CCIA Calls AT&T-T-Mobile Deal ‘Most Anti-Consumer’ in History

The Computer and Communications Industry Association attacked AT&T’s proposed acquisition of T-Mobile, calling it a “lose-lose” deal because it would damage competition and drive up prices.

The CCIA, a tech-industry trade group whose members include T-Mobile USA, as well as eBay, Facebook, Google, Microsoft, and Yahoo, said that the deal could drive up prices for wireless services and harm smaller wireless carriers. “This may be the most aggressive and anti-consumer merger proposal in history, with many antitrust issues to be unraveled in the coming months,” CCIA President Ed Black said. CCIA said that AT&T’s purchase of the nation’s fourth-biggest wireless provider would be particularly harmful for smaller regional wireless carriers and handset makers that would be negotiating deals with only one carrier at a time because the two biggest nationwide carriers, Verizon and AT&T, use different wireless-technology standards. “A deal like this, if not blocked on antitrust grounds, is of deep concern to all the innovative businesses that build everything from apps to handsets,” Black said.