[mrkurt]

Mergers are costly to society because they concentrate power. The government should _absolutely_ prevent mergers that concentrate power, or otherwise redistribute that power.

I'd rather them just block these things like they did up until the early 2000s ... but it's not unreasonable for them to break up the government granted monopoly on spectrums if they do allow mergers.

[koolba]

One could argue that a stronger combined company could better take on AT&T and Verizon. It’s not simply “mergers are bad for customers”.

[martinald]

The EU did a lot of analysis about this between member states.

It concluded that markets with 4 or more providers were far better served (price, quality, coverage, etc) than those with 3 (which effectively is what the US will have now).

The UK blocked the merger of 3 and O2 on these grounds, as it would leave only 3 providers.

[chrischen]

Does sprint even count as a provider? The size of the players must matter? If you have 4 players and 3 are there in name only, surely that can't still be true?

[kelnos]

From the looks of it, Sprint will be bankrupt in a few years anyway, and then we'll still end up with 3 providers, but likely Verizon and AT&T (in addition to T-Mobile) will buy up parts of its carcass. I'd rather T-Mo gets it all, now, rather than have all three companies fight over the scraps, later.

[kennethologist]

Do you have some source for the EU analysis would love to read this in depth? Googling doesn't turn up anything related.

[martinald]

http://europa.eu/rapid/press-release_MEMO-16-1705_en.htm is a starting point, but I can't find the EUs own source.

[sjm-lbm]

Yeah, this merger (for whatever reason) reminds me a lot of the US Air/American Airlines merger of a few years ago. On the one hand, going from 4 to 3 'major' players seems an obvious loss for consumers. On the other hand, unless these two combine, I don't really see either of them able to really challenge AT&T/Verizon long term, which means that a merger to create three large players is better for consumers than a series of events that ultimately ends with two major players - and that seems like a fairly realistic outcome in this space.

[rizwank]

Totally agree that 3 big ones are better than 2 big and 2 small. I feel this gets lost in reporting.