It seems plain as day to anyone not employed by AT&T that the merger of Sprint and T-Mobile is vastly different than a merger between T-Mobile and AT&T.
The former would create a viable third competitor in the US mobile market that is much closer in size to the other two.
The latter creates an even larger lead for AT&T, putting Sprint much further behind than they already are. That, by definition, is anti-competitive. Especially when the two big companies left were former Ma-Bell (AT&T before the split.)
AT&T has no chance of winning this appeal, really. The fact that they don't like Sprint's overtures to purchase or merge with T-Mobile doesn't matter. In fact, implying that their objection is NOT based on anti-competitive practices is also pretty baseless. It's self evident, really.
A Sprint/T-Mobile merger is a horrible idea.
- Sprint's market position is weak, and their acquisition of Nextel played a major role in their decline. They now run two parallel, incompatible networks. They may have been the first to the "4G" game, but even T-Mobile's faux-G runs at higher speeds and is far more widely deployed. Now they're depending on Clear and LightSquared, a company trying to figure itself out and a company facing significant technical hurdles, for LTE. Sprint's revenue has been declining and, although their subscriber numbers are up, their contract customer base has declined severely. Their future roadmap has too much uncertainty to it and they've made far too many mistakes in the past to be able to risk another one.
- T-Mobile's market position is even weaker. Despite being the "value" player out of the major networks with an often lauded portfolio of devices, their coverage is sub-par and they lack both the spectrum and the finances to keep up with even regional carriers. Their revenue and customer base have been in constant and consistent decline for a while, and their own parent company has withdrew funding. They can't last much longer, even with the cash and assets they would receive if the AT&T/T-Mobile merger gets blocked.
Now, the idea of the two weakest carriers joining up makes sense, right? Not really. Operational costs aren't going to shrink since Sprint would likely continue operating T-Mobile's GSM/HSPA network (based on past precedence since Nextel's iDEN network is still alive and based on necessity as they can't force people to switch to CDMA phones otherwise T-Mobile and AT&T would've gotten rid of TDMA customers much earlier than they did). In addition, Sprint currently operates 4 brands (Sprint, Nextel, Boost, and Virgin Mobile). Adding a fifth brand furthers the notion that operational costs aren't going to shrink; Sprint will just become much more bloated from running 5 brands and operating 5 networks (6 is LightSquared and Clear ever get their stuff sorted out).
Such an acquisition won't help either company's declining customer bases, either. If anything, the mess that will result of such an acquisition could wind up driving customers away. Such an acquisition won't help either company's declining revenues, either.
