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FCC to Take More Time to Review Merger Between Sprint and T-Mobile

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The United States Federal Communications Commission today informed T-Mobile and Sprint [PDF] that it needs more time to review the proposed merger between the two companies before making a final decision on approval.

According to the FCC, it is pausing the informal 180-day transaction clock to allow for "thorough staff and third-party review" of newly submitted and anticipated business documents.

sprinttmobile.jpg

Sprint and T-Mobile on September 5 submitted a revised network engineering model that's "significantly larger and more complex," which the FCC needs to look over. The two companies also did not provide the FCC with documentation on a "Build 9" business model until September 5, so that's also something the FCC needs to review, and T-Mobile is also planning to offer up additional economic modeling documents.

The FCC says that the 180-day clock will remain stopped until T-Mobile and Sprint have completed the record "on which they intend to rely" and a reasonable amount of time has passed to allow the FCC and third-parties to look over the documentation.

Sprint and T-Mobile officially reached a merger agreement back in late April, so the original 180-day review period was set to end in October. The FCC aims to complete applications for license transfers relating to complex mergers within an informal 180 day period, but warns that some application review periods can exceed 180 days.

If the T-Mobile and Sprint merger is ultimately approved by regulators, two of the four major carriers in the United States will combine into one single entity. T-Mobile and Sprint combined will have nearly 100 million customers, putting it second only to Verizon.


The combined company will be named T-Mobile and current T-Mobile CEO John Legere will serve as the Chief Executive Officer. Sprint and T-Mobile have previously said they're hoping to close the deal in the first half of 2019.

Note: Due to the political nature of the discussion regarding this topic, the discussion thread is located in our Politics, Religion, Social Issues forum. All forum members and site visitors are welcome to read and follow the thread, but posting is limited to forum members with at least 100 posts.

Article Link: FCC to Take More Time to Review Merger Between Sprint and T-Mobile
 
Article Link
https://www.macrumors.com/2018/09/11/fcc-sprint-t-mobile-merger-review-delay/
Wireless prices are already ridiculously high and this merger can do nothing to help the situation. Having only three carriers is a recipe for price fixing.
 
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No more mergers... this will result in monopolies. Which in turn will stifle competition and will only harm us in the end. I can see all these mergers as being part of the new world order aka globalization Uniting corporations so that they can have more power to abuse its customers. This is a very terrible decision and I hope that the FCC doesn't allow for this to happen.

In general, these monopolies are more harm than good. Say no to monopolization unless you want to end up getting ripped off in the end, with no alternative choice. Pretty soon there will be 1 of everything, and by then we won't have any other alternative.
 
Should both block it and force unwinding of the allowed marriages of content and distribution of the last decade.
 
I don’t agree. Right now Sprint and T-Mobile are not in the same park with T and VZ especially in rural areas. This will allow the two companies as one compete. Or you could look at it this way it is only a matter of time before Sprint goes bankrupt. So let them merge while this is viable or let one of them go out of business. Your choice.
 
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Ion-X said:
Wireless prices are already ridiculously high and this merger can do nothing to help the situation. Having only three carriers is a recipe for price fixing.
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Regardless if a merger happens or not, prices will continue to go up at Verizon and ATT. And if you believe that T-Mobile will ever do anything with Verizon and ATT (in terms of something like price fixing), then you are sadly mistaken.
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4jasontv said:
Block the merger and then divide up ATT and VZW into various companies that can compete.
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Yes, because punishing successful companies has always been a recipe for capitalism. :rolleyes: This isn't super liberal Europe or communist Russia.
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codelode84 said:
I don’t agree. Right now Sprint and T-Mobile are not in the same park with T and VZ especially in rural areas. This will allow the two companies as one compete. Or you could look at it this way it is only a matter of time before Sprint goes bankrupt. So let them merge while this is viable or let one of them go out of business. Your choice.
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I agree with you. Softbank was going to unload Sprint one way or another. And once that happened, Sprint would have gone bankrupt via slow death. That would not have helped anyone. The only way to save Sprint was via a merger of some sort with either another telecom (like T-Mobile) or a media company like ComCast/Cox.
 
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Lloydbm41 said:
Yes, because punishing successful companies has always been a recipe for capitalism. :rolleyes: This isn't super liberal Europe or communist Russia.
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How are they being punished? Companies aren't really people. The employees would still have their jobs.
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seinman said:
Sounds familiar...
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A little different, as we are talking about a real limited resource (spectrum) instead of a fabricated one (patents).

Let us not forget that these companies are licencing the spectrum from US citizens. They don't own it. We need to clarify the process by which their rights are revoked.
 
4jasontv said:
How are they being punished? Companies aren't really people. The employees would still have their jobs.
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So, forcing the breakup of companies into smaller entities isn't punishment? I don't think you grasp the concept of how capitalism or market trading works. Imagine breaking up a company like Apple, so that it's forced by the government to become 4 separate companies. Let's also assume that everyone keeps their job (which wouldn't happen because smaller companies don't need as many employees, but let's say they do). First thing that would happen at the mere whisper of a breakup, would be a collapse of the entire tech sector on Wall Street. Trillions of dollars would be lost. The next thing that would happen is the valuation of the entire company would drop. Additionally, any bonds the company has would become due forcing an even quicker drop in share prices. This would kill any company smaller than Apple, Microsoft, Google, and their like.

Forcing the break up of a company up is really, really bad!
 
codelode84 said:
I don’t agree. Right now Sprint and T-Mobile are not in the same park with T and VZ especially in rural areas. This will allow the two companies as one compete. Or you could look at it this way it is only a matter of time before Sprint goes bankrupt. So let them merge while this is viable or let one of them go out of business. Your choice.
Click to expand...
So why should T-Mo swallow an anchor?
I have had a T-Mo account for years and it has only improved over time. Easy to work with. Great signal strength where I live. I can't find a better deal anywhere. They have super bonuses for their customers like the MLB access I have been enjoying this year. How does this merger help their customer? If it provides bandwidth T-Mo can't get elsewhere then I get it. But getting more towers in the same place with the same bandwidths does not make sense. As a consumer I care about the end user experience. Where my provider falls in the pecking order is utterly unimportant to me. Maybe this merger makes sense, but I am not an investor just an end user that doesn't want to see my user experience diminish. In general, the fewer the companies vying for customers the higher the price and the lower the customer service. After all, where are you going to go? Laughing all the way to the bank go the monopolies.
 
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AZ63 said:
So why should T-Mo swallow an anchor?
I have had a T-Mo account for years and it has only improved over time. Easy to work with. Great signal strength where I live. I can't find a better deal anywhere. They have super bonuses for their customers like the MLB access I have been enjoying this year. How does this merger help their customer? If it provides bandwidth T-Mo can't get elsewhere then I get it. But getting more towers in the same place with the same bandwidths does not make sense. As a consumer I care about the end user experience. Where my provider falls in the pecking order is utterly unimportant to me. Maybe this merger makes sense, but I am not an investor just an end user that doesn't want to see my user experience diminish. In general, the fewer the companies vying for customers the higher the price and the lower the customer service. After all, where are you going to go? Laughing all the way to the bank go the monopolies.
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Sprint has a huge swath of 2.5GHz spectrum that T-Mobile wouldn't be able to acquire otherwise. Additionally, Sprint has towers and stores in areas that T-Mobile doesn't. This would allow T-Mobile to expand exponentially almost overnight, compared to having to build everything out on its own and with its premium retailers.
 
Let's say Congress passes a law w/ a Presidential signature nationalizing all radio spectrum (de facto happened in the original Communications Act back in the 30s) along w/ all usage of this spectrum prohibiting any private networks. Thus the US Gov't at its sole discretion determines what technology for wireless communication shall be developed and how that technology will be deployed. Reduces the plethora of towers, doesn't it? Since it's the gov't, you don't ever have to worry about privacy, right?
 
AZ63 said:
So why should T-Mo swallow an anchor?
I have had a T-Mo account for years and it has only improved over time. Easy to work with. Great signal strength where I live. I can't find a better deal anywhere. They have super bonuses for their customers like the MLB access I have been enjoying this year. How does this merger help their customer? If it provides bandwidth T-Mo can't get elsewhere then I get it. But getting more towers in the same place with the same bandwidths does not make sense. As a consumer I care about the end user experience. Where my provider falls in the pecking order is utterly unimportant to me. Maybe this merger makes sense, but I am not an investor just an end user that doesn't want to see my user experience diminish. In general, the fewer the companies vying for customers the higher the price and the lower the customer service. After all, where are you going to go? Laughing all the way to the bank go the monopolies.
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One of the huge benefits of the merged companies is they will own a ton of bandwidth that will allow them to rollout 5G potentially a lot faster than other companies. Sprint was a big beneficiary of a lot of bandwidth in some of the early auctions.
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Pastormac1usa said:
Let's say Congress passes a law w/ a Presidential signature nationalizing all radio spectrum (de facto happened in the original Communications Act back in the 30s) along w/ all usage of this spectrum prohibiting any private networks. Thus the US Gov't at its sole discretion determines what technology for wireless communication shall be developed and how that technology will be deployed. Reduces the plethora of towers, doesn't it? Since it's the gov't, you don't ever have to worry about privacy, right?
Click to expand...

Not going to happen this isn't Venezuela.
 
Ion-X said:
Wireless prices are already ridiculously high and this merger can do nothing to help the situation. Having only three carriers is a recipe for price fixing.
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There are only three relevant carriers as it is.
 
cocky jeremy said:
There are only three relevant carriers as it is.
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Yep. This will allow a larger company, to consume a dying company. Let it die, or let its large portfolio of tech and real estate merge into a viable company? Seems like a simple choice to me. A failing company isn't helping competition in any way.
 
Markoth said:
Yep. This will allow a larger company, to consume a dying company. Let it die, or let its large portfolio of tech and real estate merge into a viable company? Seems like a simple choice to me. A failing company isn't helping competition in any way.
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And this is the conclusion we hope the FCC and gov’t regulators come to.
 
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