AT&T deal for T-Mobile deserves close scrutiny

Misgivings about AT&T's proposed $39 billion acquisition of T-Mobile USA have flooded into the Federal Communications Commission, with nearly 37,000 comments on file that run overwhelmingly against the deal.

The deadline for official petitions to deny the transaction was last week, prompting a last-minute flurry of paperwork from competitors like Sprint and industry groups including the Computer & Communications Industry Association and Free Press. The public comments are a jumble of fears and grievances, covering everything from AT&T's dropped calls to ominous warnings about the Ma Bell monopoly reassembling itself one acquisition at a time. But the most consistent arguments boiled down to this: The combination of the Nos. 2 and 4 wireless players would fundamentally alter the market, creating an AT&T and Verizon duopoly with control over nearly 80 percent of the space. These telecom twins would have all the power and every incentive to undermine competition, innovation and pricing pressure in a sector driving the economic and technological trends of the day.