Here's one big reason rural operators oppose T-Mobile/UScellular deal

It’s fair to say some people are upset about the U.S. government’s approval of T-Mobile’s $4.3 billion acquisition of UScellular. Even though UScellular was losing customers, it still provided thousands of jobs and competition in the 21 states where it operates. But it’s the lack of conditions attached to the government’s approval that is particularly infuriating to the Rural Wireless Association. RWA said it was downright shocked that the Federal Communications Commission “rubber stamped” the deal, pandering to the desires of the merging companies. The only apparent condition the FCC attached to the deal was FCC Chairman Brendan Carr’s insistence that T-Mobile remove diversity, equity, and inclusion programs. One of RWA's big concerns is related to the nature of its members’ roaming agreements. With UScellular, they struck reciprocal roaming agreements, meaning UScellular pays the rural carriers when its customers roam onto their networks and vice versa. But according to RWA, when T-Mobile has struck roaming agreements with its members, they tend to be unilateral, where a rural carrier’s subscribers can roam onto T-Mobile’s network, but T-Mobile subscribers don’t roam onto the rural carrier’s network. In other words, T-Mobile would rather offer no coverage in these areas than pay the rural carrier for network access.