American prosperity depends on stopping mega-mergers
With T-Mobile wooing the Trump administration in the hopes of getting final regulatory permissions to acquire Sprint, the American wireless industry may go from having four big players to only three national carriers. This would be a blow to the public.
Despite T-Mobile CEO John Legere’s promises of bountiful benefits from the merger, including rolling out a nationwide 5G network (in a way that is sensitive to American national security concerns), it would likely bring about higher-priced, lower-quality mobile service, tens of thousands of lost jobs, and lower wages to employees who would have fewer places to take their skills. The latest reports indicate that, notwithstanding T-Mobile’s lobbying offensive, federal regulators have serious concerns about the merger.
If permitted, the merger would end a relative golden age in wireless that began in 2011, when the Obama administration stopped AT&T’s acquisition of T-Mobile. At the time, merger proponents predicted T-Mobile’s collapse and much higher rates for wireless service if the deal did not happen. Their forecasts have proven almost comically wrong. Having been put on notice that they could not sell out to Verizon or AT&T or join together, T-Mobile and Sprint have injected healthy competition among the four carriers.