Ten US States Sue To Stop Sprint-T-Mobile Deal, Saying Consumers Will Be Hurt (reuters.com) 71
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: Ten states led by New York and California filed a lawsuit on Tuesday to stop T-Mobile's $26 billion purchase of Sprint, warning that consumer prices will jump due to reduced competition. The complaint comes as the U.S. Justice Department is close to making a final decision on the merger, which would reduce the number of nationwide wireless carriers to three from four. The all-Democratic attorneys general from the 10 states, including Colorado, Connecticut, the District of Columbia, Maryland, Michigan, Mississippi, Virginia and Wisconsin, say the reduced competition would cost Sprint and T-Mobile subscribers more than $4.5 billion annually, according to the complaint. If the states' lawsuit goes forward, the courts would have the last say, not the Justice Department, Blair Levin, an analyst with New Street Research, said in a note on Tuesday. The next two big steps will be determining the position of Makan Delrahim, head of the Justice Department's antitrust division, and the identity of the judge assigned to the states' lawsuit, Levin wrote.
Re: States Rights (Score:2)
It may harm consumers it approved (Score:3, Insightful)
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That's why you are seeing these prolonged, years-long vacancies and McDonald's-level turnover at the higher levels of government. They haven't found a block of wood dead enough to fill the hole yet.
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Some hurt, some helped (Score:2)
I could see consumers of low cost providers like Sprint and T-Mobile seeing higher costs, but those using AT&T and Verizon seeing lower prices because of increased competition from this newly created larger competitor.
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Ahaha, you think AT*T is going to lower prices, loooool. EVERYBODY DRINK! We got another one!
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Ahaha, you think AT*T is going to lower prices, loooool. EVERYBODY DRINK! We got another one!
I never said their prices would be lowered, just that consumers would see lower prices [in the future] (last part was my intended implication). Even if the rare case that consumers benefit at all from this merger, it is far more likely to be in the form of more slowly increasing prices than from seeing existing pricing being reduced. This is of course hard to determine even after the fact since we don't know what would have happened to prices without the merger.
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You're being a bit pedantic about how "lower prices" are defined. But I'd still agree with the GP that we should all drink. It's completely naive to think that anyone is going to lower prices, even through not increasing them as fast.
It's not like AT&T really provides any higher quality of service that justifies the higher price. Why would this merger allow T-Mobile to compete with AT&T any better? It's not like T-Mobile is some small, regional carrier. Those mergers all happened a decade or more
Re:Some hurt, some helped (Score:5, Informative)
Here's Ting Mobile's [ting.com] take on this, at least as of a year ago.
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Here's Ting Mobile's [ting.com] take on this, at least as of a year ago.
MVNOs have always been the bottom feeders of the wireless industry. Most of them have either been bought out by Carlos Slim (America Movil/TracFone), and the few independents that remain have carved out niches by offering service plans that primarily cater to light users (MVNOs pay the major carriers wholesale rates, so heavy users are unprofitable).
Their very nature of being reliant on the major carriers' network infrastructure and beholden to their wholesale pricing, prevents MVNOs from ever presenting t
Re:Some hurt, some helped (Score:4, Interesting)
So assuming Sprint doesn't survive if this merger isn't approved, it becomes a choice between prices going up for Ting customers, or prices going up for all MVNO customers.
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Some hurt, some helped (Score:4, Interesting)
Yeah, pretty much.
It also comes down to "who gets Sprint's spectrum?"
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You are somewhat correct. Sprint and T-Mobile have much higher churn rates than VZW and the AT&T...see https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]
A merger of the two will likely collapse the churn rate and result in a more stable market, overall. Whether this is a good thing for the consumer will depend on what VZW and AT&T do.
Both VZW and AT&T are having real trouble with high-band 5G and both will need to spend huge amounts of capital to make it work as the physics are horrible in the high band. If the
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Convince the parents that if they just add a little extra bandwidth, they don't have to hear the kid that evening... that's where the money is.
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It can only improve the service of both Sprint and T-Mobile across the U.S....
Whether the service gets better or not, is a strawman. The debate is regarding whether the reduced competition is going to lead to higher prices for consumers.
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wow, it's amazing how you can post stupid comments on almost every thread.
Re: Not hurt (Score:1)
Hmm ... (Score:2, Flamebait)
Did that estimate come from Verizon and AT&T lobbyists?
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Did that estimate come from Verizon and AT&T lobbyists?
The lobbyists from Verizon and AT&T delivered the estimates personally to the states' governments . . . along with briefcases of cash.
This is a bit of political posturing, going along with the latest "Break Up Big Tech!" movement.
What's going to end up happening, is that Verizon will swallow up Sprint, and AT&T will munch up on T-Mobile.
Then we'll only have a big two, and your "low cost" carriers will be gone anyway.
AT&T and Verizon do not want a viable third competitor. They like their duo
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Sigh. Someone mod'ed my post "Flamebait" -- so I guess they want to defend Verizon and/or AT&T (and their notorious lobbying practices) ???
[ Perhaps Ajit Pai has a /. account ... ]
Or... (Score:1)
Would this make T-Mobile/Sprint a more competitive company? A quick search shows that AT&T (largest) currently has 155 million customers and Verizon (second largest) has 153 million. Separately T-Mobile (third largest) has 81.3 million and Sprint (fourth largest) has 54.5 million subscribers. Even after the merger the T-Mobile/Sprint company would be the third largest provider with a total of 135 million subscribers.
It seems that every industry consolidates after a while in order for the companies to
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Would this make T-Mobile/Sprint a more competitive company?
Companies are more inclined to compete when they're in an underdog position and desperately need to steal customers away from the competition. Once you're fat and happy with lots of customers, what incentive do you really have to do anything except squeeze out maximum profit?
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Companies are more inclined to compete when they're in an underdog position and desperately need to steal customers away from the competition.
To a point this is true. But if the competition is big enough to crush the little guy, then not so much. If Verizon and at&t can roll out 5g or years from now 6g and no one else can afford it then we'll have two choices.
This appeal as unlikely to win as (Score:2, Offtopic)
Let's face it, this appeal by ten US states is as unlikely to win as the US Women's Soccer Team to get more than 10 goals in one game today.
(looks at TV showing USWNT 13-0 Thailand)
Oh.
I like sprint being owned by softbank... (Score:3)
If the merger goes through, Softbank will cede control. There have been some rather unexpected perks with the Softbank-Sprint link, most notably the fact that I get unlimited talk/text/4G data in Japan as if I was home. I feel like that perk is going to vanish once T-Mobile takes over.
Not exactly (Score:2)
most notably the fact that I get unlimited talk/text/4G data in Japan as if I was home.
I have T-Mobile and was just in Japan...
T-Mobile is pretty good internationally - I still get unlimited data, it's just 3G speeds. But that is plenty fast enough to use navigation applications or light browsing/email.
Talk/Text did cost something, but they were not much - since I only use iMessage or sometimes other chat apps which use data, that didn't cost anything.
You have the option to upgrade to full-speed internet f
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I get 3g in other countries (Korea, Canada, Philippines) and the data seemed unbearably slow for even Uber(/Uber's local equivalent). Perhaps it's just the local affiliates are oversubscribed on 3g compared to T Mobile's local affiliates.