Dev.SN

Sprint: Purchase of T-Mobile Promotes Competition

posted by LaminatorX on Tuesday March 11 2014, @03:07PM   
from the Opposite-Day dept.

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."

• Re:Consumers need less douche (Score: 1) by akinliat on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:22PM

  by akinliat (1898) <akinliatNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Wednesday March 12 2014, @05:22PM (#15540)

  I think you mean that to read "lack of regulation"?

  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.

  Sometimes "free" isn't always good for the consumer. Sometimes "free" is used as a way of saturating the market with your product/service.

  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.

  Parent