While it would be nice to have a 4th national carrier, if the government was truly serious about that, it might want to see if Verizon and AT&T would want to (or maybe be forced to?) contribute to it as well, given that a combined T-Mobile and Sprint would still have fewer subscribers than either of the top two. Handcuffing the 3rd and 4th carrier only prolongs the strength of nos. 1 and 2.
It was said a while back that the merger would net the new company MORE subscribers than Verizon, making it the largest by subscriber base.
I don't see any good for the consumer (American citizen) from this merger!
Sprint is on life support and T-mobile has indicated it can’t stay viable long-term in the US market. The exit of these two would leave a duopoly of Verizon and AT&T - both of which have had consistently higher rates.
We have t-mobile and I’m happy with them for the most part. Their billing practices are much more transparent and better than AT&T or Verizon and I hope they stay in the market. This request by the DOJ doesn’t make any sense to me though - They’re ok with two companies merging as long as they spin off another company making...two companies. What’s the point?
It's a lot of B.S. These company's already rape the American public with high prices. Prices higher by far than many other company's. Where is all the money going? It's the same old, repeated excuses and in the end, we the people will have worse service and even higher prices. That is what we'll get out of it in the end.
While it would be nice to have a 4th national carrier, if the government was truly serious about that, it might want to see if Verizon and AT&T would want to (or maybe be forced to?) contribute to it as well, given that a combined T-Mobile and Sprint would still have fewer subscribers than either of the top two. Handcuffing the 3rd and 4th carrier only prolongs the strength of nos. 1 and 2.
If the Federal government got serious about competition, it would deregulate to a far greater degree. Regulations and protections from real competition are what cause monopolies, not free markets.
It’s weird how you keep posting this here when nobody agrees with you.
And yet the reality is that without artificial barriers to market entry due to state action, monopolies do not occur. Anyone that fails to recognize this fact is ignorant of very basic tenets of economics, whether they are in the majority or not.
Put it this way, if a particular market segment is known to be profitable and there are no synthetic barriers to market entry, what stops new competitors from entering and competing in that segment? Absent some artificial barrier to market entry, there is nothing. The source of all such synthetic barriers to market entry is the state.
I buy an iPhone and Sprint charges me $2.99/mo for Visual Voicemail.
VVM is a feature on the iPhone!
Give me a break!
Do not allow this merger!
How about stop using Sprint?
You're missing the point!
Am I? How would disallowing the merger stop Sprint from charging you for VVM? T-Mobile doesn’t charge for it, so it’s possible you’d no longer having to pay for it should there be a merger. Why not switch to T-Mobile either way? They’re far superior.
While it would be nice to have a 4th national carrier, if the government was truly serious about that, it might want to see if Verizon and AT&T would want to (or maybe be forced to?) contribute to it as well, given that a combined T-Mobile and Sprint would still have fewer subscribers than either of the top two. Handcuffing the 3rd and 4th carrier only prolongs the strength of nos. 1 and 2.
If the Federal government got serious about competition, it would deregulate to a far greater degree. Regulations and protections from real competition are what cause monopolies, not free markets.
Utter nonsense, of course, and as usual. We’ve seen time and time again (steel, trucking) that illegally behaving monopolies arise where there is no regulation, requiring regulation to correct.
(Man your dogma really clouds your ability to see or reason clearly.)
While it would be nice to have a 4th national carrier, if the government was truly serious about that, it might want to see if Verizon and AT&T would want to (or maybe be forced to?) contribute to it as well, given that a combined T-Mobile and Sprint would still have fewer subscribers than either of the top two. Handcuffing the 3rd and 4th carrier only prolongs the strength of nos. 1 and 2.
If the Federal government got serious about competition, it would deregulate to a far greater degree. Regulations and protections from real competition are what cause monopolies, not free markets.
You have it literally 100% backwards and history proves it, repeatedly.
Regulation is not something that magically appears from nowhere just to screw with corporations for fun. Regulation is established to correct where so-called “free market enterprise” fails to self-regulate (which is basically all the time; it’s just rare that the government actually steps in because of the constant magical thinking of “free market” supporters that have colonized the government).
I buy an iPhone and Sprint charges me $2.99/mo for Visual Voicemail.
VVM is a feature on the iPhone!
Give me a break!
Do not allow this merger!
You just provided the counter-argument for your own position by example. If T-mobile were to adopt Sprint’s visual voicemail position, they’d instantly be uncompetitive. T-mobile would obviously drop those Sprint charges because they would be a single company able to leverage their coverage and customer base to compete better.
Wait. What? Why would a company drop charges? Companies don’t reduce the amount of money they take from customers; especially these companies. Fees are historically added, not dropped.
While it would be nice to have a 4th national carrier, if the government was truly serious about that, it might want to see if Verizon and AT&T would want to (or maybe be forced to?) contribute to it as well, given that a combined T-Mobile and Sprint would still have fewer subscribers than either of the top two. Handcuffing the 3rd and 4th carrier only prolongs the strength of nos. 1 and 2.
If the Federal government got serious about competition, it would deregulate to a far greater degree. Regulations and protections from real competition are what cause monopolies, not free markets.
It’s weird how you keep posting this here when nobody agrees with you.
And yet the reality is that without artificial barriers to market entry due to state action, monopolies do not occur. Anyone that fails to recognize this fact is ignorant of very basic tenets of economics, whether they are in the majority or not.
Put it this way, if a particular market segment is known to be profitable and there are no synthetic barriers to market entry, what stops new competitors from entering and competing in that segment? Absent some artificial barrier to market entry, there is nothing. The source of all such synthetic barriers to market entry is the state.
You clearly haven’t been paying attention to all the companies that fail because of existing industry/market-dominating 800-pound gorillas.
One notable example: Microsoft effectively killed Be, Inc. with their stranglehold on OEM computer makers. Computer makers were prohibited from installing alternative operating systems on their computers by their Windows licensing terms with Microsoft. Per the license, their licensing fee would increase if another OS shared/had control of the boot sector or if some machines were sold without Windows.
This had nothing to do with government regulation and government utterly failed to address this when the infamous browser bundling lawsuit was filed against Microsoft. Be’s founder explicitly said that he’d happily testify over the control of the boot loader, but saw nothing wrong with bundling necessities like web browsers (which Be also did).
There are countless other examples out there if you care to actually do the research. One common angle anticompetitive companies like to use to kill startups is BS patent lawsuits. The whole patent system was wrecked by the computer industry and no one in government has the will to reform the system (because they’re supported in their campaigns but the same huge corporations at election times).
If they want another carrier a better solution than an MVNO on permanent government welfare would be an antitrust case to break up Verizon. Oh wait. I guess Verizon contributes to too many PACs for their monopoly to be threatened.
Comments
Put it this way, if a particular market segment is known to be profitable and there are no synthetic barriers to market entry, what stops new competitors from entering and competing in that segment? Absent some artificial barrier to market entry, there is nothing. The source of all such synthetic barriers to market entry is the state.
(Man your dogma really clouds your ability to see or reason clearly.)
Regulation is not something that magically appears from nowhere just to screw with corporations for fun. Regulation is established to correct where so-called “free market enterprise” fails to self-regulate (which is basically all the time; it’s just rare that the government actually steps in because of the constant magical thinking of “free market” supporters that have colonized the government).
One notable example: Microsoft effectively killed Be, Inc. with their stranglehold on OEM computer makers. Computer makers were prohibited from installing alternative operating systems on their computers by their Windows licensing terms with Microsoft. Per the license, their licensing fee would increase if another OS shared/had control of the boot sector or if some machines were sold without Windows.
This had nothing to do with government regulation and government utterly failed to address this when the infamous browser bundling lawsuit was filed against Microsoft. Be’s founder explicitly said that he’d happily testify over the control of the boot loader, but saw nothing wrong with bundling necessities like web browsers (which Be also did).
There are countless other examples out there if you care to actually do the research. One common angle anticompetitive companies like to use to kill startups is BS patent lawsuits. The whole patent system was wrecked by the computer industry and no one in government has the will to reform the system (because they’re supported in their campaigns but the same huge corporations at election times).