FCC Votes To Approve T-Mobile-Sprint Merger (theverge.com) 47
The FCC on Wednesday formally approved the merger between T-Mobile and Sprint. The vote comes months after the Justice Department greenlit the deal. The Verge reports: In May, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai first signaled that he would vote to approve the merger after the commission and the companies struck a deal that Republicans believed would help foster a faster 5G rollout. The other Republican commissioners, Brendan Carr and Michael O'Rielly, also voiced support for the merger at the time. The merger was pushed through on a party-line vote with Democrats dissenting, an FCC official told The Verge.
Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel announced her disapproval in an op-ed for The Atlantic Wednesday morning. In it, she argues that a merged T-Mobile-Sprint would only hurt consumers, driving up prices and staving off competition. "These state officials understand something fundamental: With less competition, rates rise and innovation falls. All the evidence demonstrates that this holds true in the mobile-phone industry too," Rosenworcel said. "If this merger succeeds, consumers will pay the price." The other Democrat, Geoffrey Starks, was the last to vote on the deal. In September, Starks put out a statement calling on the FCC to delay any votes on the merger until Sprint could be fully investigated for allegedly misappropriating Lifeline subsidy funds for around 885,000 ineligible accounts. "There is no credible way that the merger before us can proceed until this Lifeline investigation is resolved and responsible parties are held accountable," Starks said at the time. Before the deal closes, representatives from the two companies said they'll wait until a multistate lawsuit trying to block the deal is resolved.
Democratic Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel announced her disapproval in an op-ed for The Atlantic Wednesday morning. In it, she argues that a merged T-Mobile-Sprint would only hurt consumers, driving up prices and staving off competition. "These state officials understand something fundamental: With less competition, rates rise and innovation falls. All the evidence demonstrates that this holds true in the mobile-phone industry too," Rosenworcel said. "If this merger succeeds, consumers will pay the price." The other Democrat, Geoffrey Starks, was the last to vote on the deal. In September, Starks put out a statement calling on the FCC to delay any votes on the merger until Sprint could be fully investigated for allegedly misappropriating Lifeline subsidy funds for around 885,000 ineligible accounts. "There is no credible way that the merger before us can proceed until this Lifeline investigation is resolved and responsible parties are held accountable," Starks said at the time. Before the deal closes, representatives from the two companies said they'll wait until a multistate lawsuit trying to block the deal is resolved.
We could save a lot of time and money (Score:1)
Just disband the FCC. I mean, Stern's on satellite now, so they aren't making any money from those fines anymore. What does the FCC do, besides auction off public property to the highest bidder?
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Heh, well they were supposed to protect consumers' communications from predatory abuse and disruption, but that's clearly not working anymore so I sadly have to agree with you at this point.
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The FCC does exactly what it was designed to do. People keep forgetting that and whining about it. I have no sympathy for everyone giving up their liberty to be protected by a spineless lying suit in DC.
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Socialists are, by definition, anti-American.
So is bad taste, but nobody takes that into account.
Anyway, I'm going to assume you meant the Democrat (Republican) Party.
Peace!
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What is the Democrat Party you refer to?
I've heard of the Democratic Party but the people that talk about the Democrat Party are usually right-wing nutters.
Goodbye free market competition, hello monopoly (Score:3)
Unregulated capitalism is killing the free market by capturing or cornering every free market it finds. Capitalists hate competition, it lowers profits and the only goal of capitalism is the acquisition of capital.
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To be fair - this isn't resulting in a monopoly. Prior to this there were 4 major cell phone competitors (with a whole bunch of smaller ones), and the smallest 2 of those 4 are merging.
A market with 3 players isn't a monopoly. Hell even a market with 2 major players wouldn't be a monopoly.
Re:Goodbye free market competition, hello monopoly (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that the two companies that are merging are the only two that were really rocking the boat. With three big companies on approximately equal footing, there's little incentive to disrupt the market and improve things for consumers. Far from making the 5G rollout happen more quickly, this will probably slow it down. :-(
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Why is that a problem, sounds awesome (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is that the two companies that are merging are the only two that were really rocking the boat.
Seems to me like two boat-rockers acting together can rock the boat quite a bit harder....
Why would they STOP rocking boats just because they are merging? Now it means the have the combined capital and network to really stick it to complacent companies like Verizon.
With three big companies on approximately equal footing, there's little incentive to disrupt the market
Sure there is, no reason why the combined entity would not work hard to capture a lot of customers from the other two.
Far from making the 5G rollout happen more quickly, this will probably slow it down
Again, why would you think that? Now instead of two companies having to roll out 5G gear in parallel, you have one combined entity that has to deploy half the equipment they would have independently. Why on earth would that do anything but improve deployment range and speed?
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Because they'll be laying off large swaths of employees and significantly reducing their overall operating costs after the merger, and thus will no longer be desperately trying to stay alive. I'm not saying they can't still rock the boat, but the desperation won't be there.
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Sure, but don't try to pretend those three companies don't collude on pricing: https://www.nytimes.com/2018/0... [nytimes.com]
Technically, I guess the cell phone carriers represent more of a cartel than a monopoly, but the effect is similar.
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As a rule of thumb, a market needs roughly at least 7 competitors to get decent competition. The value of competition improvement gives diminishing returns beyond 7-ish. Thus, the improvement between 7 and 20 is less than the improvement between 4 and 7.
Big players often claim they have "economies of scale" efficiency, but usually that's dubious. The Detroit big-3 car makers claimed that, but Japan beat their ass with about 7 makers.
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You did say "as a rule of thumb", so I don't think you were claiming it holds true in ALL circumstances. But it's interesting to explore when and how that might make sense, and when it might not.
For instance, if you're purchasing a major ticket item, it makes sense that you'll only be purchasing one among many competing brands, and that you're not necessarily going to be losing out by picking just one out of the bunch (e.g. cars, appliances, etc). In this case, having a decent number of competitors clearl
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Often if there are many players, standards form. Look what happened to the x86 PC. Prior microcomputers were mostly proprietary. IBM made the PC mostly open, on large part due to anti-trust worries. The standard took off and there were many dozens of PC makers, and all the PC's ran the same software. (CP/M more or less did t
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I've read many articles and studies on the subject over the years, and they tend to triangulate to around 7 as the near-plateau. My apologies for not saving copies/links.
Re: Goodbye free market competition, hello monopol (Score:2)
You may be a city dweller if you think rural America doesn't already have a monopoly on cellular coverage. For them, this merger represents a chance at competition. Sprint is currently a distant third in rural with T-Mobile not even placing.
This is about 80% of the country.
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Even with this merger, it's unlikely the situation will improve substantially, because T-Mobile and Sprint both have garbage coverage in the boonies everywhere.
If coverage in rural areas really matters to you, Verizon is still the only reasonable choice. And you will still likely need a booster. Source: I'm in a group for people doing bus conversions, with many boondockers in it.
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That really depends on what rural area you live in. Here on the Eastern Plains of Colorado it's ATT or tin can and string.
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It is special privileges granted by the government that make these monopolies possible. They could not survive in an open market.
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"Unregulated capitalism is killing the free market"
you were doing good until...
" the only goal of capitalism is the acquisition of capital."
Capitalism is about "private" control of productivity vs the state controlling productivity. If you are anti-capitalist then you are against people having a say in how they work and/or owning what they produce. In short the government either tells you where to work AND/OR they own whatever you produce.
There is a never ending supply of people never picking up a diction
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This is a regulated market. You cannot become a cell phone carrier without buying frequency bands from the FCC (or contracting with someone who has bought said bands). That's not to say the regulation is unwarranted (it is because you can't have everyone stomping over each others' broadcasts).
As T-mobile customer, very happy (Score:3)
The simple fact was that T-Mobile or Sprint each on their own, were never going to have the reach that AT&T and Verizon does all by themselves.
What this means for me a T-Mobile customer is a lot better coverage overall.
Additionally, they means a LOT of reduction of duplicate efforts for T-Mobile and Sprint to get 5G coverage out. Now it's just one company expanding new coverage.
The one thing I am a bit fearful of losing is the free international roaming from T-Mobile, which I have enjoyed greatly and used a lot. If that went away I would be pretty sad, but it's not like I can get into any other boat that offers that and the U.S. coverage improving is something I would find useful much more often.
This merger is the BEGINNING of equal competition with AT&T/Verizon, not a reduction of competition...
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I don't understand. There is NO competition, T-Mobile destroys other US or Earth based telecoms. Pick up the phone and it works basically anywhere you want to be on Earth for $25/mo including tax + phone calls if not in North America.
People that aren't using T-Mobile just aren't traveling enough.
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I have a slightly more expensive bill, but I also include extra bandwidth and data/telecom coverage in canada.
They have been getting a little handsy with my legacy plan and force me to opt out of their 'unlimited data' plan for 'free.' It isn't remotely unlimited and the throttling is ridiculous compared to my currently limited plan. I never use all of my bandwidth so it's basically unlimited now.
With that said, it looks like it may be time to jump ship to one of the cheaper pay to play providers.
What's the point? (Score:2, Insightful)
This seems like the worst of both worlds. If you don't care too much about spotty coverage (e.g. if you don't travel much outside a big city) then you'll get marginally better service for a premium; exactly what you could have had before. Meanwhile the option to pay less when you didn't need perfect coverage is gone.
In the den of thugs (Score:2)
In the den of thugs, T-mobile at least has some honor. Glad they didn't get bought themselves a few years back when German parent was trying to cash out. Bet they are glad too.
Maybe more than 2 political parties... (Score:2)
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Be nice if we had a dozen different parties to choose from. Odds of 1 party ever controlling all 3 houses are slim to none, so they are forced to listen to each other and, maybe, just maybe, compromise.
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That may be true, but
That's never true. Go and Google the "Overton Window" and consider how not voting affects it.
Can any one ask? (Score:1)
You're a useful idiot (Score:1)
Now would be a good time to remind everyone (Score:2)
And I know we don't like partisanship around here, but at a certain point it's just time to call a spade a spade.
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Cricket is already a wholly owned subsidiary of AT&T
Virgin Mobile is already a wholly owned subsidiary of Sprint
There are only four networks: Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-mobile. Everyone else is an MVNO.
Of Course They Do (Score:2)
They also "Voted" to repeal Net Neutrality.
Let's put a stupid asshole with a giant Reese's mug that works for telecom in charge of the the FCC.
While were at it we might as well put a guy that has spend his entire life fighting EPA regulation in charge of the EPA.
And maybe top it off with a Department of Education chair who has never been in public school and has never sent a child to public school.
What's next? A fox news anchor as a delegate to the United Nation?
Pay no attention to the tens of people whom h
Anti just coz (Score:2)