T-Mobile/Sprint Merger Wins Approval From US Judge

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Reuters: T-Mobile's edged closer to a takeover of Sprint after a federal judge on Tuesday approved the deal, rejecting a claim by a group of states that said the deal would violate antitrust laws and raise prices. During a two-week trial in December, T-Mobile and Sprint argued the merger will better equip the new company to compete with top players Verizon and AT&T as the third-largest U.S. wireless carrier, creating a more efficient company with low prices and faster internet speeds. The states, led by California and New York, had said the deal would reduce competition, leading to higher prices.

The decision by U.S. District Court Judge Victor Marrero clears the path for the deal, which already has federal approval and was originally valued at $26 billion. In his ruling, the judge noted the difficulty in deciding an antitrust case since it forces the judge to predict the future in deciding if a deal will lead to higher prices. But Judge Marrero said that he based his decision on three essential points. The first was that he was not persuaded by the states that the deal would lead to higher prices or lower quality wireless services. He disagreed that Sprint would remain a strong competitor and was unconvinced that DISH, who is buying divested assets from the deal, would fail to live up to its promises to enter and compete in the wireless market. Sprint and T-Mobile said in a statement they would move to finalize the merger, which is still subject to certain closing conditions and possible court proceedings. New York's attorney general said the state is considering an appeal; California's attorney general said that state is "prepared to fight."

Re: Millennials Cheered.....

[Way Smarter Than You]

Idiot child has self identified. Why go AC? Fearful of something?

Re:

[TheReaperD]

Fear of already being too old and outdated. (Sucks, doesn't it.)

Re:Millennials Cheered.....

[TheReaperD]

You have the Cingular and AT&T "merger" backwards. Cingular bought AT&T Mobile, took the network and the name and then backhandedly fired most of AT&T's employees without paying unemployment benefits. For those not familiar, Cingular (now AT&T) raised the performance metrics to literally unachievable targets (I was the third highest ranked out of 10,000 employees and still couldn't make the targets) and the union contract allowed us to be fired after not making performance metrics three months in a row. "Coincidentally," the new hires that started several dollars an hour less an hour starting wage and had no allowed annual raises and bonus, unlike the current employees, had a training period that allowed them to not meet the metrics lasting just long enough for all the current employees to be terminated before they lowered the metrics to a more realistic, but way worse than ours was, numbers. Yes, this led to a union and NLRB lawsuit that got the former employees a payout but, it wasn't nearly good enough.

[Disclosure: Former AT&T Mobile Customer Care Agent]

Re:

[Anonymous Dotter]

I remember back in the mid-2000s when I worked for Sprint, and would often see similar things when Sprint Acquired Nextel. Every Cellular company does this to some degree.

When did Millennials cheer?

[rsilvergun]

the few that I know who are even aware of this thing it sucks balls but they're too busy trying to pay their student loans to worry about it. And I don't know anyone who thinks this is a good idea. It's being done to serve corporate profits at the expense of working class people and literally everybody either knows that or figures it out 2 seconds after they find out about it.

This is why Bernie Sanders is so popular with the younger set. They're hoping he'll reign this crap in. The older set would like

Congratulations to my USoA friends

[williamyf]

Even though many of you do not realize it now, no matter how bad this turns out to be, this is the best outcome you could hope for...

At this point is hypotetical but, shall the merger not proceed, the smart money was on Sprint going under, and AT&T and Verizon picking up the good meatier parts, leaving T-Mob even smaller in comparison to the other two.

At least with this, the competition is between 3 big ones, not two big ones and two smaller ones...

This is the lesser of two evils

Pray also that this is the last impetus that Dish needs to become a Carrier

Re:

[Strill]

>At least with this, the competition is between 3 big ones, not two big ones and two smaller ones...

So break them all up.

Re:

[Tailhook]

So break them all up.

Again.

Re:

[rogoshen1]

You know that scene in Terminator 2, where the liquid metal terminator gets shattered and then the bits coalesce back together?

It's just like that, only the re-combined entity is no where near as lovable and endearing as Robert Patrick.

Re:

[irving47]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bUxp5_Y6EM

Re:

[jfdavis668]

Verizon was one of the "baby bells" from when they broke up the Bell Telephone/AT&T phone monopoly. Cingular telephone later bought AT&T wireless. So both are decedents from the original monopoly. Breaking up the monopoly was to create competition, so at least that happened.

Problem is that they were still monopolies

[ron_ivi]

Sure, they were "regional monopolies" - but consumers still had no choice.

It's not like Pacific Telesis and BellSouth were somehow competing.

If they did want to break the monopoly they would have had to have overlapping regions.

Re:

[jfdavis668]

You now had a choice of long distance companies, mainly AT&T, MCI and Sprint. Bell South's wireless service became Cingular, who bought AT&T wireless, so they are still in the game.

Re: Congratulations to my USoA friends

[Way Smarter Than You]

We should have Huawei run our wireless network. Everyone says how secure their stuff is and better than anyone else's. Right?