Sprint's stock soars more than 70% after judge approves T-Mobile merger

[brooklynite]

Source: CNN

New York (CNN Business)The $26 billion merger between T-Mobile and Sprint has been approved, ending a years-long attempt to combine the United States' third- and fourth-largest wireless carriers.

A federal judge ruled Tuesday in favor of the marriage allowing the two telecom giants to combine. US District Court Judge Victor Marrero said in his ruling that he didn't envision the companies "would pursue anticompetitive behavior" and rejected the lawsuit brought on by a dozen US states.

The judge said that Sprint on its own couldn't "continue operating as a strong nationwide competitor." Sprint is currently in fourth place, but the company claimed its path to deploying a nationwide 5G network without T-Mobile was uncertain.

States' attorneys general argued that approving the merger would make wireless service and prices worse for Americans. But Judge Marrero said he was ultimately unpersuaded by the states' economic theories and analytical modeling, writing that the two sides' claims ultimately came down to competing crystal balls. He said he was relying substantially on his own "skills and frontline experience" to reach a decision.

Read more: https://www.cnn.com/2020/02/11/investing/sprint-tmobile-merger-decision/index.html

[Maxheader]

1. I've already been warned...

My virgin mobile acct is switching over to boost which is worthless...

[ancianita]

2. The whole new company will be called T-Mobile.

It's supposed to expand the 5G network.

The approval comes despite the fact that antitrust experts, consumer advocates, and a long list of others have pointed out the deal will reduce wireless sector competition by 25%, inevitably driving up costs and reducing the quality of service (40 years of US telecom history suggests as much). And while T-Mobile and Sprint insists the deal will create jobs, both union reps and Wall Street predict the deal could kill anywhere between 10,000 and 30,000 jobs.

[ChiTownDenny]

5. Agreed that the merger will drive up costs. However,

the lack of viability of Sprint in a 5G world would result in its purchase or demise, anyway, which would also drive up costs. Gov't, through its tax code, can spur competition and/or drive down costs to consumers.

[ancianita]

6. It only revs up monopolistic control that allows Barr to get the US a bit ahead of China using 5G

power, which is really a means of global domination of data and intel. The new company actually is T-Mobile now. Sprint is going up right before the merger to get stock splits, maybe?

Govt could, but govt won't give us tax breaks; more likely they'll give tax breaks to the big three providers.

Pricing will go up, and national coverage won't improve, either.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200210/06124743890/us-broadband-gaps-are-twice-as-bad-as-government-claims.shtml

A new study by BroadbandNow, compared the FCC's data to data provided by the pre-qualification tools on ISPs' websites. What they found was that U.S. broadband gaps are probably about twice as bad as the FCC has suggested:

"The firm examined broadband availability across the U.S. using more than 11,000 addresses from a dataset of 1 million. Those addresses were first compared to FCC data, then verified via the broadband availability websites of nine different internet service providers (ISPs). Even taking a conservative approach to estimates, the group claims the actual number of unserved American households is closer to 42 million—double FCC estimates."

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20180920/08515340677/no-next-gen-wireless-5g-wont-magically-fix-broken-us-broadband-market.shtml

While 5G wireless broadband will certainly be useful, it's not going to magically fix an industry that's been broken for decades ... wireless connections are routinely capped, throttled, and face a universe of bizarre restrictions, like the industry's recent decision to charge you more money if you want HD streams to work as intended.

"Unlimited" connections are routinely shown to be very limited (as California firefighters just found out), especially in more rural markets where limited investment results in many users getting kicked off the network for using often-ambiguous amounts of bandwidth.


And while ideally 5G wireless updates should make wireless networks more resilient with greater capacity, there's an underlying reason that pricing and arbitrary restrictions aren't going away anytime soon. Namely, the monopoly companies like CenturyLink, Verizon, and AT&T hold over the special access market.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190715/07241342588/5gs-latest-problem-summer-temps-are-causing-5g-phones-to-overheat.shtml

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20190701/07244842500/nasa-noaa-navy-tell-fcc-5g-plan-will-harm-weather-forecasting.shtml

Americans should not believe 5G hype.

[Initech]

3. Yay! More wealth in the hands of the few!

[KWR65]

4. Back in the 1970's we had Ma Bell by 2025 we will have a Ma Cell.

Then the government will go to court to break up Ma Cell like it did in the 80's to Ma Bell.

[DUar17]

7. Just great... just how many years will it take

Just great... just how many years will it take AT&T or Verizon to buy T-mobile?