https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/wjvw55/t-mobile-sprint-merger-is-a-joke

The Department of Justice has approved T-Mobile’s controversial $26 billion merger with Sprint. And while the agency proposed a number of remedies it says will mitigate the competition and job-eroding impact of the deal, experts say the fixes will do nothing of the sort.

From the beginning, the biggest issue with T-Mobile’s planned $26 billion merger with Sprint was the fact that it would reduce the number of major U.S. carriers from four to three. Historically, (say in Canada or Ireland) such consolidation results in two things: much higher prices, and a significant culling of jobs as redundant positions are eliminated. As a result, AT&T’s attempt to buy T-Mobile in 2011 was blocked by regulators. A 2014 merger attempt by T-Mobile and Sprint was blocked for the same reason. But after T-Mobile engaged in a full court lobbying press (including ramping up patronage of the President’s DC hotels), the company is now hopeful that the third time’s the charm. The DOJ says it will impose requirements offsetting the competitive harm of the deal. More specifically, the DOJ says that T-Mobile and Sprint will need to offload Sprint’s Boost Mobile and some spectrum to Dish Network, who’ll then attempt to build a new, viable fourth competitor from these scraps to offset the elimination of Sprint from the market. “Today’s settlement will provide Dish with the assets and transitional services required to become a facilities-based mobile network operator that can provide a full range of mobile wireless services nationwide,” DOJ Assistant Attorney General Makan Delrahim said of the deal. But experts consulted by Motherboard say the proposal isn’t likely to work, and the end result of the merger will still very likely be higher prices and worse service for all. For one thing, Dish has been promising to build a wireless network for the better part of the last decade with little to show for it. The company has routinely been accused of “spectrum squatting,” or buying spectrum it doesn’t use in a bid to turn around and sell it later when it’s more valuable. Even T-Mobile made this complaint when Dish initially criticized the merger. Much of the spectrum Dish has acquired comes with conditions requiring that it build out a wireless network within certain time constraints. But there’s been little real penalty in instances where the company has ignored those requirements and deadlines, experts say. “They already have more spectrum than they know what to do with,” Wall Street telecom analyst Craig Moffett told Motherboard. “If the government wants Dish to build a network, they could start by simply enforcing the buildout requirements to which Dish is already subject.”