customer) i am not worried as much as i would not want to see Sprint/TMO get acquired in the next 5 years by ATT and Verizon, but I am not as doom and gloom about this as the combined company will still only have 1 main product they offering: mobile services. Verizon has its FIOS/landline business as well as Yahoo/AOL. ATT has UVerse, Warner Media well at DirecTV (that was the merger that really should have been shot down).
Sprint/TMO can and should keep pric