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youngatheart writes:
"When does merging two companies make for more marketplace competition? When they aren't big enough to compete with the other giants in the industry. At least that's the logic behind the argument that Sprint should be allowed to acquire T-Mobile. I'm wondering what this means for MetroPCS users like me now that we're T-Mobile users by the previous merger."
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Sprint: Purchase of T-Mobile Promotes Competition
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(Score: 1, Informative) by akinliat on Tuesday March 11 2014, @06:04PM
It's not the monopolies that are the problem, it's the level of regulation. Ma Bell was far more of a monopoly than almost any company today. It was effectively a branch of the US government. Yet the telecommunications network that Ma Bell built was the best in the world. The corporate culture was firmly dedicated to the notion of public service and the research that came out Bell Labs won Nobel prizes.
They invented this little thing called the transistor, and then charged just a $25,000 fee for production under license. Ever hear of ABC, NBC, and CBS? When the TV first came along and the networks were trying to figure out how to get shows to their affiliates, AT&T gave them connections for free as a public service.
We have some really odd religions in the US, from Shakers to Primitive Baptists to the Church of the Sub-Genius, but I've always thought that the strangest of them all was the belief in the marketplace as something beneficial to the consumer.
(Score: 1) by sl4shd0rk on Wednesday March 12 2014, @10:37AM
I think you mean that to read "lack of regulation"? Indeed. Any time you give an 800lb gorilla all the bananas it wants things are going to go badly for everyone but the gorilla.
Sometimes "free" isn't always good for the consumer. Sometimes "free" is used as a way of saturating the market with your product/service. Eg: When Microsoft started giving away IE back in the '90s and bundling it with Windows, it was the end of Netscape. Point being, "free" should not be used as an indicator of best choice. Yes, the same goes for FOSS.
(Score: 1) by akinliat on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:22PM
Well, there's still, even today, a lot of regulation in the telecomm industry. It is perhaps less than it was, but that's because it used to be one of the most heavily regulated industries in the country -- and AT&T encouraged that level of regulation. It was one of the tools that originally established the monopoly.
Absolutely true. However, in this case, the customers were the networks themselves, rather than consumers. In addition, there really was no market as such -- television was only just getting started. The free connections did shape the evolution of commercial television and the network affiliate model, but it's really hard to say what it might have looked like otherwise. More importantly, AFAIK, Ma Bell never did end up charging for these services. They were given away as a justification for Ma Bell's monopoly.
That was the great thing about Ma Bell. In order to keep the monopoly, it would do all sort of things that were in the public interest, and we all would benefit.