Sprint, and Their Proposed Merger, Take a Hit Today

The Sprint company and the idea of its merger with T-Mobile takes a hit today in the New York Times.

Stop Creating Corporate Goliaths

A little of what they have to say.

Letting T-Mobile merge with Sprint would hurt consumers, workers and the economy

For years, T-Mobile’s chief executive, John Legere, has gleefully bad-mouthed his much larger mobile phone competitors, Verizon Wireless and AT&T, for their high prices and profit margins, and their low-quality service. Decked out in magenta sneakers and T-shirts, sporting long hair like an aging rocker, Mr. Legere promoted T-Mobile and himself to his 6.2 million Twitter followers as renegades — telephonic cool kids.

T-Mobile wooed customers by offering service plans with no long-term commitments, and by paying to free those customers from their old service plans. Rolling your unused data and minutes into the next month? T-Mobile did that, and AT&T and Verizon had no choice but to follow. More recently, T-Mobile vowed to match any discounts offered by competitors.

The fierce competition, and the march of technology, has rapidly reduced the cost of mobile phone service. Since 2009, the average cost of mobile service has fallen by roughly 28 percent, according to the Labor Department’s calculations. In 2017, at the peak of the mobile phone price wars, the Federal Reserve said prices were falling fast enough to meaningfully reduce inflation across the entire American economy.

That’s the beauty of competition. It’s been good for T-Mobile, too. Over the past five years, the company has added more subscribers than its larger rivals.

Now T-Mobile, the nation’s third-largest wireless company, wants to merge with Sprint, the No. 4 wireless carrier in the United States. The combined company would be in the same weight class as the two largest, AT&T and Verizon, with the three companies each controlling roughly a third of the market. Mr. Legere, who scorned the big guys, now wants to be one of them.

The Justice Department’s antitrust division staff has recommended that the federal government go to court to block the merger. That is good advice.

The proposed merger would harm American consumers. It would reduce the choice of service plans, and, over time, it is likely to result in higher prices and less innovation. It would also harm workers in the mobile phone industry, reducing competition for their labor. And it would increase the political power of the combined corporation...

On the one hand, this is coming from none other than The New York Times so it's going to carry some weight. It's certainly going to be on everyone's "radar", so to speak. 

On the other hand, boys will be boys and money buys all, especially in our current national government. This may be a conversation for a while--a few days?--but when all is said and done, the FCC and this administration will do what they will, customers and nation be damned.

Look for the Sprint-T-Mobile merger to go through. We hope not but these things usually don't go for the people.

But thanks, anyway, New York Times, for trying.

What We Need To Do

Herewith, a relatively short list of what we, as a nation, as a people, with our government, need, exactly, to do.

It would be for the benefit of most of the people of the nation and so, it would be for all.

Corporations win again. America? You lose

It's happened again.

First it was the Supreme Court handing over the capability to flood government election campaigns with unlimited amounts of corporate cash, now, yesterday, a federal court ruled in favor of corporations, this time regarding internet access :

"A federal appeals court ruled on Tuesday that regulators had limited power over Web traffic under current law. The decision will allow Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites and charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users."

"The court decision was a setback to efforts by the Federal Communications Commission to require companies to give Web users equal access to all content, even if some of that content is clogging the network."

I've written here before how, years ago, it used to be the government's job to protect both the "little guy"--you and me out here in the country--as well as the broader interests of the country, against the corporations.

It is certainly less and less so lately.

With this ruling yesterday, a couple of things have come out.

First, it effectively strips the power of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to regulate the internet and all our access to it. If a corporation finds it in their best interest to slow internet access down, according to this ruling, they can do it.

That's bad for you and me but it's also bad, truly, for business.

In the rest of the world--Japan as an example, in particular--fast computer access is more of a given. The US is already known for having slower computer downloading and access.

This gives the companies the ability to give fast loading to those who can and will pay for it. Quick internet access to the highest bidder.

Typical, right? Computer capitalism. It's the "American Way", even if it is, at its core, unfair, imbalanced and, again, bad for the country, let alone bad for you and I--and small business.

It's clear this is what it's come to--more and more, the courts rule for the corporations and against the broader interests of the country, as I said above.

In this latest case, Comcast won while you and I and the US lost.

Let there be no doubt--the corporations are in control.

We need to take our country back from them.

Ralph Nader has been warning us for decades.

I'm with Republicans on this one

When it comes to blowing money or saving it, I can so frequently say I'm with the traditional Republican position.

That is, let's save it.

Right now, the Democrats and the Obama administration are apparently on course to set up $650 million to give to people in the form of coupons so they can buy converter boxes for their television sets.

Over one-half billion dollars.

For TV's.

No, I just can't see it.

It seems Congress thinks we all need more time and more money in the form of these coupons to switch over to HD viewing.

Ridiculous.

The assumption is, if we went on schedule now, in February, to switch over to all digital transmission, 15% of us wouldn't be ready.

Well whoop-ti-freakin'-do.

I can virtually guarantee that if these people went home and their tv sets wouldn't receive a signal, they'd go out that day and buy the $40.00 converter box so they could see their shows that very night.

And if they didn't? Would that hurt anyone?

It just isn't worth more than a half billion dollars to the country to switch this over.

We have a lot more important things to take care of than these things.

Like saving our economy, for starters.

How about the 46 million of us that don't have health care?

But no, we have to pay loads of money, time and attention to television sets.

Oh, yeah. We have much greater problems than this.