
States are looking to jam T-Mobile and Sprint’s proposed $26.5B merger - srnvs
https://techcrunch.com/2019/06/11/states-are-looking-to-jam-t-mobile-and-sprints-proposed-26-5-billion-merger/
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hn_throwaway_99
While I'm usually wary of giant corporate mergers like this, the fact that
they are 3rd and 4th leads me to believe it would actually position them to
better compete against Verizon and AT&T in a way that would be good for
consumers.

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shmerl
Let them invest to compete, instead of merging. Merging will only make things
worse.

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ViViDboarder
How do you figure? If they merge, we get three main market leaders all
competing head to head.

If they don’t, Sprint tanks, and we still have three main market leaders,
however two will remain significantly ahead of the third. Keeping in mind that
the two that are ahead are now playing the monopoly game and buying into other
industries (see AT&T and Time Warner or AT&T and DirecTV or Verizon and Yahoo,
etc)

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shakyshakyshaky
Break up Verizon and AT&T.

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dorchadas
We then need to _keep_ them broken up.

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scarface74
This makes no sense to me. There is no reasonable reality where Sprint becomes
a healthy competitive force in the US as a standalone business.

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colinbartlett
Instead of approving this merger, is there another way the government could
encourage competition? Perhaps break up the larger carriers or some how
promote new upstart competition?

Your statement sounds correct but I don’t exactly like the reality.

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toomuchtodo
Manage the cell tower infrastructure and spectrum themselves through a non
profit GSE (government sponsored entity) (think ISO grid operators for
electric grids) and make every commercial provider an MVNO stakeholder.
Similar to a municipality owning the last mile fiber to the house, and any
provider can provide you service with a quick patch cable or VLAN change at
the central office/colo facility.

Running a nationwide cellular network is expensive and complicated AF. You
have to provide a level playing field if you want to enable competition
without needing hundreds of millions of dollars to start up.

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JoshTriplett
Competition between carriers has partly driven the widespread availability of
coverage. Several carriers compete on the basis of their coverage. A
government-funded entity seems highly unlikely to provide optimal coverage, or
to do so in a cost-efficient manner.

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rayiner
I'm not categorically against government-run solutions. But the cellular
market isn't so obviously broken that a government-run system has any hope of
being better. U.S. market concentration in cellular is less than for shipping,
ecommerce, and soft drinks, and a lot less than for mobile operating systems,
search, or social media. Verizon and AT&T's combined market share of about 68%
is about the same as Apple and Samsung's combined share of the U.S. smart
phone market.

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fyoving
What's the thinking here? Stopping the merger of the two insignificant players
would only shield the major players from real competition.

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randyrand
ATT & Verizon have impressive lobbies.

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pcurve
My hunch is they would welcome the merger

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CriticalCathed
I left Sprint because I hated their guts. I went to T-Mobile.

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rubyn00bie
The real answer to this is to break up AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast while
blocking the T-Mobile/Sprint merger.

This will probably help net neutrality slightly since T-Mobile and Sprint
gotta duke it out offering more network throughout to customers while AT&T and
VZW compete over speed... the four sort of forcing each other to sort of
almost make something which appears neutral (it’s not).

Unless there are no gigantic telecoms or there’s way more government
intervention in these markets (common carrier status anyone?) there will be no
point in things like this against the bottom tier national providers.

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fitzroy
At this point I'm just rooting for them to get together. They're like star-
crossed lovers: Romeo Corp and Juliet Inc.

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em3rgent0rdr
"The lawsuitm" typo

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wrong_variable
The problems facing the US in competing with China are structural.

No Amount of mergers between giant monopolies is gong to fix structural
problems.

On a cynical level, it maybe that "China" is used as an excuse to push through
a merger for profits, but lets assume some innocence.

The execs. realize how costly 5G is going to be, and the only way they know to
borrow that amount of money is increasing their underlying capital assets.

The problem is that Huawei became successful in 5G through massive government
investment, currency arbitrage ( supported by the US ), cheaper land, cheaper
engineer, ...

Just a side note, have a look at how Huawei operates. They build a giant
60,000 engineer city for their employees !

Is the US ready to create a giant 60,000 engineer city to compete in 5g ?
where engineers are paid a fat salary with low rent ? ( in PPP terms )

5G maybe the reason why the US has to finally confront the structural reasons
why they have become so uncompetitive in electronic hardware in relation to
East Asia.

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soup10
Let's not forget that our government is mostly run by people with law degrees
while china has a large amount of technocrats. Making it much harder to get
state-scale large engineering and software projects going in the U.S..

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skinnymuch
We have had a leader being a technocrat/rich businessman only once before in
US history. That was Herbert Hoover. Now Trump. Neither have done anything
amazing for business and/or innovation.

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hhmartin
The list of Trump's attempted businesses is hilariously sad (except the Fraud
which is just sad). Don't even get me started on his Snazzle Snacks pyramid
scheme.

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selimthegrim
Or Trump: The Game

