Another Giant Telecom Merger Could Kill Jobs and Leave Low-Income Consumers in the Lurch. It’s Happened Before.

In Jan 2018, T-Mobile completed its acquisition of a small Midwestern telecommunications company, Iowa Wireless Services (iWireless). While the company only provided service to 75,000 customers, many of its users had no other options. The service was precisely what rural communications advocates have asked for: affordable, effective, and accessible. T-Mobile, one of the nation’s biggest telecom providers, promised it would improve on those qualities. Instead, jobs could end up being cut, prices could go up for the lowest-income users, and other companies could be pressured into lowering wages to keep up. Since T-Mobile’s purchase, nearly one-third of iWireless’ former customers now live more than two hours from a T-Mobile retail location. T-Mobile, which reported to the US Securities and Exchange Commission after the merger that it only expected to retain 17,000 of the company’s 75,000 users—and only 4,000 prepaid consumers—seemed aware of the potential loss and made it clear that the primary asset of the acquisition was the spectrum held by iWireless.  Now, consumer advocates worry that the same economic upheaval will be seen on a national scale if the T-Mobile and Sprint merger is approved.