How Consumers Suffer from the Sprint-TMobile Merger

            In the upcoming weeks, Americans will see and hear millions of dollars in happy talk about the proposed merger of Sprint and TMobile.  Spin masters, dollar operated academics and a legion of lobbyists will claim breathlessly how this merger will make the combined company a stronger competitor and innovator, that consumers will see lower prices and how the combined company will expedite the introduction of fifth generation services.

            Nonsense!

            This merger has one and only one true objective: to generate higher margins for the combined company.  Sprint and TMobile have wanted to merge for years, because three ventures controlling nearly 100% of an essential, must have service, cannot help but earn higher profits than a less concentrated industry.

            This merger reduces by 25% the number of ventures providing service.  Would you want one of the Big Four airlines to merge with another, particularly after several earlier acquisitions?

            Do not for a millisecond buy the notion that the wireless marketplace will have more than 3 major players.  Already the pro-merger advocates mention that Comcast has become a competitor.  To be clear, Comcast has become a reseller of network capacity leased from Verizon.   There are several so-called Mobile Virtual Network Operators who can generate a profit as resellers thanks to the ample margins U.S. wireless carriers have. True competition results if and only if additional facilities-based network operators enter the market.

            Bear in mind that U.S. wireless carriers already have some of the highest profit margins (Average Revenue per User) in the world.  They have offered an enhanced value proposition largely because two mavericks, Sprint and TMobile, have come up with virtually all of the promotions and innovations we like.  But for competition from Sprint and TMobile, do you think AT&T or Verizon would offer lower roaming costs, carry forward minutes, large monthly baskets of minutes, semi-unlimited data, zero rating, bring your own device and service bundled with content?

            The pro-merger advocates will claim that there is no downside in having 3 powerful competitors.  In reality, having just 3 companies promotes a greater likelihood for what antitrust economists and lawyers term “conscious parallelism.” That’s a clinical sounding name for price fixing: it will become ever more enticing not to spend sleepless afternoons competing and instead to implicitly agree on prices and other, non-negotiable terms of service.

            If this horizontal deal goes down, expect the Big Three to increase their ARPU with AT&T and Verizon setting a higher umbrella price with the new company pricing service just below.

What Charlie Ergen’s Rational Exuberance Means for Consumers

            In the latest of an unbroken chain of disinformation from the Wall Street Journal, columnist Holman W. Jenkins, Jr. today implies that a Dish Network acquisition of Sprint offers more proof that there’s nothing but sunshine in the broadband and wireless marketplace.  According to Mr. Jenkins, anyone having a “woe is us refrain” ignores the robustness of facilities-based competition and how the network neutrality issue is a solution seeking a problem.

            Not so fast Mr. Jenkins.  There is another meme to yours that your publisher won’t allow and you cannot fathom: Dish Network, like AT&T, Comcast and all actual or prospective acquiring companies have commercial objectives that mostly involve enhancing shareholder value, goosing stock options, locking up spectrum and buying out competitors than promoting competition or ensuring fairness and transparency.  There is nothing wrong, noble or charitable about Mr. Ergen’s gambit: just like Comcast, he sees the need to find a hedge and alternative to his core satellite services.  Just in case consumers lose their appetite for a forced bundle of content tiers, delivered via Mr. Ergen’s satellites or Comcast’s cables, incumbents like Dish need to identify new profit centers.  For both Comcast it involved bolstering control over content, not just its distribution.  For Dish it requires a return to earth-based content distribution technologies in addition to—hopefully not in lieu of—the satellite option.

            Dish sees Sprint primarily as a source of terrestrial spectrum, perhaps for the same content it now distributes via satellite.  There is nothing in a Dish acquisition that bolsters the “reality” of broadband competition, or refutes concerns about the incentive and ability of network operators to favor affiliates.  Dish may revitalize Sprint, but the deal does not create new competitors, new competition, or more spectrum. 

            Mr. Jenkins exuberantly sees a rosy future when competitors buy each other out and collaborate in ways that foreclose even the prospect for facilities-based competition.