Ownership

T-Mobile CEO John Legere and Sprint executive chairman Marcelo Claure will pitch their companies' $26 billion merger before Congress, hoping to ease lawmaker's concerns about wireless competition while pushing the tie-up as a key part of the nation's 5G quest. It's a key test for a deal that would reduce the number of major national wireless carriers from four to three. The deal's opponents are fighting an uphill battle against a generally business-friendly administration, but the upcoming hearings let them air their concerns and turn up the heat.

New York’s Public Service Commission has approved T-Mobile's acquisition of Sprint with some conditions related to jobs and benefits provided to employees in the fourth most populated state in the country. The state agency determined that the merger is “not expected to cause interruptions or changes in service for existing Sprint wireline customers.” Moreover, as a condition for approval, the commission is requiring the company to continue to operate its relay call center in Syracuse and honor existing contracts until they expire.

AT&T’s decision to label some of its most advanced 4G LTE mobile network as “5G Evolution” has drawn scorn from rivals and some analysts who claim the carrier is misleading consumers about the real arrival date of faster fifth-generation technology called “5G.” Competitor Sprint went a step further and filed a lawsuit to block AT&T from using the term and having a label show on customers’ phones as “5GE.” “AT&T has employed numerous deceptive tactics to mislead consumers into believing that it currently offers a coveted and highly anticipated fifth generation wireless network, k

T-Mobile’s pricing is under scrutiny as both federal and state regulators continue to evaluate its proposed merger with Sprint. CEO John Legere recently sent a letter to Federal Communications Commission chair Ajit Pai pledging not to raise prices for three years on any of its current mobile plans if the merger is approved. Critics said perhaps T-Mobile’s pledge was leaving wiggle room for higher-priced, new 5G plans. Legere said emphatically that was not the case. 

In the world of competition law, Louis Brandeis applauded “the introduction of two governmental devices designed to protect the rights and opportunities of the individual.” One was, of course, antitrust. The second was the creation of “[c]ommissions to regulate public utilities.” Brandeis always preferred competition to regulated monopoly, but he recognized that there were times when sectoral regulation was needed, as, for example with local gas, water, and telephone monopolies. He viewed such instances as “exceptional” but obviously important.

Verizon and AT&T have waffled on their timelines and business strategies for fixed 5G vs. mobile 5G. In 2018, Verizon pushed hard to be the “first” operator to launch 5G and it was going to do so by offering a fixed wireless service. The company fulfilled that goal with its prestandardized fixed 5G service, called 5G Home, that it launched in four markets in Oct 2018. However, it appears Verizon will be moving more quickly to a mobile 5G offering, while the expansion of its fixed 5G Home service may be delayed to later in 2019. 

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) reintroduced two pieces of legislation to modernize antitrust enforcement and promote competition. 1) The Merger Enforcement Improvement Act would update existing law to reflect the current economy and provide agencies with better information post-merger to ensure that merger enforcement is meeting its goals.

The digital publishing industry took a big hit in recent days, when more than 1,000 employees were laid off at BuzzFeed, AOL, Yahoo and HuffPost. The cuts at BuzzFeed were the most alarming. Wasn’t this the company that was supposed to have it all figured out?  But look past the gloom, and a complicated narrative emerges that does not lend itself to a one-size-fits-all interpretation of What Went Wrong or a handy forecast of journalism’s future.

In the last Weekly Digest, I presented a retrospective of a major policy story from 2018: The democratic harms of “Big Tech.” This week, a polar vortex accompanied a vortex of more privacy abuses from Big Tech, and further concerns about the very bigness of Big Tech.