Public Knowledge said that it has filed a petition with the Federal Communications Commission, asking the agency to deny the proposed merger of T-Mobile US and Sprint. The petition was filed with Common Cause, Consumers Union, New America’s Open Technology Institute, and the Writers Guild of America West.
Public Knowledge said that if approved, the deal will reduce the number of national mobile carriers to three from four, reducing competition and potentially increasing costs for customers. "The proposed combination of T-Mobile and Sprint is a clear-cut horizontal merger that will dramatically curtail competition in the wireless market and harm consumers," Public Knowledge said, adding that the mobile marketplace is already "excessively" consolidated.
The organisation said that aggressive competition between T-Mobile and Sprint has over the past few years led to many benefits for people, such as the reintroduction of unlimited data plans, lower prices, the elimination of two-year contracts, early upgrades, and free international data roaming. These type of benefits could end with a merger.
More opposition
Rival Dish Network is also opposing the deal and filed a petition with the FCC, the website Multichannel reports. The company accused T-Mobile of overstating the impact of 5G on the merger and said the projected benefits of the merger would not be enough to outweigh the downside in terms of reduced competition. The challenger benefits brought by T-Mobile would likely diminish and its pricing be more in line with the market leaders AT&T and Verizon, Dish said.
The deadline for petitions to the FCC was 27 August.
T-Mobile US recently asked MVNOs on its network to support the merger with Sprint through public or regulatory statements. However, Altice, which has a MVNO deal with Sprint, said it was concerned the merger could lead to reduced access for virtual operators on the combined company's network, FierceWireless reports.The companies have made "no tangible commitments regarding meaningful support for current MVNO partners", Atice said "The concerns of Altice are magnified in view of T-Mobile’s hostile statements against MVNOs, including cable operators entering the wireless market," the company said in a statement to the FCC.US Congress members said they will be scrutinizing the deal due to Softbank's ties with Huawei, Bloomberg reported earlier, citing a draft letter by members of the US Congress to Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin, who leads the US national security review of the deal. Softbank is the parent of Sprint.
Meanwhile, the New York attorney general’s office has started looking into the proposed takeover to see what effects it would have on New York consumers, the Wall Street Journal reported earlier. The merger could result in the loss of over 30,000 jobs across the country, a study conducted by the Communications Workers of America (CWA) union also revealed.
