So this week the T-Mobile/Sprint merger finally went to trial, and I've been half-following it between other things because I've been a Sprint customer since like 2013 and I have Feelings about this.
Quick recap for anyone who tuned out of this saga a while back (understandable, its been going on since April 2018): T-Mobile wants to buy Sprint for something like $26 billion. The FCC already signed off last month. The DOJ approved it too, on the condition that Sprint's prepaid brand, Boost Mobile, gets sold off to Dish Network so Dish can supposedly become a fourth national carrier out of the wreckage. Great, a fourth carrier built from spare parts, I'm sure that'll go smoothly.
But a bunch of state attorneys general, New York and California leading the pack, werent satisfied with any of that and sued to block the deal outright. That trial started this week in a federal courtroom in Manhattan. Executives from both companies are apparently testifying, and I'd bet money John Legere shows up in something that isn't a suit jacket, because that man has never met a magenta t-shirt he didnt love.
Here's my actual opinion, since this is my blog and I'm allowed to have one: I dont buy the argument that merging two of four national carriers into three is somehow going to make prices go DOWN. Legere has been promising lower prices and better rural coverage for over a year now, and maybe that's true eventually, but every time an industry consolidates from four players to three, in literally every industry, prices creep up once the dust settles. Airlines did this. Cable did this. I have no reason to think wireless is going to be the exception just because a CEO in a pink hoodie says so on a stage.
My personal experience with Sprint hasn't been amazing, for what its worth, so it's not like I'm defending them out of loyalty. My coverage where I live is spotty at best, and Ive had to restart my phone in the exact same spot on my commute more than once just to get bars back. Customer service was fine when I called about a billing error over the summer, actually, I'll give them that, the guy on the phone fixed it in about ten minutes without me having to escalate anything. But the network itself has been mediocre for years and part of why Sprint is even in this position is that they never had the capital to build it out properly on their own. So sure, maybe combining infrastructure with T-Mobile helps that specific problem. I just dont think it's a good trade if it comes at the cost of actual price competition.
The trial is expected to run a few weeks, so dont expect a verdict before the year's out. I'll probably check back in on it whenever there's actual news instead of just opening arguments, because right now everyone involved is mostly just restating things they've already said in filings for the last year and a half.
Unrelated but sort of adjacent: AWS wrapped up re:Invent in Vegas last week, and even scanning the keynote highlights after the fact, it's wild how much of the tech industry now runs on decisions made in a handful of Amazon data centers. Not really the point of this post, just something that's been rattling around my head while reading about a phone company merger. Everything eventually comes back to a handful of huge companies deciding what infrastructure the rest of us build on top of.
Anyway. If youre also a Sprint customer riding this out, curious to hear if your local coverage has been as inconsistent as mine, or if its just my particular corner of the map that got shortchanged. Email's in the sidebar like always.