AT&T and T-Mobile USA: the case against a merger

[Commentary] Some will argue for AT&T's purchase of T-Mobile because it has the potential to unify compatible spectrum in an open, fair way that encourages manufacturer participation and shifts control from operators to consumers. But the success of this plan hinges on a flawed foundation, which is that Americans are willing to pay $500 for their phones as a matter of course. They’re not. American carriers have trained us far too well into believing that a cheap phone should be free, and an awesome phone should generally be $150 to $250. So who blinks first? Carriers aren't about to remove subsidies from the devices they sell directly, of course — contracts and cheap hardware are key to keeping churn low from quarter to quarter. Manufacturers sporadically try to rage against the machine by offering their own pure, clean devices outside the carrier ecosystem, and they do so with very little success.