[gjsman-1000]

Antitrust; antitrust; antitrust; but also, debt, debt, and more debt. Verizon? $115 billion of it. T-mobile? $78 billion. AT&T? $126 billion. It gets even better when 6G networks start knocking!

So let's make the case to shareholders: We buy Verizon, with a $180 billion market cap, for a substantial premium; assume $115 billion of their debt; there's an investment into 6G on the horizon; this hopefully won't anger any major players in the Android market (e.g. Samsung) from abandoning the network; and this will somehow magically reach the break-even point. Obviously, absurd.

[strongpigeon]

AT&T's debt is such a self-own. You'd think it's because building networks is expensive, but it's mostly debt-finance (IMO terrible) acquisitions like DirectTV and Time Warner