utiz4321

The primary argument for a merger I've seen, at least as I understand it, is "scale": "Sprint/T-Mobile as a merged company will be better capitalized to compete against Verizon/AT&T."
I think this argument is total BS. Look what T-Mobile was able to accomplish since the AT&T merger failed. It's on fire. Customer acquisition is through the roof. It's marketing message is on point. T-Mobile doesn't need Sprint to compete.... and Sprint doesn't need T-Mobile to compete. T-Mobile is eating into Verizon/AT&T. When Sprint finally gets its act together, it will too.
Yeah T-Mobile got a few billion dollars and some spectrum from AT&T as part of the merger breakup fee, but it could have just as easily blown the money on failed marketing and failed branding.... but it didn't.
Sure T-Mobile/Sprint may want the market to have only three major players as a result of a merger... but that may not be in the best interests of consumers in terms of price.

10 minutes ago, danlodish345 said:

I have a feeling it’s going to be blocked the merger. It’s all over the news.


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The decision isnt in the hands of the DOJ staff.  It is in the hands of a trump DOJ appointee that is a completely "hands-off" free marketer. I doubt it gets blocked.

Home ISP? Maybe in rural areas.

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8 minutes ago, Mr.Nuke said:

Pretty much everybody.

Well, I would have expected AT&T to have raised prices after both Verizon and T-Mobile did, yet they did not. A combined T-Mobile/sprint would have the spectrum resources to offer unlimited data for a long time to come as well as being a home ISP. Price is going to depend of where profit maximizations occurs. Upward pressure in this formula would come from less competition but downward pressure is going to come from scale, synergies and spectrum resources being more highly concentrated.

4 hours ago, S4GRU said:

Yes.  And post merger there will be even more pressure to raise the pricing.  It might be the right thing for the eventual health of the market.  I'm not sure if I am prepared to discuss the merits of that currently.  However, pricing will be under reduced pressure to go up without a 4th carrier to pressure them.  Right or wrong, that's where we are headed.

Maybe. That argument doesn't take into account returns to scale. The industry is still relatively competitive and with the push to 5g, MIMO, IoT, the rising cost of handsets etc... Who knows what prices are going to do. 

I don't know why people think that have two weaker competitors to the duopoly is better than a third really strong competitor? Or why they think a player like dish might not jump into the market if it consolidates.  These are all assumptions and ones not based on any facts. 

23 minutes ago, danlodish345 said:

The article stated that there wouldn’t be any break up fees.....which I am not surprised but if this merger does go through I hope soft bank eats a majority of sprints debt...if I was T-Mobile I wouldn’t even take the merger offer unless SoftBank agrees to paid off the majority of sprints debt...that best load would cripple T-Mobile...

The new company will have the debt of both companies. 

33 minutes ago, twospirits said:

True, but one never knows.  One thing that bugs me is that there is no mention of a breakup fee anywhere. If there was, I'll be more comfortable

I read that there is not going to be a break up fee. At least that is the rumor. 

I don't think the DOJ or the FCC will block the merger.  If you look at the attitudes of the decision makers in both agencies, they are both free market guys, it seems very unlikily it will get blocked. 

True but I assume Canadians travel and any national carrier their would have to cover at least the major road ways. In any case their population is less than a tenth of the US.  If the average national US carrier has 60000 macro sites and holding everything else constant, for the vost of operating the networks to be the same that would imply the average national Canadian carrier would be runing at about 6000 macro sites.  

But everything else isnt the same. So they have less leverage with network and handset vendors.  I don't know why anyone would think prices in Canada would be the same as here. 

1 hour ago, Thomas L. said:

Four seems to be the magic number for competition, France had three carriers and Canada has three carriers, both having awful prices and customer service. When France added Free, a fourth carrier (the French T-Mobile), prices dropped dramatically. Canada of course still has three providers and has the most expensive wireless service in the developed world after the US. If this merger happens, nothing good will come of it. I am crossing my fingers it fails. 

There is no “magic number” that is good in every country on earth.  That is just magical thinking. Each country is different in many key ways: number of pops, land mass, regulations, etc... all that goes into determining the proper size of the market, Canada probably has too many players. 

2 hours ago, SprintNYC said:

That is what

That is what a wireless carrier spend in a year. Sprint was spending closely the same amount before the merger. 

Yes, but that is an extra 5 billion in addition to what sprint was spending. 

15 minutes ago, bigsnake49 said:

As a Sprint customer you will see immediate benefits since you will be able to freely roam on T-Mobile's  data network. Voice integration will take a bit more.

I dont know if that is true. They have blue print for that in project fi but I dont know if they will make this available before the merger is approved.  Besides, the really exciting stuff is massive mimo on Sprint's side and 600 on t mobile. If those two things are delay I will be kind of bummed. 

10 minutes ago, SprintNYC said:

2014- Zero investment on network

2016- Minor investment on networks

If memory serves, 5 billion of the 22 billion ended up being a capital investment in the business itself.  The Japanese did invest into the network. 

1 hour ago, SprintNYC said:

It will take a year after the merger close to see the higher fees and unlimited going bye bye. I do not favor for this merger, but Sprint and its parent company have been waiting for this. This has been their strategy from the start, but the problem now is they are the seller rather than the buyers. The only thing in their way is the DOJ, but the new administration appointed pro-business lawyers in the antitrust department. 

Had the Japenese invested on Sprint network from the get-go, they would have been negotiating a merger from strength rather than weakness. 

They did invest in the network. 

22 minutes ago, RedSpark said:

If a merger is announced, I'm concerned about what that means for Sprint's network investment, service quality and customer service until that merger is completed.

Yup, this is my biggest concern.  1 yr for the merger to get approved and 1 yr to integrate the two companies before they start building the network out would be annoying. 

15 minutes ago, nexgencpu said:

Again, no one is arguing about adding 3 more carriers, in fact the argument is the opposite. So your example is kinda useless in this case.

My argument is still unchanged, mass consolidation is not a good thing for the consumer. If everyone's thought process was similar to yours, we would have one wireless company, and hey, since they have 100% market share, I'm sure they would gladly afford consumers great prices and services, cause you know, why not!? 

Cause corporations always make the wisest decisions when the profit motive is number one. 

You must be a huge fan of Citizens united...Corporations=people 

You must be in favor of backwardness imposed by the government because muh feels. 

Look, you are claiming to know the perfect size of the wireless industry and that it would be a bad deal for consumers if the industry had fewer players.  I am asking you to give some kind of facts for that claim, to which you replied "mergers are bad".  I pointed out that if that were true then the mergers that occurred in the mid 2000s would have been a bad thing so you should be able to make the case that the market size should be 7.   You cant do it. It is a perfectly valid strain of thought. 

6 minutes ago, nexgencpu said:

Yeah lets talk again after S-mobile increase rates 50% and start decommissioning thousands of sites that are considered "unnecessary"

I can still hear the ex iDEN users cries falling on death ears after waiting years to be converted to LTE and it never happening.

Funny thing that doesnt actual answer my question, nor does it help your case. 

Why would 7 carriers be better that 4 in 2017? On a spectrum consolidation bases alone it wouldn't makes sense. 

If your arguement is "muh IDEN", look thank the fates IDEN is dead.  It was a dead end technology and the spectrum would be a wast in today's data Centric world. 

15 minutes ago, nexgencpu said:

I never specifically said anything good for corporations is bad for consumers. Where talking M&A here, and how they usually are initiated to eliminate competition, not to somehow increase quality of goods.

Without competition in the wireless industry we would still be on 2G/3G, why bother spending when no one will have an option to switch anyway. R&D is an unnecessary expense in a world with zero incentive to innovate.

How does a sprint/t mobile tie up eleminated competition? There are still three nation wide players and a couple regionals.  The fact is in most case mergers are good for consumers, that is the logic, even from a corporation's  point of view.  Companies merge because it makes the more able to deliver goods and services competitively. 

The wireless industry is a perfect example of where mergers were of great benifits to the consumer. Unless you can argue that 7 players would have been able to create a better wireless industry than we have know.  Go on, I am willing to listen to a case.  I just dont see it. 

Just now, nexgencpu said:

Mass consolidation of consumer business goods/services are mostly only good for corporations taking over, his stance on this is far from polarizing.

Say what you will about John Oliver, his delivery is almost always spot on. Good writers+good pitch man is the only way shows like these work, and Last week tonight has delivered in spades.

Markets are not zero sum games.  If something is good for a company it doesn't follow that it is bad for the consumer.  That is particularly true in industries with high fixed cost as there are benifits to both consumers and companies to scale.

If mergers are always bad for consumers then make the case for 7 national wireless providers and why thatvwoyld be better than what we have now.  Ill give you a hint, it wouldnt be better: no 3f, no fake 4g and no LTE.  

32 minutes ago, nexgencpu said:

For those in favor of a Sprint/Tmobile tie up need to see the latest eps of Last week tonight. Its a small reminder of why mergers in general are mostly a bad idea. His segment(about the airline industry, and ironically enough makes fun of ATT) will definitely have some negative affect on any questionable mergers that are up and coming, including Sprint/Tmobile (He almost single-handedly saved Net Neutrality with an unbelievable segment similar to this one)

Doesn't hurt that its a hilarious segment..

John Oliver 

Generally speaking, if john Oliver is against it, I am for it. The manbis lucky he has good writters. 

3 hours ago, RedSpark said:

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-23/softbank-is-said-to-be-willing-to-take-market-price-for-sprint

Oh no... Seriously?

If t mobile won't go for sprint at market value than t mobile doesn't think sprint can make it as an independent company and believes the value of sprint will fall in the near future.  

41 minutes ago, SprintNYC said:

Hey after a merger T-Mobile will introduce the one plan including taxes and fees :  180 dollars per line nice. Unlimited will go bye bye

No. 

2 hours ago, Mr.Nuke said:

Sprint's latest guidance for CapEx was to remain around $3.5 to $4 billion a year for the next 3 years (2017-2019). Can guidance change? Yes, and it has before with Sprint. That said, I'll take their guidance over speculation based on debt maturities.

The have 8 billion in debt maturing over the next 3 years and have 7 billion in cash. If you can explain to me how the math works at their current free cash flow ill agree with you.  Otherwise, their guidance isnt worth much. 

13 minutes ago, Jones said:

A horizontal merger like this is good for one entity... Shareholders. 

Tens of thousands will potentially lose jobs, prices will go up, unlimited will go bye bye (unless you are willing to pay).

Dont forget how powerful the big 2 are in the US government. They will win major concessions in the merger too. 

Which is another point, the larger a company becomes the less responsive they are to the consumer because ppl become a statistic rather than valuable. Look at equifax's or Comcast's treatment of customers. 

So, none of the mergers in the 2000s was good for consumers? Sorry but that is nuts. Tell me how you even get to 3g with 7-8 players?